D&D 5E 20th level Wizard vs the World

[Shadowedeyes]

The big thing I think the wizard needs to do is avoid putting a target on their back. The Aberrant sorcerer, the clerics I brought up, they could maybe win in a cage fight, but the smart wizard isn't going to let it come to that. The wizard has the best toolbox for manipulating things on a large scale, bar none, and that is what they should be leveraging.

 

[Hohige]

The big thing I think the wizard needs to do is avoid putting a target on their back. The Aberrant sorcerer, the clerics I brought up, they could maybe win in a cage fight, but the smart wizard isn't going to let it come to that. The wizard has the best toolbox for manipulating things on a large scale, bar none, and that is what they should be leveraging.

That's the point, It's by far inferior to Aberrant Mind Manipulating things. The Aberrant is the best for it by a large margin. The Aberrant Mind can cas Psionic 9th Geas + Heightein Spell 12x per day, an Aberrant Mind level 20 has trully reliable Minions that is charmed forever. With Impunity, because bypass Verbal and Somatic components
+17 Deception check + advantage + Sorcerer's Magical Guidance is too good.
Aberrant Mind Sorcerer's Telephatic Speech allows him to manipule creatures with impunity
Telephatic Speech "He's trying to kill you" Deception Check.

Telepathic Speech is actually very powerful for manipulating creatures from level 1

 

[DND_Reborn]

Wizards are awesome and beat the pants off of sorcerers, but there has already been at least one thread on that topic.

EDIT: Yep, there is a reason why the thread title is "20th level Wizard vs the World" and not "20th level Sorcerer vs the World".

 

[Hohige]

Wizards are awesome and beat the pants off of sorcerers, but there has already been at least one thread on that topic.

All I saw was a level 20 Wizard stepping back to a level 11 Sorcerer that is destroying his Fortness.
Muahaha

 

[Benjamin Olson]

We are in a level 11 vs level 20 fight and are you complaining about the feat? At equal levels the Wizard would be completely destroyed, with no chance of surviving.

I'm not complaining, by all means take feats. The point is that if you don't get a lot of feats in 5e, and you have proposed spending one of them getting around just one spell the Wizard might use, well then you're going to run out of feats real fast. You could also spend a feat getting proficiency in Intelligence saves so he doesn't Feeblemind you, but obviously that's a terrible use of a feat.

All I saw was a level 20 Wizard stepping back to a level 11 Sorcerer that is destroying his Fortness.

Fortresses take Wizards 1 minute and a diamond to create. He'll get over it.

He can always make more diamonds by True Polymorphing the the various Sorcerers he defeats.

 

[Stalker0]

Ok so lets look at a model where the 20th level wizard decides to take out the powerful people in the world, and I mean real "power" not just kings and the like.

This works best before the Wizard goes forward with his main plans, as he wouldn't be seen as a major threat yet. So lets look at 11th level spellcasters, which the Wizard would see as the number 1 threat.

1) Finding the Target. A combination of various scrying, divinations, and good old fashion payments to various thieves guilds who likely be able to a find an 11th level character. They are in the sweet spot of being popular enough to be recognized a lot of where they go, but don't have the super high level spells that can make you highly resistant from divinations and scrying.

There is the risk of the "hermit high level character", but again in theory with the powerful divinations a wizard of this level has access to, they should be able sniff them out.

2) Arcane Casters

So arcane casters are actually the easier to take out. For all their power, they don't have some of the clerical powers that can really mess with the wizard's plans.

If they are the type of character that travels, even somewhat infrequently, than they are pretty easy prey. A very simple wizard plan would look like this:

1) Have on a 6th level Globe of Invulnerability (aka I am now immune to any spell the casters could use to harm me). This is our concentration, so we have to keep that in mind. We also have counterspell if needed.

2) Teleport in (7th level). The wizard could bring in 8 hired mercs, loyal followers, or maybe even summoned creatures (DM to rule whether summons are willing, I personally would consider them such). The mercs don't have to be particularly strong, really just enough to hold off forces for a couple of rounds. They would also be in the globe, so magics are no concern, just need to hold off the beef.

3) Kill the caster. There are a few ways to do this:
a) Power Word Kill: Realistically an 11th level arcane caster is going to have 80 ish hitpoints with a good con, maybe 90 if they have some temp hp going on. But a power word kill should absolutely 1 shot them....with the only real defense being death ward (which arcane casters generally do not have). The main risk here is that is that if anyone is able to examine the body, they probably would be able to see the power of very strong magics (maybe unheard of magics). This might draw attention to the wizard. It also blows your 9th level spell instead of having a wish ready for a bail out option.

b) Good old fashioned power. There are a lot of ways to go about it. Banish a wizard, take them down with raw damage, whatever. The easiest way here would be to either have on Foresight, or use a wish to have them reroll their save (at disadvantage), for a huge % chance of having them fail the save.

4) Teleport away with the caster (8th level slot). This last piece is important, you do not want raise dead as an option, and this will help prevent others from knowing what you are up to.


Alternate: The Gate Strategy. Now Plan A does involve some risk, even if its low. A much safer strategy would be the use of the gate spell. Now assuming you could learn the name of the 11th level character.... then you simply gate them into your living room, already prepared for their arrival. Again with a globe on to prevent any shenanigan's. This method is expensive, but all but guarantees they succumb....and help prevents any associates from knowing what happened, especially if you can do it at just the right time. The best they could muster to get out of their is a d door (teleport circle takes too long to cast and can't be put on a contingency). A locate creature spell has double the range, so even an extended d door from a sorc couldn't outrange you. And even if they manage to escape, you are on another plane, and they don't have plane shift, so they are pretty limited in where they can go.

3) Clerics

Clerics are in theory the hardest target. First, the access to revivify means you really have to ensure you get the target away when you kill them, or they may be right back in action in minutes. Word of Recall is available to 11th level clerics, so any trap you set for them they may have means to just port right back to their nice fortified temple. And most importantly, divine intervention. While the chances of it going off are very low, it is the one thing that can counter or even beat your own power. Even against just a couple of 10th level clerics across the world, that is a fair amount of risk. So we want to try and mitigate that. We have a few options, neither is perfect but offers some protection.

a) 9th level Globe of Invulnerability. This in theory protects you from any direct use of divine intervention, aka they try to kill you with a 9th level spell kind of use. Considering they may not even know wizards of your strength can even exist, its possible they don't even know such protection could exist. It does consume your 9th level slot though, and it has the risk that a more indirect wish kind of effect could thwart you in other ways. Even that said, this is probably the overall safer of the two options.

b) The Wish Reroll. Wish has the unique power to allow a reroll on any roll....so even a percentile die should be allowed. And its even with disadvantage. So in the rare event the cleric got off his effect, assuming you aren't immediately screwed....you could force another roll, this one with only a 1% chance of working.

Ultimately this has the advantage of leaving you with a 9th level spell when the cleric doesn't get his effect off, and can counter indirect spells more effectively. However, its greatest weakness is you have to take the hit on whatever the cleric throws at you before you can make your own wish....which is a risk all itself. And of course, the 33% of never casting wish again....which does dampen your world domination schemes.

c) 8th level globe + gate. We use the gate trick with an 8th level globe. Again not perfect protection, but we can at least fortify our base against some shenanigan's and try to take them down on the first round.

From there we still have a wide array of spells to take them down. Again, its trickier than an arcane caster but still should be very doable.


After the first few.... Mind Blank. So while we can likely take out 1, maybe 2 high level people in the way described (and even that much will severely limit the worlds ability to resist)....likely the remaining high level people will start sniffing out a plot. This is where mind blank comes in. This gives you incredible protection against a world trying to find you, now scrying and divinations are completely shut down against you, limiting the enemies ability to find out who you are and where you are stationed. You may have to abandon a lair or two over time against more mundane means of sniffing you out, but that's a small price to pay. Realistically with Teleport and Mind Blank, 11th level and lower characters should never be able to find you if you have a modicum of sense (and you probably have a 20 int, so you have a lot!)

The counter is the loss of your 8th level slot. This means teleporting in, kill, tp out requires your wish (limiting your options and power). Or you tp in, and use teleport circle / d door to leave (no ideal options). Or you stick with the gate trick. At this point, I would use gate as much as possible, it severely limits your risk, and when your going for the world, a few 5k gp casts are well worth stripping away your greatest competition.


Countering the Gate Strategy

On the surface, the Gate Strategy seems nigh unbeatable. You are safely on another plane that the enemy has very limited ways to get to, and you can effectively just grab who you want, no matter where they are at. There are a few counters though.

1) Keeping your name a secret. If the wizard doesn't know your name, then they can't use gate on you. However, that may be a tall order. If you are an existing 11th level character, and have never had to worry about keeping your name secret against spell levels you haven't even dreamed of...than its likely some people know your name. Now its absolutely possible you have used a pseudoname all of your life, or have been a hermit in hiding, that kind of thing. This leads us to divinations. With Wish we have access to every divination in the book (even legend lore), and with repeated castings it would be hard not to be to dig up something as mundane as a name).

Now nondetection is our answer to that, but that requires 3 castings of a 3rd level spell every day to be sure. This may be a strategy that high level people start using once their fellows go missing....so the wizard may find the gate strategy becomes a bit weaker over time. He can use it to pick out clerics and druids though, who don't get that spell.

2) Hallow

Hallow is the one spell in the game that is 5th level (so castable in our world) and can wholesale block dimensional travel. So high level clerics fearing this new gate sniper could spend some resources (expensive but manageable for such high level people), and could protect themselves in a temple or somewhere.

Now this has the disadvantage of holing them in a set known location (which is gold for a wizard planning an assasination). But that would at least require more direct involvement instead of just grabbing them away at any moment, so its still a step up).

 

[Hohige]

Fortresses take Wizards 1 minute and a diamond to create. He'll get over it.

He can always make more diamonds by True Polymorphing the the various Sorcerers he defeats.

a level 8 spell slot, a level 9 and a diamond.
Well, the Each Celestial deals 54.000 damage against your structures. The Sorcerer can cast 7 per day.
Good lucky.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

I like sorcerers, but honestly, in this kind of scenario the sorcerer is so far behind it's not funny. Let's look at your own proposed tricks before I talk about wizards specifically.

The Geas trick is easily detected(Detect Magic-1st lvl Spell) and nearly as easily removed(Remove Curse-3rd lvl Spell) It's not reliable, is going to get traced back to you eventually, and is probably going to get you killed eventually.

The Deception check is pretty solid. I'll actually give the sorcerer a point here since it's something the wizard can't fully replicate, although they can get potentially get close. The telepathic communication is nifty, but I'm dubious on if it even works how you think it does. It says the target can communicate back, so that kinda implies it knows that their is another person on the line.

Finger of Death I've already touched on, but lets reiterate. It can in theory give you an army of basic zombies, and the sorcerer can do it faster than a Wizard thanks to Twin Spell. But it's going to leave a whole lot death in your wake, making you the target of all sorts of powerful people.

Now let's look at Wizards. First, let's see how they can do their own spin on the tricks. First the Geas trick. No substitute for Heighten here admittedly. On the other hand we can use the Enchantment school to make them forget we ever casted the spell on them, and use Nystul's Magic Aura to make it undetectable to Detect Magic. It's going to be slower but way more reliable.

A wizard can get a deception check equal to our hypothetical sorcerer, and with Tashas we can even get advantage with Enhance Ability now on the wizard list. No real substitute for Magical Guidance, hence my point to the sorcerer there. Still, pretty good, if not the best. Finger of Death can be used just the same as the sorcerer, although the army will take longer to build up, even if I think it's a bad idea.

Now let's look at what the wizard has got.

-Divinations. The sorcerer has an abysmal selection out of the box in comparison. Wizards have Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Scrying, Augury(Tashas), Divination(Tashas), and Arcane Eye. While a Abberant sorcerer can pick these up with their Psionic Spells feature, a few can be grabbed by a Divine Soul Sorcerer from the Cleric's list, they are basically stuck with them while a wizard can swap them in as needed from the spellbook. Also, Contact Other Plane can be cast as a ritual, and the Wizard is going to have a better chance on that Int saving throw anyway.

-True Polymorph. No way for the Sorcerer to get this, beyond a weird assertion of Genies.

-Counter Divinations. If you want anonymity, the wizard has Nondetection, Mind Blank, Mordakanien's Private Sanctum. The sorcerer has none of these spells.

-Summoning. The sorcerer again needs to fall back on their subclass to do this. Divine Soul is pretty good with Conjure Celestial, Summon Celestial, Gate and Planar Ally. Wizard gets Conjure Elementals, the demon summoning spells from Xanathar's, all but the Celestial summon from Tashas, Gate and Planar Binding.

-Fabricate, Instant Fortress, Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Move Earth. The wizard is an excellent builder. The sorcerer gets Wall of Stone, Divine Soul can get Stone Shape and Temple of the Gods.

-Protection. The wizard has access to a lot of protection for their fortresses. Glyph of Warding, Guards and Wards, Programmed Illusion, Symbol, Mordakainen's Magnificent Mansion, Demiplane, Antipathy/Sympathy. Tons of good stuff there. Sorcerer can get Demiplane now thanks to Tashas, and the Divine Soul Sorcerer can get Glyphs, Symbols, Forbiddance and Hallow.

-Teleportation Circle.

-Control Weather. This is a really good spell in a sandbox political game. Sorcerer can only get it through Divine Soul.

-Modify Memory. Another interesting one. Sorcerer can only get it through Abberant Mind, and they can't Nystul's Magic Aura to hide it.

Anyway, this is getting long. Suffice to say, lots of stuff here the sorcerer just doesn't get. Now, of course, Wish can do some heavy lifting on both sides here, but it's important to remember Wish is once per day. The more you don't need to lean on it, the better.

 

[tetrasodium]

A lot of interesting discussion has sprung up! Its good to see

So I thought it was worth commenting on a couple of themes pop up:

1) What constitutes "ruling the world"?

People have asked if the Wizard has to be iron fisted or maniacal, can ruling by proxies work, etc etc. Ultimately, I would say the Wizard can "rule" in any way you see fit. My thought would be, a wizard that rules the world can effectively leverage any resource of that world at his whim, and can inflict his whim on the world in a large scale. For example, if the Wizard needs an army, he can have it mustered. If he needs a particular magic item or treasure the world possesses, people will give it to him. If he needs to sacrifice a young maiden to fulfill a dark ambition, people will (even if reluctantly) provide them one. If he declares a new edict in a country, it becomes law. Now whether the world knows they are providing said resource to the "Wizard" or whether they knew new edicts are coming from the "Wizard" is up to the poster, its fine if the wizard works through a proxy or people do it because of beliefs, threats, mental influence, whatever.

Now that doesn't mean the control is absolute. I could absolutely see periodic rebellions and underground insurgencies. But we are assuming a level of control where these are more "annoyances" than true threats to the wizard's power. If a rebellion has grown to truly challenge the wizards authority, than the Wizard can no longer be considered to rule the world.


2) How to win the argument.

So I think there are two key factors you have to prove in order to say a wizard can rule the world.

a) Step 1: Rule the World
Aka how does the Wizard exist such considerable influence on the world? Is it a hammer, meteor swarming any who oppose you and taking an iron fist. Is it slower, more influence, domination, and politics. Or going super slow, literally changing cultural paradigms. Or something inbetween.

b) Step 2: Beat the Resistance
At some point, its assumed that the other powerful people of the world would attempt to counter the Wizard, or the Wizard would look to systematically take out the powerful people. So the question becomes, how effective would the Wizard be at countering these threats?

c) General Beats Specific

So a lot of discussion has been on the Aberrant Mind Sorc vs the Wizard. I think its an interesting discussion. My main counter would be it assumes that a 10th level character (already established to be pretty rare) is a sorceror (even rarer) and then is a specific subclass (rarer still). So the likelihood that one would exist in a world is pretty low (though clearly pretty effective)

Lets contrast that to the 10th level cleric argument. While 10th level clerics are still pretty rare based on our assumptions, any subclass will work....so the chance that one of these exist in the world is a lot more likely.

And of course, strategies that work with groups of lower level spellcasters are even a better argument, as those are common enough that we could safely assume a world would have them.

So ultimately the best arguments to me are the ones that rely on a less and less specific circumstances.

You might also want to watch the watchmen (movie then tv series) or read the comics. The movie is about how a super power individual (dr manhattan) affects the cold war & how a super intelligent individual does what needs doing to stop an impending nuclear war. The tv series gets more into the alternate history & how the events of the movie changed the world. It might be ome useful material for your thought experiment & both are on hbo max right now.

 

[Hohige]

I like sorcerers, but honestly, in this kind of scenario the sorcerer is so far behind it's not funny. Let's look at your own proposed tricks before I talk about wizards specifically.

The Geas trick is easily detected(Detect Magic-1st lvl Spell) and nearly as easily removed(Remove Curse-3rd lvl Spell) It's not reliable, is going to get traced back to you eventually, and is probably going to get you killed eventually.

The Deception check is pretty solid. I'll actually give the sorcerer a point here since it's something the wizard can't fully replicate, although they can get potentially get close. The telepathic communication is nifty, but I'm dubious on if it even works how you think it does. It says the target can communicate back, so that kinda implies it knows that their is another person on the line.

Finger of Death I've already touched on, but lets reiterate. It can in theory give you an army of basic zombies, and the sorcerer can do it faster than a Wizard thanks to Twin Spell. But it's going to leave a whole lot death in your wake, making you the target of all sorts of powerful people.

Now let's look at Wizards. First, let's see how they can do their own spin on the tricks. First the Geas trick. No substitute for Heighten here admittedly. On the other hand we can use the Enchantment school to make them forget we ever casted the spell on them, and use Nystul's Magic Aura to make it undetectable to Detect Magic. It's going to be slower but way more reliable.

A wizard can get a deception check equal to our hypothetical sorcerer, and with Tashas we can even get advantage with Enhance Ability now on the wizard list. No real substitute for Magical Guidance, hence my point to the sorcerer there. Still, pretty good, if not the best. Finger of Death can be used just the same as the sorcerer, although the army will take longer to build up, even if I think it's a bad idea.

Now let's look at what the wizard has got.

-Divinations. The sorcerer has an abysmal selection out of the box in comparison. Wizards have Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Scrying, Augury(Tashas), Divination(Tashas), and Arcane Eye. While a Abberant sorcerer can pick these up with their Psionic Spells feature, a few can be grabbed by a Divine Soul Sorcerer from the Cleric's list, they are basically stuck with them while a wizard can swap them in as needed from the spellbook. Also, Contact Other Plane can be cast as a ritual, and the Wizard is going to have a better chance on that Int saving throw anyway.

-True Polymorph. No way for the Sorcerer to get this, beyond a weird assertion of Genies.

-Counter Divinations. If you want anonymity, the wizard has Nondetection, Mind Blank, Mordakanien's Private Sanctum. The sorcerer has none of these spells.

-Summoning. The sorcerer again needs to fall back on their subclass to do this. Divine Soul is pretty good with Conjure Celestial, Summon Celestial, Gate and Planar Ally. Wizard gets Conjure Elementals, the demon summoning spells from Xanathar's, all but the Celestial summon from Tashas, Gate and Planar Binding.

-Fabricate, Instant Fortress, Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Move Earth. The wizard is an excellent builder. The sorcerer gets Wall of Stone, Divine Soul can get Stone Shape and Temple of the Gods.

-Protection. The wizard has access to a lot of protection for their fortresses. Glyph of Warding, Guards and Wards, Programmed Illusion, Symbol, Mordakainen's Magnificent Mansion, Demiplane, Antipathy/Sympathy. Tons of good stuff there. Sorcerer can get Demiplane now thanks to Tashas, and the Divine Soul Sorcerer can get Glyphs, Symbols, Forbiddance and Hallow.

-Teleportation Circle.

-Control Weather. This is a really good spell in a sandbox political game. Sorcerer can only get it through Divine Soul.

-Modify Memory. Another interesting one. Sorcerer can only get it through Abberant Mind, and they can't Nystul's Magic Aura to hide it.

Anyway, this is getting long. Suffice to say, lots of stuff here the sorcerer just doesn't get. Now, of course, Wish can do some heavy lifting on both sides here, but it's important to remember Wish is once per day. The more you don't need to lean on it, the better.

You forgot that Aberrant Mind Sorcerer regain sorcery points each short range and casts for Sorcery Points and can cast countless more powerful spells than the Wizard. And you can even use Twin Simulacrum for even more power.
Psionic 9th Geas + Heightein Spell is effectively stronger. They are effectively minions. Dispelling this is useless and rare, because the spellcasting isn't perceptible, It is not possible to know who cast the Psionic Geas, not even the victim knows it has been charned.
and the dominated creatures are taken to their fortress forever. Its with Impunity. Psionic 9th Dominate Person + Heightein Spell can control a creature for 8 hour an literally order them anything.
Telepathic Speech is insanely good on practices for manipulative actions.
The Sorcerer protection are Charmed Creatures and his Undead Army that is by far bigger than the Wizard.
The aberrant mind is the best summoner, extended level 9th Summon Aberration 12x day. Well, Its really good.