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

[Hohige]

You know, unless the wizard is smart and plays the long game. . .

Resources are no problem, due to True Polymorph letting you get permanent access to gold. This lets you get every spell in your spellbook, giving you infinite versatility and resources. Using these spells, you're going to build a dungeon/fortress that serves the second purpose of luring in your enemies and killing them with death traps. Telekinesis, True Polymorph, Stone Shape, Transmute Rock, Disintegrate, and many other spells will help you in building this fortress/dungeon.

Get a bunch of Glyph of Wardings set up in a base, especially one that lets you teleport if they somehow do become a serious threat. The party of rebels will be facing a ton of spell-slot free fireballs, dominate person, 9th-level bestow curses, finger of death, and any other nasty spell that will seriously annoy/destroy your intruders. You can use necromancy spells to create pits/rooms of zombies and wights, as well as skeletons hidden behind arrow slits to shoot unsuspecting enemies while being mostly out of reach.

You can even make Eyes of Fear and Flame, Frost Giant Zombies, Gnoll/Blood-Drinker Vampires, Phylaskia, Shadow Assassins, Sword Wraith Commanders, or a T-Rex Zombie with True Polymorph. Undead don't need food or water, and will willingly do your dirty work in order to kill the living. Other minions can be created by using True Polymorph on an object to make a Clay Golem, Frost Salamanders, Myrmidons, Abhorrent Overlords, Adult Oblex, Cloakers, Ulitharids, Grey Slaad, Mind Flayers Scaladar, Living Blade of Disaster, Warforged Titan, Vampiric Jade Statues, or any other CR 9 or lower monster (preferably immortal ones).

Have your base be a maze, with dozens of dead ends that can kill party members with traps, spells, and minions. You can disguise your traps and create false traps with Nystul's Magic Aura, create elaborate puzzles using Glyph of Warding, and punish those who dare enter the dungeon with tons of illusions and other tricks. (For example, a dead end room that looks like it would move on to the next area, but is actually a death trap. The floor is made completely of stone, but a glyph of warding is set that uses transmute rock to transform the ground into mud. Underneath the ground is a huge pit trap that you carved out using disintegrate.

Adventurers can't resist a good dungeon, and you need to make yours more drawing and deadly than the Tomb of Horrors.

Smart wizards can kill their enemies even before they reach them if they use enough ingenuity and magic. Once enough of your enemies dies, others will hopefully either bow to your rule or go in hiding, allowing you to easily conquer the world, using threats of unleashing an army of dragons (created with True Polymorph and raised by you), Meteor Swarms stored within Glyphs of Warding that would utterly destroy a city upon your command, or brutally slaying the ruler/champion of a large kingdom, using Major Image to show this graphic death to the members of the kingdom. Once you get charge of one large kingdom, you can go on conquering all other nearby nations, using the same tactics of conquering them as before.

A level 20 Wizard can easily take over the world if given enough time.

With infinite resouces and time, everyone can do It.
Including wizard's Enemies.
It isnt a Wizard Power, its resources Power.

 

[Hohige]

True Polymorph is overestimate.

True Polymorph
"If the spell becomes permanent, you no longer control the creature. It might remain friendly to you, depending on how you have treated it."

The Wizard lose the control and It might remain friendly to you.

Are they friendly to you when you want to turn them into Minions, Controlling them?
Also, they are friendly(or not) to you, not your allies.
And above all, It has no obligation to follow the Wizard's orders.
You have a big problem here.
Wanting to turn creatures into minions is very dangerous. I bet this wizard dies in a week.



Do you want reliable minions?
Finger of Death is the best pick
and again, he's inferior to any sorcerer, with Twinned Finger of Death. Level 20 Sorcerer can create 8 permanent controlled Zombies, while Wizard 4.
Turn them all into you with Distant Seeming Spell and cast suble/psionic spells for Improved Mirror Image without know who is the caster.
Who knew, the sorcerer is the best Necromancer.
Do it at level 14.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Finger of Death is gonna end up with the sorcerer killing a lot of people, which tends to piss off everyone. No foolproof way to get minions.

 

[Quartz]

so with that in mind, put on your scheming hats pinky and the brain style, and see how to take over the world!!

Magic begets money and money buys politicians.

 

[DND_Reborn]

You know a lot of these posts assume a wizard dominating the world through power and such.

Why couldn't a 20th level wizard simply be a good leader, efficient, kind, and supported because he/she creates a much better world?

 

[Oofta]

You know a lot of these posts assume a wizard dominating the world through power and such.

Why couldn't a 20th level wizard simply be a good leading, efficient, kind, and supported because he/she creates a much better world?

But they're a politician at that point so isn't that kind of an oxymoron? I mean "kind", "creates a much better world" instead of "does whatever is best for their faction"? Crazy talk!

 

[Shadowedeyes]

Actually, I kind of agree with 6ENow! on this. 20th lvl Wizard probably has the best shot at making utopias on earth.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Actually, I kind of agree with 6ENow! on this. 20th lvl Wizard probably has the best shot at making utopias on earth.

Yep. The quote:

Magic begets money and money buys politicians.

got me thinking: why buy politicians? Using Wish and other power spells, the Wizard could help create a paradise.

So, all this "conquering" and "power-dominating" talk would be the more difficult road to walk to world domination, IMO.

 

[tetrasodium]

Actually, I kind of agree with 6ENow! on this. 20th lvl Wizard probably has the best shot at making utopias on earth.

With spells like geas, I would expect politicians & quite a few positions of power in a mageocracy to have a geas or otherwise "cursed" item that forces them to uphold a certain standard of ethics & avoid even the appearance of corruption if not just the occasional magical contract including that sort of language by default in a lot of cases. The average person would be unaffected by such big brotheresque methods but would reap the benefits of a clean uncorrupt government & be pretty cool with it so long as those contracts aren't written on the skin of a newborn or something

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

With infinite resouces and time, everyone can do It.
Including wizard's Enemies.
It isnt a Wizard Power, its resources Power.

No one else will have infinite resources. The wizard is the only level 20 character in the world, so the enemies don't have access to any of the stuff I mentioned. It's a wizard power to be able to have every spell on their spell list in their spell book, which would allow them to do this.