Willowhaunt said:
Also, most straight combat solutions such as rapid fire, sneak attacks, and grappling don't work all that well because a smart mage will have used various magical means to find out the attacker is on his or her way long before initiative is rolled. There's even a 1st level spell for just this purpose: Alarm.
Does the smart mage always have the correct spells prepared for that day? No. Even if he prepares Scry or whatever... it's good for that one encounter per day. When the second, third and fourth one occurs, he's caught with his pants down. Very seldom have I ever seen a wizard carry more than one spell of a single type, unless they know for a fact that they are going into a fight, then most of the spell slots go to combat and buff spells - which reduces their effectiveness in other areas correspondingly.
Does every mage know every spell? No. It's likely that most will know Fly and a couple things like that, but it's not a certainty. In fact, the more they know, the less likely it will be that they will have the 'correct' ones ready for an unusual encounter. Now, if a mage is going into a situation with correct intelligence then he's more effective, just like anyone else. Unlike the fighter and rogue, when confronted with the unusual he has no room to improvise unless he can take that 15 minutes or so to change out a spell slot. Think he's usually going to have that time? Heck, no.
Most of the detection and scrying type spells have things that stop them, having saving throws, or have a chance to be noticed. Make sure the NPC's get the same benefit from their abilities that the party does. Yes, they get a chance to notice that scrying origin. Yes, they have saves as well.
If you have a party that does not cooperate well, then things get even worse for the mage since - if there is more than one wizard - they might not share spells with each other.
Make sure you're not making the 'last sentence' mistake (I love that phrase - means 'notice the restrictions on a spell that may not be mentioned until the very end, or somewhere in the middle of a long description) or mixing up edition versions - the spell may not be as effective as you think it is. This is a very common problem which trips up even experienced players and GMs. Conversely, make sure you know the rules cold, or you might be shortchanging non-magical solutions in favor of magical ones. Like the sneak attack one: just off the top of my head I cannot think of a single common spell that will prevent a sneak attack, ie, that lets the mage retain his dodge bonus in a situation where he would ordinarily be denied it. Maybe someone else knows if there is such a thing, but I can't think of a common normal spell that does that.
Make sure they're at least paying
some attention to material components, especially if it's something unusuial. No reason to really make them keep track of all that stuff per se -
nobody really wants to check off every peice of bat fur or twisted leather they have, especially if they are things that be readily obtained from the environment - but weird stuff, like the half-pound of gold dust required for Fire Trap, or eyelash in gum arabic for Invisibility? You betcha. Those are part of the balance mechanic and, like a stool, when you remove one part of that mechanic either have something to compensate for it or be prepared to fall over.
Alarm is an OK spell, but it's immobile and exists for one reason: to keep something from sneaking up on by foot and slitting your throat. It doesn't do a thing to warn you against the archer in the bushes, since it has such a limited radius. In fact, they could feather you in your sleep and you'd never know it since it has to be a creature that breaks the radius, not an object.
