Feat: Wizard Slayer?

[Mynaheir]

Hello,

So after sparring with warriors I thought - They need more defensive measures against spell casters. What about turning what is considered a "Kit" in Forgotten Realms into a "feat." Wizard slayers can interrupt spellcasting and are trained in it. It was one of my favorite classes with Baldur's Gate.. Nothing like an arrow from a wizard slayer interrupting a wizard from killing me.

It could help warriors who train in it to have an initiative bonus when a wizard goes to cast a spell.

Thanks,
Myna

Inspiration:
Wizard Slayer

In short: A fighter who specializes in fighting magic-users is known as a Wizard Slayer. He gains 2% magic resistance per level, and the ability to interrupt spells. Opponents suffer a cumulative 25% spell failure for each of the Wizard Slayer's successful attacks. He cannot use any magical items (potions, rings, amulets etc.) except magical melee weapons and must be of good alignment.

Description: Wizard Slayers are obsessed with destroying practitioners of evil magic. They come from cultures where the practice of magic is reserved for an elite group of elders. These elders examine every baby born to the tribe, looking for omens. An unusual birthmark, a head of white hair, or a complete set of teeth may be interpreted as a sign that the gods have selected the baby to become a Wizard Slayer. The child is taken from its parents and raised to bring out the abilities of the Wizard Slayer. This upbringing provides him with special powers to detect evildoers and resist their magic.

The Wizard Slayer has few interests aside from destroying evil magic. He cooperates with his companions as circumstances dictate, but he is always seeking evil practitioners of magic. His single mindedness discourages friendship. He keeps his companions at arm's length and prefers solitude. Grim and brooding, he may go for days without saying a word, brightening only at the prospect of encountering one of his hated foes.

Wary of all forms of outworld magic, he avoids associating with the magic-wielding members of his party unless forced by circumstance.

Armor/Equipment: Begins with hide armor, a small shield, and a quiver of arrows.

Special Benefits:

Protection from Evil: As a result of the treatment from his elders, the Wizard Slayer radiates a protection from evil aura to a distance of one foot. The aura is constant and permanent; it otherwise acts exactly as the 1st level priest spell.

Know Alignment: A Wizard Slayer can use this ability at will by touching the targeted creature, character, or object. The creature is allowed a save to resist this ability.

Detect Illusion: A Wizard Slayer has a 5% chance per level of determining that a phenomenon with illusory, visual, auditory, or other sensory components is actually an illusion. This chance can't exceed 75%. He may use this ability twice per day, but only once per phenomenon.

Detect Magic: A Wizard Slayer has a 25% chance at 1st level and a 5% bonus per level thereafter, up to a maximum of 90% to detect magic.

Attack Magical Creatures: A Wizard Slayer can strike at magical creatures normally immune to nonmagical weapons. At 4th level he can strike as a +1 weapon, he gains an additional +1 for every even number level after that, up to a max of +5 at 12th level.

The Wizard Slayer gains a magic resistance of 2% per level. Whenever a Wizard Slayer hits an opponent a 25% spell failure is applied to the target. This percentage is cumulative.

Special Hindrances:

No Magic Items: Unable to use any magical items except melee weapons and armor.

Combat Compulsion: A Wizard Slayer must, in combat situations, seek out a mage or spell caster over any other opponents.

[Terageld]

Yes! This is the goodest thing ever invented! I always wanted to be able to fight wizards without getting disintegrated, pulled into another dimension, flayed by demons, shrunk to halfling size, stabbed with a pointy stick that's also on fire, zapped dead by a lightning bolt, blown up into tiny bite size pieces, implode into my own stomach, thrown into the sky, thrown into walls, thrown into the ground, thrown into the sky and then into the ground, getting stabbed by a fiery stick while getting thrown, flayed by demons with a pointy stick, blown up into bite size pieces with a lightning bolt that's also on fire... I finally don't have to do any of that!

I don't think that this class would have to confined to good-alligned characters, though. I remember that in one of the Complete Warrior Manuals that there's a special class called Mage Hunter or something. The basis of the class is that it's a warrior who thinks people are too irresponsible to use magic. Because of that, he goes out and kills wizards. I think this should be available with all alignments.

[Mynaheir]

If not a class than maybe a feat with three to five rankings? With benefits every time it is trained? Sort of like the feat "Spell Penetration."

[Yemin]

I've seen warriors beat wizards before. Its not exactly easy because not just any old build of fighter can do it on FK for various reasons but it can be done if you've built for it.

Spread out through various threads are variations of this topic and I believe the consensus generally is that fighters aren't really meant to be one man do it all. Their soldiers that are meant to suppliment a team and are as invaluable as wizards or clerics depending on the kind of challenge faced. Their good at tanking, good at hitting things and killing a large number of enemies without expending finite resources like spells.

I'd be more in support of prestige classes over feats. Fighters get the most feat points so there's not much cost in making anything like this a feat. You just pick it up and you have the rest of your 20+ bonus feat points or something to be just as good at everything else you want to do.

Even Conan the barbarian who in fiction I think is the closest to the best example of sword user doesn't ever beat his wizard adversaries without some kind of trick of clever thinking over any one skill. I think its just something embedded deep in fantasy that a fighter should never be able to beat a wizard in a frontal straight up attack.

If you want to make a fighter that can beat a wizard in FK, I kinda started an all purpose thread to clarify fighter builds... called fighter builds.

[Yemin]

http://www.forgottenkingdoms.org/board/ ... =1&t=19372

[Ungtar]

I'm kind of with Yemin on this one.

The instadeath spells seem to be pretty easy to save against. And there's no surplus of magical trinkets to festoon yourself with to augment your saving throws.

Against mobiles, I'm not having trouble fighting the casters. They get interrupted pretty heavily. So this would seem to me to be a player versus player thing. I'm not really a pkill guy, so I don't know, but is there enough of it going on to justify the coding effort? And if you make this change, is it going to change the character of this game towards a MORE pkill environment?

Those would be my concerns. If it's just a matter of not wanting to be completely at the mercy of a wizard should they happen to pick a fight with you, then perhaps an expensive antimagic potion available in-game (may already be such a thing) would suffice?

The rules of FK sort of hamper any realistic way in which mages would be normally dealt with. No ambush, no fights without a lot of roleplay beforehand, etc. If you think it puts warriors at a disadvantage, imagine what it does to rogues and assassins.

This is one of the reasons I've decided not to pvp with just anyone due to random circumstances. PvP is something I will only engage in with really good roleplayers with whom we've arranged the details beforehand and are using it to advance both of our character storylines. Stuff that's too important for a random saving throw to mess up.

[Yemin]

As a funny note... the best way to kill a wizard in tabletop is another wizard.

I kind of find it interesting that here, for the most part, it goes, cleric trumps wizard, wizard trumps fighter, everybody gets to beat on rogues

[Ungtar]

As a funny note... the best way to kill a wizard in tabletop is another wizard.

I kind of find it interesting that here, for the most part, it goes, cleric trumps wizard, wizard trumps fighter, everybody gets to beat on rogues

A warrior did win the tournament after beating not just one but several wizards.

[Ungtar]

I should add, that the counter-argument would be that the tournament was not quite reality because the wizards didn't use a lot of instadeath spells.

However, I saw wizards completely unable to cast because the warrior kept interrupting. I saw wizards go down in 3-4 rounds under the onslaught of 5 attacks per round.

I just don't believe it's going to be an absolute positive thing that the warrior will always lose to a wizard.

There is no "save versus" for a battle axe or two handed sword.

[Yemin]

As a funny note... the best way to kill a wizard in tabletop is another wizard.

I kind of find it interesting that here, for the most part, it goes, cleric trumps wizard, wizard trumps fighter, everybody gets to beat on rogues

A warrior did win the tournament after beating not just one but several wizards.

Conan the barbarian drow always beats wizards thats not surprising.
Was talking about the ratio out of 100 though.

[Ungtar]

Yeah, he kind of does ... and drow resistance to magic is a huge help too.

What do you think the ratio is currently and what do you think it ought to be?

As a side question, do shields help at all with impact spells like fireball and lightning bolt?

[Yemin]

Yeah, he kind of does ... and drow resistance to magic is a huge help too.

What do you think the ratio is currently and what do you think it ought to be?

As a side question, do shields help at all with impact spells like fireball and lightning bolt?

The ratio of different fighters able to beat wizards is maybe 1 to every 7 or 10. I'm not sure what it should or shouldn't be, I'm very very bias because I identify with wizards alot more and am a holder of the viewpoint that wizards are the geeks who can't do anything for about 4 levels then suddenly they get fireball at level 5 and become ok croud thinners, then black tentacles at level 7 and become decent control lock down... then planar binding at level 9 and its all over lucy, just pack up that sword and go home.

Or in FK terms, color spray at level 11, phantasmal killer at level 16, then illusery pit at level 26 so on and so forth... yes color spray at level 11 because reasons.
A critical hit with a scythe doing x4 damage with a strength of 50 doesn't ever equal a wish spell... Or whatever the weird capstone for fighters is.

Also, A shield doesn't or at least shouldn't help with spells like those long as the code is reflecting general dnd rules.

Only exception is if someone took it upon themselves to make a tower shield that you can hide behind.