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Recruit a god.
As Stockvillain indicates, there needs to be a LOT more information available. Each Wizard 20 is unique.
Fried chicken. Lots of friend chicken.
I suppose Wizards can't cleanse themselves of heart attacks.Fighter tested, Wizard approved....Fried chicken. Lots of friend chicken.Murder by heart attack?
limited wish addresses the cleanse ;)
Now, the tactical advantage of the Wizard having both hands occupied with greasy fried chicken, unable to use any of the four kinds of components, is enormous, provided said Wizard does not make use of a Quickened prestidigidation to clean himself up promptly... ^_______^
Since I have been on kineticist shtick for a while, I am going to suggest a few of those.
Maybe a team of them. You might as well get one of each, or at least the ones that seem like they work for you.
Earth can stop shape (traps? Traps are for people that go through the doors made by the enemies. I make my own doors), and they are usually fairly good for entangling or grappling with their infusions
Aether can use telekinetic maneuvers in order to steal at a distance- good for taking out anything that grants freedom of movement, which helps earth
Various ways to have them be effective against sight- aether can get blindsight via touchsight, earth can have tremor sense, fire with firesight, air with wind sight. Plenty of options to find him if he tries to mess with visibility, and plenty of ways to keep visibility if you rob him of it (with clouds or smoke, for instance)
Windsight-greater can get info if he short range teleports so you can see the area, and Earth can commune with nature via greater tremor sense greater- 10 minutes to set up, but it can end up with a fairly good range. Also, any kineticist, other than aether, can move at an amazing speed if you use ride the blast (assuming you can aim at empty space, that is 480, for air 960, per round; Mark Seifter kinda implied that by comparing it to dimensional door at times; I wonder if you can use snake too so it basically improves your movement...), so they can scour the place manually fairly easily. They can be good at cat and mouse.
And lets not forget, of course, the idea that you have several characters blasting with powerful ranged attacks, many of which aim for touch. Things like concealment help...but enough attacks (whole party at once+ quickened blasts?)
I will, of course, give the obvious caveat that all of these characters need to be half elves or dwarves, due to the class' low will saves. Half elves can specilize (+2 will, +2 vs 'kill your friends' spells), dwarves for +2 vs spell saves and +2 more with feat. Add on iron will, maybe improved iron will for rerolls... yeah, you can do fairly well. The class is also exceedingly SAD, so splurging on wis while dumping str/cha seems fair.
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Wait till he is kicking back in his hot tub. Transmute the water to green slime or antimatter.
Mathius has the right of it. Any plan that hinges on significant interactions with anything resembling the combat rules has completely misunderstood the question.
if the wizard isn't a lich, served only by golems and undead, etc, then he probably has servants to tend to all of those tedious day-to-day tasks. No wizard wants to scrub clean the pit he keeps his goblinoid test subjects in.
So, grab a human commoner, knock him out, and put him under a geas(He must use his weekends off to go to a specific pub), and get him a job scrubbing the goblin pits. Then you have a guy on the inside who doesn't know he's your guy (after all, he just got mugged, and he has a nice routine on his saturday off, where the serving girl just so happens to be re-geasing him).
Let your manchurian candidate get into the wizards good light, then one saturday while he's enjoying his stout, place a new geas instructing him to use a dose of powerful poison (player provided of course) to kill the wizard, using whatever means at his disposal.
Best case scenario; a several month long plan comes to fruition, and your nemesis lies dead.
Worst case scenario; you waste a dose of poison, and a few scrolls.
If you worry about the poison approach, a necklace of fireballs makes a great gift, and nystul's aura can help you slip it in via your commoner's, ah, smuggling hold. and lets be honest, who spends all of their spell slots keeping protection from energy up 24/7?
if the wizard isn't a lich, served only by golems and undead, etc, then he probably has servants to tend to all of those tedious day-to-day tasks. No wizard wants to scrub clean the pit he keeps his goblinoid test subjects in.
So, grab a human commoner, knock him out, and put him under a geas(He must use his weekends off to go to a specific pub), and get him a job scrubbing the goblin pits. Then you have a guy on the inside who doesn't know he's your guy (after all, he just got mugged, and he has a nice routine on his saturday off, where the serving girl just so happens to be re-geasing him).
Let your manchurian candidate get into the wizards good light, then one saturday while he's enjoying his stout, place a new geas instructing him to use a dose of powerful poison (player provided of course) to kill the wizard, using whatever means at his disposal.Best case scenario; a several month long plan comes to fruition, and your nemesis lies dead.
Worst case scenario; you waste a dose of poison, and a few scrolls.
If you worry about the poison approach, a necklace of fireballs makes a great gift, and nystul's aura can help you slip it in via your commoner's, ah, smuggling hold. and lets be honest, who spends all of their spell slots keeping protection from energy up 24/7?
If a wizard needs servants, why would he hire some bum off the streets when he can planar bind Planetars to do his housework?
Not that he needs to, when freaking Prestidigitation literally takes care of most day-to-day issues. >.>
But that's aside from the point. Level 20 wizards are likely to only surround themselves with those they can fully control. Your plan relies on a lot of assumptions that make it very likely to fail right from the start.
Plus, we're talking about a level where Astral Projection and Create Demiplane have been in full effect for ages. Even best case scenario you're looking at a slightly inconvenienced wizard with a dead Astral Projection/Clone.
if the wizard isn't a lich, served only by golems and undead, etc, then he probably has servants to tend to all of those tedious day-to-day tasks. No wizard wants to scrub clean the pit he keeps his goblinoid test subjects in.
So, grab a human commoner, knock him out, and put him under a geas(He must use his weekends off to go to a specific pub), and get him a job scrubbing the goblin pits. Then you have a guy on the inside who doesn't know he's your guy (after all, he just got mugged, and he has a nice routine on his saturday off, where the serving girl just so happens to be re-geasing him).
Let your manchurian candidate get into the wizards good light, then one saturday while he's enjoying his stout, place a new geas instructing him to use a dose of powerful poison (player provided of course) to kill the wizard, using whatever means at his disposal.Best case scenario; a several month long plan comes to fruition, and your nemesis lies dead.
Worst case scenario; you waste a dose of poison, and a few scrolls.
If you worry about the poison approach, a necklace of fireballs makes a great gift, and nystul's aura can help you slip it in via your commoner's, ah, smuggling hold. and lets be honest, who spends all of their spell slots keeping protection from energy up 24/7?
If a wizard needs servants, why would he hire some bum off the streets when he can planar bind Planetars to do his housework?
Not that he needs to, when freaking Prestidigitation literally takes care of most day-to-day issues. >.>
But that's aside from the point. Level 20 wizards are likely to only surround themselves with those they can fully control. Your plan relies on a lot of assumptions that make it very likely to fail right from the start.
Plus, we're talking about a level where Astral Projection and Create Demiplane have been in full effect for ages. Even best case scenario you're looking at a slightly inconvenienced wizard with a dead Astral Projection/Clone.
Well, he probably still doesn't want to go clean the goblin pits himself. I mean...they are still goblin pits. Even with magic that makes cleaning a breeze, it is still nasty, and you have to be in smelling distance to use the spell.
But yes, he would not pick some random commoner. But you forget of the wonderful, wonderful world of UNPAID INTERNS! With a level 20 wizard, it would not be hard, at all, to get plenty of people that want to study underhim (if only so they can put it on their resume). So that means dozens of level 1-5 wizards would be fairly easy to get ahold of.
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Get several chargers and grapplers. Use an anti magic shield. Grab him and slowly crush his throat. The end.
Careful with AMFs in a wizard lair. You don't want to suppress a Polymorph Any Object that transformed lava into masonry.
Dotting so I can fully appreciate the incoming snark.
Divert a river and flood it.
It really depends on a great many things. How creative is the wizard? How much attention does the wizard pay to your party? What is the wizard's build? What is the party build?
Four 20th level, 10 mythic tier PCs will usually make a cakewalk of it, or at least get a lot of additional chances to get it right.
Four tenth level PCs that are in the spotlight shouldn't have a chance unless GM plot says they somehow have a shot (wizard has some sort of code against simply scry and fry, or some such).
An evocation wizard with little imagination is far easier to take down than a very creative and crafty divination wizard.
Kill a 20th level wizard in their lair? Assuming the wizard knows what they're doing, which they will if they're actually using that INT score properly?
You don't, and people who think you do have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the mechanics work.
Go have a look at a build apparently posted by Anzyr a while back for what a 20th level wizard could do in a single week of prep for a fight that takes them out of their lair and imposes limits on certain things they can do. Then try to comprehend what that same wizard could do with far more prep time and those limits removed and the benefit of fighting in their stronghold.
I think that is hardly fair. A wizard's ability to know anything only works to the extent that he bothers to ask, typically.
If you a no one, then why would he bother even looking at you?
Wisdom is more of the score for figuring out dissidents that you have to wipe out. Int is for making an impossible death trap that hardly cares who you are, why you are there, or even what flavor of girl scout cookies you are selling.
Here are a few suggestions:
• Free Rovagug.
• Play your Exalted character.
• Let your cat onto the gaming table.
• Become the GM.
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Use mad psychological skillz to undermine his ego and sense of purpose so he commits suicide.
An evocation wizard with little imagination is far easier to take down than a very creative and crafty divination wizard.
Well the Evocation wizard ONLY kills the entire party in one turn. Moment of Prescience for Initiative, then Quickened Chain Lightning into Chain Lightning that kills everyone save or not...unless they all have evasion in which case you use some other spell.
Or he Dazing Spell locks the group.
And then if for some reason everyone isn't dead, he Emergency Force Spheres or his Contingency Teleport activates and whisks him to safety whilst the party has to pay for Resurrection fees.
step 1: befriend said wizard as a fellow adventurer and maybe occasional hireling that can get things done; for example as an assassin or bodyguard.
step 2: spend some years indirectly supporting and helping said wizard relize his goals/saving him from problems or at least making life simpler, maybe go on qusts to get ingridients that are hard to find and get paid by him for your efforts.
step 3: get romanticly involved with said wizard (either as a valued lover or as a friend with benefits) -if said wizard is asexual or you're not his type, try to get a valued position in his household.
step 4: spend some years (of your life, not the character)turning your game into a mashup of game of thrones/marco polo/any other series where people talk a lot - the rest of the group might leave during this time, or they might enjoy it, who knows ...
step 4: realize That You Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore, That You've Forgotten What You Started Fighting For!
step 5: awkward sex with GM ...
...or maybe not, more seriosly though: can you give some more info on the scenario? because so far we have his class and level - and it's impossible to kill Schrödingers Wizard(tm). (at least without the thread turning into a sidetracked spectacle of "nu-uh!/Ye-uhu!")
Who is he? what's his story? what's Your story with him? why do you want him dead? known interests/enemies/powers/allies
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1-Play elf, wait for wizard to die of old age.
or
2-Find attractive but stupid commoner of appropriate gender, use Diplomacy to convince them to marry wizard... Manipulate situation without magic so that they meet/marry. Have her squeeze out some kids, gain a bunch of weight. Wizard now has fat, stupid wife and kids.
Kills self.
Well, it's a wizard. A guy who relies on situation analysis, rational thinking and preparation. If there is a pattern, this Int 20+ guy will find it. And if this recognized pattern is about murdering him, he will act. Ouch.
So don't give him patterns. Give him chaos. Do a bunch of nonsense actions at irregular times, e.g. let a devil and an angel dance together close to his castle or blow up an unimportant hill nearby. He will try to get the pattern. Throw in some red herrings, so he thinks he slowly gets it, then show him he is wrong. Proceed with other strange stuff - each should be as different as possible. Don't get caught as the one behind all this.
He will get mad and paranoid - and he will start to make mistakes. Don't plan how to get him - likely he is still better at planning and recognizing plans than you. Wait for one opportunity, e.g. not really loyal new bodyguards hired because of paranoia or him personally scouting the area around his lair.
Find another 20th level wizard, go to each of their lairs, and tell each one that the other called them a dork. The rest should take care of itself.
I like this one.
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if the wizard isn't a lich, served only by golems and undead, etc, then he probably has servants to tend to all of those tedious day-to-day tasks. No wizard wants to scrub clean the pit he keeps his goblinoid test subjects in.
So, grab a human commoner, knock him out, and put him under a geas(He must use his weekends off to go to a specific pub), and get him a job scrubbing the goblin pits. Then you have a guy on the inside who doesn't know he's your guy (after all, he just got mugged, and he has a nice routine on his saturday off, where the serving girl just so happens to be re-geasing him).
Let your manchurian candidate get into the wizards good light, then one saturday while he's enjoying his stout, place a new geas instructing him to use a dose of powerful poison (player provided of course) to kill the wizard, using whatever means at his disposal.Best case scenario; a several month long plan comes to fruition, and your nemesis lies dead.
Worst case scenario; you waste a dose of poison, and a few scrolls.
If you worry about the poison approach, a necklace of fireballs makes a great gift, and nystul's aura can help you slip it in via your commoner's, ah, smuggling hold. and lets be honest, who spends all of their spell slots keeping protection from energy up 24/7?
If a wizard needs servants, why would he hire some bum off the streets when he can planar bind Planetars to do his housework?
Not that he needs to, when freaking Prestidigitation literally takes care of most day-to-day issues. >.>
But that's aside from the point. Level 20 wizards are likely to only surround themselves with those they can fully control. Your plan relies on a lot of assumptions that make it very likely to fail right from the start.
Plus, we're talking about a level where Astral Projection and Create Demiplane have been in full effect for ages. Even best case scenario you're looking at a slightly inconvenienced wizard with a dead Astral Projection/Clone.
We're both relying on assumptions, you that the wizard is played as you would play it; a hyper-paranoid control freak with no vices or oversights whatsoever, I that the wizard is played like a human or elf wizard in any of a thousand novels. I choose to assume that the wizard in question has flaws and oversights, because that's how I run them when I Dm. Great power creates great arrogance. Sure, the wizard can make a chain of demiplanes and hide his real body behind a long line of astral projections, but would he? At that level, a wizard is sure to have made outer planar enemies, who could find and snip his silver cord with some ease. Is he willing to leave himself open to an easy assassination by various outsiders all to forestall a death at the hands of mortals he no doubt considers himself above? Look at Elminster; always very concerned with the goings on of important folks; kings, malaugrym, devil princes, and consistently overlooks things that should be obvious, Narnra for instance, lives under his nose for 20 years unseen.
Look to the Red Wizards of Thay; a more paranoid group of squabbling magelords you could not find, and they have very good reason to fear assassination from every side. They still have their vices, they still have their extracurricular activities, they still have slaves to scrape out their goblin pits.Against a living wizard in a living game, subterfuge and assassination can and do work if the proper steps are taken to avoid divination. Only the theoretically optimized wizards of this and similar forums are immune to their own arrogance, addiction and lust.
Clone and Create Demiplane are relatively very cheap. Trap the Soul is your best bet but Detect Magic and True Seeing are also very cheap to make permanent. You need to somehow convince a wizard to pick up a Trap the Soul object without recognizing it for what it is. Maybe a very distracted wizard that trusts you?
Guys, unless the Wizard involved is a complete knobhead you will never be able to FIND him or his lair without embarking on some kind of an epic quest. Real wizards are paranoid. The truly dangerous wizards are the ones that you don't even know exist.
I don't think they even need to be paranoid. They just need to look at how quick and easy it is to set up a half dozen permanent demiplanes and putting a clone on each along with a number of easy defenses plus a few permanent self-buffing spells (detect magic and true seeing in particular) along with a few defenses on each of the clones (undead or constructs or planar bonded creatures or whatnot plus some rather routine spells). Just a reasonable level of precaution means you're going to have a half dozen backups in place.
Guys, unless the Wizard involved is a complete knobhead you will never be able to FIND him or his lair without embarking on some kind of an epic quest. Real wizards are paranoid. The truly dangerous wizards are the ones that you don't even know exist.
Well, it is less that real wizards are all paranoid, it is just that the wizards that have gone through enough to reach 20th level (and survived long enough to do so) have ended up paranoid due to the fighting, intrigue, subterfuge, etc. Very, very few wizards live in the dangerous world of adventurers, warlords, and demon princes.
Basically, your average wizard is probably a librarian, or maybe some small crafter churning out scrolls for 1-3 level spells and +1 swords for dumb noble kids.
Just thought I might mention that. It had been bugging me throughout this discussion, since everyone is always using the term 'wizard' in such an all encompassing manner. No, this has not real effect on the original discussion, since it was about a 20th level wizard who is very entrenched in the world of traps, mazes, portals, minions, and 'pesky kids'.
Guys, unless the Wizard involved is a complete knobhead you will never be able to FIND him or his lair without embarking on some kind of an epic quest. Real wizards are paranoid. The truly dangerous wizards are the ones that you don't even know exist.Well, it is less that real wizards are all paranoid, it is just that the wizards that have gone through enough to reach 20th level have ended up paranoid due to the fighting, intrigue, subterfuge, etc. Very, very few wizards live in the dangerous world of adventurers, warlords, and demon princes.
Basically, your average wizard is probably a librarian, or maybe some small crafter churning out scrolls for 1-3 level spells and +1 swords for dumb noble kids.
Just thought I might mention that. It had been bugging me throughout this discussion, since everyone is always using the term 'wizard' in such an all encompassing manner. No, this has not real effect on the original discussion, since it was about a 20th level wizard who is very entrenched in the world of traps, mazes, portals, minions, and 'pesky kids'.
I'm just assuming that it's an individual who has 20 levels in the wizard class. Once you have access to multiple 9th level wizard spells a day, you're in possession of such ridiculous power that - regardless of how you got here - you're going to have some basic protections in place. Clone, permanency and create greater demiplane are just so ridiculously good spells for ridiculously cheap prices that you may as well use the s*** out of them.
I'm just assuming that it's an individual who has 20 levels in the wizard class. Once you have access to multiple 9th level wizard spells a day, you're in possession of such ridiculous power that - regardless of how you got here - you're going to have some basic protections in place. Clone, permanency and create greater demiplane are just so ridiculously good spells for ridiculously cheap prices that you may as well use the s*** out of them.Guys, unless the Wizard involved is a complete knobhead you will never be able to FIND him or his lair without embarking on some kind of an epic quest. Real wizards are paranoid. The truly dangerous wizards are the ones that you don't even know exist.Well, it is less that real wizards are all paranoid, it is just that the wizards that have gone through enough to reach 20th level have ended up paranoid due to the fighting, intrigue, subterfuge, etc. Very, very few wizards live in the dangerous world of adventurers, warlords, and demon princes.
Basically, your average wizard is probably a librarian, or maybe some small crafter churning out scrolls for 1-3 level spells and +1 swords for dumb noble kids.
Just thought I might mention that. It had been bugging me throughout this discussion, since everyone is always using the term 'wizard' in such an all encompassing manner. No, this has not real effect on the original discussion, since it was about a 20th level wizard who is very entrenched in the world of traps, mazes, portals, minions, and 'pesky kids'.
Yes....and I think most wizards just aim for level 5 where they can get enough crafting feats that they can have a nice repretroire.
The disconnect we are having here is that I always have a simple fact in the back of my mind: most people are level 1-3 commoners. And even with people with classes, most don't get very far. That is why adventurers who have honed their skilled fighting life and death battles against monsters (and obtained levels upwards of 10+) are necessary.
I recognize the fact npc's are typically put at 'just a few levels above or below you'. I am saying that I write that off (adventurers just live in the stratas of society where the powerful people live) and just think keep the weak commoners as something that appears in the background, but they are too inconsequential to bother mentioning.
I'm just assuming that it's an individual who has 20 levels in the wizard class. Once you have access to multiple 9th level wizard spells a day, you're in possession of such ridiculous power that - regardless of how you got here - you're going to have some basic protections in place. Clone, permanency and create greater demiplane are just so ridiculously good spells for ridiculously cheap prices that you may as well use the s*** out of them.Guys, unless the Wizard involved is a complete knobhead you will never be able to FIND him or his lair without embarking on some kind of an epic quest. Real wizards are paranoid. The truly dangerous wizards are the ones that you don't even know exist.Well, it is less that real wizards are all paranoid, it is just that the wizards that have gone through enough to reach 20th level have ended up paranoid due to the fighting, intrigue, subterfuge, etc. Very, very few wizards live in the dangerous world of adventurers, warlords, and demon princes.
Basically, your average wizard is probably a librarian, or maybe some small crafter churning out scrolls for 1-3 level spells and +1 swords for dumb noble kids.
Just thought I might mention that. It had been bugging me throughout this discussion, since everyone is always using the term 'wizard' in such an all encompassing manner. No, this has not real effect on the original discussion, since it was about a 20th level wizard who is very entrenched in the world of traps, mazes, portals, minions, and 'pesky kids'.
Yes....and I think most wizards just aim for level 5 where they can get enough crafting feats that they can have a nice repretroire.
The disconnect we are having here is that I always have a simple fact in the back of my mind: most people are level 1-3 commoners. And even with people with classes, most don't get very far. That is why adventurers who have honed their skilled fighting life and death battles against monsters...
Murder-hobodom isn't the only path to experience points. You gain experience through all sorts of "advancing the story" means like forging alliances or retrieving lost artifacts or GM fiat.