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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6188025" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Argh, reluctant to get into this as this is going to be be exactly the sort of Calvinball, Rock/Paper/Scissors games about hypothetical strategic play that I find abhorrent enough to post in this thread.  It isn't going to go anywhere as its going to be AHAHAHAHAH BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS ad nauseum. I don't GM that way.  I GM by the philosophy of Say yes or roll the dice and I never try to assume an adversarial posture with any of the classes/archetypes players in my game.  You just unfortunately must do that with powerful spellcasters (specifically Batman Wizards) in 3.x for the game to not go wobbly.That being said.  The first thing that comes to mind is to run a CIA Clairaudience/voyance operation on the local Lizard Man tribe in the marsh/bog/jungle that venerates the Black Dragon.  Comprehend Languages and Invisibility as required.  Once they give up the goods about the location of the sinkhole entrance that leads to the lair of the dragon (where they would go and give offerings to placate the beast), I go there and casts Legend Lore to learn about the story of the great (non-wizard) heroes of yore confronting the dragon but mostly dieing on their climb down the glyph/trap/guard-laden sinkhole tunnel.  Now I'm on my disc (or likely just flying), with detect magic, avoiding obstacles, dispelling anything required, and floating down invisibly where at the bottom I render him quite "dead but doesn't know it yet" with Shivering Touch through Spectral Hand (with whatever means of buffed spell resistance penetration to ensure the check).Or maybe Clairaudience/voyance does the trick.  Maybe they actually go down into his/her lair to give him/her the offerings straight into his/her chamber so the great beast doesn't have to move.  So I follow them invisibly while flying, navigate the tunnel the same way as before.  Wait for them to leave and do my thing.Those are the cool things a Diviner can do.  If they can't do cool things such as that then forget being a Diviner.  If we parry their well-devised strategic Calvinballed gameplan with our own (privy to all information in the world and can change on the fly as we wish) augmented, strategic Calvinball enough times then we are going to (and rightfully so) illicit contempt and distrust from our players.  Diviners are "information guys".  This is what they do.  If they can't be fantasy world, CIA special agents then there won't be any Diviners or Divination school in our games.  Its not their fault they still have access to other cool things that let them infiltrate and navigate warded lairs.  Its not their fault they still have spells that bypass the saving throw system, that render the spell resistance system inert and that attack a dragon where they are most vulnerable.Too much GM strategic Calvinball to parry Wizards' Calvinball (or worse, too much post-hoc lair protection after the Wizard has played their hand) and that GM won't have people playing Wizards and then they won't have a problem with spellcasters!  Or they won't have players at all because the players will form the opinion that the GM is using privileged information to build post-hoc, strategic defenses that protect their precious encounter from a good Wizarding!</blockquote>

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