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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grog" data-source="post: 1198099" data-attributes="member: 6183">Seriously. They nerfed Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus but left this in? I was planning an adventure for a 13th-14th level party and was looking at using one of these guys for a villian (after adapting the organization to my campaign world). Boy did I drop that idea fast.It's insane how powerful these guys are. Look at a 10th level Red Wizard (15th level character). First of all, he's effectively a 20th level caster right off the bat, and he doesn't even have to sacrifice spell slots to increase his caster level like the new Archmage does.But the real problems start when you look at the Circle Leader ability. If he leads a circle of, say, 9 9th level wizards, each of them can cast a 5th level spell, giving him 45 spell levels in his pool. He can crank his caster level to 25 and still have 40 levels left over to metamagic his spells without increasing their level.I considered what he could do to the party with that kind of power. First of all, a caster level of 25 means his buffs would be literally untouchable by party dispels, and he could strip away their buffs with ease. He could open the combat by casting a Finger of Death Heightened to 20th level - instant death for one character (even the party barbarian couldn't make a Fort save with a DC in the high 30s-low 40s). Or, if he just wanted to kill the whole party at once, he could cast an Empowered Maximized Cone of Cold, followed up by a Quickened (actually using a 7th level slot for this because at least Red Wizards can't use the Circle ability to Quicken spells) Empowered Maximized Fireball. That's 150 + 12d6 damage to the entire party, and he still has 30 spell levels left in his pool afterward. He could Heighten the spells too, to ensure the PCs would fail their saves, and voila - instant TPK.Given that there's basically no cost for using the Circle Leader ability, there's no reason that the Red Wizard wouldn't do it every day, so he's always running with that kind of power at his disposal. And as far as I can tell, there's absolutely nothing the party can do to take it away from him - it's not dispellable or anything like that.I would submit that this guy would cause major problems even for a 20th level party! He makes the 3.0 Archmage look like a Commoner. What was Wotc thinking?</blockquote>

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