Dumb Wizard Tricks

[Hicks]

So, 3.X wizards. Evokers cry themselves to sleep every night because Save or Lose and Save or Die spells like sleep and color spray are just better than magic missile or fireball, and then there are the No Save just Win spells like solid fog and other battlefield control spells that can chop a high EL encounter into its lower CR components.... and then there are the dumb wizard tricks; because sometimes you just want to do all the damage

Level 1
Gargantuan Cantrip: Kaelik actually shined me onto this one. Launch Bolt is a transmutation cantrip that launches a crossbow bolt. seems pretty tame, cuz it has a material component of 1 crossbow bolt. eschew materials is a feat that lets you ignore material components that cost less than 1 GP; gargantuan crossbow bolts only cost 8sp.... and do 4d6 damage. I mean you have to actually hit on an attack roll against their armor class, but this beats the pants of of anything else you were going to do with your cantrips, and does the most damage to kill things dead of any spell until you get to level 5

Level 5
Book Bomb: I learned this trick over a decade ago on the Wizards forums. Explosive Runes is the abjuration spell that just blows everything away, but only if properly prepared. So the thing is you just buy a 50gp book with a hundred pages in it, and at the end of every day cast Explosive Runes with any unused spell slots you have on each page until the book is filled. and then store that thing in a haversack or some other extradimensional space because it will kill you. at level 5 (and after casting Explosive Runes into the book a hundred times) you hand the haversack with the book bomb to somebody you absolutely trust, and when something absolutely needs to die, you ready an action to cast Dispel Magic on the book after your trusted friend uses a move action to retrieve the book bomb from the haversack and uses their standard action to throw the book bomb at the square the soon to be destroyed creature stands. the square has an AC 5, and they can throw the book bomb up to 50 feet. THEN, and this is crutial, you fail your dispel check. Any thing within 10 feet of the (not) dispelled book bomb has to make reflex save (for half) or take 6d6 force damage, and SR applies, and they have to do that 100 times. Average damage is ~2,100 damage, but that is with no successful saves so it goes down to 1,995 if they only save on a 20, and minimum average damage is ~105 if they only fail on a 1. Spell Resistance makes the calculation weird, but basically if at level 5 you went up against something with SR 15, it would half the expected damage output, Maxing out at ~937.7 and bottoming out at ~52.5 damage, depending on reflex saves. it works against everything except golems, but those can be beaten with Silent Image so who cares? This dumb combo does the "most" raw HP damage up to level 11.

Level 11
IPAD: so no joke, this came about because i was researching rules legal ways for airships to exist in 3.5, and it all starts with buying some chickens. These are crutial, 'cuz we really are about to do an actual blood sacrifice (in 3.5) to end the universe (in 3.5). You need lat least 12 chickens, or any 1 HD creature with less than 10 HP, and you should probably be on any plane in the abyss, but really any infinite outer plane will do. so you get your pen of 12 chickens near an efreet you used planer binding on in the Abyss to get 3 wishes, and the first wish is for the genie to cast Greater Consumptive Field, which will kill the chickens and add +12 to the efreet's caster level (which is now at least CL 32). the second wish is to have the efreet cast Animate Objects on the abyssal plane you're on, and due to how dumb the size rules in 3.5 are anything, and i quote, "64 ft. or more" counts as a colossal object, and an infinite abyssal plane is by definition "64 ft. or more" in every dimension, it now counts as an animated object creature. And finally for the third Wish, you wish for the efreet to, "Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions." and drop that colossal animated abyssal plane at least 10 feet anywhere in the multiverse that you just want to not exist anymore.

"For each 200 pounds of an object’s weight, the object deals 1d6 points of damage, provided it falls at least 10 feet."

So Infinity divided by 200 is InfinityD6 damage, which basically obliterates everything in the target plane for no save, no SR, just raw the damage.

There are of course still counters to this. A properly worded contingent Plane Shift could (with a successful concentration check to defensively cast in a threatened area, touch attack, and failed will save) send the plane to a predesignated plane, obliterating someplace else; and a contingent Wish could also do that (the concentration check to defensively cast it is a little higher, but has a higher save and doesn't require an attack roll) and can even return the Inter Planar Abyss Drop to sender, and then have it bounce back and forth until someone runs out of contingencies or fails a concentration check. And of course Frenzied Berserkers will be in their deathless frenzy, frantically trying to huff their waterskins to drown away the infinite damage they just took, but those peeps were immune to HP damage anyway.

The nice thing about an IPAD is that it is weirdly scaleable. don't want to obliterate an entire plane of existance? just animate a planet or moon, asteroid, or you could even use stone shape to custom carve out a city shaped divot (seperating the divot from the moon or whatever by 1 picometer) to selectivly obliterate the offending part of the campaign world you just can't stand.

And of course in Pathfinder it still works (colossal creatures are still, "64 ft. or more") and it's as easy as handing your planar bound efreet 5 strands of Prayer Beads, each of which only contain a single Bead of Karma to boost its CL from 15 to 35, and only takes 2 wishes. I mean it still takes a 100,000gp in prayer beads, but think of all the gold you'll save on chicken sacrifices!

(Edit 02/19) Level 12
Decanter Rocket: So it turns out that wall of fire can be permenanced to an object. And when a DC 24 Spellcraft check (DC 20 + spell level) succeeds, the spell creates a bubble of steam instead of its usual fiery effect, but otherwise the spell works as described. Put on the throat of a decanter of endless water and for 9000gp and 2000xp you have a 0.907kg engine that outputs 7,181 neutons of force. Or for quick a dirty math, for every 700kg of vessel, 1 decanter engine will push it at *juuuust* over 10m/s for eternity. And nobody really cares because DnD is secretly Stargate at level 7+ where you can just lesser planar bind a bearded devil, crawl into a portable hole or bag of holding, and be greater teleported anywhere in the universe.

[Kaelik]

As I have previously pointed out. The rules for Creature Sizes say 64ft or more. There are no rules that indicate that the Creature Size rules apply to item sizes, so there are no rules saying that Objects larger than 64ft are Colossal.

Thus, the idea of animate objecting a Moon or Planet requires making up rules that don't exist about item sizes, and I recommend, instead of making up rules that let you do that, to instead make up rules that don't all you to do that.

If a Colossal creature could wield the entire plane in two hands as a weapon, or wield the moon in as a two handed weapon, then you could start trying to make that argument based on the Weapon size rules, but just applying rules for creatures to objects without any rule saying that you can doesn't work.

[Hicks]

As I have previously pointed out. The rules for Creature Sizes say 64ft or more. There are no rules that indicate that the Creature Size rules apply to item sizes, so there are no rules saying that Objects larger than 64ft are Colossal.

That is irrelevant. The spell Animate Objects makes the object a creature of a size based on your caster level and the size table in the combat chalter, and should that object be larger than 64' in every dimension it is Animated as a colossal creature.

As a total strawman, one could reasonably make an argument that a contiguous, solid land mass is made of different materials and therefore has some arbitrary limit on it's size in any dimension... but then a wagon with rotating wheels is specifically called out as a valid animated object in the monster entry.

Colossal creatures are not normally allowed to wield moons and planets as weapons, not because of the fact that those things are colossal, but because even celestial bodies as small as Ceres mass, ~89,580,0000,000,000,000 tons which would require a strength of around ~490 as a light load for a hulking hurler build, which no monster or PC normall possesses. And even then, it would do 6d6+360 damage if wielded with both hands in melee, or 8.958x10^(18)d6 damage if dropped from at least 10 feet.

[Stahlseele]

Nice End-Time Scenario though.
Basically make it the moon from majoras mask by making the actual moon a living being and telling it to go hug Earth.
Burning bridges. Salting Earth. Beginners stuff.
Meanwhile, i will live on this plane of endless beaches.

[Aharon]

As I have previously pointed out. The rules for Creature Sizes say 64ft or more. There are no rules that indicate that the Creature Size rules apply to item sizes, so there are no rules saying that Objects larger than 64ft are Colossal.

It's kind of stupid, but in the PHB "Guidelines and glossary" Chapter, this is actually listed:
size:The physical dimensions and/or weight of a creature or object. The sizes, from smallest to largest, are Fine, Diminuitive, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colosssal.

So this seems to work out.

Concerning the Book bomb: IIRC, you can't voluntarily fail your dispel-check. You can, however, buy a Wand of Dispel Magic made by a trapsmith at CL 1, so that you have a high chance of failing.

[Kaelik]

As I have previously pointed out. The rules for Creature Sizes say 64ft or more. There are no rules that indicate that the Creature Size rules apply to item sizes, so there are no rules saying that Objects larger than 64ft are Colossal.

That is irrelevant. The spell Animate Objects makes the object a creature of a size based on your caster level and the size table in the combat chalter, and should that object be larger than 64' in every dimension it is Animated as a colossal creature.

I mean... the spell doesn't do that, which is my point.

It says you can animate a small object and for 32 small objects you can animate a Colossal Object. It doesn't say that a 1000000000ft object is a Colossal Object, because it doesn't define a Colossal Object anywhere.

Lacking a definition of Colossal Object elsewhere in the rules, this function call to Object Size doesn't do the thing you claim it does without the DM making up Item Size rules on the spot.

As I have previously pointed out. The rules for Creature Sizes say 64ft or more. There are no rules that indicate that the Creature Size rules apply to item sizes, so there are no rules saying that Objects larger than 64ft are Colossal.

It's kind of stupid, but in the PHB "Guidelines and glossary" Chapter, this is actually listed:
size:The physical dimensions and/or weight of a creature or object. The sizes, from smallest to largest, are Fine, Diminuitive, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colosssal.

So this seems to work out.

I don't dispute that Fine to Colossal Objects are the names of sizes of Objects. I'm saying that the existence of a thing called a "Colossal Object" doesn't tell us that the Colossal Objects can be or are infinity in any dimension, or even miles in any dimension.

Rules saying "If we write a creature, and it's actually 68ft big or 1000ft big, it's Colossal, use the rules for Colossal creature" does not mean "all objects 1000ft big or 68 feat big or 4 miles big, 999999999999999999 miles big are Colossal Objects"

[nockermensch]

Regarding dumb wizard tricks, anything a player can think on, it must already have been attempted in-universe, several times in the past. "Wizards" as a group are hyper-intelligent, curious, creative and tend to enjoy growing their power in asymetrical ways. So, the best reaction for a player bringing something cute like this is to think how people in the game world would have dealt with it - centuries ago.

So, if the gargantuan bolt launcher trick works at all (instead of being a designer oversight), then all arcane spellcasters in that campaign walk around with a bunch of colossal crossbow bolts tied to their backs as if they were some kind of retarded naturo character, since Launch Bolt is the default attack method for them. I mean, why why stop at 4d6 damage if you can actually pay 16 sp for the pleasure of impaling people you dislike with what I assume is an actual sharpened log - that you draw with a free action as per spell description?

Actually, since Launch Bolt it's a cantrip that doesn't depend of caster level and since the cost of a colossal bolt is like 13% of the scroll enchanting cost, every wizard just makes and carries around a bunch of Launch Bolt scrolls (with colossal bolts enchanted in - 14.1gp). Also, there are actual "bolt launchers" (Wands of Launch Bolt - 455gp). Happy fragging!

The same reasoning applies to the animate fucking entire plane trick. If it works, then somebody already used it in the past and the campaign world was destroyed. Lets play Scythe instead.

[Dean]

Regarding dumb wizard tricks, anything a player can think on, it must already have been attempted in-universe, several times in the past.

Fuck you. Math is a set of rules and mathematicians have existed for hundreds of years so any discoveries in mathematics is impossible, everything would have already been figured out in the past. War is the basis of societal survival and warlords on all sides are constantly trying to get an edge so the idea of advancement of weaponry or tactics is impossible, everything would have already been figured out in the past.

Not only are your ideas gygaxian nonsense and extremely disempowering they are also totally narrative destroying. Every wizard the party fights using abusing explosive runes the session after the player discovers it despite no wizard ever having used runes in your campaign before will have every person at that table call you a bullshit hack. Zero people would be fooled by your claims that the world has always been this way while watching you rewrite your game world weekly in a dick measuring contest with one of your PC's.

I figured out a way in Pathfinder games to wear some constructs as armor which was very powerful. If every npc after that session showed up covered in Golems literally everyone would have called the DM shit.

D&D has an unbelievable amount of abilities, effects, and spells to choose from. The proper way to respond to player discoveries is to let them feel cool and powerful and find other things that can challenge them anyway. Not to tell them nothing they do will ever matter or count because you can't handle it. I'll grant you there are some things that just can't be allowed at the table like summoning infinite armies of Solars or whatever because they don't allow the game to function but in that case the answer is to simply man up and tell the player that that's an awesome find but the game would break if it was allowed and ideally then write better rules yourself for summoning (or whatever)

Speaking of cool wizard tricks
Wearing Constructs as Armor
Some Pathfinder book has rules for modifying constructs. One of the modifications lets a construct or animate object function as armor and while you're wearing it any damage goes to the construct first and then to you. The construct has to be the same size as you to be worn so at most you're looking at something like 30 extra hp from even the toughest medium sized construct options. Instead of doing that what our clever wizard will do is build a colossal sized object to use as his armor which by the rules can have hundreds of hp and lots of special abilities like flight because more size equals more power in these rules. Then you "Shrink Item" the colossal armor into being wearable, animate it, and boom your wearable construct armor now has hundreds of hp because it's a shrunken colossal item with colossal item base stats which will soak hundreds of damage for you.

[Koumei]

Regarding dumb wizard tricks, anything a player can think on, it must already have been attempted in-universe, several times in the past. "Wizards" as a group are hyper-intelligent, curious, creative and tend to enjoy growing their power in asymetrical ways. So, the best reaction for a player bringing something cute like this is to think how people in the game world would have dealt with it - centuries ago.

Are you the guy who said we don't need a patent office because everything has already been thought of and there are no new ideas or discoveries to make?

[Hicks]

To be absolutely fair, it just means that Tippiverses don't exist and the campaign world actually takes place on a plane of the abyss, because all the others were destroyed. The only safe space is being mind blanked inside a magnificent mansion with 9' ceilings.

I mean, that's what infinity means; if it ever could happen it is happening an infinite number of times for every infinite fraction of a second since the beginning of time.

[Username17]

The existence of the Colossal+ size category in the D&D Joke Book does put a stop to animating objects that are hundreds or thousands of meters across. Colossal objects can be more than 64 feet in one dimension or another, but there are still limits. Poorly defined limits, but limits nonetheless.

-Username17

[Thaluikhain]

Regarding dumb wizard tricks, anything a player can think on, it must already have been attempted in-universe, several times in the past. "Wizards" as a group are hyper-intelligent, curious, creative and tend to enjoy growing their power in asymetrical ways. So, the best reaction for a player bringing something cute like this is to think how people in the game world would have dealt with it - centuries ago.

There is a certain logic to that, but that assumes centuries of wizards of appropriate level. Yeah, lots of tricks for 1st level spells would have been done before, but higher level wizards are rarer and busy making random animals breed for no adequately explained reason.

But yeah, you've got another way wizards are more interesting than fighters there.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yeah, lots of tricks for 1st level spells would have been done before, but higher level wizards are rarer and busy making random animals breed for no adequately explained reason.

Ahem.

[nockermensch]

Regarding dumb wizard tricks, anything a player can think on, it must already have been attempted in-universe, several times in the past.

Fuck you. Math is a set of rules and mathematicians have existed for hundreds of years so any discoveries in mathematics is impossible, everything would have already been figured out in the past. War is the basis of societal survival and warlords on all sides are constantly trying to get an edge so the idea of advancement of weaponry or tactics is impossible, everything would have already been figured out in the past.

No, fuck you. There's nothing disempowering about playing a wizard. You're already one of the strongest classes in the game with the tools you legitimally have on your arsenal.

There are two ways to look at shit like Launch Bolt:
a) it's a designer oversight that it doesn't specify a maximum weight or something, since it's a fucking cantrip.

b) it's a fucking power spike for its level, and then people tend to notice that.

Not only are your ideas gygaxian nonsense and extremely disempowering they are also totally narrative destroying.

No, look: The narrative is destroyed by these dumb tricks in first place. If people can use cantrips to deal 6d6 damage at range or wear constructs as armor with hundred of HP, then the world is actually different from what the books say. I don't particularly mind DMing a Super Robot campaign with D&D rules if the players so want, because this is what happens if these kind of tricks actually work. What doesn't happen is only the PCs knowing the trick.

Zero people would be fooled by your claims that the world has always been this way while watching you rewrite your game world weekly in a dick measuring contest with one of your PC's.

>implying that would be even the attempt of fooling anyone
It's gentlemen's agreement all the way down, Dean. It's the fucking Disjunction situation, only happening from level 1 on. If a trick is on the table, then it's on the table for everybody.

Re: "BUT NOBODY CAN INVENT STUFF": Humans haven't "Intelligence 30+", live for hundreds of years or actually dedicate their entire lives/unlives to "mastering spells" [Citation needed]. Also, RL human tech actually evolves, instead of being stuck in a medieval stasis as D&D posits. So, people inside the game world totally have a much better chance of already having figured these "cute tricks" than an Int 13 player browsing dndtools for cool ideas. Therefore, cute tricks are immersion breaking and can't work as you think they do.

[OgreBattle]

How large and heavy is a gargantuan crossbow bolt? 24lb ?

The SRD mentions a ballista is a huge crossbow, so a gargantuan crossbow bolt is twice as long as a ballista bolt or what

[Prak]

So, I'm not sure about a gargantuan bolt. But a large bolt is twice as heavy as a medium bolt, and D&D tends to keep such calculations consistent. So a medium bolt weighs 1/10#. A large 2/10, a huge 4/10, and thus a gargantuan 8/10#.

Length likewise doubles with each step up. D&D tends to portray bolts as being pretty short, compared to reality where they tend to be 20" on average. So, realistically, a gargantuan crossbow bolt is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13' in length. Cuz D&D. Going by the illustration in the PHB, D&D bolts seem to be around 7" in length or so, which would make a gargantuan bolt would be about 4.5' long. Which is still pretty ridiculous for something that allegedly weighs .8 lbs, but whatever. It's D&D.

[Hicks]

No, look: The narrative is destroyed by these dumb tricks in first place. If people can use cantrips to deal 6d6 damage [4d6, Hicks] at range or wear constructs as armor with hundred of HP, then the world is actually different from what the books say. I don't particularly mind DMing a Super Robot campaign with D&D rules if the players so want, because this is what happens if these kind of tricks actually work. What doesn't happen is only the PCs knowing the trick.

Are you high? You've picked a really weird hill to die on here. I mean for fuck's sake there are named spells in the PHB for wizards who invented or discovered new magic: Tasha, Rary, Evard, Bigby, Mordenkainen... Maybe you heard of them? Wizards who discovered new magic that didn't yet exist and then got their Hideous Laughter or Magnificent Mansion or whatever named after them because they were the first to think it up. And in all those cases it was literally a player who had access to a magical effect nobody else thought up because it didn't exist for anybody else unless they taught it to them or their secret technique was stolen.

News flash: D+D doesn't look like you think it looks. "MAH IMMERSUN!" is an argument without teeth from a person who refuses to seek the logical conclusions of the abilities and feats presented to them. You have heard of Tippy, right? Where he takes the spell Teleportation Circle and tries to see the implications of a one-way goddamn stargate? And automatically resetting Wish traps. All of that was a reaction to how his players discovered new ways to use the rules that were already there, tales of city states and their rise and fall based on the application of new magical techniques.

[Kaelik]

While we are talking about how dumb the "if it was such a good idea, everyone else would have done it before you!" school of trying to shit on things is.


.... Like sure, this applies to crashing the Moon into the Earth. But like.... bookbombs and crossbow bolts... so what?

"Other people have used book bombs!" "Okay, so there are some craters in the world, what does that have to do with anything?"

"Other people have used Launch Bolt that way!" "Okay, so some other Wizards were also able to use a decent damage at low level, and most of them are probably now level 13, or died to a Glabrezu at 7, or what the fuck ever, how does this effect my casting in any way?"

[OgreBattle]

"Wizards levitate spears and shoot them at high speed" is fun setting flavor, up there with "These guys are not Christians so they have scimitars"

[nockermensch]

@Hicks: The 6d6 is to make the ridiculous situation more explicit. The original trick is to use gargantuan bolts (4d6) because with Eschew Materials you can cast the spell without even having the bolt. But since we're going for extreme burst damage at level 1, why the fucking not spend 16 silver coins to fire colossal bolts at fools? And wait, can we make them colossal+ bolts? Or is that category only for creatures?

Also, while it'd be rather cool to play in a campaign with an actual spell arms race, where you need some kind of background to learn one of Tasha's spells because they were invented like last year and only Tasha and her friends know them, the fact is that named spells are for flavor and exist because Jack Vance. Spells can be created, but then it's a 100% DM vetoed situation.


@Kaelik: The problem with that is that D&D is, among other things, a wargame where both teams have an expected competence level. Part of the fun for everybody is to set up encounters that provide some illusion of being challenging (see: Frank posts about designing a new heartbreaker starting by the monster manual). The PCs, specially if they are wizards are already expected to win if they stick to Grease, Slow or Solid Fog. If they can also deal 6d6 ranged damage at level 1 or [BIGNUMBER]d6 damage on level 5 by throwing a book at a fool, then one player is walking over the fun everybody else at the table should be having with that tactical minigame.

I mean, people can legitimally have fun with a game like this, only that the story will be something like Asterix, where the heroes are hilariously OP and the reason people come to the game is for the gonzo roleplaying. If a player decides to come to the table with a shrunken colossal construct armor (hundreds of hit points, flight, etc), then this is probably the only sane outcome: The DM sets up the fight, then immediatelly segues to "after you hilariously defeat [the giants/the dragon/Strahd] you find that...". Just skip the fight, since the illusion of challenge was absolutely shattered already.

Or, you know, maybe the story is something like Slayers, in that the PCs are just OP relative to 99.999% of the world, only that it means that the opposition that matters is the 0.0001% that can actually match their OPness. The wizard comes to the game with her shrunken colossal construct armor and Explosive Runes nukes and the DM just narrates the outlandish ways she obliterates dragons, planetars and the tarrasque (no dice rolling). The part where the DM plays epic instead of Benny Hill music is when the rival faction that also has construct armors appears.


@OgreBattle: It's absolutely flavorful. It's also a 9th level trick.


My position is that DMs can act legitimally disempowering to the players. But what this term refers to is DMs who say that a vampire is somehow immune to disintegrate, or that the dragon "just powers through" a Solid Fog or whatever. When the PCs use their tools in cool ways, let them do it.

What this doesn't mean is to let PC find a particularly retarded interpretation of a spell and/or item and then walk over the challenge guidelines forever. See, the correct way to deal with dumb wizard tricks is the Tomes route: Just write into your setting: "Chain-binding efreetis is a thing that works? Alright, so this is expected outcome and everybody just does it."

[Kaelik]

Do you know how long it takes to make a book bomb? It's a lot. They aren't going to kill every person with that, they are going to kill every person they can't beat in any other way.

[nockermensch]

Do you know how long it takes to make a book bomb? It's a lot. They aren't going to kill every person with that, they are going to kill every person they can't beat in any other way.

Look, it's absolutely cool and memorable if the wizard spends the entire campaign saying "TONIGHT I'LL ADD ANOTHER PAGE TO THE BOOK OF DOOM", and then fucking uses the book bomb on the BBEG, ending the climatic fight in one turn. That's the kind of dedication that makes for the best /tg/ greentext stories and I'm all for it. Implicit in this method is that the wizard has actually been saving one 3rd level slot each adventuring day for adding another rune to his tome of mass destruction.

However, it goes from memorable tale to abusable spam in any of the following situations:
1) "demiplane where time passes 1000x faster"
2) "I have this cool trick to make infinite gold, so I'll head to a planar metropolis and buy a lot of pre-filled book bombs"
3) "since there's a six month time skip, I'll start the next adventure with two book bombs at ready (for campaigns with a slow pace)"
4) "since I'm an elf wizard, I spent the last 100 years crafting book bombs. I have about 300 in store."
5) "since I also know Mind Blank I hide and become untraceable for 100 days."

[Dean]

Not only are your ideas gygaxian nonsense and extremely disempowering they are also totally narrative destroying.

No, look: The narrative is destroyed by these dumb tricks in first place. If people can use cantrips to deal 6d6 damage at range or wear constructs as armor with hundred of HP, then the world is actually different from what the books say. I don't particularly mind DMing a Super Robot campaign with D&D rules if the players so want, because this is what happens if these kind of tricks actually work. What doesn't happen is only the PCs knowing the trick.

You're wrong. Your own statements are even arguments against your own position. If one wizard figures out how to use a cantrip for roughly 20 damage that is absolutely not narrative destroying. It is inconsequential and doesn't matter. If "people", as you say, can all do that it does destroy the narrative. Your plan of seeing any cool trick a PC does and declaring that everyone everywhere must have already thought of it is what requires you to make the world different.

Yes only the PC's know the tricks that the actual humans around the table came up with. No, 4 people having moderately powerful cantrips and +140hp actually doesn't effect things that much. You're the DM. There are 18 million different monsters and ten billion spells you can oppose the PC's with. You can have them fight the armies of hell or come up against the Red Wizards of Thay. Instead of telling them that everything they can do or think up doesn't matter and is instantly retconned into being something everyone has already been doing for a million years just go "Good job finding that awesome trick you actual human I'm playing this game with, the only goal of which being your enjoyment!" and then make the IMAGINARY people you control in the game respond to those threats. Pepper a few more mid level casters in their opposition who will absolutely not give a shit if the PC's have 3 digit hp and a moderately powerful cantrip at their disposal. The number of things you can throw at a party to mix things up and keep things interesting is endless. This is a game with save or die's, domination, petrification, stunning, nausea, dazing, solid fogs, walls of force, ability damage, ability drain, disease, poison, suffocation, blinding, uberchargers, grapple-monsters, and about 1800 other different things. Instead of shitting on cool things your players come up with let them feel cool for having come up with it. Let them have the thing where they can't really be threatened by level appropriate threats that deal only hp damage, or where they have a seriously powerful single target DPS spell they found at low level, or even a CRAZY powerful explosive runes DPS effect they're able to repeat by high level. Recognize that you have literally unlimited power and nut up to responding to your players cool discovery with more effort than "Nuh uh".

You know what game would be awesome? The one where your players used the launch bolt cantrip to fuck up your original orc band you had them fighting so the Warlord they serve comes with his personal force to show he's not weak. Then when the Warlords forces arrive the players have taken that time to make construct armor allowing them to fight his army like a team of fantasy iron mans. Then when a group of occult mages hears about this they want to bend this new team of adventurers to their will and the players figure out their explosive runes trick to vaporize any wizards stupid enough to stand within 20ft of one another letting them gain an edge over these extremely deadly mage enemies. That game is one your players would love and is way better than dismissing the ideas that players are allowed to fucking do things.

Sometimes you have to hard ban an option because it would destroy the setting on contact. Most times you should unruffle your fucking feathers and use the infinite power you were granted in the D&D table's social contract to respond to peoples ideas with "Yes And".

[nockermensch]

You're wrong. Your own statements are even arguments against your own position.

Lets take these words right back at you. Here:

Pepper a few more mid level casters in their opposition who will absolutely not give a shit if the PC's have 3 digit hp and a moderately powerful cantrip at their disposal. The number of things you can throw at a party to mix things up and keep things interesting is endless.

See this? See this shit? This shit right here is the powergamer paradox: Because "playing D&D" is a social occasion for a bunch of people to meet, pretend to be elves and play a combat mini-game, there's not much point in looking for dumb tricks that allow you to punch much above your weight-class, because this means the DM has to act like a rubber-band AI and stat-up stronger opposition than the expected to keep things challenging, with the end result that the party is spending about the same amount of time and resources on the fights anyway. It's quite silly, because everybody here should easily agree that setting the game so that it's very hard (if not impossible) for people to make gimped characters is a worthy design goal, but you don't seem to realize that the same care must be taken at the other end of PC competence spectrum, and for about the same reasons.

Also, the part that comes immediately before the previous quote is problematic, but for another reason (Emphasis mine):

Instead of telling them that everything they can do or think up doesn't matter and is instantly retconned into being something everyone has already been doing for a million years just go "Good job finding that awesome trick you actual human I'm playing this game with, the only goal of which being your enjoyment!" and then make the IMAGINARY people you control in the game respond to those threats.

There are like 4-7 people at a RPG game, including the DM, and the only goal is the enjoyment of all of them. You're somehow assuming the DM (whose prepared opposition for the evening is now meaningless) and the other players (whose combat participation is now meaningless) would find enjoyment when the wizard decides that he has a personal mecha and some nukes. Which finally takes us to the following piece of wank:

You know what game would be awesome? The one where your players used the launch bolt cantrip to fuck up your original orc band you had them fighting so the Warlord they serve comes with his personal force to show he's not weak. Then when the Warlords forces arrive the players have taken that time to make construct armor allowing them to fight his army like a team of fantasy iron mans. Then when a group of occult mages hears about this they want to bend this new team of adventurers to their will and the players figure out their explosive runes trick to vaporize any wizards stupid enough to stand within 20ft of one another letting them gain an edge over these extremely deadly mage enemies.

This may have sounded cool in your head, but despite writing "the players" over and over, all these dumb tricks were probably brought by one (1) dude to the table. Which, given that this is a game taking weekly hours out of the schedules of like 4-7 people, is a terribly wasteful set-up for masturbation. Odds are that at least one of these players signed-up for the game thinking that he would be Aragorn but ended up being Gourry instead. Only that this time this applies even to the Druid player.

There's also the fact that this is a world with stuff like Scry, Contact Other Plane and Speak With Dead on it. So, even in this masturbatory fantasy, when the group of occult mages learns about the PCs, they (being, you know, mages) cast Divinations to figure what the fuck is going on, and from that moment onwards they start to appear with their own Bolt Launchers (and possibly the construct armor too, if they're proactive enough). This is another leg for the "everybody knows the trick" argument: Even assuming for an instant that the PC invented the trick right there, after the trick has been used in a way that made important people care, then it's not a secret anymore, because you can totally play 20 questions with magic:

Speak with Dead with orc corpse: "Why is there a fukken pointy log through your chest?"
Dead Orc: "Robed human gestures and points at orc. Orc dies."
Later, Contacting Other Plane: "Is the spell used to kill the orcs lower than 4th circle?"
(then narrow down to school, then to particular spell, then it's done: The group of occult mages has figured the Launch Bolt trick. And the group of baddies that comes after them can likewise learn about the book bomb, etc).

Both of the solutions I proposed before (Everybody is ninjas now or we're playing Asterix and the actual fun is had by roleplaying invincible badasses) allow the DM and the other players to join in the fun, thus maximizing the happiness for the group. Sounds better (and fairer) for me than the alternative of letting one player think that D&D is some kind of one-upmanship optimization challenge versus the DM. That shit is old (as in, almost 32 years old, as of today) and pointless, because as you already said, the DM can simply add more opposition until game balance is achieved anyway.

In any case, since the thread intention is supposed to be a collection of dumb wizard tricks, me butting in to say that they are bad and you should feel bad is equivalent to thread-shitting. We can start another thread to continue this discussion if people so want.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Wouldn't people start figuring it out when they hear about you showing up with construct armor or whatever? I can easily see a wizard running into the local wizards guild with news that some dude made dope-ass golem armor, and it's not like we have anything better to do, so get crackin?