Hey Paiozians!
I'm thinking about doing the Patherfinder Fiction contest. The premise of my story is a an evil high level male human necromancer wizard hunting and a goodish high level female elf druid. From what I've gathered, a 20th level wizard should be able to kick the crap out of the druid.
But, because its a fun short story, what I'd generally like to do is:
- establish that creeping, awful feeling of what happens when you are being mercilessly hunted and played with (for the druid)
- have her continually manage to not die in creative ways
- have her eventually take him out due to a slip up on his part
So what I'd like is some help from you guys on magical mechanics like:
- what sort of magic would he use to hunt/toy with her?
- and when he finally moves in for the kill, how does she manage to survive his god-like onslaught?
- what sort of slip ups would it take to finally kill him? I'm thinking the end would be her grapple/pinning him into submission.
Spells should all be PF Core/APG; neither class has to be super-optimized - I'm ultimately looking for color/flavor here, with enough crunch to make it interesting.
And generally speaking, any ideas I can steal (I'm not proud!) to make the story better, would love to hear 'em!
Thanks in advance!
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
I would say that your best bet for a piece of fiction is not to try and fit the story exactly to the rules- just use the general powers of a Wizard and Druid, but don't restrict yourself down to simulating the game itself.
Hm.
Well, a wizard's kill tricks are:
1. Time stop. Practically every tactic is better with this. Then, it varies...
- 5x Delayed Blast Fireball. For an epic wizard, they could be intensified or empowered or both. That's insane amount of fire damage.
- Reverse Gravity+Prismatic Sphere
- Walling the target in + cloud spells (acid, fire, kill)
- Summoning stuff
- Disjuncting anything currently active.
On beam side, empowered enervation, disintegrate are pretty nasty.
Tracking would be done through divinations, naturally. Druid can has foresight running, but that's about it.
A druid can...
- turn into something that burrows
- turn into something small enough that can pass through the bars in force cage
- Be poison immune
- Be fire immune/resistant.
- Fly
- Death Ward is on list, so requires an action to disjunct to enervate.
there NEEDS to be a reason for the druid to have really EXCELLENT saves, or rerolls or such. Nothing much can be done about Save-ors, when they hit, otherwise. ( although, spell turning items, SR... )
The druid's best friend here is that there's no use limitation to a high level wildshape, while even a high level wizard is generally limited in uses/day. Also, animal companion, especially if the wizard went with arcane bond instead of a familiar.
As for turning the tables...
- Antipathy effectively negates summons and calls.
- As the wizard is probably scrying, a 'seemingly' safe place which never-the-less is dangerous, might be called for. Something that requires necklace adaptation or you end up with fort saves VS. Surprise moving AMFs.
- Allies, are naturally great. Perhaps there's a friendly great wyrm green dragon the druid knows, who can turn into a harmless-looking humanoid and mask it's magic aura...
Off the top of my head, y'know.
Enlight_Bystand wrote: I would say that your best bet for a piece of fiction is not to try and fit the story exactly to the rules- just use the general powers of a Wizard and Druid, but don't restrict yourself down to simulating the game itself. I agree with this. The games should try to emulate the stories. The stories should not try to emulate the game.
At that level in a real world fight anyone could win.
True, but I do like Magic A is Magic A.
That being said, feel free to invent new spells or fluff effects (medusa blood in stonework blocks teleportation or whatnot) or even new abilities, as there are no pre-existing epic abilities, or think of it as inventing new APG-style alternate class features.
An epic druid, I imagine, can meld into the earth, walk on clouds, call storms, turn into legendary beasts and so forth.
An epic mage can create constructs, tapestries of magic, or even new species. they can manipulate energies, build and destroy, breach the planes, call creatures, enslave them if needed.
sozin wrote: Hey Paiozians!
I'm thinking about doing the Patherfinder Fiction contest. The premise of my story is a an evil high level male human necromancer wizard hunting and a goodish high level female elf druid. From what I've gathered, a 20th level wizard should be able to kick the crap out of the druid.
But, because its a fun short story, what I'd generally like to do is:
- establish that creeping, awful feeling of what happens when you are being mercilessly hunted and played with (for the druid)
- have her continually manage to not die in creative ways
- have her eventually take him out due to a slip up on his part
So what I'd like is some help from you guys on magical mechanics like:
- what sort of magic would he use to hunt/toy with her?
- and when he finally moves in for the kill, how does she manage to survive his god-like onslaught?
- what sort of slip ups would it take to finally kill him? I'm thinking the end would be her grapple/pinning him into submission.
Spells should all be PF Core/APG; neither class has to be super-optimized - I'm ultimately looking for color/flavor here, with enough crunch to make it interesting.
And generally speaking, any ideas I can steal (I'm not proud!) to make the story better, would love to hear 'em!
Thanks in advance!
Quite frankly a smart wizard won't set himself up for one on one confrontation. He'll be doing any of the following perhaps more than one.
1. He'll use an assasin, perhaps some type of creature that Druids aren't that strong against, or simply someone put in a betrayal of trust. In one D20 Warcraft scenario, the druid was simply murdered in his sleep, his throat slit by someone he trusted.
2. Wizards, especially necromancers will have lots of underlings working for them, perhaps even powerful intelligent undead. He'll use whatever means he can to distract, or put his opponent in an unfavorable position.
Similarly stories like this are frequently resolved in certain ways. No matter who you are, necromancer or druid, it helps to make friends.
Because basically when two parties are epic and competent enough it'll frequently come down to who surprises who or who wins initiative. And evil bad guys that are competent enough to get to 20th level, never leave things up to that kind of chance.
LazarX wrote: sozin wrote: Hey Paiozians!
Quite frankly a smart wizard won't set himself up for one on one confrontation.
Remember, wisdom is at best, a penalty-less stat, if not a dump stat. wise, charismatic AND intelligent wizards who've survived long enough that their physical stats don't matter any longer, are very close to plot devices.
My NPC/bad guy wizards are often enamored with their arcane power, impulsive, aggressive, hold a grudge like no-one and have a tendency to taunt and exposit at the PCs when they feel safe.
Druids are REALLY versatile, argueably much more so than wizards, so the druid might have an edge, even if it's just wildshaping into something tiny and hiding while summoning critters to rain death on the wizard. They also have access to positive energy, which harms most undead. For long range spells, tiny druids could have a +128 to Stealth checks against the wizard, not counting Dex or ranks in Stealth.
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