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Message: <blockquote data-quote="harmyn" data-source="post: 2921796" data-attributes="member: 13511">Very handy, 15 minutes. 18th/19th level character. Now your players have slain the dastardly bad guy and loot him. What is his 130k to 170k plus worth of gear that an NPC of that level has? Bought all of that in the 15 minutes? What was his touch AC? Magical armor adjustments or is it just Greater Mage Armor? All skills need stating for the wizard? no. But you should jot down Concentration, Spellcraft, and any other skills that might be relevant. Did he permanence any spells on him? Most would have by that time if they could have. Is this a wizard or a sorcerer? Fighting in his home? If its a wizard the players might just go searching for his spell books. And at that level they just might have the capacity to locate them. Did the wizard have any wards in place? Did he know they were coming? Was he prepared or just knocing about the house enjoying a cup of tea and the newspaper (you know, taking the day off from doing evil)? What did he Contingency on himself? Anything? What triggers it? This would probably affect the spells he knows. Any Quickened Dispels on hand to counter player magic? Cause that would up your spells needed a bit. You really don't need to note all this down, but at the same time its wrong to just arbitrarily rule against party creativity because you didn't commit yourself (this can happen as you intuitively give abilities and spells to wizards and clerics).That may sound like a lot of "minutae" bit it is all stuff you need to consider when creating a 18th level wizard. How common are they in your world? Such a character does require some thought if there is supposed to be a climactic resolution. I do track NPC's, reuse stats, make only minor tweaks, use the books as a basis, but there is still a good deal of crunch work involved as ou get to higher levels, especially in the new edition of D&D. That's just a fact. I have winged it plenty, it just gets harder at higher levels because the variables increase so much.The fighter is easier than the wizard as BTB he only has 17 feats to spend (18 if human) and all his gear. Now you can resuse a lot of these kinds of characters with only a little tweaking, but if there is any sort of a template or variation involved then it gets a little more time consuming. Also is it a straight fighter or a prestige class. Any special notes you need to know about?Don't mean to jump at your or take some personal offense at your comments, I don't. Its just that I frequently hear of all the available "short cuts" out there, but they only do so much, and most of the time its players who have never DMed who are trying to point out such "aids". There is just a lot to high level characters, no way around it.</blockquote>

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