Red Wizard - What the hell was WotC smoking????

[Nifft]

I just read the "primary source" rule, and I guess it would apply here. It seems strange and silly that WotC would make a PrC that doesn't actually work the way it's written, though...

Consider it a "cut-n-paste" error -- WotC is having editorial issues in the 3.0e-to-3.5e upgrade, and it's likely that no-one bothered to think about the logicalness of the 20 level limit.

IMHO, it's likely that they paid more attention to potentially unbalancing benefits than they did to potentially non-sensical limitations.

-- N

 

[Saeviomagy]

Another thing anyone noticed that Red Wizards bacame a completely non playable class:: in 3.5?

I mean who is wotc kidding. Lets say you are an Evoker.
Ok you drop Illusion and Enchantment at first level.
And at 5th or 6th level (by gaining the RW PrC) you drop
Conjuration and Necromancy.

Yeah you can power up spells to high power, but the cost to do that is imho TOO FRIGGING HIGH!
I'd rather drop GCL, and cap the power of CL more and keep another school of magic. I mean 3 schools is a cruel trade, but FOUR SCHOOLS IS INSANE!

As far as I can tell, taking the red wizard PrC only requires you to drop one additional school on top of your initial specialization sacrifice.

Furthermore, the PrC specifically says that you retain access to spells you already knew from the school which you drop for the purposes of red wizard.

So if you knew fireball before you took red wizard, and you dropped evocation, you still know and can use fireball (and all of it's metamagiced variations).

It's a bit wierd, because it would seem to suggest that the best possible red wizard build is a wiz9/red wizard 10/something else 1, who learnt every spell from the first 4 levels of his red-wizard prohibited school before he became a red wizard.

 

[Simulacrum]

Umm no, actually the description say 1 or more schools wich means that if you took divination you have to drop one otherwise two....that makes two schools lost completely and two from level 3 or at best spell level 4, wich is a a joke imho and is completely unplayable and insanely high cost.

 

[FrankTrollman]

The Primary Source Rule says that the Red Wizard Text Wins. This is a power of the Red Wizard. Since PrC abilities are in the DMG - the DMG text wins.

The Red Wizard says it can go up to 20th level - which requires that it be able to Heighten past 9th level - otherwise it can't rise things past 14th level which it can specifically do.

The normal maximum from Heighten, Empower, and Maximize is 14th. The new Maximum is 20th. That's a higher than normal maximum and it is thusly its own Primary Source.

-Frank

 

[Toras]

A few points.
1) Thay wizards should really be a FR class because of their politics. Their ranks are filled with backstabbing, treachery, and deceit. If a Red Wizard manages to gather his apprentices, (without them betraying him), and gains the levels from them, he still has his multitude of rivals who watch in the shadows for a moment of weakness. If he unloads his uber spells at the party, he no longer has these levels to menace his enemies, who he has likely been using that as a club against.

2) If he EVER doesn't make the init compared to Fighter with Mercurial Greatsword and Power Critical, Archer with Bolt of Human slaying (fort save bitch), assassin, the cleric who bitch slaps him harm (if he makes the sr), the death touch class from Book of Exalted deeds or the Archmage with Spell Turning. Or God forbid a Spell Fire Channeler, (he'd leave such a stain)

Not a single one of the groups in which am currently a part of would have failed to defeat this Red Wizard at the level range required. Part of which gives you some idea of how broken we were and some about how dirty your willing to play it. A party member gets mindblanked, sneaks into the Red Wizard's tower, and poisons the villians goblet. Or our friendly archer picks him off from hiding far away. If he doesn't see it coming, he is dead.

Also, if he does the Fireball/Cone of Cold, half my party at that level, (including my character, the half-celestial with the armor with Fire Resistance.) would have just looked at him funny. He could have maximized and double empowered the damn thing and that would have barely slowed some of us down. We would likely have had to raise our wizard (though he is and was an archmage with evocation speciality and spell turning), and possibly our cleric.

The other party was and is just gross (Chosen of Goddess of Luck), Halfling Cavalier, a Spell Fire wielder (who turned a dracolich into his manabitch), a samuri with supreme cleave and uberginsu, the monk (me), and the cleric of baccus who had timestop as a domain ability. Its an epic level FR campaign and I swear we have almost depopulated Thay at this point.

 

[Simulacrum]

Sure and the Red Wizards with their vast army's, legions of undead (not to mention the legions of hell they can conjure), thousands of specialist killers lead by a big mob of superintelligent long time archmages and epic liches didnt do the same cheap tricks on your party?
looooooooooooool
Your DM is a little weak of mind.
Red Wizards wouldnt drop Fireballs at your party, they would disinitgrate them with DC's far over the 30ties....
(after they cast lots of wishes and timestop to make sure you have zero chance of survival, and or unleashing a good ton of Pit Fiends to slow your party to a whimsy crawl...)
If there was a way for a bunch of epic characters to defeat the Red's it would have allready happened long ago.
3 problems:
1.Thay is protected by a mythal similar magic that prevents scrying on them.
2. The Red Wizards should be played highly intelligent. As you have written, all of them should be naturally full of paranoia and not too easy to surprise...also they deal with devils and demons, thus they are the fathers of cheap and ugly tricks.
3. Red Wizards are ultra careful, as they tend to do dangerous business all the time. They should be permanently warded by essential spells like Arane Sight, See Invisibility and Contingency's. Thus it would make it pretty hard to actually kill them in battle, or even surpise them. Not to forget that the Red Wizards hav the biggest recources on magic available, they will quickly find a spell and a few items that will make short work out of most threats (see below)
(just for example, though arcane sight you can see instantly that someone is using spell turning against you. so you throw a high level but benefical spell against them (draining the reflective power) and having the spell rebound on yourself. Funky!)
Items like Ioun Stones that can absorb magic up to 8th level should be easily created by Red Wizards of high power and Rods of Cancelation and M's Disjunction should turn your party into helpless puppies after a few rounds...

If your epic party was that powerful, your DM should have made the Red Wizards at least 10 times as powerful. And lets not forget Szass Tam (and the other Zulkiers) who is to date undefeated in 1:1 combat (who owns netherese artifacts) is not amused by having to watch some whimpy mortals endanger his business...

 

[Toras]

We haven't assualted Thay, I meant more to the fact of the sheer number of Red Wizards we had killed outside of it. And yes, if you are high enough level, most red wizards they have outside of Thay are not particularly difficult. Also if you have Szaa Tallen and massive legions of undead coming after you, that means Thay is on the move in a big way. The kingdoms in the way are hardly going to remain idle and neither are the power players present.

We got like 15 of them at once, by finding the boats they were supervising, waiting until nightfall, and then casting prismatic walls in front of the boats. Only 3 managed to make it off the ship before they got kicked the crap out of. And those three we picked out of the sky farely easily.

Improved Counter Spell + the Spell Turning Archmage ability (not the spell turning spell) . Wizard holds action and uses a similar spell to essentially turn back the spell the Red Wizard is casting. It doesn't show up on the Arcane Sight, and your disintergrates become his disintergrates. Make your own save.

The Epic FR party also has a Epic Spell Fire Channeler, who can eat any targeted spell that he can get in front of. (yum Disintegrate). He also can launch blasts that would crispy fry any Red Wizard, SR not applying. How is 30d6 to face.

And before you ask, yes they have sent Assassins (we defeated them), the undead never make it past the Positive Energy Aura. And the last Mordienkines Disjunction we got shot at us just made the Staff of the Magi mad.

 

[Simulacrum]

Sounds like serious munchkin crap. I'd never lead such a game. Completely turned for the players.

You know that the Red Wizards are around a bit longer than your party and they know every little slimy trick.
And they are masters of magic. Nearly every high level Red Wizards takes Reactive Counterspell and Mastery of CS as soon as he can get. Thus he can turn the spell back again against your spellcaster (forfeiting his next action but still your boy is a crispy critter afterwards...etc)
eh epic munchkin party's there is nothing worse.
Believe let me build a equaly munckinised Red Wizard assault group and you wont survive a round...

No offence its your gaming group, but your DM sounds like a very poor DM.

For starters if you want to hurt a party, dont attack them as a Group, anihilate/ capture individual key members. After that let the rest of the party be little tools and toys for the Red Wizards pleasure...and as soon as they become useless turn them into Undead and stick them into the army...(and thats by the way exactly how Red Wizards operate, a Zulkir who hears that some epic goons have killed lots of his lackeys is going to be royaly pissed, there is no way he wouldnt retaliate in an equaly epic strike, that is so buffed and fool proof that the party can be happy to get away with their bare lives (but without any magic items etc of course, and most likely as captives).
I mean serious do I have to post how easy it is for a whole legion of high level spellcasters is to come up with some nasty surprise no one has a chance of surviving?
They will wait and strike at a moment your individual members are helpless to begin with...

And its foly of you bringing in the argument that as soon Thay is doing something that immediate help would arive for your party. Ever though of the fact that the reverse could be true to?
Like you destroyed a ship with the guys that were actualy directly doig a job for Szass Tam who in turn worked for LARLOCH?
Boy Larloch is going to be pissed and send some Archliches and Epic Shadow Lord Vampires to chekc if you guys have any loot that makes up for his loss...(wich is doubtful by recalling that he and Szass have about everything that is Netherese and looks like an artifact)

If you are talking grand (epic) scale, than please be realistic (or better give your DM a clue) about how it should look from the other side.
Evil (epic) organazations are vastly underestimated and believe me Larloch and Szass Tam are not going to WATCH some goons foil any of their plans.
Next stop-> Larloch using one of his powers obtained from the Nether Scrolls....

 

[HeavyG]

Improved Counter Spell + the Spell Turning Archmage ability (not the spell turning spell) . Wizard holds action and uses a similar spell to essentially turn back the spell the Red Wizard is casting. It doesn't show up on the Arcane Sight, and your disintergrates become his disintergrates. Make your own save.

This doesn't work, btw. Disintegrate is a ranged touch spell and thus would "merely" be countered.

 

[Toras]

Curious, I was not aware that Disintergrate didn't function, did this change from 3.0? The example I was thinking off took place using that version of the Archmage. Assume that the Archmage also has reactive counterspell and master of counterspell (sooner because he doesn't have to get through Red Wizard levels to get it)

Our epic FR DM is not exactly the best at plot development or preparation, but when it comes to designing retribution for such groups she does a fairly good job. Though perhaps I am not describing the situation clearly. We killed the Red Wizards who were involved in selling a series of particularly nasty drugs into Om and other places along that coast. Now we are currently investigate similar happenings in Waterdeep. I doubt Szass Tam is that concerned with the drug trade to invoke his masters aid due to losses on an admittedly large but not crippling scale.

Admittedly that game has slowly become extremely munchkin, due to in part the rolling randomly for treasure. Let it be said I consider that a mistake. But any DM can kill any part at any time. The question is what makes for a fun, interesting, and realistic (I used the term loosely) game. What I am flabbergased about is the fact that you honestly think that the PCs, even Epic PCs, are the center of the universe.
1. Larloch honestly doesn't care much about what goes on outside his lab, they said as much in many seperate sources. Before Szass Tam, anyone who bothered him would be horribled killed. I don't debate the fact that he could right now, horrificly maim and slowly kill every member of our party by himself. I debate the fact that we are even at the forefront of his mind. More likely his attention is resting on the return of the Shade Enclave and their artifacts and mythalar. If he was honestly going to toss epic undead at people why has he never done so in any FR source? Why do Halaster, Shade and Cloth still possess Nether Artifacts?

2. Admittedly Szass Tam could be incredibly pissed about the whole affair, and could organize a Red Wizard strike team that likely could wait in the shadows and pick us off left, right, and center. But in order to do that, he has to bend a group high level wizards to his will long enough to convince them that we are a huge threat that must be eliminated, no matter the fact that they would have to weaken their position to make the strike. Either this is easy or extremely difficult. If it is easy, why hasn't he conquered the realms yet? Right now we could stand our own with most of the power players, (the Chosen of Mystra, Most of the sword kindoms, and most of elven lords now). If he could basicly destroy any of them, why does he tolerate the Sisters continued attacks upon his holdings? Indeed, why has he not simply destroyed them now, if his power is so great?

3. Consequences and Reprisals. Right now, we are affiliated with a noble house which is nobility in Waterdeep and in Om (one of the characters is the head of the family). The estate were we dwell has many interesting magical properties, woven in times of paranoia. The first of which is the fact that no one but ourselves may teleport into the estate. The second is the wards against scrying that are placed through out the mansion itself and any attempt to teleport in lands one in a room a locked room 81 square feet total. The room is covered by an permanent antimagic field as well having no food or water. Outside the mansion, their are several golems and Clockwork Dragons guarding the against intruders.

Outside of the mansions and grounds proper is a series of two temples. One to Baccuss, which leads to the wine orcherd and houses many clerics to that deity. The other is a temple to Bahamut, and we regularly have good dragon worshipers arriving there.

Again I don't debate that he could, with sufficent effort destroy us utterly, but the consequences of such an action would be dire. First, it couldn't be quiet, that level of conflict would be sensed by massive numbers of people. And assuming they manage to get us all. They still have to deal with consequences of having angered (alot) of Gods that are hardly slouches, including Baccus, Bahamut, Timara, and a host of other dieties whom we have done good works for. As well as the fact that they have essentenially committed an act of war against both Om and Waterdeep by assassinating an important noble and laying waste to his house.

Either the PCs are important enough to matter to both Good and evil alike, making their deaths the beginning of a multiplanar storm the likes of which Toril has never seen. Or they are below the extreme notice of both.

In Summary, I honestly believe that Thay as a nation is quite as powerful as you would contend, realitive to the world in which they live. I also contend that any party that would be doing enough lasting damage to warrant the type of response that you are suggesting would likely be valuable enough to others to protect.