Wizards who refuse to use blast spells

[Tarek]

Oh, I just had a vicious thought.

Subject the wizard, and the rest of the party, to... "The Mocking".

Ingredients: One bard. Several bardic apprentices. One party with wizard who refuses to blast. Another BBEG.

Bard approaches party with intent to learn stories of their adventures in order to create ballads. Bard learns *real* story of adventures. Bard is offended by the non-heroic exploits ending with "...and then after he fell, we shot him with arrows some more, and Fighter here hit him again while he tried to get up and then again while he was on the ground."

Bard starts spreading true tales but slanted to mock the party for its "cowardice". This takes place over a few months of game time.

BBEG hears these tales, and starts investigating the party and their usual tactics. BBEG prepares extensively for the party, researching counters and preparing traps based on the party's known tactics.

BBEG then sends out a challenge, indirectly, which will bring the party to his lair.

It might involve the original bard offering to stop mocking the party if they can take out BBEG, because by now the party has definitely heard all those songs and has started seeing NPCs react with amusement whenever they pass by.

Then sit back and run the adventure. Whether it ends up being a deathtrap is up to you, but I'd definitely make it an CR+3 or CR+4 encounter. One where if they stick to their usual tactics, they're really going to be hurting. A lot.

Preparing the adventure will mean a lot of thought about each of the characters, the resources they have access to, how much of those resources are actually known to the bard, and deep thought on how you can turn the party's use of non-damaging spells against them. Just make sure to leave the BBEG and his crew vulnerable to the very spells that the wizard refuses to use.

 

[Hammerhead]

That wizard sounds smart, and worthy of the Intelligence they supposedly have. Anyone can do damage.

Tarek: Your thought isn't so vicious because in my experience, most parties try to hide their usual tactics. I know that I've seen a psion who carried around a banjo to appear as a bard, and a sorcerer in Eberron who drastically misreports the party's capabilities in all of his anecdotes. We would NEVER allow some potential enemy to learn our secrets. Also, it's highly possible that the party just won't care about any bad press it receives, or takes drastic measures to suppress the songs (aka beating the living snot out of any bard who dares to sing some kind of mocking song).

Also, Tarek, a Ring of Water Walking has no effect on a grease spell, nor does an "Amulet of Lesser Invulnerability" (which doesn't actually exist, and shouldn't, btw). Grease doesn't allow SR.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What annoys me is how almost all of his spells cripple-but-don't-kill, simultaneously making the monsters less fun and more book-keeping to run.

And

Efficient characters are well and good, but when it comes down to using the same three or four tricks, all of which prevent me from doing anything interesting with the NPCs in combat ... it sucks a lot of fun out of it.

Grease, Color Spray, etc. are just a different 3 or 4 tricks than the typical mage- IOW, Fireball, Sleep, Magic Missile, etc. You can't tell me that mages with those spells don't practically have those engraved in stone on their list.

Seriously, you probably wouldn't like but a single mage I've played in the last 30 years.

 

[Tarek]

Amulet of Lesser Invulnerability: Usable 3/day. Casts "Lesser sphere of invulnerability" or whatever the spell is named now on the user. What's unbalanced about it?

And there should be an easy to use, relatively common counter to Grease. Magically created grease, that dissipates when the spell duration is over? Should not affect creatures whose SR the spellcaster doesn't beat. But that's a personal opinion.

I'd seriously consider adding a thick layer of sand to the floor to absorb the grease created by the grease spell, since it creates "real" grease that acts like "real" grease would act.

 

[Umbran]

Subject the wizard, and the rest of the party, to... "The Mocking".

Do not meddle in the affairs of minstrels, for your name is pretentious and scans to "Greensleeves".

 

[WhatGravitas]

Simply add some token mages to your enemies sometimes, who cast dispel magic. This should remove the most annoying problems.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Glitterdust is a very good spell, the wizard in the game I run uses it a lot. Being a conjuration it doesn't even allow SR. He's also a big fan of slow. I do sometimes get tired of monsters being blind and slowed but I can always just use high will save critters such as undead or aberrations.

I think the annoying thing about most debuffs is they prolong fights and add extra rolls. Both grease and web have little sub-rules you have to learn. Grease requires extra rolls every round. Glitterdust means you have to roll a miss chance. Slow otoh, simplifies the game by removing iterative attacks.

 

[amethal]

I'd seriously consider adding a thick layer of sand to the floor to absorb the grease created by the grease spell, since it creates "real" grease that acts like "real" grease would act.

I did that at least once in my last campaign

On a more controversial note, I've also flat out told a player NOT to cast Evard's black tentacles when it would have turned the entire encounter into a three hour festival of tedium and actually provided little or no overall practical benefit to the party.

Of course, I can't actually stop PCs casting what they want, but in my experience players will go for the "fun" option ahead of the "no fun" option if you explain the choice in those terms.

If not, then the DM has to adapt to the players. Any NPC that would normally have a brooch of shielding can be expected to have potions of levitate instead.

And glitterdust allows a saving throw against blindness.

 

[howandwhy99]

I know if we just threw big numbers at each other until one side or the other died, whatever the irrelevant descriptions, our combats would be very dull. It's the game changing spells that make things fun.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

I think the annoying thing about most debuffs is they prolong fights and add extra rolls. Both grease and web have little sub-rules you have to learn. Grease requires extra rolls every round. Glitterdust means you have to roll a miss chance. Slow otoh, simplifies the game by removing iterative attacks.

I concur.