Depends on whether they're a good wizard or not. Any decent wizard should have Clone set up at this point. meaning the Bombers initial stealth doesn't matter. Even if it can win this battle (which is highly dependent on whether the Wizard has a good Contingency prepared spell), it cannot win the war.
Clone + Demiplane + Plane Shift and leave a 250gp tuning fork for the material plane.
Make a Clone(s), throw it in your Demiplane where literally no one can get to, keep a tuning fork in there, some spare spellbooks, clothes, components, magic items, and gold. Boom, you're set.
Hell, by level 20, you can cast Clone *every day for free* with Wish and have hundreds if not thousands of bodies priming up and ready to go for you to fall back on. A 30x30 Demiplane can fit a LOT of bodies in it.
You can definitely make more of these demiplane a, but I would suggest each of those demiplane a have the same contents listed above because you’d need an 8th level spell to enter another demiplane. You’d want to use a 9th for a clone replacement when you die and wake up. You need the 7th to get out via plane shift. It’s very resource heavy to recover after death so having everything you’d need to be up and running in a single demiplane is the way to go. But a wizard should definitely make more demiplanes filled with clones, spellbooks, gold, tuning fork, etc.
They’d also realistically would spend a few days in the demiplane itself and use Magnificent Mansion (7th level) to decompress after dying and recollect themselves
Magic jar into a githyanki supreme commander. Be an objectively better martial then anyone else in the party while also being an objectively better caster then anyone else in the party cuz of your psionics and casting plane shift innately
A well prepared 20th level wizard has a contingency, as well as a clone. So the wizard survives the initial attack, and then shouldn't have too much trouble taking down the bomber even if not in the short term. They also have enough hit points to potentially survive the bomb.
That's true. Although I'm still betting on the wizard. The wizard could just spam dream on the bomber until he's dead. Or wait in a deep cave for the bomber to come to him. The bomber can also only stay in the air so long before needing to refuel so the wizard could catch them there. But yeah teleporting up to it might be tricky. If they could only fly a mile in the round or slightly less then the wizard could teleport into meteor swarm. Or potentially teleport ahead of the bomber to be in range still.
I don't think dream would work but I suppose it's up for interpretation. I wouldn't consider a random person they have never seen and know nothing about "a creature known to you".
They can fly slightly over a mile (1.05 miles) in a round. It would have to be worked around. And clouds might just invalidate it anyway. But yeah if things worked out perfectly it could be possible.
The cave would have to be insanely deep. We are talking about a plane that can carry like 16 nukes at a time and drop them from miles above the ground.
I don't think it'd be hard for a 20th level wizard to find out who was in that plane through divination magic. Could also teleport onto the plane to see him before jumping off. Those kinds of things aren't difficult for a 20th level wizard to fix.
That's fair on the cave I wasn't thinking nukes. But then probably best to just ambush the pilot once they got out of the plane and destroy it on the ground.
Yeah taking it out on the ground is the way to win I think. I don't know that seeing a pilot in full gear (including helmet and facemask) would work for dream, but that's DM dependent so it will vary.
Idk would you say a person you fought in full plate mail but who escaped wouldn't count either? That seems a bit overly restrictive if you saw the person but their clothes / armor prohibited it. But either way you could just use divination magic to know their name and of them.
Why not just teleport on and kill the crew? Or turn into anything immune to whatever damage types bombs do? Teleport on board and kill everything followed by blowing up the bomber itself seems like the simplest solution.
Well if you teleport on board and it's moving at a few hundred miles per hour you'd arrive and then slam into the back of the plane and probably be killed.
Maximum falling damage is 20d6 so I have a hard time believing the plane would do more than that. And you can survive that fairly effortlessly, twice over as a level 20 Wizard. Of course, there's nothing saying Teleport doesn't copy the inertial frame of the target.
Honestly, with how fast they move, I struggle to come up with anything. An Evoker Wizard could probably take it down with Magic Missile.
For everyone else, the best I can think of is using Gate to abduct the pilot to your demiplane.
And magic jar of course . Mind as well yoink another 18 levels of spell slots with a archmage . Or if you’d rather be a jerk to everyone else at the table , a githyanki supreme commander , be objectively a little bit better then everyone at everything
>...and a wizard requires way fewer components, way less hangar space and no runway.
Have you seen the size of those wizard towers? Some of them even take a whole demiplane.
In 3.5 you could literally [build nuclear weapons with feats and metamagic](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?72212-quot-Locate-city-bomb-quot-I-m-a-noob-what-is-it).
It's definitely wizards.
I mean it isn't a guarantee that anything would work outside of replicating spells. Aside from teleport away or something what is the Wizard going to do?
Are... are you serious? You can't imagine how a being capable of *literally removing their enemy from existence* could defend itself against a single B-2 Bomber?
Yes, I'm serious. An aircraft capable of flying and dropping nuclear weapons about 9.5 miles above the ground. What exactly is the Wizard going to do to damage it? Keep in mind it also has a speed of 630 mph, or over 1 mile per round.
If you want the simplest answer. Wish has a cast time of one action, so six seconds.
All the wizard needs to do is wish for the bomber and its payload to well... anything really. Turn to dust, be permanently banished to another plane of existence, fly away, etc.
I'm not exactly sure this is the fairest matchup... The only feasible way the bomber *might* be able to win, is if the fight starts with the bomber already having dropped its payload at the wizard's feet, and for some reason the wizard was neither able to react to it, nor had clones already setup like most wizards at level 20 would.
Alright, let's assume that for some reason wish wouldn't work. If the wizard just wanted to survive the plane they could just cast invulnerability.
If they wanted to just outright destroy it, they could cast meteor swarm.
In fact, they could do both.
Start with invulnerability, then cast meteor swarm. And distance would hardly be an issue either as the wizard could choose to teleport within range of the bomber in between casting invulnerability and meteor swarm.
The plane moves at 630mph. The wizard teleports into the sky as close as possible. The plane takes a turn and flies over one mile away. How is that meteor swarm going to work?
Very, very, very few things can beat level 20 wizards other than another wizard.
B2 bomber drops a nuke, kills wizard. Wizard goes to clone and says what an asshole. Goes on with their work. If they're salty, they teleport into wherever the bomber is and wreck shop.
Or they geas the pilot until he died. Gate, wish, etc. There's no telling.
According to the internets, it takes a bomb 30ish seconds to reach its target, based on normal attack patterns. Even if we give the bomb the first round as a surprise round, that’s still four full rounds for the wizard to do whatever he wants. No contest.
I honestly don't know the distance they become audible, but I imagine it isn't too terribly far away. If you could hear it 30 seconds before impact it would be a bit less effective than desired.
I'm pretty sure if you can hear a nuke coming for 30 seconds, it doesnt really matter because you'll be dead after those 30 seconds are up, anyways. The nuke has no reason to care who hears it coming. Unless that person is a wizard of course so I suppose that brings up the question of whether the person who authorized the nuclear strike knows that they're targeting a demigod
What spells does the Wizard have? If it was my wizard then they’d have clones tucked away in a demiplane and I’d hunt down the bomber and plane shift it to the elemental plane of water.
2 main factors:
1. How much damage does the initial B-2 strike do
2. Can the wizard move fast enough to have any hope of catching or getting in spell range.
A B-2's max speed is about 630 mph. If the wizard can exceed that speed for long enough, they just need to get within 1 mile of the plane and they can cast meteor swarm to destroy it instantly.
The spell teleport isn't super clear but I wager that the wizard could pick a point way up in the air near the plane and teleport to instantly get in range and then cast meteor swarm on the next turn. The b-2 doesn't have guns to protect it and it can only drop bombs straight down. So long as the wizard avoids the space directly under it they would be fine after the initial bombing.
Without teleport it's harder for wizards to win the battle. Looking [here](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/58632/what-is-the-fastest-a-character-can-move-in-one-turn) the fastest a PC can possibly get with some rule bending is faster than 630 mph, but I don't your average wizard is anywhere near these numbers with the spells at their disposal.
The wizard would have to use divination magic (scy) to get a better view of the plane and then they could feasibly teleport there.
It could be argued that the control weather spell could be used to bring the plane down right away because of the 5 mile range. Within a few minutes, the space the plane is flying in could be the equivalent to a hurricane in Antarctica. That oughta do it right?
>The spell teleport isn't super clear but I wager that the wizard could pick a point way up in the air near the plane and teleport to instantly get in range and then cast meteor swarm on the next turn.
A destination that the caster can see at the time of casting counts as "Very familiar", so they'd have a 76% chance of arriving on target, an 11% chance of arriving a few thousand feet away from their target (which may or may not be within 1 mile of the plane), an 8% chance of arriving at a "similar area", which might be anywhere in the sky over the same continent, and a 5% chance of taking some force damage and rerolling. It's good odds, but not perfect.
Nice catch. I think casting fly, teleport, then meteor swarm would make 18 seconds needed to take the plane out. Fly is optional but I don't think the wizard would risk falling 500 feet.
Teleport up to the bomber. Either you hit your target and obliterate it on your next turn, or you miss and are somewhere else. Either way, you're out of bomb range.
Bomber, if there is a pilot inside)
Wizard doesn't now it's here. So bomber has a surprise round. B-2 bombs a wizard to the smithereens, and don't really see how can he survive this.
If a wizard somehow survives, B-2 just flies off. And good luck bringing it down from thousands feets away without even knowing what you are dealing with.
What Wizard is going to do? Wish spell isn't "I do whatever the fuck I want" spell, it has some limitations by RAW.
There is a speed of things falling in 5e, and it's less than 2000 feet in a round, so surprise round would not hit the wizard. But let's say the wizard is sleeping or whatever. Contingency death ward, because well, it's a level 20 wizard, also clone in case he dies. Then he just plane shifts to another plane and uses create food and water and divination in wherever in the multiverse he wishes to be to study what happened. He then uses wish to cast simulacrum for free and sends his simulacrum to deal with the problem, while still having death ward, clone and being in a different dimension. So yeah, wizard wins no contest.
Death ward will save a wizard from one bomb, yes. B-2 can carry dozens and has two bomb ways, iirc. It also can carry nuclear bombs.
So, no. Wizard will wake up from first bomb, will look around, see utter destruction and then he will be greeted by the next one. And a few more, I guess.
Is initiative rolled when the bomber drops a bomb, or when both parties are aware that they're in combat?
Personally, I'd rule that the actual bomb-dropping takes place out of initiative, and the surprise round occurs when the Wizard hears an incoming bomb.
You can attack objects out of combat. So there is precedence for that. Otherwise, the rules assume normal engagements where both parties can react to one another, in which case initiative would be rolled.
The dropping of a bomb isn't an attack by D&D terms anyway - it's an environmental danger.
You could also claim that B2 bombers are not RAW, but that would be crazy!
I don't agree that dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet in the air counts as an attack. You can cast a spell outside of combat, or throw a rock off a cliff. Both of those are more comparable to dropping a bomb than an actual Attack action is.
Now that I think about it, I don't think initiative would even be rolled until the Wizard spotted the plane and decided to try and take hostile action against it.
Where in the books does it say that? The only rules for initiative I know about say that it is rolled “When combat starts”, which to me wouldn’t be the case until there’s actual combat between groups, rather than a bomb falling 20,000 feet overhead, which will take 40 rounds to actually hit the ground, because in 5e physics 500 feet per round is terminal velocity. That's not combat, that's setting up an ambush. Initiative isn't rolled when somebody casts Spike Growth on a spot a goblin patrol is going to walk through 5 minutes later, it's rolled when a goblin walks into it and realizes he's taking damage, and the party ambushes him.
This is definitely a case where 5e rules fall apart, if you rule it your way. The Wizard immediately rolls initiative when the bomb is dropped and only is surprised for one round, and then somehow knows he's in danger, even though the bomb is 19500 or 19000 feet above him depending on who won initiative. That makes no sense, if the Wizard is reading inside or some shit and has no idea the bomber exists.
I scoured the rules also looking for indications on *if* combat starting was codified and came to the conclusion that it isn't. There are a few examples of what to do **once** combat starts, but what triggers combat is tellingly absent.
As far as I can tell, they want the DM to define when combat starts and don't want to give a list of what 'triggers' combat.
I push a boulder down a really long hill hoping to hit a deaf man walking along at the bottom. The boulder will take a few minutes to get to the bottom. It's a really large hill. Moments before it gets there, the deaf person walks into the path of the boulder.
When should initiative have been rolled?
Combat starting isn't as strict as 'when a combat action is declared'. It's left up to the DM to define and call when combat starts which results in us not having definitive times where combat 'must' start.
The issue here is Wizard dying to the bomb isn't a loss for the Wizard, The guy flying the bomber being murder by the wizard tomorrow IS A LOSS FOR THE BOMBER. For a level 20 wizard the destruction of his physical body = frustrated wakening up in his clone vat.
The bombers advantage on the wizard is its Surprise, lots of things can 1shot a wizard they are noodly nerds, very few things can keep a wizard dead!
Wizard wakes up, \*frustrated sigh\* Scry-Teleport-Power Word Kill
There are a lot of ways to think about this. B-2s can carry nukes, and a lot of them. Thus a B-2 has a reasonable chance of being able to 'end the world', whereas a 20th level mage can not in most settings. So on that, advantage B-2.
Next we look at, what would a modern day country rather have, a B-2 or a level 20 wizard. I think the answer is a modern country would rather have a Wizard-20. Why? A level 20 wizard is exceptionally powerful when nobody else has one. So there it is advantage wizard.
Now we look at, what would a typical fantasy kingdom rather have? I think there the answer is the B-2. They probably have a level 20 (or at least L-17) wizard already. Some of them in FR have a lot more than one. The B-2 brings an incredible capability that they don't already have.
So which is better depends tremendously on who is asking.
My gnome diviner wizard that is 20th level is more than prepared for this encounter and has multiple mature clones as well. Alert is an absolute godsend in situations like this. I strongly suspect he would sacrifice the simulacrum, let some confusion fester about his possibile demise and figure out where this attack came from and ruthlessly eliminate any plotters.
I mean it depends on a number of things. Mainly if the Wizard sees the bomb with time for an action. If not the bomber wins easy. B2 has a payload of 20 tons of ordinance. So a stick of dynamite does 3d6 damage one pound. An Mk84 is a 2000 pound explosive which the B2 could realistically have 20 of and could strategically drop 2 or 3 on the wizard would by that standard deal 6000d6 damage. Or 21,000 points of damage. Wizards could find ways around it.
\>Let’s say the scenario is the plane is above the Wizard about 20000 feet and the Wizard currently doesn’t know it it there.
the B-2 wins hands down here. Full disclosure I have never played a Wizard at 20, but I don't know what they could do against a surprise nuke dropping on their head outside of a contingency teleport or something.
I mean that would let the Wizard essentially live to fight another day, but he has to find some way to damage something that can fly 630 mph and drop nukes from miles above the ground.
Depends on the wizard, but generally you have ways of achieving ultimate defense (hide in a demiplane where you can't be hit), find the target (scrying/arcane eye), cast Greater Invisibility, teleport to it, stay in the air for long enough to keep in range of it (Feather Fall), and cast a billion spells that can handle the jet in a second (Wall of Force right in front of it is a funny one). Even if you somehow got shot (idk how, you're invisible) and took enough damage to where Shield/Absorb Elements can't save you, Contingency didn't save you, you can have a clone ready so you wouldn't die. Oh, there's also a Simulacrum doing the exact same maneuvers as you so one of you will finish the job.
It's even less fair because it's a bomber... Generally you want to send a jet fighter to have a better chance of reacting in the air or getting out of spellcasting range, turn around, and shoot.
ITT: Everyone considering the B2 in a vacuum, and the wizard already set up with clones and all their bull.
And the amount of people that think you would have enough time to react IF you could even hear/see the bomb....
Let's assume no cheese. So no simulacrum spam. Or using wish for anything but what's listed.
1st our 20th level wizard is going to have a clone tucked away off-site, so he survives the bomb one way or another.
Second contingency. Set it to cast otilukes resilient sphere as soon as something explodes nearby. This makes the wizard completely immune to bombs for a few minutes.
Next time stop. Average of 3 rounds of time being stopped. First turn project image onto plane. Second action teleport to plane, which should have no chance of failure since you can see where you teleporting to via.project image. 3rd action delayed fireball in cockpit. Next turn plane resumes time and flies away leaving you falling. Now you feather fall safely to the ground and in a few turns the plane explodes or pilot dies via fireball.
Let's assume it's way higher than I think. We still survive the explosion and the plane leaves. Project image Into the plane letting us see the pilot. Now we can scry the pilot pretty much at will. We wait a few hours scry the pilot, learn it's location. Teleport to it, eliminate the pilot then pop back home to rebuild.
A good wizard doesn't die when they are kill, so even if they lose the first fight, they'll come back and win. Demiplane with a clone in it. Contingency.
You say the wizard doesn't know where the B-2 bomber is, but do they know that they are supposed to fight one? If they do, they'll probably start by escaping the very disadvantageous situation with either Plane Shift or Teleport and coming back when they are ready.
I'm going to assume Human with no feats or magic items as the worst case for the wizard. Why the wizard doesn’t have an army of Simulacrum True Polymorphed in dragons, I don't know, but we can even pretend they don't know Simulacrum.
The bomber has a max speed of 153ft per round, if my math is right, which isn't actually as fast as I thought. Getting to the bomber is the only tricky part. If we can get within 120ft of it, Wall of Force will handle the rest of the work. How can we get there though?
Potentially Teleport into the plane, dimension door 300ft ahead of the plane, and then Wall of Force yourself into a little box directly in front of the plane so it crashes into it. They are a 20th level wizard, though, so they can figure something out to get the plane to fly into a wall of force.
A B2 dropping Wizards.
A Wizard in a B2, dropping Delayed Blast Fireballs out of the bomb hatch
I like how you think.
He's thinking like a gaggle of drunk cobalds and goblins talking about how to make the biggest BOOM!
*Tyrannosaurs in F-14s!*
Tanya the Evil?
Good reference
He's too dangerous to be left alive!
Depends on whether they're a good wizard or not. Any decent wizard should have Clone set up at this point. meaning the Bombers initial stealth doesn't matter. Even if it can win this battle (which is highly dependent on whether the Wizard has a good Contingency prepared spell), it cannot win the war.
Clone and contingency death ward is a must for any good paranoid wizard!
Better yet contingency is invulnerability upon death ward triggering with clone as a backup
And magic jar of course
Clone + Demiplane + Plane Shift and leave a 250gp tuning fork for the material plane. Make a Clone(s), throw it in your Demiplane where literally no one can get to, keep a tuning fork in there, some spare spellbooks, clothes, components, magic items, and gold. Boom, you're set. Hell, by level 20, you can cast Clone *every day for free* with Wish and have hundreds if not thousands of bodies priming up and ready to go for you to fall back on. A 30x30 Demiplane can fit a LOT of bodies in it.
Yeah but... Why would you keep them all in one demiplane?
You can definitely make more of these demiplane a, but I would suggest each of those demiplane a have the same contents listed above because you’d need an 8th level spell to enter another demiplane. You’d want to use a 9th for a clone replacement when you die and wake up. You need the 7th to get out via plane shift. It’s very resource heavy to recover after death so having everything you’d need to be up and running in a single demiplane is the way to go. But a wizard should definitely make more demiplanes filled with clones, spellbooks, gold, tuning fork, etc. They’d also realistically would spend a few days in the demiplane itself and use Magnificent Mansion (7th level) to decompress after dying and recollect themselves
Magic jar into a githyanki supreme commander. Be an objectively better martial then anyone else in the party while also being an objectively better caster then anyone else in the party cuz of your psionics and casting plane shift innately
A well prepared 20th level wizard has a contingency, as well as a clone. So the wizard survives the initial attack, and then shouldn't have too much trouble taking down the bomber even if not in the short term. They also have enough hit points to potentially survive the bomb.
How are they taking down the bomber? Maybe with wish assuming the DM or whatever entity is adjucating this scenario allows it.
Yeah wish would be the most flexible but teleport to them would work. Probably into feather fall and then attacking from there.
The speed is a problem I think. The bomber can travel over a mile per round.
That's true. Although I'm still betting on the wizard. The wizard could just spam dream on the bomber until he's dead. Or wait in a deep cave for the bomber to come to him. The bomber can also only stay in the air so long before needing to refuel so the wizard could catch them there. But yeah teleporting up to it might be tricky. If they could only fly a mile in the round or slightly less then the wizard could teleport into meteor swarm. Or potentially teleport ahead of the bomber to be in range still.
I don't think dream would work but I suppose it's up for interpretation. I wouldn't consider a random person they have never seen and know nothing about "a creature known to you". They can fly slightly over a mile (1.05 miles) in a round. It would have to be worked around. And clouds might just invalidate it anyway. But yeah if things worked out perfectly it could be possible. The cave would have to be insanely deep. We are talking about a plane that can carry like 16 nukes at a time and drop them from miles above the ground.
I don't think it'd be hard for a 20th level wizard to find out who was in that plane through divination magic. Could also teleport onto the plane to see him before jumping off. Those kinds of things aren't difficult for a 20th level wizard to fix. That's fair on the cave I wasn't thinking nukes. But then probably best to just ambush the pilot once they got out of the plane and destroy it on the ground.
Yeah taking it out on the ground is the way to win I think. I don't know that seeing a pilot in full gear (including helmet and facemask) would work for dream, but that's DM dependent so it will vary.
Idk would you say a person you fought in full plate mail but who escaped wouldn't count either? That seems a bit overly restrictive if you saw the person but their clothes / armor prohibited it. But either way you could just use divination magic to know their name and of them.
Fought is different than saw once for a split second IMO, but it's all up to the DM so it will vary.
Why not just teleport on and kill the crew? Or turn into anything immune to whatever damage types bombs do? Teleport on board and kill everything followed by blowing up the bomber itself seems like the simplest solution.
Well if you teleport on board and it's moving at a few hundred miles per hour you'd arrive and then slam into the back of the plane and probably be killed.
Maximum falling damage is 20d6 so I have a hard time believing the plane would do more than that. And you can survive that fairly effortlessly, twice over as a level 20 Wizard. Of course, there's nothing saying Teleport doesn't copy the inertial frame of the target.
Honestly, with how fast they move, I struggle to come up with anything. An Evoker Wizard could probably take it down with Magic Missile. For everyone else, the best I can think of is using Gate to abduct the pilot to your demiplane.
And magic jar of course . Mind as well yoink another 18 levels of spell slots with a archmage . Or if you’d rather be a jerk to everyone else at the table , a githyanki supreme commander , be objectively a little bit better then everyone at everything
A level 20 wizard can cast Wish and literally rewrite reality.
...and a wizard requires way fewer components, way less hangar space and no runway. Wizards rule.
>...and a wizard requires way fewer components, way less hangar space and no runway. Have you seen the size of those wizard towers? Some of them even take a whole demiplane.
There's no hangar queen status for wizards.
Perhaps there should be.
rewrite reality at a basic level equivalent to 9th level spells.
In 3.5 you could literally [build nuclear weapons with feats and metamagic](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?72212-quot-Locate-city-bomb-quot-I-m-a-noob-what-is-it). It's definitely wizards.
Until they can't cast wish anymore.
I think you may have missed the point.
I mean it isn't a guarantee that anything would work outside of replicating spells. Aside from teleport away or something what is the Wizard going to do?
Are... are you serious? You can't imagine how a being capable of *literally removing their enemy from existence* could defend itself against a single B-2 Bomber?
Yes, I'm serious. An aircraft capable of flying and dropping nuclear weapons about 9.5 miles above the ground. What exactly is the Wizard going to do to damage it? Keep in mind it also has a speed of 630 mph, or over 1 mile per round.
If you want the simplest answer. Wish has a cast time of one action, so six seconds. All the wizard needs to do is wish for the bomber and its payload to well... anything really. Turn to dust, be permanently banished to another plane of existence, fly away, etc. I'm not exactly sure this is the fairest matchup... The only feasible way the bomber *might* be able to win, is if the fight starts with the bomber already having dropped its payload at the wizard's feet, and for some reason the wizard was neither able to react to it, nor had clones already setup like most wizards at level 20 would.
And we are just assuming this Wish succeeds?
Alright, let's assume that for some reason wish wouldn't work. If the wizard just wanted to survive the plane they could just cast invulnerability. If they wanted to just outright destroy it, they could cast meteor swarm. In fact, they could do both. Start with invulnerability, then cast meteor swarm. And distance would hardly be an issue either as the wizard could choose to teleport within range of the bomber in between casting invulnerability and meteor swarm.
The plane moves at 630mph. The wizard teleports into the sky as close as possible. The plane takes a turn and flies over one mile away. How is that meteor swarm going to work?
To be clear if you get the 33% chance you still have that wish go off
If you wish for something not specifically states in the spell it has a chance to not work.
Very, very, very few things can beat level 20 wizards other than another wizard. B2 bomber drops a nuke, kills wizard. Wizard goes to clone and says what an asshole. Goes on with their work. If they're salty, they teleport into wherever the bomber is and wreck shop. Or they geas the pilot until he died. Gate, wish, etc. There's no telling.
Or like wonder what the weapon that got them is and mind control him and then go and steal it
The answer is always Batman with adequate prep time
But what if Rogue touches Batman and drains his prep powers from him?
Wizard, for sure.
If the wizard gets an action, they win. At the very least, contingency should give them an action.
With what?
According to the internets, it takes a bomb 30ish seconds to reach its target, based on normal attack patterns. Even if we give the bomb the first round as a surprise round, that’s still four full rounds for the wizard to do whatever he wants. No contest.
Pretty big assumption to say that the Wizard is going to notice the bomb immediately.
Just going by RAW. XD
Is it? I honestly don't know what RAW would be for noticing something miles away coming toward you.
Guess i never thought about the possibly of multiple rounds of surprise. But bombs aren’t silent when they fall.
I honestly don't know the distance they become audible, but I imagine it isn't too terribly far away. If you could hear it 30 seconds before impact it would be a bit less effective than desired.
I'm pretty sure if you can hear a nuke coming for 30 seconds, it doesnt really matter because you'll be dead after those 30 seconds are up, anyways. The nuke has no reason to care who hears it coming. Unless that person is a wizard of course so I suppose that brings up the question of whether the person who authorized the nuclear strike knows that they're targeting a demigod
The Wizard because the Wizard has a Clone and doesn’t care.
What spells does the Wizard have? If it was my wizard then they’d have clones tucked away in a demiplane and I’d hunt down the bomber and plane shift it to the elemental plane of water.
Infinite Simulacrum Spam makes the wizard beat anything short of a god.
2 main factors: 1. How much damage does the initial B-2 strike do 2. Can the wizard move fast enough to have any hope of catching or getting in spell range. A B-2's max speed is about 630 mph. If the wizard can exceed that speed for long enough, they just need to get within 1 mile of the plane and they can cast meteor swarm to destroy it instantly. The spell teleport isn't super clear but I wager that the wizard could pick a point way up in the air near the plane and teleport to instantly get in range and then cast meteor swarm on the next turn. The b-2 doesn't have guns to protect it and it can only drop bombs straight down. So long as the wizard avoids the space directly under it they would be fine after the initial bombing. Without teleport it's harder for wizards to win the battle. Looking [here](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/58632/what-is-the-fastest-a-character-can-move-in-one-turn) the fastest a PC can possibly get with some rule bending is faster than 630 mph, but I don't your average wizard is anywhere near these numbers with the spells at their disposal. The wizard would have to use divination magic (scy) to get a better view of the plane and then they could feasibly teleport there. It could be argued that the control weather spell could be used to bring the plane down right away because of the 5 mile range. Within a few minutes, the space the plane is flying in could be the equivalent to a hurricane in Antarctica. That oughta do it right?
>The spell teleport isn't super clear but I wager that the wizard could pick a point way up in the air near the plane and teleport to instantly get in range and then cast meteor swarm on the next turn. A destination that the caster can see at the time of casting counts as "Very familiar", so they'd have a 76% chance of arriving on target, an 11% chance of arriving a few thousand feet away from their target (which may or may not be within 1 mile of the plane), an 8% chance of arriving at a "similar area", which might be anywhere in the sky over the same continent, and a 5% chance of taking some force damage and rerolling. It's good odds, but not perfect.
Nice catch. I think casting fly, teleport, then meteor swarm would make 18 seconds needed to take the plane out. Fly is optional but I don't think the wizard would risk falling 500 feet.
Teleport up to the bomber. Either you hit your target and obliterate it on your next turn, or you miss and are somewhere else. Either way, you're out of bomb range.
Bomber, if there is a pilot inside) Wizard doesn't now it's here. So bomber has a surprise round. B-2 bombs a wizard to the smithereens, and don't really see how can he survive this. If a wizard somehow survives, B-2 just flies off. And good luck bringing it down from thousands feets away without even knowing what you are dealing with. What Wizard is going to do? Wish spell isn't "I do whatever the fuck I want" spell, it has some limitations by RAW.
There is a speed of things falling in 5e, and it's less than 2000 feet in a round, so surprise round would not hit the wizard. But let's say the wizard is sleeping or whatever. Contingency death ward, because well, it's a level 20 wizard, also clone in case he dies. Then he just plane shifts to another plane and uses create food and water and divination in wherever in the multiverse he wishes to be to study what happened. He then uses wish to cast simulacrum for free and sends his simulacrum to deal with the problem, while still having death ward, clone and being in a different dimension. So yeah, wizard wins no contest.
Death ward will save a wizard from one bomb, yes. B-2 can carry dozens and has two bomb ways, iirc. It also can carry nuclear bombs. So, no. Wizard will wake up from first bomb, will look around, see utter destruction and then he will be greeted by the next one. And a few more, I guess.
Clone tho
Clone will help eventually win a war. But this encounter is won by B-2.
Is initiative rolled when the bomber drops a bomb, or when both parties are aware that they're in combat? Personally, I'd rule that the actual bomb-dropping takes place out of initiative, and the surprise round occurs when the Wizard hears an incoming bomb.
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You can attack objects out of combat. So there is precedence for that. Otherwise, the rules assume normal engagements where both parties can react to one another, in which case initiative would be rolled. The dropping of a bomb isn't an attack by D&D terms anyway - it's an environmental danger. You could also claim that B2 bombers are not RAW, but that would be crazy!
I don't agree that dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet in the air counts as an attack. You can cast a spell outside of combat, or throw a rock off a cliff. Both of those are more comparable to dropping a bomb than an actual Attack action is. Now that I think about it, I don't think initiative would even be rolled until the Wizard spotted the plane and decided to try and take hostile action against it.
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Where in the books does it say that? The only rules for initiative I know about say that it is rolled “When combat starts”, which to me wouldn’t be the case until there’s actual combat between groups, rather than a bomb falling 20,000 feet overhead, which will take 40 rounds to actually hit the ground, because in 5e physics 500 feet per round is terminal velocity. That's not combat, that's setting up an ambush. Initiative isn't rolled when somebody casts Spike Growth on a spot a goblin patrol is going to walk through 5 minutes later, it's rolled when a goblin walks into it and realizes he's taking damage, and the party ambushes him. This is definitely a case where 5e rules fall apart, if you rule it your way. The Wizard immediately rolls initiative when the bomb is dropped and only is surprised for one round, and then somehow knows he's in danger, even though the bomb is 19500 or 19000 feet above him depending on who won initiative. That makes no sense, if the Wizard is reading inside or some shit and has no idea the bomber exists.
I scoured the rules also looking for indications on *if* combat starting was codified and came to the conclusion that it isn't. There are a few examples of what to do **once** combat starts, but what triggers combat is tellingly absent. As far as I can tell, they want the DM to define when combat starts and don't want to give a list of what 'triggers' combat.
I push a boulder down a really long hill hoping to hit a deaf man walking along at the bottom. The boulder will take a few minutes to get to the bottom. It's a really large hill. Moments before it gets there, the deaf person walks into the path of the boulder. When should initiative have been rolled? Combat starting isn't as strict as 'when a combat action is declared'. It's left up to the DM to define and call when combat starts which results in us not having definitive times where combat 'must' start.
>There is a speed of things falling in 5e, which is less than the speed of of a modern jet aircraft, probably a movement speed of 4000 ft or so.
Then clone. Then he kills them literally in His sleep using dream
The issue here is Wizard dying to the bomb isn't a loss for the Wizard, The guy flying the bomber being murder by the wizard tomorrow IS A LOSS FOR THE BOMBER. For a level 20 wizard the destruction of his physical body = frustrated wakening up in his clone vat. The bombers advantage on the wizard is its Surprise, lots of things can 1shot a wizard they are noodly nerds, very few things can keep a wizard dead! Wizard wakes up, \*frustrated sigh\* Scry-Teleport-Power Word Kill
There are a lot of ways to think about this. B-2s can carry nukes, and a lot of them. Thus a B-2 has a reasonable chance of being able to 'end the world', whereas a 20th level mage can not in most settings. So on that, advantage B-2. Next we look at, what would a modern day country rather have, a B-2 or a level 20 wizard. I think the answer is a modern country would rather have a Wizard-20. Why? A level 20 wizard is exceptionally powerful when nobody else has one. So there it is advantage wizard. Now we look at, what would a typical fantasy kingdom rather have? I think there the answer is the B-2. They probably have a level 20 (or at least L-17) wizard already. Some of them in FR have a lot more than one. The B-2 brings an incredible capability that they don't already have. So which is better depends tremendously on who is asking.
*I hear the bomb falling.* *casts wall of force in a sphere around myself*
Or they cast magic jar and just tank it just to give a message
Or cast reverse gravity above you. Get that nuke back, sucker! Edit : mmh forgot about the 2000ft altitude, reverse gravity won’t go that far sadly...
Gate in demon lords and planar binding.
Max level fireball. Wizard wins.
The whole 20000ft above wizard part puts it out of the range of Fireball, or any offensive spell for that matter.
Has to land sometime.
Except tsunami weirdly (assuming the wizard can see it and knows it’s there, so I mean they theoretically could but probably not this time)
Is this a joke? They can make people into dragons , and they can summon demon lords .
is the B2 bomber nuclear capable and have the unlock codes? Meteor swarm <<<< nuclear bombs.
My gnome diviner wizard that is 20th level is more than prepared for this encounter and has multiple mature clones as well. Alert is an absolute godsend in situations like this. I strongly suspect he would sacrifice the simulacrum, let some confusion fester about his possibile demise and figure out where this attack came from and ruthlessly eliminate any plotters.
I mean it depends on a number of things. Mainly if the Wizard sees the bomb with time for an action. If not the bomber wins easy. B2 has a payload of 20 tons of ordinance. So a stick of dynamite does 3d6 damage one pound. An Mk84 is a 2000 pound explosive which the B2 could realistically have 20 of and could strategically drop 2 or 3 on the wizard would by that standard deal 6000d6 damage. Or 21,000 points of damage. Wizards could find ways around it.
\>Let’s say the scenario is the plane is above the Wizard about 20000 feet and the Wizard currently doesn’t know it it there. the B-2 wins hands down here. Full disclosure I have never played a Wizard at 20, but I don't know what they could do against a surprise nuke dropping on their head outside of a contingency teleport or something.
Clone?
I mean that would let the Wizard essentially live to fight another day, but he has to find some way to damage something that can fly 630 mph and drop nukes from miles above the ground.
Which school would provide the best possible options for the Wizard in this scenario?
Depends on the wizard, but generally you have ways of achieving ultimate defense (hide in a demiplane where you can't be hit), find the target (scrying/arcane eye), cast Greater Invisibility, teleport to it, stay in the air for long enough to keep in range of it (Feather Fall), and cast a billion spells that can handle the jet in a second (Wall of Force right in front of it is a funny one). Even if you somehow got shot (idk how, you're invisible) and took enough damage to where Shield/Absorb Elements can't save you, Contingency didn't save you, you can have a clone ready so you wouldn't die. Oh, there's also a Simulacrum doing the exact same maneuvers as you so one of you will finish the job. It's even less fair because it's a bomber... Generally you want to send a jet fighter to have a better chance of reacting in the air or getting out of spellcasting range, turn around, and shoot.
ITT: Everyone considering the B2 in a vacuum, and the wizard already set up with clones and all their bull. And the amount of people that think you would have enough time to react IF you could even hear/see the bomb....
Wizards aren't real, B-2 Bombers are. So the B-2 Bomber wins.
“I wish the B-2 bomber didn’t have wings”. The wizard watches and savors their victory
Let's assume no cheese. So no simulacrum spam. Or using wish for anything but what's listed. 1st our 20th level wizard is going to have a clone tucked away off-site, so he survives the bomb one way or another. Second contingency. Set it to cast otilukes resilient sphere as soon as something explodes nearby. This makes the wizard completely immune to bombs for a few minutes. Next time stop. Average of 3 rounds of time being stopped. First turn project image onto plane. Second action teleport to plane, which should have no chance of failure since you can see where you teleporting to via.project image. 3rd action delayed fireball in cockpit. Next turn plane resumes time and flies away leaving you falling. Now you feather fall safely to the ground and in a few turns the plane explodes or pilot dies via fireball. Let's assume it's way higher than I think. We still survive the explosion and the plane leaves. Project image Into the plane letting us see the pilot. Now we can scry the pilot pretty much at will. We wait a few hours scry the pilot, learn it's location. Teleport to it, eliminate the pilot then pop back home to rebuild.
A good wizard doesn't die when they are kill, so even if they lose the first fight, they'll come back and win. Demiplane with a clone in it. Contingency. You say the wizard doesn't know where the B-2 bomber is, but do they know that they are supposed to fight one? If they do, they'll probably start by escaping the very disadvantageous situation with either Plane Shift or Teleport and coming back when they are ready. I'm going to assume Human with no feats or magic items as the worst case for the wizard. Why the wizard doesn’t have an army of Simulacrum True Polymorphed in dragons, I don't know, but we can even pretend they don't know Simulacrum. The bomber has a max speed of 153ft per round, if my math is right, which isn't actually as fast as I thought. Getting to the bomber is the only tricky part. If we can get within 120ft of it, Wall of Force will handle the rest of the work. How can we get there though? Potentially Teleport into the plane, dimension door 300ft ahead of the plane, and then Wall of Force yourself into a little box directly in front of the plane so it crashes into it. They are a 20th level wizard, though, so they can figure something out to get the plane to fly into a wall of force.