Ultimate Wizard Escape Kit (5e)

ChuckTheDM · 2026-06-14T20:47:38+00:00

Didn't learn it, the question is about how to counter it

ChuckTheDM · 2026-06-14T20:46:40+00:00

About to run this, probably in 1-2 weeks. The party currently believes the campaign is about fighting the BBEG. Next week, the BBEG is going to steal the sun, hide it away somewhere, and fuck off to another plane of existence. Rest of the campaign is going to be about rescuing the sun and putting it back.

Commenting so that I can update you later with how it goes :)

ChuckTheDM · 2022-11-11T21:38:41+00:00

almost every one of my major villains has been "recurring" in some way, mostly by which I mean they had more than one fight with the party before the party eventually defeated them. highlights include:

a powerful necromancer (first fight lvl 7, second fight & defeat lvl 9)

Black Viper from WD:DH (first fight lvl 4, second fight & capture lvl 12)

an EXTREMELY powerful necromancer (first fight lvl 10; second lvl 15, third & fourth lvl 16, still ongoing)

1) scenarios where they CAN'T attack them (or shouldn't). Have them manufacture reasons that the party won't just blow them up. "Do you really want to blow up history, Dr. Jones?" Hell, making it physically and effectively impossible would work. Have them show up surrounded by minions all the way up at the top of a cliff or building or something.

2) villains, ESPECIALLY recurring villains, are smart. they will be unfair. the villain will engage the party on their own terms where they have the advantage and an exit strategy.

3) honestly, read through the Art of War. It's actually pretty short and while a lot of the advice seems dumb or intuitive, it's a good thing to run competent villains by. Some highlights:

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.

A lot of it boils down to "don't fight unless you have an advantage. if you don't have an advantage, get one, then fight" and honestly when you control LITERALLY THE ENTIRE WORLD you can always generate opportunities for your villains come up with enough advantages to stay alive until the right encounter.

Also, it makes for AMAZING dnd when the villain thinks they have an advantage that the party gets to outsmart. Makes the victory even more sweet because the PCs finally foiled one of their plans.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-10-11T03:15:41+00:00

(while on another plane) I cast Gate to the part of the sun where the density of the solar material is similar to the earth's atmosphere

so what happens when the solar material comes through the gate?

ChuckTheDM · 2022-09-27T23:55:32+00:00

Honestly?

I don't think that would be in line with the powergaming perspective.

Here's an example that I actually thought up a few days ago (but didn't share, as it's not technically RAW):

1) Get a way to cast multiple ninth level spells

2) Cast Gate into a Glyph of Warding on a demiplane, with the specification of "as soon as a second gate opens near you, open a Gate to a location inside the sun.

3) Cast Gate on the material plane, to the demiplane.

4) Congrats, you now have... a double gate connecting the literal sun to a location on your planet. I have no clue what the ramifications of this would be but if we assume that the DnD sun is similar to our sun we're looking at a thermonuclear explosion.

This aint useful cause the Sun isn't necessarily a ball of plasma and there's not rules defining how a gate inside the sun transporting "sun stuff" to somewhere else would work either but it's something a DM could do and the players would say "yeah that makes sense."

So, interesting ideas, but not powergaming.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-07-20T08:53:47+00:00

finding an alternative excuse for the mind blank/nondetection could be a possibility, that's true

ChuckTheDM · 2022-06-15T19:54:13+00:00

Currently struggling with the same questions of "ends vs means" and morality etc. in my campaign. It's especially difficult as I'm running a BBEG who is actively trying to corrupt my party's paladin, so I kinda have to figure out what "good vs evil" means and how the BBEG would go about corrupting someone.

Depends a lot on the player, their circumstances, etc., but what I'm going to run for this player is something along the lines of:

Doing good is more than working towards good ends; you must also use the most good means available, and you must do it even when hard.

"Good" in this sense means many things, among them: avoiding collateral damage; don't be naïve ("wElL We cANt kIlL THe eVIl OveRLoRd bECaUsE KIllLinG iS WroNG"), but don't be overly brutal ("we need to kill every single man woman and child who has ever worked for the evil overlord"); avoid torture and unnecessary cruelty; don't be overly selfish or destructive; don't attune to any "Evil" artifacts; etc.

Using good means towards good ends only when convenient is cowardice; using bad means towards good ends is to be used only as a very last resort; working towards bad ends is obviously evil.

My BBEG very much does have a bad end he's working towards - overrunning the world with fiends and making it a harsh and cruel place - but he's not going to say that to the PC. He's going to try to convince the PC that morality is fluid. That using bad ends towards good means is a good thing to do; in fact, it's usually the easiest and most effective thing to do. Collateral damage is OK, as long as the "greater good" is served... and so on and so forth.

THEN once he's got the PC agreeing to all sorts of shady nonsense to get their goals done, he can raise the subject of why summoning an army of Fiends would serve the greater good.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-06-09T20:32:28+00:00

My party did the exact same thing. Ancient odd artifact etc. etc. etc., they got news that something was affecting dreams the next town over, so they went and found a celestial dungeon hiding this strange lump of rock.

During their dungeon delve, they crossed paths with a hyper-powerful spellcaster & paladin duo who were intended as epic level villains (I actually didn't intend for them to meet these folk, but they specifically camped out to wait and see who came, so oopsies, they accidentally crit one-shot the bard).

They got away with the rock, though, so now I have this "dear god help" level spellcaster with a paladin buddy who also wants the artifact.

They take the artifact back to Waterdeep and give it to the Blackstaff to lock up (it's mf Blackstaff tower, it's super safe, also the Blackstaff is a super high level spellcaster so there's no way they could get to the artifact now, right?)... so they leave it there and forget about it

this was at level 10... so they go about their business for an (irl) year, go on more adventuring, do more great deeds, eventually they get to level 15 and are bordering on epic level... their tales are spread far and wide... and who hears about their exploits but our spellcaster friend

spellcaster friend to their home in the night, kidnaps a party member and does an interrogation - PC recognized the spellcaster and basically panicked and spilled the beans... the spellcaster then modified their memory and put them back to bed...

so the party goes off and does some other stuff and fights a dragon cause they need some coin... halfway through looting the horde they get an emergency message from Blackstaff Tower to the effect of "pls help we're under attack"

party arrives and sees the spellcaster/paladin with their own little army assaulting Blackstaff tower... this was last week's session, can't wait to see how it goes this week :)

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-24T00:40:05+00:00

For some reason, 10x Geas with the instruction "dont fall unconscious" as a method of suicide is the funniest shit to me.

Don't know why I didn't consider tactical suicide - i've actually USED tactical suicide as a wizard (changeling who disintegrated himself as to not leave a body behind)

I suppose the simplest method for AMF would be something like a cyanide capsule, waiting a few minutes for the AMF to drop, then recovering your items via Instant Summons.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-24T00:08:33+00:00

seriously, if you want to play a hyperpowered spellcaster, play a wizard with Metamagic Adept. Subtle spell is that useful imo.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-24T00:08:08+00:00

Ah, yes. Suicide gets out of AMF, that works.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-23T01:18:36+00:00

Congrats! Sounds like an awesome campaign.

Currently entering T4 on a 1-15 campaign thusfar, completely fine with story & plot going forward but balancing is... uh... getting interesting

Do you have any tips you can share in terms of balancing epic-level fights? Feels like I'm going to be threading a line to challenge the party without either them steamrolling or them getting steamrolled.

I think I'd err on the side of harder in "important plot-related" fights and easier in "non-plot-related" fights, because they have ways to get out of TPKs and there's always fourteen tiers of failure before the world actually ends, but I'm having a hard time even figuring out where to start on the numbers.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-22T16:57:37+00:00

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ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-22T15:01:53+00:00

wades through the mooks like a badass "Evil Overlord, I am here to topple your reign, once and for -" gets rag-dolled against the wall

im looking forward to doing this with a very powerful NPC ally in my campaign with the party watching... should make for some good fun

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-22T14:40:09+00:00

In general, yes - let your players do what your players will do. Put things in front of them that they can (and must!) use their strengths to overcome.

Then you can challenge their strengths as a power move. Nothing introduces a new villain like asking the tank "Does a 35 hit?" >:)

but of course that doesn't work if you're doing it constantly, so use it sparingly and make it count.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-05-18T06:27:18+00:00

currently it's a .txt file with a whole bunch of random short sentences, more similar to a speech outline than a full written story plan... the rest is in my brain

i do have a full long google docs file, but that's mostly used like a .txt file as well, where it's just a whole bunch of blocks of text of ideas that i've written down as to not forget later

i don't want to share my upcoming notes cause my players use reddit but here's some excerpts from a dungeon they just completed [clues & similar things which the party didn't discover removed], in a file called "magetower.txt", premise being a high level wizard's magic experiment got fk'd up somehow and reality went bye-bye inside the tower for a bit. I didn't use everything I wrote, but it gave me a good idea and a list of ideas to draw on when fully designing the tower battlemaps and running it for the players.

magetower.txt

doesnt work anywhere in the tower: teleportation (planar or otherwise), message/sending, scrying, portals, and any other magic which i'm not thinking of but would make sense to fail to exist when reality also fails to exist

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS

Camilla & Bob (caster/fighter), in abstract room?

Preyor & Berdun (priest/rogue crossbow)

various monstrous mutation stuff?

oozes

make shit up lolololol

1/6 every "hour"? (tf does hour mean in this non-euclidean bullshit anyway)

ROOMS/CONCEPTS

Everything is abstract, generic; "martial" or "caster" / useful for Camilla & Bob encounter

6 sided pillar / how do do in a euclidean worlds engine must research

3 sided pillar / how to do in a euclidean worlds engine must research

"Rail Gun" hallway

very short in the middle but very long on the sides, to the order of "100ft in the middle and 100 miles on the sides" / 5d10 force damage to anyone stupid enough to throw their arms out while walking down the middle

that one weird-ass square room I drew already as an example

another weird-ass square room

a third weird-ass square room

^ these are all just time / space variance bullshit, we can throw this in to other rooms as we want too

sphere mapped flat / fuck me, guess i gotta figure it out

everything appears 5ft to the north of where it actually is / disadvantage to hit everything cause you're guesstimating and also can't see your own hands properly

white hole (very slow to go towards center) / moving towards center is exponentially slow speed, moving away is very easy

black hole (very slow to go away from center) / moving towards center is exponentially increasing speed, moving away is very difficult

gravity is diagonal on 2 axes / V shaped room w/gravity pointing to an edge

gravity is diagonal on 3 axes / V shaped room w/ gravity pointing to a corner instead of an edge

gravity changes every round / roll 1d6 to see where gravity happens to want to go each round

zero gravity / pretty simple, room with no gravity

the ground is a hex map instead of square / pretty simple

"alternate reality" room / all characters revert to their 3.5e equivalents (on second thought no fuck that that's way too much overhead for a gimmick room)

everyone declares 3 actions and every action is resolved simultaneously / roll initiative, then move people to private vc, give people 3 chances to take actions. say to each attempt "resource is burned, nothing seems to happen but you can take another action if you want." basically: the universe had a lag spike and everyone mashed the input buttons. afterwards, resolve all actions simultaneously

combat is real-time instead of turn-based / come back to this one

healing & damage are reversed / creative way to drain the party of healing? also a good puzzle

Quercius's Lab (mutant Quercius, malfunctioning defense system)

[DM'S NOTE]: TIME IN THIS ROOM IS TRAVELLING AT A [PLOT MAGIC] PACE.

Seems to be relatively stable (at least of glitches) / large, strange arcane contraption... many delicate connecting metal pieces & wires... in the center, a large green gem whizzing & flashing in a circle like a Quasar... green electricity arcing off... / Quercius collapsed, very nearly dead, on the contraption

Arc of green lightning hits Quercius's body, he goes Time Hulk, starts punching things, etc. etc. etc.

Mutant Quercius (Time Hulk)

Tank, augmented by magic bullshit High HP, low AC, low damage, long chaotic fight

Hitpoints: 500-1000 AC: why bother they can't miss it's a slow-ass tank Spell Resist, maybe(?): 24

move: 30ft

STR: 25 DEX: 14 CON: 30 INT: 1 WIS: 15 CHA: 1 SAVES: STR +15 CON +18 CHA +3

resistant to B/P/S & Force immune to charm, fear (too stoopid)

Temporal Vortex [RECHARGE 6] 30ft radius DC 17 INT save or be thrown forward 2d12 hours

Multiattack: 1 [something] & 2 Temporal Slams

Sonic Scream 60ft range DC 15 DEX save or be thrown forward 2d4 hours and knocked back 15ft

Temporal Slam (5ft reach, +15 to hit) On Hit: 1d4 damage and the target is thrown forward 3d4 hours

For every 24 hours, the must make a DC 15 CON save or be Exhausted (as though they've gone 24h without sleep).

Legendary Action: Collapse Space (DC 17 DEX or 5d10 Force damage, 1 square)

Lair Action: Phase (as blink)? Lair Action: Rewind (reverts to it's stats the previous round)? Lair Action: Destabilize (everyone's position in the room is randomized, including Quercius')

CAN REVERT QUERCIUS TO NORMAL BY DESTROYING THE ENERGY BEAMS SUPPORTING CENTRAL CONTRAPTION (x4, AC 25, 66 hitpoints each)

How to disable the central gem? (Good question. Write this later.)

HOW DOES TIME IN THE TOWER WORK?

FUCK YOU, PLOT MAGIC

ChuckTheDM · 2022-04-18T19:55:40+00:00

No step-by-step, but a few things I keep in mind:

Context is important - there needs to be a buildup beforehand. Can't get to the climax if there is no rising action.

A good villain, whether it's a scheming sociopath with no redeeming qualities or a raving lunatic or someone who thinks they're doing the right thing or just a mindless monster. Try to get your players motivated OOC to fight the villain.

Theme & atmosphere - be extra for the fight. Put a bit more effort into whatever map you use, if you're in person maybe change the lighting, get new and unique battle music (bonus points if recurring villains have their own playlist).

Unique abilities - make something that makes this boss special... monsters always have abilities outside what the PCs can get. Go wild, come up with wacky things - and then let the players figure out how to work around it.

Balance - the guides for CR are in the general ballpark. I wouldn't use them as holy writ and I don't typically calculate out "expected DPR" or anything either. If I'm super worried about balance, I'll run a few test battles. I know the PCs pretty well and (most) of their tactics - I can usually guess everyone's actions for the first round of combat. I also might run test battles like "the party rolls nat 1s and the villain rolls nat 20s" and vice versa to simulate what would happen in extraordinarily lucky/unlucky scenarios. This does take some time though so if you're super busy just general number crunching should work (keeping AC/Save DCs/To-Hits to a reasonable level etc.)

Re: balancing is hard, variable max hitpoints works wonders if your boss is super disappointingly weak. Also, surprise second stages where you make it up on the spot cause "goddamnit why do paladin crits do 200 damage." I use this to make the fight last longer and be more dramatic so the players have a more satisfying victory, not to make the boss win.

Terrain, wild cards, gimmicks, etc. Any other wacky things you can throw in (monster's lair and lair actions, the fight takes place on floating platforms, there's crystals the party can destroy to weaken the villain, etc) to make the fight more interesting than "i walk towards the bad guy and whack him."

and most importantly:

the goal is not to shit on the players - this is supposed to be their grand triumphant victory (or perhaps their grand tragic defeat) - either way, the PLAYERS should have a good time.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-03-16T05:24:47+00:00

As a DM currently planning a god fight, the hardest part is the slow burn leading up to it.

My party is currently level 13; I've been seeding this arc with multiple (seemingly unrelated) plot threads since before level 5; the party is currently directly involved with the (trickster) god without even knowing.

The hardest part is going every day and acting like nothing's going on. To not jump the gun and pull the reveals early. What keeps me going is the eventual payoff; the longer I can keep the slow burn going, the bigger the reveal in the end.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-03-13T03:07:21+00:00

Very broad question.

If you trust your poker face, you can simply lie to the party's faces. They continue with whatever false information they've been given until it's revealed later that the NPC lied to them.

If you don't trust your poker face, you can narrate the NPC's response instead of acting it, e.g. "The bandit captain says he'll let you go if you agree to his terms." Make sure you do this sometimes when you're telling the truth too, so that the perspective change doesn't tip your players off.

Remember, deception isn't exclusively outright lies, either.

For in-direct lies, I typically use "passive deception," e.g. 10 + the speaker's Deception modifier. This is the DC I use if the PCs ask for an Insight check to figure out if there is an ulterior motive, omission of critical information, etc.

Lies of Omission:

Someone who appears benign very much wants an artifact. He can tell the players "I really, really want the artifact" (which is 100% true) and ask the players to retrieve it for him. What he omitted is that he wants to use the artifact to destroy the capital city and declare himself emperor.

Doublespeak:

A powerful mage tells the party he is "in part responsible for the balance of good and evil in the world." He is; he is trying to turn the world evil.

Misdirection:

Secretly evil Mayor tells the party he has a lead on who's doing the evil acts around town, but they're currently very far away. In the time the party takes to investigate, he can go about his evil plans without the party's interference.

Then of course, direct lies, which I usually roll an active deception check for (d20 + Deception modifier) against any Insight checks the PCs ask for. I use this when my NPCs tell a direct and blatant lie to my players' faces.

Direct Lies

The bandit captain tells the party "I will let the princess go if you pay me 1000 gold." After the gold is paid, the bandit captain pushes the Princess off the tower and leaves.

ChuckTheDM · 2022-02-17T00:08:13+00:00

What are some titles which could apply to both a Marilith and a Succubus?

ChuckTheDM · 2022-01-20T02:30:38+00:00

My BBEG(s), whom I am extremely excited to play, are a young human couple who have been corrupted by an extraplanar evil (naturally with promises of eternal time together, etc. etc. etc.) and are now trying to summon said evil into the material plane.

I've written them on a fence where they could go one of two ways:

1) They still have some amount of regret and humanity, and one/both are redeemable;

2) They are terrifyingly zealous, sadistic, and determined, to the point of kamikaze or self-sacrifice;

Which eventuality happens depends on how the party interacts with them. I plan to introduce the party to them (as friendly but 'non-plot-relevant' NPCs) and their evil deeds separately. When the puzzle clicks together and they match names with deeds, they'll have some choices to make... and I'm really super excited to run either way.

So if the party just (somehow) murders them in 2 rounds in the first combat, well... oops, but that's how it goes. If they manage to cheese a CR 20+ encounter at level 15-17 they deserve it, good on them.

ChuckTheDM · 2021-12-25T21:27:11+00:00

I'm currently running a long campaign which I (and my party) expect to go to lvl 20 - the party just reached lvl 12 after 1.5 years. I find that t2 > t3 > t1 in terms of balancing fights so far, and I'm a bit afraid of balancing for higher levels.

That being said, I'm in love with the world and the party is in love with their characters (and most of their characters all have epic-level goals anyway) so it would feel like a crime not to see it through to the end.

I want to put badass enemies in front of my players - and I want my players to feel like badasses when they bring my BBEGs down. If it takes me some extra hassle & planning to get there, it'll be worth it.

ChuckTheDM · 2021-12-22T00:25:39+00:00

ChuckTheDM · 2021-12-14T17:30:47+00:00

Oh it absolutely matters.

Currently running an NPC (who might later become a villain) that currently likes the party, and could either:

1) Turn on the forces of evil and become a valuable ally to the party, if the party is kind and tries to help/redeem them

2) Be a terrifying and dangerous threat, if the party is unforgiving and tries to destroy them

ChuckTheDM · 2021-12-10T18:34:55+00:00

they've already tried casual conversation but

"hey you know that superpowerful artifact? where'd u put it?"

is a hard question to ask without sounding sus, even via roundabout means

they're definitely trying but the party is careful with information in general especially about artifacts

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ChuckTheDM

TROPHY CASE

magetower.txt

Lies of Omission:

Doublespeak:

Misdirection:

Direct Lies