Hey guys
I have been wondering 'how would a high level caster actually deal with a party of lower levels attacking him/her?'. I'm DM’ing at the moment (my 2nd campaign) and it is going well, but knowing my players and the foolish choices they often make, I need to know how a caster of higher level would either teach a lower level party a lesson (or straight out slay them) if they stepped out of place or threatened/attacked him/her. Knowing how powerful magic is and how much more powerful it gets when you're getting the higher level spells, it seems like a caster should be able to handle such a situation without breaking much sweat but exactly how would he/she do it?
Let’s just assume a pretty melee heavy party of four, combined of twohanded powerattackers, sneak attackers, maybe a wildshaped druid and a single arcane caster (a pretty common setup in my group), and a situation at close range. With these parameters the group can certainly dash out a lot of damage if the caster is not being careful or only targeting one character. And let’s assume that the characters’ individual levels are around 60% of the caster (i.e.: a 15th level caster vs. 8th-9th level characters or a 19th level vs. 12th level characters).
How would a caster with 9th level spells handle the situation if he wanted to kill the disrespecting characters? And what If he/she only wanted to disabling them?
And a caster with 8th level spells (disable and kill)?
And finally a caster with just 7th level spells (disable and kill)?
Try to keep it rather simple without too much cheesy material. I’m thinking core, spell compendium and maybe the complete series. No campaign specific spells and no spells from obscure books or magazines. I want the solutions to be effective not because of silly spells, but simply because of the difference in power.
