What monsters were designed to wreck wizards (and Clerics to a lesser degree)?
Either by design intention ("The golem is immune to magic!") or in your own experience as a DM or player.
Golems, certainly, unless a wizard is specifically prepared to deal with them.
Anything the wizard can't actually target - like a mind blanked, greater invisible rogue (or just about anything else) would be a BIG problem for a wizard, especially if it can spring attack.
Wizards tend to dump strength, so strength-draining enemies are very dangerous for them.
So, I propose the mind blanked, greater invisible greater shadow rogue as well up in the ranks of wizard-killers...
Basically any monster that can surprise a wizard will have a good chance to wreck them. Sneak attack damage, poisons, grappling. Stuff that targets their CMD or Fortitude saves (Reflex to a lesser degree, since Wizards tend to have decent dex for use with ranged attack spells). Wizards can get out of danger with relative ease, especially if they have Dimension Door, so you have to hit them hard and fast.
Clerics are tougher and usually better armored.
A good general purpose solution to dealing with any caster are spells, effects, and poisons that reduce the spell casting stat for the class.
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Golems are a standard go-to choice. Immune to most spells, high AC, big attacks. However, they can be easy to avoid, and there are enough no-SR spells that a clever wizard player can still cope with them.
Rakshasa also have huge SR for their CR. In older editions they were worse - they were just flat-out immune to 1st-8th level spells.
Incorporeal monsters can be tough on everybody - half damage from nearly everything, most are undead so they come with a swathe of immunities. Extra points if it alos has DR - I'm looking at you, shadow demon.
Outsiders in general have SR and good saves, as well as various resistances and immunities.
Surprise encounters where the casters have no warning to "pre-buff," especially if the attackers go right for the casters, cam be very rough as well.
A series of minor encounter designed to prevent the wizard from ever getting 8 hours of rest, thus preventing reupping of spells, can also be tough. Be careful with this one as it can be very frustrating.
I am also a firm believer in threatening a wizard's spellbook when appropriate - it's a deliberate weakness built into the class. Again, don't overdo it. Also fair game is an arcane bond item if it's obvious, as well as spell component pouches and holy symbols.
Great question. As a GM I have not yet had to build an encounter for a wizard. we only have a sorcerer In our party. He's of a Dragon bloodline and relies Heavily on fire. this makes him easy to plan a challenging counter for.just Dig out a golem , devil, demon or anything else with fire resistance and our sorcerer cringes lol.
Monsters that cast spells as per sorcerers of a higher level than the wizard?
Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.
Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.
Conjuration to the rescue!
Element focused casters get really angry if you throw something at them that is immune to their element of choice.
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Some sort of reverse-rust monster that constructs armor around its foes, thus giving the wizard a high arcane spell failure chance?
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Some sort of reverse-rust monster that constructs armor around its foes, thus giving the wizard a high arcane spell failure chance?
Oh my god, the thought of that is hilarious. "The beast's feeler reaches out and grazes you. Suddenly, you feel as if you have had a great weight placed upon you. You look down in horror and find that you are encased in plate mail!"
Even better, a beast that can reassign equipment around the party. Take the paladin's plate and put it on the wizard, whose wand ends up in the hands of the raging barbarian!
What monsters give wizards the most trouble sounds like a trick question to me. The monsters that give wizards the most trouble are the ones the wizard isn't prepared for. If they're prepared for a monster, they can usually take it out, that's their strength. But if they don't have a good spell for the situation, they're in trouble. That's why I think experienced players are so much more dangerous as wizards than new players. They have the experience and meta game knowledge to know what to prepare for.
Derghodaemons can wreck an arcane spellcaster's day.
Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.Conjuration to the rescue!I fail to see how this solves anything do do with grappling. Dimension door may not have somatic components but that has nothing to do with the concentration check from grappling. Similarly, casting as a swift action may not provoke an AOO but still requires a concentration check for being grappled.
You can try to argue that it being a supernatural ability will somehow circumvent the check but you would be mistaken.
Supernatural Abilities don't require concentration checks.... so what is the problem
Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.Conjuration to the rescue!I fail to see how this solves anything do do with grappling. Dimension door may not have somatic components but that has nothing to do with the concentration check from grappling. Similarly, casting as a swift action may not provoke an AOO but still requires a concentration check for being grappled.
You can try to argue that it being a supernatural ability will somehow circumvent the check but you would be mistaken.
The rules do not specify whether supernatural abilities require concentration checks. I'd be wary of using "as if using dimension door" as proof of either interpretation. I do know that any monk player I've ever met would be surprised to find out that their abundant step could be nullified by breaking their concentration.
Spell Resistance is a pain in the patootie. I'd rather face down a reverse-rust monster than something with SR.
Still, a competent archer that is holding his action waiting for me to start casting can shut me down as well.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the spell feeblemind. If a wizard fails his save, he becomes useless. Ouch!
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Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.Conjuration to the rescue!I fail to see how this solves anything do do with grappling. Dimension door may not have somatic components but that has nothing to do with the concentration check from grappling. Similarly, casting as a swift action may not provoke an AOO but still requires a concentration check for being grappled.
You can try to argue that it being a supernatural ability will somehow circumvent the check but you would be mistaken.
I fail to see how you thought I was mistaken.
Supernatural Abilities (Su): Using a supernatural ability is usually a standard action (unless defined otherwise by the ability's description). Its use cannot be disrupted, does not require concentration, and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the spell feeblemind. If a wizard fails his save, he becomes useless. Ouch!
Derghodaemons have a feeblemind aura. :D
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3.5 wound up publishing 5 or 6 volumes of the Monster Manual (and that's not including the Fiend Folio) by the end, but almost everything after Monster Manual III was crap - HOWEVER, the reason I bring it up at all was because Monster Manual IV (yes, it's a free PDF - surprising and, if I'm not mistaken, rather poignant) has the Mageripper Swarm, which is just what it sounds like.
Since you also asked about Clerics: If the stereotypical Cleric has one consistent weakness (aside from the class's most fundamental limitation, the fact that they only have their magic as long as they remain in the good graces of a demanding higher power), it's being notoriously SLOW - you've heard of "Cleric initiative," haven't you? It's supposed to be a blessing in disguise, but it's still a low initiative, and all that that could potentially mean. They're also likely to be slow in every other way: burdened by heavy armor and the most likely of all classes (save for Paladins/Antipaladins) to take points away from/put their lowest roll in their Dexterity score. SO, if you want to mess with a Cleric, that's the easiest thing to exploit - anything that demands a Reflex save is obvious, but so is sending "chaser" monsters of any sort after them, putting them in collapsing ruins/ground that falls away behind you/one of these/Evil Otto, etc.
Other things you could do include attacks from behind while the party is stuck in a single-file hallway (since there is a tradition, in the absence of some better candidate, of placing the Cleric at the very back of the line), pitting them against antagonists with anti-divine abilities (Faiths and Philosophies has a section on Golarian "atheism" that provides a chain of feats that make those who take them an increasing pain in the ass for divine spellcasters, and there's the Order of the First Law, and outside Pathfinder, 3.5 and 3rd-party d20 sources have offered up a number of very nasty variations on this theme, such as the Defiant prestige class, the "Society of Atheists" prestige class from Ultimate Prestige Classes, Volume I, 3.5's divine interdiction spell, and even though I can't find it for the life of me, and I looked, I could swear there's a higher-level 3.5 spell out there that simply erases a Cleric's connection to their god), and the most profound challenge to a Cleric, putting them in a position that could wind up costing them the favor of their divine patron.
The easiest way for such a thing to happen is for the Cleric's alignment to change in an unacceptable way, but that should only happen because the player's actions lead to a change, I wouldn't normally try to initiate that shift if I were a DM; instead, I'd pit the player against situations that went against their patron's portfolio and raison d'etre - for example, getting a Cleric of of a wine god tangled up a temperance movement, placing a Cleric of civic order in the middle of a revolution (and the party is, by necessity of either moral or mortal nature, on the revolution's side), confronting a Cleric of a "war, weapons, and strength" deity with your campaign world's equivalent of the Manhattan Project ("A weapon so powerful that if used, it will end war forever by killing everyone???"), tasking a Cleric of a god of knowledge with trying to understand the nature of stupidity or a form of knowledge that somehow comes at the incontrovertible expense of other knowledge (I'm speaking as someone who suffered the misfortune of being forced to play this role for years IN REAL LIFE), introducing a Cleric of one of the various and assorted "Undead are an abomination, destroy them all" deities out there to your campaign world's equivalent of Tim Burton's Halloweentown, placing a Cleric whose deity is obsessed with "balance" in a situation where there simply is no "middle ground"...you get the idea.
Grappling is probably the worst thing for a wizard to deal with. Damage is an issue but can be dealt with. But grappling... he can't get out on his own, and casting spells is almost impossible.Conjuration to the rescue!I fail to see how this solves anything do do with grappling. Dimension door may not have somatic components but that has nothing to do with the concentration check from grappling. Similarly, casting as a swift action may not provoke an AOO but still requires a concentration check for being grappled.
You can try to argue that it being a supernatural ability will somehow circumvent the check but you would be mistaken.
I fail to see how you thought I was mistaken.
Supernatural Abilities (Su): Using a supernatural ability is usually a standard action (unless defined otherwise by the ability's description). Its use cannot be disrupted, does not require concentration, and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Good catch! That's rock solid.
Point conceded. It'd be really nice if ALL the pertinent information regarding supernatural abilities was actually in the same place. I mean really. It would only make sense.
Unfortunately, books are linear, while pertinence is multidimensional. The only way to put all of the information about a particular subject in the same place would be to repeat yourself a lot. The CRB would probably be over a thousand pages.
Some sort of reverse-rust monster that constructs armor around its foes, thus giving the wizard a high arcane spell failure chance?Oh my god, the thought of that is hilarious. "The beast's feeler reaches out and grazes you. Suddenly, you feel as if you have had a great weight placed upon you. You look down in horror and find that you are encased in plate mail!"
Even better, a beast that can reassign equipment around the party. Take the paladin's plate and put it on the wizard, whose wand ends up in the hands of the raging barbarian!
It gets worse when it's not an acceptable target for fireballs. Give the wizard a knighthood and a hyper-efficient squire who insists on "preparing his lord for battle".