Question for Gm's. Have you ever have an issue with the so called "God" wizard?

[Ambrus]

I'm playing a sorcerer / oracle / mystic theurge who, because I'm the only dedicated caster in our party, has tried my best to cover all the magic bases; except blasting. Most of my resources go into information gathering; be it straight out divination or magically scouting areas ahead of the group. Then, having figured out the challenges ahead of us, I devise a plan and use my magic to bolster and position the party for a surprise attack. My preferred M.O. is to find (or create) a proverbial back door and start by surprise attacking the BBEG first and then discreetly going through its cohorts in reverse order. It's proven to be a devastatingly effective approach. I keep a wide assortment of wands, scrolls and potions to deal with most any situation that might arise.

Most often, by the time the fight begins, my part in it is largely over. I might cast a few battlefield control spells or some detrimental spell to neutralize an enemy's particular advantage, but it's often not really necessary seeing as how our martially focused party takes advantage of the surprise round and won initiative in the first full round to wipe out the biggest threats first.

All in all it's rewarding to play this kind of character in a campaign, though I'm not certain I'd want to do so again in the future. It takes out a lot of the challenge from the game.

[voska66]

I've never seen the God Wizard. I've seen Wizards take what I thought would be tough encounter and turn it upside down making it trivial. At the same time I've seen wizards die from easy encounter you'd think they'd breeze through.

[Kydeem de'Morcaine]

In answer to the OP's question.

I would say it depends very heavily on the GM. For example in our current campaign I am trying to build toward the God Wizard. However, I have not had a single day (now 3rd level) when we weren't under attack or rushing off to rescue someone so that I could scribe a simple scroll. Our divinations / information gathering / rummor mill has never been good enough to be sure of what we would be facing or what was needed to defeat it.

This is standard in this group.

I have played in other groups where info and time are much easier to find.

[Tacticslion]

Although not exactly as seekerofshadowlight describes (which, aside from the 3.0 deities and demigods divine salient ability Arcane Mastery, which is literally restricted to literal god wizards/sorcerers, is impossible), I'm playing something pretty close in our Kingmaker campaign, although it is not pure Pathfinder (mixing in 3.5, as it was our first "actual" PF campaign), which, we've found, is part of the source of the power creep. Nonetheless, with the large amount of downtime, my personal abuse of rules to create (more than one) infinite wish machines (which I actually use comparatively sparingly, as I come up with numerous reasons why "they don't work that way" when asked for certain things), and a lucky roll or two, has allowed me to create a large magical divinatory mental network which I have constant access to. This basically means I have a pretty good idea of what's about to happen shortly before it does (although, due to the limitations of divination I don't always have super-accurate knowledge or a vast amount of time) to prepare most things I'd need before hand.

I do this very directly and without any chicanery - the GM is fully aware of what I know and don't and has full access to my spellbook/spells prepared. It's the foreknowledge that's the thing. With that, it often comes down to what Ambrus describes.

Despite this, I've "stepped on the toes" of/"invalidated" the other characters only once: when I solo'd the boss of adventure three (which was one of the more exhilarating and harrowing things I've ever done in a game). After which I immediately ceased using those tactics and have switched things up to permanently tie much of my magic up into doing and dealing with other things, while supporting/buffing/battlefield control similar to Treantmonk's suggestions.

[Ambrus]

Tacticslion wrote:

Despite this, I've "stepped on the toes" of/"invalidated" the other characters only once: when I solo'd the boss of adventure three (which was one of the more exhilarating and harrowing things I've ever done in a game). After which I immediately ceased using those tactics and have switched things up to permanently tie much of my magic up into doing and dealing with other things, while supporting/buffing/battlefield control similar to Treantmonk's suggestions.

Much the same with me. I've often devised the means by which I could solo a fight or most of an adventure with little trouble but I try to avoid doing it as much as possible so as to let the rest of the party do what they built their characters for; beating NPCs to death. I've only soloed two fights; once to beat a killer monster with a CR 7 points above the party's average character level (which would have likely killed them had they fought it directly) and another to take out an enemy army which would have proven to be an endless slog if handled conventionally. I also try to avoid using the same magic combos over and over if they prove too effective.

[DreamAtelier]

I've seen the 'God-Wizard' problem in play on a few separate occasions.

The first was back in Ad&D, when the rules allowed for a wizard to cast spells directly from his spell book (or it might just have been that our group misunderstood them sufficiently to believe this was the case). So we had a wizard who kept hirelings around to hand him the right book, and as such it was virtually unheard of for him not to have the right spells available by the third round of combat.

The second was in 3.0, and involved a game which could best be described as Monty Haul to the nth degree. By level 5 the wizard had access to a fully charged Staff of Power that had been recovered in part of a treasure hoard. While he may not have been a true "god-wizard", it certainly felt like it to the rest of the party, as he always had something that was a viable combat ending spell, since most creatures we were going up against could be wiped out by a single casting of a direct damage spell from the staff, and he instead prepared utility spells in his slots.

The third time was actually rather recently, and it was in pathfinder. But again, it wasn't the god-wizard as is most commonly presented and understood. What happened there was that there were two wizards and a sorcerer all being played in the same 9 player party, all three of whom picked up Leadership with another lower level spell caster, and had UMD-focused familiars. The wizards knew the sorcerer's spell list in its entirety, and shared their own spell knowledge rather freely, which meant that on any given day we'd have a pair of 7th level wizards preparing their spells so that they had no overlap with each other or the sorcerer, and a pair of 5th levels doing the same thing. The main sorcerer was a blaster, while his cohort was the basic utility things like knock and so forth.

With six characters worth of spell selection, and a ready supply of low level spells prepared by their followers and often cast by their familiars, they managed to truly trivialize the game for the rest of the group. It was unheard of for one of them not to have the needed spell to end any encounter on the first round, though there was no way to know which one of them it would be.

All the involved characters have since been retired, at the request of the group as a whole, Leadership has been house-ruled so that casting classes will never serve as followers or cohorts (under the DMs theory that they are simply too egotistical to believe a PC is someone they should take orders from), and a new table policy has been set in place that in party casters may not exchange spells with each other without first scribing it as a scroll and then deciphering the scroll. So, at least that problem is over.

[Dragonamedrake]

DreamAtelier wrote:

I've seen the 'God-Wizard' problem in play on a few separate occasions.

The third time ... two wizards and a sorcerer all being played in the same 9 player party, all three of whom picked up Leadership with another lower level spell caster, and had UMD-focused familiars.

LOL there is your issue in that example... 9 players! and the DM allows Leadership! Good God how long did your combat take? I assume others had pets or cohorts of their own?

A. I never allow more then 6 players (personal preference)

b. If I have over 5 players I don't allow Leadership... or if I do the cohorts are for taking care of the PC's holdings or making items... not for adventuring.

You get 9 players + cohorts + pets + familiars + npcs... and its near impossible to challenge them as they SHOULD have an answer with that many people and combat slows down to a crawl.

I feel for you and am jealous you have that many gamer friends at once my friend.

[Fozbek]

Yeah, I disallow combat cohorts from Leadership (ie, cohorts that are party members) if we have 4 or more players. They can still take the feat, but the cohorts will be non-combatants, or at least in-the-background combatants, such as a general for an army or suchlike.

As to the original question, no, my play group are all good friends with each other and we play a friendly game. God-wizards don't make for a very fun game for the other party members. We're pretty good about self-policing, and we've voluntarily retired characters that turned out to be unexpectedly too powerful before.