so, there's this level 45 evil mage...

[Dandu]

I'm sure that story would make more sense in the context of the campaign, but it I can't make heads or tails of what happened.

 

[Hexer]

LOL that kinda sounds just as chaotic and "not what it was supposed to be" as our very first session.
Our GM had planned a simple little story that would have set us up ready to go for the campaign, we overreacted at one point and everything went right down the drain

 

[WHW4]

I'd be a little miffed by that ending, if it was me. Did your GM know you guys had poured so much thought into how to defeat this guy before the session you fought him in?

Reminds me of when in a SW Saga game, we had a large space transport. I had discussed endlessly throughout the week about the group's plans to add-on/modify it and take on a few jobs. I got nods and "sounds good"s. Halfway through the session the ship is fiat-ed away from us, exposes our bases location, and we are "absolutely unable" to get any clues as to why or how this happened. Sure would have been nice to save that brain-space to plan out other stuff.

 

[krupintupple]

If you're being completely railroaded or are unhappy, you could always have the entire group say "We all kill ourselves dead," and then just rolling up new characters and starting over.

 

[Jacob]

Yeah, it's entirely possible that the wizard prepares nothing but Fireball.

Combined with the Archmage High Arcana ability Mastery of Elements, it's not so bad.

Well, suppose I were to employ the following set of tactics in an overall strategy to just blow the mage and his tower to kingdom come:

a) Establishment of Infinite Crafting XP

First, take controlled level loss. Drop a single level (putting you exactly one half a level backward). Next, spend all but the last 500 of the level's XP making things. Finally, use "Greater Restoration" to return yourself to the highest level you ever held. Rinse and repeat.

b) Construction of the Tsar Bomba

As we have access to virtually unlimited raw materials, we could presume to be able to construct a tower silo as a bomb casing (90 ft. diameter, 280 ft. tall). We could fill the silo with marbles (.008 gold a pop) enchanted with spells such as "Fireball", "Ice Storm", or "Sphere of Ultimate Destruction". Establish the spell trigger as a marble's destruction. This would amount to well in excess of 1 million marbles. Establish a small blast charge (say, gunpowder or alchemist's fire) in the casing to destroy the first few marbles. Let the spells which ensue destroy and thus detonate the remainder of the marbles.

According to my calculations, using "Shocking Grasp" (5d6), this would amount to somewhere around 1.7 quadrillion points of damage. Of course, I would need to use a non-touch attack, but still. That's the LOW end of spell damage. Alternatively, that much magical energy accumulating at a single point could hypothetically result in the construction of a super-epic wild magic surge the likes of which the universe has never seen.

The process of constructing this weapon, by 1 cycle per day, will take approximately 3.4 years. As we have the ability to suspend time indefinitely (within a pocket dimension), this does not pose an issue.

c) Alternate Uses for the Tsar Bomba

If, for some reason, the bomb turns out to not be useful as a weapon, hypothetically the Artificier in our party could use the marbles she created to gain a fundamentally infinite crafting pool and construct something else just as epic.

brought to you by our artificier.

a. Greater Restoration only gives back XP from level drain/negative levels. Not that it isn't viable, because you could have a vampire servent to help you with such a task. The problem I see is the free XP you're supposedly getting after spending the other half you have left from level loss. A proper DM would enforce a penalty, at the very least minus the crafting XP from your previous XP before level loss.

b. + c. If the Wizard had major energy resistance (electriciy) 30, then he would not have been effected by any of the Shocking Grasp marbles mentioned, even if they all exploded at once. A little moot with the other spells thrown in, but it bothered me all the same.

Oh, and you've certainly answered the question in my head when I wondered on the crafting time in another scenario: just give them a pocket dimension which moves slower than real time. Coupled with the infinite resources you mentioned, I'm all the more assured in thinking the DM was just wanted you guys to have fun. All I can hope for is that the amount of thought you've put into the game felt worthwhile, and wasn't too overblown.

And I hope that world finally got itself sorted out, because the gods must not really be in control if a group of people crafted a planar bomb under their noses to destroy an otherwise small fry opponent. Overkill!

 

[Dandu]

Combined with the Archmage High Arcana ability Mastery of Elements, it's not so bad.

10d6 any damage at epic levels is so bad.

 

[libermortis]

creat a mythral the seed from lost empires of faerun, make it block magic unless you are approved by the caster, that will work even beatter than a antimagig field.
then dispell him with a epic dispell, and kill with pure damage.

 

[SolitonMan]

...

these being the important details, we went up to the mage's room. instead of the terribly hard climatic battle we were expecting, he pushed a button and teleported away while self destructing the tower.

the wild magic mage didn't take this very well, and broke the dimension lock, tracked the teleport, and followed him.

...

It's probably a trivial detail in the grand scheme of reality destruction and all, but - how did the evil mage teleport out of a dimensionally locked area? Just curious...

 

[airwalkrr]

Gate-ing in an army of solars comes to mind as my first approach to this 45th-level mage business. Let the summoned monsters do all the fighting for you until he is out of spells.

 

[Dandu]

Gate-ing in an army of solars comes to mind as my first approach to this 45th-level mage business. Let the summoned monsters do all the fighting for you until he is out of spells.

Gate can call in something with HD up to twice your caster level. Solars have 22 HD.

Dream Larva, perhaps?