Inspired by a number of posts indicating that Wizards are absolutely guaranteed to win 1v1 battles, I wanted to put together a quick post that takes these two classes and pits them together to see if it's at least *possible* for the Fighter to win (without magical items, otherwise what’s the point?). So I put two test characters together:
Why Chronurgist? Well, that's the only one with Convergent Future that can offer a 2nd round win with Polymorph, Convergent Future, and then Power Word Kill at a 36% chance. A Divination Wizard has to roll Portent Dice and also has to overcome the Indomitable Class Feature, so that's not a guarantee in the 1st round.
What does the field look like? Well, to make it fair, it's been suggested that the battle start 60 ft away, be featureless and infinite in every direction, and has 4 posts that are 40 ft apart, infinitely high and 10 feet in diameter in a square pattern centered between the combatants.
Why? Because featureless would be impossible for Rogues to do anything, and any edges ruins the advantage of a character with Flight.
So, let's build the Chronurgist first. Tell me to change something on the link, and I'll update it. Once I have a change indicated, I'll re-run the scenario and look at the *best-case-scenario* for the Champion, in an effort to actually give some statistical evidence that it's either impossible, or not. Feel free to throw in your strategy if need be!
I assume 20th level? I will even give you a post and 85 ft.
Any 20th wizard that has a free round with nothing else to do is like to cast Invulnerability. Take the Concentration hit and simply spend the future rounds attacking the Champion. He might even go for a simple dagger attacks, taking the full ten minutes to kill the Champion 1d4 at a time.
I assume 20th level? I will even give you a post and 85 ft.
Any 20th wizard that has a free round with nothing else to do is like to cast Invulnerability. Take the Concentration hit and simply spend the future rounds attacking the Champion. He might even go for a simple dagger attacks, taking the full ten minutes to kill the Champion 1d4 at a time.
Check the links - a Wizard doesn’t have enough spell slots to kill the Champion through damage alone. Indomitable, Resistance, Dwarven Durability and Survivor will negate all your damage. If you want to test Invulnerability, give me a rundown of which spells you would use 1-8 (and so on) and I’ll give you a rundown of how much HP he would have left.
1. Starting 60ft away is unfair as it means that any melee build short of a monk has to dash to get within range. Having a starting condition that explicitly disadvantages one party should never be used to establish anything. A distance of 25ft is what would trulu be fair: outside of melee range, but inside walking distance for any race. If the other party wants distance and has won initiative, they can walk away and thus force their opponent to dash, but the initial outline should be within an attainable margin for both parties.
2. Convergent futures does not override indomitable. It overrides your save to be a failure. You can then use indomitable to roll again -- the wizard has used their reaction and cannot use convergent futures again, nor shield, nor temporal shunt as they no longer have a reaction.
3. As the fighter has additional asi, it is not difficult to work Alert into their build. This means that a dexterity champion fighter would have the same modifier to initiative as a chronurgist due to remarkable athlete providing half the proficiency bonus to initiative. This assumes 16 dex or less on the part of the wizard, which is not an unreasonable assumption. If the wizard maxed dex, a fighter with alert would still be competitive and not lose outright. (Chronal shift does work on initiative, but it is not disadvantage, just a reroll; you could in fact HELP the fighter and burn your reaction in doing so).
3. Immediate defensive action is NOT the optimal move for a fighter that wins initiative. An immediate alpha strike is, as a lvl20 fighter built well can easily expect to be able to kill a wizard outright in one round using action surge. Without magic items, and again assuming 16 dexterity, a chronurgist has 18ac (using shield spell, no mage armor as that would be a prepared buff). With the archery fighting style, a 20dex fighter has an attack bonus of +13, meaning they must roll a 5 or higher to hit, that is a 75% chance per shot of hitting. An archer champion, making 8 attacks with a longbow and sharpshooter should expect to roll one critical hit in that round on average (0.15×8=1.2). This means your basic damage line would be 9d8+40. This is approximately 80 damage. Hmm not enough. Lets use our other bonus asi to get magic initiate warlock for hex... its a bonus action so it doesnt interfere and adds an additional 9d6 to our expected damage, or about 31.5 damage. We are up to 111.5 damage now. Still probably not enough unless the wizard is a madlad with a low con. Lets use another asi for sharpshooter. The -5 to hit isnt great, but because of the archery fighting style, it still leaves us with a +8 to hit, meaning we need to roll a 10 or higher to ensure a hit. A 50% chance each shot to hit sounds risky. Luckily we only need to risk it twice to put most wizards in the ground.
If you end up having bad attack rolls, you can still fall back on indomitable as a desperation play. Oh and since you won initiative, go ahead and walk into melee.
If they use their turn to cast invulnerability (and probably ran 30ft) assuming you went to melee after your turn, you can now use YOUR turn to walk up and use one of your attacks to disarm the wizard of their focus (as found in the DMG) and then pick up their focus. Now they cant cast spells with material components, so just put em in a headlock and push em prone for 10min.
Or... if you were a character made in Mythic Odessys of Theros, you could have taken the Iconoclast supernatural gift at character creation, and just cast antimagic field at the start of combat.
Most of your comments here disregarded the info I already added to the two links. The Mage has 20AC with Shield and 20 Dex, and 140+ HP. And if your alpha strike fails (and it does statistically), Poly + Convergent has a high percentage chance to work. Unless I’m missing something?
Also, the Chronurgist has +15 Init and the Fighter has +11 Init.
And the mage can use a Component Pouch easily instead of an Arcane Focus.
At 20th level the wizard could probably spare 2 or 3 spell slots of 1st level to have Mage Armor active 24/7... or have it be a free spell... and their 2nd level free spell could be Scorching Ray giving them unlimited damage forever. (In reference to not having enough spell slots to do enough damage to kill a fighter.)
(edit): I almost forgot, they could Counterspell any spell the fighter cast. (Does the fighter casting a spell take away from it's attacks?)
Scorching Ray is +11 and 2d6 Damage. With AC 21 for the Champion, you have a 50% shot at hitting and doing 7 damage, for an average of 3.5 per round. The Champion regenerates 10 HP per round. This won’t be effective. He can Counterspell but the Champion can either walk behind a Pillar or outside of 60 ft range.
Doesn't the champion only regenerate when below half hp?
If he walks behind a pillar or outside of 60 foot range then his melee attacks are nil.
After the 1st round the wizard can teleport away and spend years or even decades preparing all kinds of magical mayhem.
(That's where I spotted a huge flaw that doesn't favor the fighter or the wizard. 5e is meant to be balanced and it isn't, it can't be whenever you have differing classes. Favor the melee combat too much or even a little and the fighter gains an advantage, go the other way and the wizard gains an advantage. There can never be a fair fight between any 2 classes. Plus by not giving the wizard time to prepare spells you take away from his main class feature. Many of the spells don't have an action as casting time, some are minutes or hours, maybe even days?)
Yeah, pretty much this, but some people want to claim that this was a guaranteed win for a Wizard and how easy it would be ... but when I throw up an example nobody wants to actually put it to the test so I thought I’d see...
Too many people love to argue about how the classes are balanced vs each other in 1v1 somehow... and it’s ludicrous. So I just thought I’d see if someone would take the challenge. 🙂
I don't have time to try, but looking at your character, it seems that you have optimized your magic items against wizards
Gem of seeing to counter invisibility,
Mantle of Spell resistance to give advantage on saving throws,
Winged boots to counter flight,
Adamantine Plate to counter criticals,
I don't think anyone is going to Argue that a Champion can take on a 20th level wizard with the perfect range of magic items.
The only thing I will add is, with Indomitable, there is only 2 uses, and with a 8 in INT and CHA, There is a selection of spells than can be used. such as force cage, feeble mind, plane shift, mental prison etc.
If I was a wizard and used my arcana to recognize all those magic items, I would just leave and come back later with 50 simulacrum and all casting feeble mind on the same turn.
Contingency only works for 5th level spells or lower. The usual spells to take would be Greater Invisibility (which they can see through with magic item) or Resilient sphere which would give you time to buff) but normally PVP there is no prep or buff. or else the wizard would already have simulacrum.
The example above with magic items would be a Boxer challenging a Mix Martial Artist to a fight then brings a gun.
Yah, i disregarded the build you posted because the build you posted is in no way optimized.. a fighter with 10str and 14 dex? Why did you suggest a fighter that cant attack effectively for this contest?? A wizard with 20dex is also not exactly an average example: I honestly have never seen a wizard not take either resilient constitution or warcaster to bolster concentration. Sure it could happen, but the point is that you built the wizard specifically to maximize its initiative and armor, you built it specifically for this contest, and yet the fighter you propose is exactly the opposite of what should be used.
A race with 25 movespeed set 60ft away, without any viable attacks, and specifically ensuring they have a significant initiative disadvantage... what a fair comparison. Congrats. You built a character that depends on chip damaging a squishy to go against a build that can win in a round or two by technical knockout. The fighter has much less of a chance the longer the fight goes on. Even one round makes it very likely that the wizard will win simply because they can thunderstep or otherwise teleport to kite. The fighter has to be built to alpha to win, insisting that the fighter cannot alpha strike via a required build is putting your thumb on the scales to ensure a preferred conclusion.
I also notice you have magic items for the fighter but not the wizard, which is odd. But if magic items are available, why not make an Elven champion with elven accuracy and an oathbow. That most assuredly does delete a wizard in one round, as EA+advantage+improved critical means you ARE going to hit and the +3d6 is enough to average to 20 damage a hit without sharpshooter. 8 attacks for 160 damage, not counting crits.
With a build that maximizes dex + alert and remarkable athlete you get an initiative mod of +13... well within the possibility to beat a +15.
Edit: and no, poly + convergent does not have a high chance to work, it has the same chance of working as a casting of poly without convergent.... because indomitable occurs after convergent unless the fighter failed the initial save, in which case, yes, convergent plays a role, but it ONLY effects the situation if used AFTER indomitable.
The entire reasoning that no prep spells are allowed is because there are so many buffs with a significant duration. It is asking for one party to get more actions than the other. It is unfair.
Invulnerability has a 10min duration, it could be cast before a fight. Is it fair that the wizard start a duel with this spell in effect?
It is the same deal with contingency. If you allow one fighter time to prep, you need to allow the other party the same consideration. Would it be a fair duel if a martial had time to dig a pit trap under the wizards starting position and line it with punji stakes and snakes?
Starting without buffs does not reduce a wizards spellcasting feature, it just makes sure that an equal amount of actions are taken by both parties. Prebuffing essentially adds action economy to specific builds while disadvantaging other builds that dont have those options.
To be honest? Considering that every build and class has specific things it is good at and things that is less good at, any standardized scenario will advantage certain strategies and builds over others.
IMO, so long as it is possible to act normally with the first turn, it is probably as fair as it will get. For this reason the starting distance should be 25ft, so that a melee dwarf or other 25ft speed race doesnt have to dash if they get the first turn, but the other party isn't already in melee which would disadvantage ranged characters.
If a mage or ranged character wins initiative, starting 25ft away, then they can use their movement to go to 55+ft away or otherwise CHOOSE to increase the distance with things like thunderstep, misty step etc to force their opponent to dash or use actions to catch up. This gives the caster the choice of either trying to win immediately, or to improve odds by kiting their opponent, WITHOUT making it so that a melee character that wins initiative must waste their turn dashing, negating their advantage of moving first.
And you talked about spell slots. Nope. My ideas was to DAGGER the fighter to death. Or simply use cantrips.
The Wizard is using invunerabiltiy which give them 10 minutes to kill the Fighter. Eventually the Fighter will use everything up. Cantrip by Cantrip or Dagger blow by Dagger blow, the Fighter dies.
In addition, you gave the Fighter a ton of magic items and nothing for the Wizard. A belt of Strength =25, makes that dagger deadly.
Finally, and most importantly, your character is over-weight. His walking speed is 5ft, because he is carrying 198 lbs with a strength of 10. He has to get his weight down to 50 lbs in order to be able to move at 25.
It isnt handicapping the wizard, it is ensuring the wizard doesnt have an unfair advantage. If you dont understand how requiring some builds (builds i am not using as everything i have suggested in this thread revolves around a longbow) but REQUIRING some builds to waste at least one turn just dashing is not an unfair advantage i dont know what i can say to convince you. When starting at 25ft the wizard has the option of walking or casting a spell to create distance; just WALKING would require that melee fighter to dash, are you seriously so biased that you wont abide your character using their movement in an intelligent manner?
If you do want "no holds barred" and to allow precasts, then you should allow the fighter the same opportunity. In Mythic Odessys of Theros, every character is suggested to start with some select "supernatural gifts", one of which is the Iconoclast, which allows ANY character with this gift that is the appropriate level to cast antimagic field. Go ahead and precast, set up a glyph of warding to get a second concentration spell... so long as you allow the fighter to start within 25ft and ACTUALLY abide by no hold barred then it wont matter.
@mog
I am not the author of this thread. That build is not my build and i have decried both the scenario and the way the fighter is set up. I did not make the build in the initial post, and did not give those magic items. If the scenario allows magic items, i would not have chosen the ones given in the initial post.
As i have said elsewhere, invulnerability only grants immunity to damage, not effects. A fighter can still incapacitate a wizard with invulnerability on through non damaging means, such as removing their material components and grappling them, perhaps under water if such options are available. Invulnerability is a very powerful effect, but it isnt a guaranteed win, it just massively puts the odds in the wizards favor.
This contest (as presented by the author, with the fighter allowed magic items and 60ft starting distance) entirely depends on initiative, whoever wins initiative is significantly more likely to win the fight. As the chronurgist wizard can get an additional +2 to their initiative modifier, they are thus 10% more likely to win this matchup.
Yah, i disregarded the build you posted because the build you posted is in no way optimized.. a fighter with 10str and 14 dex? Why did you suggest a fighter that cant attack effectively for this contest?? A wizard with 20dex is also not exactly an average example: I honestly have never seen a wizard not take either resilient constitution or warcaster to bolster concentration. Sure it could happen, but the point is that you built the wizard specifically to maximize its initiative and armor, you built it specifically for this contest, and yet the fighter you propose is exactly the opposite of what should be used.
A race with 25 movespeed set 60ft away, without any viable attacks, and specifically ensuring they have a significant initiative disadvantage... what a fair comparison. Congrats. You built a character that depends on chip damaging a squishy to go against a build that can win in a round or two by technical knockout. The fighter has much less of a chance the longer the fight goes on. Even one round makes it very likely that the wizard will win simply because they can thunderstep or otherwise teleport to kite. The fighter has to be built to alpha to win, insisting that the fighter cannot alpha strike via a required build is putting your thumb on the scales to ensure a preferred conclusion.
I also notice you have magic items for the fighter but not the wizard, which is odd. But if magic items are available, why not make an Elven champion with elven accuracy and an oathbow. That most assuredly does delete a wizard in one round, as EA+advantage+improved critical means you ARE going to hit and the +3d6 is enough to average to 20 damage a hit without sharpshooter. 8 attacks for 160 damage, not counting crits.
With a build that maximizes dex + alert and remarkable athlete you get an initiative mod of +13... well within the possibility to beat a +15.
Edit: and no, poly + convergent does not have a high chance to work, it has the same chance of working as a casting of poly without convergent.... because indomitable occurs after convergent unless the fighter failed the initial save, in which case, yes, convergent plays a role, but it ONLY effects the situation if used AFTER indomitable.
I optimized the Fighter to win against the Chronurgist. Do you have an alternative that has a better shot at winning? Feel free to post it up instead of degenerating into a bunch of random points with no evidence. It’s a hypothetical shot, not a tried and true character.
He wasn’t wearing the magical item, but I removed it anyways for you. You missed the entire point again - the argument is that a Fighter at Level 20 without magical items isn’t capable of winning against a Wizard at Level 20 without magical items. The Wizard-camp already knows they need 20AC with Shield, and Poly+PWK is there only option with a high-HP opponent. And unless you can alpha 142HP in one round with 8 attacks, you’re banking on luck against an Indomitable roll and Convergent Future not working.
Chance of my build succeeding on Wis save? 60%. If it succeeds, Convergent Future requires second roll at 60% success. If it fails, and I use Indom, they can use Convergent Future to make that fail. So I have a .6*.6=36% chance of success. I want to up those odds. But if you move Wis over to Dex scores, you lose this battle even quicker. 18 Wisdom? .55*.55=30.25%
If I use Resistance First, whenever the opponent uses Convergent Future I have a 100% chance of success. And that’s higher than 36% already.
So throw up your build and stop throwing up great ideas - I already said I’d do the stats for you, I just need someone to take the bait.
Still don't see how it's any way near fair when wizard keeps getting handicaps and the fighter doesn't... can't cast any spells that have a casting time longer than an action... and now am forced into easy range of melee, which obviously favors the fighter... anything else, hands of wizard tied behind the back maybe...
I can still one shot the fighter even if I lose initiative... willing to bet only long time wizards can see how.
Throw up an actual tactic instead of just humble bragging. I contest that even at 60 ft away, the Champion is likely to win if he gets initiative.
Your initial post does not say no magic items, ans your initial build had magic items, so i think a case for you "moving the goalposts" could be made...
But sure, here is a build that has a solid chance of winning. It uses your initial criteria, and it does use magic items because that was the initial scenario.
It also has a +14 to initiative, so only 1 off from your chronurgist.
If it wins initiative, bonus action to activate Oathbow, then 8 attacks, at advantage, each for 1d8+3d6+5, averaging 20 per hit, without crits. That is 160 damage. Quite likely to get above AC 20 when you have +14 to hit and three rolls of d20.
It is protected from temproal shunt by a robust +12 to wis saves, with advantage and indomitable AND lucky.
And you talked about spell slots. Nope. My ideas was to DAGGER the fighter to death. Or simply use cantrips.
The Wizard is using invunerabiltiy which give them 10 minutes to kill the Fighter. Eventually the Fighter will use everything up. Cantrip by Cantrip or Dagger blow by Dagger blow, the Fighter dies.
In addition, you gave the Fighter a ton of magic items and nothing for the Wizard. A belt of Strength =25, makes that dagger deadly.
Finally, and most importantly, your character is over-weight. His walking speed is 5ft, because he is carrying 198 lbs with a strength of 10. He has to get his weight down to 50 lbs in order to be able to move at 25.
Adjusted weight. It was from 1000 arrows. Haha.
If I just dodge while you’re Invulnerable, Fire Bolt does 6 damage per round and I regenerate 10 per round. Unless you have a better cantrip, that 10 minutes will be over and I’ll still be at half HP.
Your initial post does not say no magic items, ans your initial build had magic items, so i think a case for you "moving the goalposts" could be made...
But sure, here is a build that has a solid chance of winning. It uses your initial criteria, and it does use magic items because that was the initial scenario.
It also has a +14 to initiative, so only 1 off from your chronurgist.
If it wins initiative, bonus action to activate Oathbow, then 8 attacks, at advantage, each for 1d8+3d6+5, averaging 20 per hit, without crits. That is 160 damage. Quite likely to get above AC 20 when you have +14 to hit and three rolls of d20.
It is protected from temproal shunt by a robust +12 to wis saves, with advantage and indomitable AND lucky.
Oh, and it averages 3.6 crits per turn
So you think it’s possible to build a fighter with Oathbow that can kill an average Wizard... congratulations? This was never my setup - the build I had wasn’t wearing a single magical item and I’ve removed them from inventory as well. If the challenge was to stack the Champion with items, there is literally zero challenge, so why would I even propose it?
The real effort would be in beating a Wizard without them, but I guess you can always throw your hands up and add magical items until you win if that’s the only level of input you want.
Inspired by a number of posts indicating that Wizards are absolutely guaranteed to win 1v1 battles, I wanted to put together a quick post that takes these two classes and pits them together to see if it's at least *possible* for the Fighter to win (without magical items, otherwise what’s the point?). So I put two test characters together:
A Champion Fighter: https://ddb.ac/characters/20393806/MbMphE
A Chronurgist Wizard: https://ddb.ac/characters/29830225/I7R7oB
Why Chronurgist? Well, that's the only one with Convergent Future that can offer a 2nd round win with Polymorph, Convergent Future, and then Power Word Kill at a 36% chance. A Divination Wizard has to roll Portent Dice and also has to overcome the Indomitable Class Feature, so that's not a guarantee in the 1st round.
What does the field look like? Well, to make it fair, it's been suggested that the battle start 60 ft away, be featureless and infinite in every direction, and has 4 posts that are 40 ft apart, infinitely high and 10 feet in diameter in a square pattern centered between the combatants.
Why? Because featureless would be impossible for Rogues to do anything, and any edges ruins the advantage of a character with Flight.
So, let's build the Chronurgist first. Tell me to change something on the link, and I'll update it. Once I have a change indicated, I'll re-run the scenario and look at the *best-case-scenario* for the Champion, in an effort to actually give some statistical evidence that it's either impossible, or not. Feel free to throw in your strategy if need be!
In the current incarnation, the Chronurgist has a 70% chance of going first and winning. So let's go to the 30% chance that the Fighter goes first.
Round 1
The Champion moves 25 ft away to cover behind a post and casts Resistance. This will only be used to negate Convergent Future any time it's cast.
The Chronurgist... what does he do now?
I assume 20th level? I will even give you a post and 85 ft.
Any 20th wizard that has a free round with nothing else to do is like to cast Invulnerability. Take the Concentration hit and simply spend the future rounds attacking the Champion. He might even go for a simple dagger attacks, taking the full ten minutes to kill the Champion 1d4 at a time.
Check the links - a Wizard doesn’t have enough spell slots to kill the Champion through damage alone. Indomitable, Resistance, Dwarven Durability and Survivor will negate all your damage. If you want to test Invulnerability, give me a rundown of which spells you would use 1-8 (and so on) and I’ll give you a rundown of how much HP he would have left.
1. Starting 60ft away is unfair as it means that any melee build short of a monk has to dash to get within range. Having a starting condition that explicitly disadvantages one party should never be used to establish anything. A distance of 25ft is what would trulu be fair: outside of melee range, but inside walking distance for any race. If the other party wants distance and has won initiative, they can walk away and thus force their opponent to dash, but the initial outline should be within an attainable margin for both parties.
2. Convergent futures does not override indomitable. It overrides your save to be a failure. You can then use indomitable to roll again -- the wizard has used their reaction and cannot use convergent futures again, nor shield, nor temporal shunt as they no longer have a reaction.
3. As the fighter has additional asi, it is not difficult to work Alert into their build. This means that a dexterity champion fighter would have the same modifier to initiative as a chronurgist due to remarkable athlete providing half the proficiency bonus to initiative. This assumes 16 dex or less on the part of the wizard, which is not an unreasonable assumption. If the wizard maxed dex, a fighter with alert would still be competitive and not lose outright. (Chronal shift does work on initiative, but it is not disadvantage, just a reroll; you could in fact HELP the fighter and burn your reaction in doing so).
3. Immediate defensive action is NOT the optimal move for a fighter that wins initiative. An immediate alpha strike is, as a lvl20 fighter built well can easily expect to be able to kill a wizard outright in one round using action surge. Without magic items, and again assuming 16 dexterity, a chronurgist has 18ac (using shield spell, no mage armor as that would be a prepared buff). With the archery fighting style, a 20dex fighter has an attack bonus of +13, meaning they must roll a 5 or higher to hit, that is a 75% chance per shot of hitting. An archer champion, making 8 attacks with a longbow and sharpshooter should expect to roll one critical hit in that round on average (0.15×8=1.2). This means your basic damage line would be 9d8+40. This is approximately 80 damage. Hmm not enough. Lets use our other bonus asi to get magic initiate warlock for hex... its a bonus action so it doesnt interfere and adds an additional 9d6 to our expected damage, or about 31.5 damage. We are up to 111.5 damage now. Still probably not enough unless the wizard is a madlad with a low con. Lets use another asi for sharpshooter. The -5 to hit isnt great, but because of the archery fighting style, it still leaves us with a +8 to hit, meaning we need to roll a 10 or higher to ensure a hit. A 50% chance each shot to hit sounds risky. Luckily we only need to risk it twice to put most wizards in the ground.
If you end up having bad attack rolls, you can still fall back on indomitable as a desperation play. Oh and since you won initiative, go ahead and walk into melee.
If they use their turn to cast invulnerability (and probably ran 30ft) assuming you went to melee after your turn, you can now use YOUR turn to walk up and use one of your attacks to disarm the wizard of their focus (as found in the DMG) and then pick up their focus. Now they cant cast spells with material components, so just put em in a headlock and push em prone for 10min.
Or... if you were a character made in Mythic Odessys of Theros, you could have taken the Iconoclast supernatural gift at character creation, and just cast antimagic field at the start of combat.
Most of your comments here disregarded the info I already added to the two links. The Mage has 20AC with Shield and 20 Dex, and 140+ HP. And if your alpha strike fails (and it does statistically), Poly + Convergent has a high percentage chance to work. Unless I’m missing something?
Also, the Chronurgist has +15 Init and the Fighter has +11 Init.
And the mage can use a Component Pouch easily instead of an Arcane Focus.
Scorching Ray is +11 and 2d6 Damage. With AC 21 for the Champion, you have a 50% shot at hitting and doing 7 damage, for an average of 3.5 per round. The Champion regenerates 10 HP per round. This won’t be effective.
He can Counterspell but the Champion can either walk behind a Pillar or outside of 60 ft range.
Yeah, pretty much this, but some people want to claim that this was a guaranteed win for a Wizard and how easy it would be ... but when I throw up an example nobody wants to actually put it to the test so I thought I’d see...
Too many people love to argue about how the classes are balanced vs each other in 1v1 somehow... and it’s ludicrous. So I just thought I’d see if someone would take the challenge. 🙂
I don't have time to try, but looking at your character, it seems that you have optimized your magic items against wizards
Gem of seeing to counter invisibility,
Mantle of Spell resistance to give advantage on saving throws,
Winged boots to counter flight,
Adamantine Plate to counter criticals,
I don't think anyone is going to Argue that a Champion can take on a 20th level wizard with the perfect range of magic items.
The only thing I will add is, with Indomitable, there is only 2 uses, and with a 8 in INT and CHA, There is a selection of spells than can be used. such as force cage, feeble mind, plane shift, mental prison etc.
If I was a wizard and used my arcana to recognize all those magic items, I would just leave and come back later with 50 simulacrum and all casting feeble mind on the same turn.
Contingency only works for 5th level spells or lower. The usual spells to take would be Greater Invisibility (which they can see through with magic item) or Resilient sphere which would give you time to buff) but normally PVP there is no prep or buff. or else the wizard would already have simulacrum.
The example above with magic items would be a Boxer challenging a Mix Martial Artist to a fight then brings a gun.
Yah, i disregarded the build you posted because the build you posted is in no way optimized.. a fighter with 10str and 14 dex? Why did you suggest a fighter that cant attack effectively for this contest?? A wizard with 20dex is also not exactly an average example: I honestly have never seen a wizard not take either resilient constitution or warcaster to bolster concentration. Sure it could happen, but the point is that you built the wizard specifically to maximize its initiative and armor, you built it specifically for this contest, and yet the fighter you propose is exactly the opposite of what should be used.
A race with 25 movespeed set 60ft away, without any viable attacks, and specifically ensuring they have a significant initiative disadvantage... what a fair comparison. Congrats. You built a character that depends on chip damaging a squishy to go against a build that can win in a round or two by technical knockout. The fighter has much less of a chance the longer the fight goes on. Even one round makes it very likely that the wizard will win simply because they can thunderstep or otherwise teleport to kite. The fighter has to be built to alpha to win, insisting that the fighter cannot alpha strike via a required build is putting your thumb on the scales to ensure a preferred conclusion.
I also notice you have magic items for the fighter but not the wizard, which is odd. But if magic items are available, why not make an Elven champion with elven accuracy and an oathbow. That most assuredly does delete a wizard in one round, as EA+advantage+improved critical means you ARE going to hit and the +3d6 is enough to average to 20 damage a hit without sharpshooter. 8 attacks for 160 damage, not counting crits.
With a build that maximizes dex + alert and remarkable athlete you get an initiative mod of +13... well within the possibility to beat a +15.
Edit: and no, poly + convergent does not have a high chance to work, it has the same chance of working as a casting of poly without convergent.... because indomitable occurs after convergent unless the fighter failed the initial save, in which case, yes, convergent plays a role, but it ONLY effects the situation if used AFTER indomitable.
The entire reasoning that no prep spells are allowed is because there are so many buffs with a significant duration. It is asking for one party to get more actions than the other. It is unfair.
Invulnerability has a 10min duration, it could be cast before a fight. Is it fair that the wizard start a duel with this spell in effect?
It is the same deal with contingency. If you allow one fighter time to prep, you need to allow the other party the same consideration. Would it be a fair duel if a martial had time to dig a pit trap under the wizards starting position and line it with punji stakes and snakes?
Starting without buffs does not reduce a wizards spellcasting feature, it just makes sure that an equal amount of actions are taken by both parties. Prebuffing essentially adds action economy to specific builds while disadvantaging other builds that dont have those options.
To be honest? Considering that every build and class has specific things it is good at and things that is less good at, any standardized scenario will advantage certain strategies and builds over others.
IMO, so long as it is possible to act normally with the first turn, it is probably as fair as it will get. For this reason the starting distance should be 25ft, so that a melee dwarf or other 25ft speed race doesnt have to dash if they get the first turn, but the other party isn't already in melee which would disadvantage ranged characters.
If a mage or ranged character wins initiative, starting 25ft away, then they can use their movement to go to 55+ft away or otherwise CHOOSE to increase the distance with things like thunderstep, misty step etc to force their opponent to dash or use actions to catch up. This gives the caster the choice of either trying to win immediately, or to improve odds by kiting their opponent, WITHOUT making it so that a melee character that wins initiative must waste their turn dashing, negating their advantage of moving first.
And you talked about spell slots. Nope. My ideas was to DAGGER the fighter to death. Or simply use cantrips.
The Wizard is using invunerabiltiy which give them 10 minutes to kill the Fighter. Eventually the Fighter will use everything up. Cantrip by Cantrip or Dagger blow by Dagger blow, the Fighter dies.
In addition, you gave the Fighter a ton of magic items and nothing for the Wizard. A belt of Strength =25, makes that dagger deadly.
Finally, and most importantly, your character is over-weight. His walking speed is 5ft, because he is carrying 198 lbs with a strength of 10. He has to get his weight down to 50 lbs in order to be able to move at 25.
@brian
It isnt handicapping the wizard, it is ensuring the wizard doesnt have an unfair advantage. If you dont understand how requiring some builds (builds i am not using as everything i have suggested in this thread revolves around a longbow) but REQUIRING some builds to waste at least one turn just dashing is not an unfair advantage i dont know what i can say to convince you. When starting at 25ft the wizard has the option of walking or casting a spell to create distance; just WALKING would require that melee fighter to dash, are you seriously so biased that you wont abide your character using their movement in an intelligent manner?
If you do want "no holds barred" and to allow precasts, then you should allow the fighter the same opportunity. In Mythic Odessys of Theros, every character is suggested to start with some select "supernatural gifts", one of which is the Iconoclast, which allows ANY character with this gift that is the appropriate level to cast antimagic field. Go ahead and precast, set up a glyph of warding to get a second concentration spell... so long as you allow the fighter to start within 25ft and ACTUALLY abide by no hold barred then it wont matter.
@mog
I am not the author of this thread. That build is not my build and i have decried both the scenario and the way the fighter is set up. I did not make the build in the initial post, and did not give those magic items. If the scenario allows magic items, i would not have chosen the ones given in the initial post.
As i have said elsewhere, invulnerability only grants immunity to damage, not effects. A fighter can still incapacitate a wizard with invulnerability on through non damaging means, such as removing their material components and grappling them, perhaps under water if such options are available. Invulnerability is a very powerful effect, but it isnt a guaranteed win, it just massively puts the odds in the wizards favor.
This contest (as presented by the author, with the fighter allowed magic items and 60ft starting distance) entirely depends on initiative, whoever wins initiative is significantly more likely to win the fight. As the chronurgist wizard can get an additional +2 to their initiative modifier, they are thus 10% more likely to win this matchup.
/thread
I optimized the Fighter to win against the Chronurgist. Do you have an alternative that has a better shot at winning? Feel free to post it up instead of degenerating into a bunch of random points with no evidence. It’s a hypothetical shot, not a tried and true character.
He wasn’t wearing the magical item, but I removed it anyways for you. You missed the entire point again - the argument is that a Fighter at Level 20 without magical items isn’t capable of winning against a Wizard at Level 20 without magical items. The Wizard-camp already knows they need 20AC with Shield, and Poly+PWK is there only option with a high-HP opponent. And unless you can alpha 142HP in one round with 8 attacks, you’re banking on luck against an Indomitable roll and Convergent Future not working.
Chance of my build succeeding on Wis save? 60%. If it succeeds, Convergent Future requires second roll at 60% success. If it fails, and I use Indom, they can use Convergent Future to make that fail. So I have a .6*.6=36% chance of success. I want to up those odds. But if you move Wis over to Dex scores, you lose this battle even quicker. 18 Wisdom? .55*.55=30.25%
If I use Resistance First, whenever the opponent uses Convergent Future I have a 100% chance of success. And that’s higher than 36% already.
So throw up your build and stop throwing up great ideas - I already said I’d do the stats for you, I just need someone to take the bait.
Throw up an actual tactic instead of just humble bragging. I contest that even at 60 ft away, the Champion is likely to win if he gets initiative.
Your initial post does not say no magic items, ans your initial build had magic items, so i think a case for you "moving the goalposts" could be made...
But sure, here is a build that has a solid chance of winning. It uses your initial criteria, and it does use magic items because that was the initial scenario.
https://ddb.ac/characters/29866557/aYy4NE
It also has a +14 to initiative, so only 1 off from your chronurgist.
If it wins initiative, bonus action to activate Oathbow, then 8 attacks, at advantage, each for 1d8+3d6+5, averaging 20 per hit, without crits. That is 160 damage. Quite likely to get above AC 20 when you have +14 to hit and three rolls of d20.
It is protected from temproal shunt by a robust +12 to wis saves, with advantage and indomitable AND lucky.
Oh, and it averages 3.6 crits per turn
Adjusted weight. It was from 1000 arrows. Haha.
If I just dodge while you’re Invulnerable, Fire Bolt does 6 damage per round and I regenerate 10 per round. Unless you have a better cantrip, that 10 minutes will be over and I’ll still be at half HP.
So you think it’s possible to build a fighter with Oathbow that can kill an average Wizard... congratulations? This was never my setup - the build I had wasn’t wearing a single magical item and I’ve removed them from inventory as well.
If the challenge was to stack the Champion with items, there is literally zero challenge, so why would I even propose it?
The real effort would be in beating a Wizard without them, but I guess you can always throw your hands up and add magical items until you win if that’s the only level of input you want.