Let's say you are an ancient lich. You have access to any 9th level or lower spell from any official published material for 5e. similarly, you have access to any magic item (legendary or lower) from the same sources. You have 3 months of prep time.
You know that 2 evil creatures as powerful as Tiamat are going to be teleported to your plane of existence. You have to either slay or imprison these creatures. Using your incredible intellect, what combination of items and/or spells do you use to accomplish this?
I have not read too much about Tiamat, but her stat block does not say she can planar travel. Assuming your homebrew creature does not know how to planar travel either, you can try to use a bunch of mirrors of life trapping to attempt to trap her. Due to her high Charisma and that she probably knows about the mirror of life trapping, you may want to bring at least two or three dozen mirrors to ensure that one of the mirrors succeed in trapping her. If your homebrew creature has less Charisma, you can probably make do with less mirrors.
Well, lets put aside Tiamat for the moment, since lich versus dragon goddess is basically a whole Dragonlance novel trilogy and involves celestial politics as well as epic level magic and special ritual gates. Instead, I'm going to assume we're talking about sapient CR 30 monsters that aren't spellcasters themselves.
So, the very first thing that, as a lich, you're going to want is divination magics. Including the Divination spell itself (thanks Tasha's!) You need to gather as much information as possible about these two that are coming. Wish will also likely be used to gather information by mimicking spells from other lists. Wizards, in general, really shine when it comes to discovering and exploiting enemy weaknesses. Well, wizards also have defensive spells against this kind of exploitation, but I'm not assuming that, otherwise the wizard chess will get VERY complicated very fast. Anyways. lich. Divination for enemy nature, strengths and weaknesses.
Once enemy weaknesses have been identified, we can pick out the appropriate spells to use against these two monsters. That's going to vary a lot, since the nature of the enemy changes what the appropriate response will be - something like the Tarrasque could be Mazed with no way out, but a fiend or lich could kill themselves and reform to escape. These beings also likely have three Legendary Resistances each that we're going to have to burn through.
We're going to need a Simulacrum as well. If they both arrive at the same time, then we're going to need two liches for a two-on-two fight, or we'll be crushed by virtue of action economy overload. Heck, there's literally no reason to not have two of us fighting even if its one - on - one. I'll even go another step further and say we should use the Gate spell to call in even more reinforcements, preferably devils who won't break a contract and less likely to backstab us. Expensive, but doable.
For items? Staff of the Magi, Robe of the Archmage are important, since both raise our Save DC. Trying to out damage two monsters is probably going to fail miserably. Instead, we need to burn through their Legendary Resistances and force some direct Save or Suck/Die effects. Polymorph, Dominate Monster, Polymorph.... any of these type of spells, if they successfully land? That gives us the opportunity to cast True Polymorph or Imprison, or use a Sphere of Annihilation - powerful but take time to really end the problem. That's why we need control spells.
We're also going to need a crap ton of defensive and contingency items to keep ourselves, and our Simulacrum, alive. Again, which spells and items we invest in for defense are going to strongly depend on what the monsters are capable of, which is why those early divinations and research attempts are so important.
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Need help with a plot problem.
Let's say you are an ancient lich. You have access to any 9th level or lower spell from any official published material for 5e.
similarly, you have access to any magic item (legendary or lower) from the same sources. You have 3 months of prep time.
You know that 2 evil creatures as powerful as Tiamat are going to be teleported to your plane of existence. You have to either slay or imprison these
creatures. Using your incredible intellect, what combination of items and/or spells do you use to accomplish this?
I have not read too much about Tiamat, but her stat block does not say she can planar travel. Assuming your homebrew creature does not know how to planar travel either, you can try to use a bunch of mirrors of life trapping to attempt to trap her. Due to her high Charisma and that she probably knows about the mirror of life trapping, you may want to bring at least two or three dozen mirrors to ensure that one of the mirrors succeed in trapping her. If your homebrew creature has less Charisma, you can probably make do with less mirrors.
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Well, lets put aside Tiamat for the moment, since lich versus dragon goddess is basically a whole Dragonlance novel trilogy and involves celestial politics as well as epic level magic and special ritual gates. Instead, I'm going to assume we're talking about sapient CR 30 monsters that aren't spellcasters themselves.
So, the very first thing that, as a lich, you're going to want is divination magics. Including the Divination spell itself (thanks Tasha's!) You need to gather as much information as possible about these two that are coming. Wish will also likely be used to gather information by mimicking spells from other lists. Wizards, in general, really shine when it comes to discovering and exploiting enemy weaknesses. Well, wizards also have defensive spells against this kind of exploitation, but I'm not assuming that, otherwise the wizard chess will get VERY complicated very fast. Anyways. lich. Divination for enemy nature, strengths and weaknesses.
Once enemy weaknesses have been identified, we can pick out the appropriate spells to use against these two monsters. That's going to vary a lot, since the nature of the enemy changes what the appropriate response will be - something like the Tarrasque could be Mazed with no way out, but a fiend or lich could kill themselves and reform to escape. These beings also likely have three Legendary Resistances each that we're going to have to burn through.
We're going to need a Simulacrum as well. If they both arrive at the same time, then we're going to need two liches for a two-on-two fight, or we'll be crushed by virtue of action economy overload. Heck, there's literally no reason to not have two of us fighting even if its one - on - one. I'll even go another step further and say we should use the Gate spell to call in even more reinforcements, preferably devils who won't break a contract and less likely to backstab us. Expensive, but doable.
For items? Staff of the Magi, Robe of the Archmage are important, since both raise our Save DC. Trying to out damage two monsters is probably going to fail miserably. Instead, we need to burn through their Legendary Resistances and force some direct Save or Suck/Die effects. Polymorph, Dominate Monster, Polymorph.... any of these type of spells, if they successfully land? That gives us the opportunity to cast True Polymorph or Imprison, or use a Sphere of Annihilation - powerful but take time to really end the problem. That's why we need control spells.
We're also going to need a crap ton of defensive and contingency items to keep ourselves, and our Simulacrum, alive. Again, which spells and items we invest in for defense are going to strongly depend on what the monsters are capable of, which is why those early divinations and research attempts are so important.