Herremann the Wise
First Post
On this, I am fairly similar although I do allow research which pretty much opens everything up (similar for gate too). Even with these restrictions, I still found it was too abusable.
It stops the wizard being targetted by the nasty high level stuff. They have to be sprayed with attacks first which was not always easy if they were flying or other evasive some such. Area effects could trim up hit points but that means that the wizard gets a free shot at the magic caster (usually killing/mazing them).
Thats the thing though. Wearing away those defences is very very difficult. They don't just wear off any time soon.
At high level, you can literally ignore the DM trying to do this. You can reasonably interrupt their resting but if they NEED to rest, then they can usually find a way of doing it that if the DM does try to interrupt them, will just be the DM metagaming and waving around the DM mallet of doom as I call it. Sometimes, you just have to respect the power level of the party and that they can rest when they want, go where they want and pretty much kill anything they want. To challenge a party of this level in combat is very difficult. You either just end up challenging the fighter-types or killing them if you up the challenge to match it with the wizard. Such is the tightripe I was describing in previous posts.
This is fine at lower levels. At higher levels, they crawl out of their Magical Mansions to dine on the Cleric's best Heroes Feast. Again, when the party has ready access to these things, you just have to accept that you can't challenge them as you once did.
But you can't have every enemy they face having access to that sort of stuff. The monsters will do the best they can but when it comes to ambushing, the PCs are going to be doing it more so than the bad guys.
And then they came back and ressurected her when they were at full power and so the King was happy again. If charged with cowardice in the first place, they would simply answer that if they were dead, the Princess would not be coming back at all. If the King pushed the matter, he'd then end up with a very expensive bill from the party or just simply being replaced if he was that ungrateful.
In high level combat, it is fairly easy to be killed and killed quickly. Most combats barely last a couple of rounds. Moment of Prescience is a guaranteed "you lost a round DM'. It does not have to be used - and in fact it almost becomes a game to get the wizard to use it up on a slightly lesser magic so they can't on the big one. (and that is of course once you have got through spell turning too).
In a "fair" encounter, you are not going to be able to target a wizard that many times with nasty stuff. This spell is the key to surviving more often than not - and most wizards I have played or DMed against will have a few scrolls of this just in case.
You would load this one on before heading off to ambush the bad guys. It's like a blur against magic which is incredibly handy.
If the opposing mage is using up valuable time with GDM, they're not killing the wizard. If you can have creatures that have a GDM effect then cool, you are going to make the wizard feel a little heat as the opposing wizard takes advantage. As for Disjunction, not many things have access to this and if they do, then nobody has much fun. I think almost by passive agreement, my group limits the use of this - kind of like antimagic. It's there though and it has its place. It just does not come up that often.
As for Mind Blank, it is a blanket protection versus enchantments (which in a world of Feebleminds is huge). It also protects the mage versus scrying and so many other little things at the cost of an 8th level spell slot. Key spell.
But this is the thing, area of effect things generally don't kill the wizard, even if maximized. They normally have some sort of resistance to the energy type (particularly if they are ambushing). All the good stuff is generally targetted. And I think in this you are missing the point. Put altogether, you have a really difficult series of barriers to get through - and you can't have every combat being about getting through the wizard's defences. As such, they become incredibly dangerous and "unkillable" in regular, standard encounters. If you have had to DM through this, you would see what I mean when I say that your prep becmoes completely warped by what the wizard can do. To challenge the party as a whole is so incredibly difficult.
This if fine at lower levels, but at higher levels the game changes. What the PCs can do is completely different. This is where the grittiness of a game generally ends as the PCs don't have to worry about this stuff any more. Admittedly, this is as much a product of the DM embracing the rule set, rather than trying to restrict and limit teleportation and all the other stuff that the PCs at high level can do. If you go with the rules as written, this is the type of game you end up with. Not everyone's cup of tea, nor is it easy in terms of preparation, and nor is it easy to make it enjoyable and challenging. High level DMing becomes an art unto itself.
No when the wizard Meteor Storms the murder of crows because the rogue or cleric made a DC 50 check that "something was a little fishy about that flock of crows following us", and they all get fried to ash except for the singed one in the middle, THAT is as good as a name tag. And something that the rogue will then put a series of arrows into, generally killing it. Unfortunately, once you get to certain levels, familiars just become easy targets.
If the enemy barbarian is getting a chance at hitting the wizard, the fighter is NOT doing his job right. The other party members have to do something! Druid's are very powerful in the effects they can produce, particularly against multiple targets and at range too. But they don't have the all round utility of a wizard, nor the wizard's complete array of defenses.
If mooks are using up a wizards primary defenses, then the wizard's player ain't doing it right.
So if the party fighter fails and the wizard gets targetted - remembering of course this is the classic case where the fighter looks at the mirror images and starts guessing, there is a chance that the melee enemy might get a lucky shot in. But again, look at the other defenses the wizard might have such as stoneskin, moment of prescience and so on. It is just not that easy to do.
Time stop is the wizards ultimate friend in this regard along with Gate or even conventional summoning. He doesn't teleport away, he teleports next to the party cleric who's ready with a heal spell if he's in that bad a way. OR he flies into the air if such will put easy distance between him and a non-flying melee enemy. Surely you've seen this all before. Unless you specifically go out of your way to do it as a DM, getting to kill the party wizard just does not happen at high level.
Mordenkainen's Disjunction does not grow on trees. And I disagree with you with this. A DM who gets too joy-happy with Disjunction will generally find their players losing interest as hard fought for or crafted MIs get destroyed. Again, I think for high level play to be fun on both sides of the screen, I think you almost need to have a gentleman's agreement on this one. I very very rarely go anywhere near using this spell against PCs and if I do, the PCs will generally have worked it out beforehand and be expecting it as part of the challenge. YMMV.
On a 1, yes things have to make saves. Doing more than this would seem a little unfair.
It used to go with the territory along with Gate. As the party wizard, you just accepted that this was a part of things in 3.x. In Pathfinder of course, the pain gets spread around in terms of diamonds.
And that's cool. The main reason why groups don't go to higher levels is because it places a huge demand on the DM in terms of rules knowledge, and preparation time. As well, the differences between casters and non-caster becomes increasingly pronounced in terms of power level. Pathfinder addresses this but the differences are still there. This means that it becomes less fun for some players and less fun for DMs planning things to challenge the PCs.
Actually our games sound very similar! At lower levels, this is exactly how things pan out. I prefer a grittier feel but as I mentioned above, by 11th level, the wizard starts getting signigicantly more powerful than the non-casters. By 15 level, the style of the game changes and by 19th level, you have the issues that I have mentioned in this thread where the wizard becomes unkillable unless his death is programmed by the DM. The tactics I mentioned above DO result in this. Seriously try DMing against it and you will see exactly what I mean.
And the rest of the PCs are just going to stand around and let this happen? I prefer to limit extra stuff and in my Pathfinder games, I have stuck to core only. Antimagic is a good way of scaring a wizard and it will work. But you can't have every combat utilizing anti-magic. Flying works very nicely against your tactic by the way.
Confusion, rinse repeat at range while the rest of the party do their thing. If something survives that, then you might let loose a more powerful spell but a good wizard will know when to use the big stuff and when not to. Unless you have something that is an immediate threat to the wizard, they will dominate, or the group will bug out, buff up and head back and destroy the enemy through superior planning.
Unless the PCs have to (that DM mallet of doom again), they will rest up if their Cleric and Wizard can't protect them. Besides, when the PCs have control over where they are spacially (greater teleport), and they know who there enemy is (thank you cleric), then you don't get to ram all your beastie's at them. They normally just go straight to the BBEG. As a high level DM you get used to planning stuff that simply never gets within coo-ee of the PCs.
Again at higher levels the game changes. With ready access to multiple 9th level spells and the sea of spells below that, the wizard is in a different sphere power-wise to the rest of the party. The trend starts happening at about 11th level, is obvious at 15th level and is par for the course after that. That is the point of this thread and my input in regards to my own experiences playing and DMing high level adventures. What makes a game fun is up to the DM and the players and for most, this fun is in the 6 to 11 sweetspot. If you are willing to embrace the ruleset for high level play, there is also fun to be had but is more difficult to orchestrate in terms of DMing. It is not for everyone and that is perfectly fine. I can certainly understand why most groups press the Campaign Refresh button when they start hitting levels 15 and above.
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
