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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Banshee16" data-source="post: 5293847" data-attributes="member: 7883">Hmm...Shapechange....yes.....well, whether or not it was the ultimate spell of doom depended (IMO) upon which of the 30 versions of it WotC errata'd over the life of 3E.  In some instances it was worse or better than others.Personally, a simple fix I implemented was ruling that my players couldn't have a spellcaster just go shopping through the MM to pick the best form.  I just ruled that they were only able to turn into creatures they had personally seen.  That tended to reduce the forms selected by a fair amount.Mirror Image I didn't mind.  It didn't help against AoE attacks, and *did* give the Wizard some protection against melee attacks.  Frankly with 1d4hp/lvl, and no armour, wizards were very vulnerable to fighters.  If those magical defenses got taken down, or wore off or whatever, a Wizard (even high level) was one good hit away from -10 hp.  Given that I didn't use the whole "go nuke, then camp" paradigm, the Wizard had to ration out his abilities over the day.  If they *did* go nuke and then camp, they usually got attacked while sleeping, and oftentimes the beaten up party would end up worse off than before they started resting.  I tended to enforce everything from running out of food, to sleeping without armor on in order to get a proper rest.  And if they decided to camp, and didn't get interrupted, well, the NPCs weren't twiddling their thumbs either.  For every statement about the party wizard being able to determine the rules of engagement and when the fight would occur.....well, the NPC villains could do the same thing.  If they had Outsiders, or a Wizard themselves, they would just reverse those tactics on the PC.  Or just go ahead and off the princess or something....and then the King would hear from some bystander/witness (maybe a plant, by the NPCs, disguised as an innocent), that they fled the fortress or whatever, and left the princess to die, because they seemed to want to limit their risk.Even ones like Moment of Prescience are limited.  It's a bonus with a long duration...but it's expended as soon as you use it...once.  So, it's an 8th level spell that's effectively "protection from death".  How many games take place where there's only once in the adventure that the party faces death?Spell Resistance was excellent......but it basically had to be used shortly before the big battle...otherwise it would wear off while you're getting there.  Mind Blank was definitely useful.  But it wouldn't do much against most damaging spells......nor would it stand up to Greater Dispel Magic or Disjunction.  Spell Turning was great, as long as you were facing targeted spell effects, and not AoE effects.Again, it sounds like we had different paradigms for our game.  I tended to have a bit of a gritty feel to my games, and the feel that events were going on around the PCs, regardless of what they did....and sometimes as a consequence of what they chose to do or not do.  Enemies didn't stand still and wait in their 10x10 room for someone to come kill them.  They might scry on the party, and if they couldn't see the wizard, they might still see the fighter, for instance.  Or, without scrying, they might have something simple.....like the opposing wizard has a crow familiar.  The PCs would have to have a reason to be trying to spot a single crow out of a flock of 50 of them sitting in a group of trees (for instance).  And even if they did notice the crows, do they know that one of them is a familiar?  How do they tell it apart from the others?  Does it have a name tag?I'm fairly familiar with high level play.  Frankly, in my campaign, the Wizard ended up being overshadowed by the druid.  And the rogue and fighter made a great tandem.  The wizard was great, but his defenses were by no means invulnerable to the barbarian's critical hits, for instance.Oftentimes, defenses would get used up against a wave of minions who might flood the PCs, before a more deadly encounter.  Then, they'd be rebuffing, have an even lower selection of spells to choose from, and come across a fighter or something who'd get a good hit in on the Wizard, and the Wizard's 60 hp would be taken down to 4 in a single good hit, and now he'd be so busy trying to get distance between himself and the sword swinger that all his tactics were purely defensive.  And yes, he could teleport away......which, since it was happening while he was trying to save his own skin, would mean he abandoned the rest of the party, which is effectively the same as having been killed, with respect to the effects it has on the rest of the party.As to things like Disjunction, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.  It was yet one more tactic enemies could use.  I also tended to use item saving throws, so if a character failed a save and survived (or even failed a save and died, but planned on being resurrected), plan on losing some of your magic goodies.And Wish?  At 5000xp per casting, it wasn't used that often.  The Wizard didn't really want to end up entire levels behind the rest of the party after casting a few spells.I'll admit I likely haven't run as many high level campaigns.  We had one that got into high levels.  The rest were in mid levels.Sounds like our games were just very different.  I'm not going to say one approach is better than the other.  I'm just saying, in my experience, the tactics you're talking about did not result in wizards being unkillable.And adding 3rd party material into the game just magnified this fact.  Yes, there were spells that could make wizards even more unkillable.....but there were also spells and feats that made others even better at turning wizards into fertilizer.  Laced spells that could dispel a wizard's protection from fire spell, even while hitting him with a fireball, throwing an antimagic shell onto the BBEG's antipaladin henchman, and sending him after the wizard (how good are those defensive wards now?).I tended not to rely only on single enemies against the party either.  Very often I used the rules for combined CR's when building encounters, so instead of fighting one CR 15 guy, they might be fighting 2 CR 10's, 4 CR 9's, and 6 CR 7's in a single fight for instance.  It is correct that none of those would be a match for a party on their own, but in a group?  It was all about grinding down PC resources.Then, after 2-3 fights like that, *then* they would hit the CR 15 baddy.  But at that point, they'd already all be hurting, the cleric is burning through all his utility spells (thus lessening his ability to do anything other than heal) just channeling energy to heal the party, the fighter's at 70% of his normal hp total, the wizard is missing half his spells and he is at 60% of his hp (which might only mean he has 35 left), etc.But, they couldn't stop to rest, because they knew that the BBEG planned to sacrifice the princess to Gozor or whatever.......so they didn't have enough time to rest and get their spells back before going into that final battle.  Sometimes the PCs made it through, and sometimes half of them were dead but the rest survived, and other times they had to flee, and failed their quests.  But everyone had a good time.  My players tended to point out that they liked that they didn't feel like anything was getting handed to them.Banshee</blockquote>

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