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How to Shut Down an Archmage 🙅—D&D 5e
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Sep 30, 2022
Read all about it here: https://www.flutesloot.com/how-to-shut-down-an-archmage?utm_source=youtube Archmages are common “boss monsters” in D&D. Dungeon Masters enjoy deploying powerful spellcasters to challenge their adventurers. Adventurers would do well to go into these types of fights prepared rather than without intel (winging it). After all, you don’t want to get roasted, enslaved, or raised into an undead army by some cocky spell slinger. I’d like to clarify that I’m referring to archmages in general, not the official stat block found in the Monster Manual. Here are my tips for overcoming dangerous spellcasters, particularly archmages! ⏰Time Stamps: 00:00 Prepare to Burn! 00:39 Assess Your Assets 02:17 Spell Success with Spells 12:17 Scout that Sorcerer 13:02 Sweet, Sweet Sabotage 14:29 I Hope This Helped! ---------- 🎈 Shop our loot on Redbubble: flutesloot.redbubble.com 🎈
View Video Transcript
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How dare you enter my domain, my fire will burn you to ash
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I am the greatest archmaid in the land, prepared to die. Not today, because looters, flutes loot, we're talking about how to take down an archmage
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how to fight those scary spellcasters so that you can come out on top today
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Here we go. So how do you fight a high-level spellcaster so that you can emerge victorious
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Especially if you are much lower level than they are. Their spells are pretty scary
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A few things you'll want to do is take inventory of your resources
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It could be actual inventory like magic items or different skills you have
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You might also think, okay, what kind of terrain are we going to be working with? Are you going to be able to take cover and avoid being seen by the archmage
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Are we going to be able to sneak up? What are the kind of resources? is available to you. You'll want to know everything and say, okay, what are going to be the most
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useful things, which things might be more risky because the archmage can probably deal with it easily
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and just think it through with your party. If someone has the mage slayer feet, you want to get them in
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close. If the paladin has an aura to boost your saving throws, you'll want to make a strategy
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based on staying close, perhaps, to the paladin. If you have a bard that can use bardic
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inspiration to help you with counters and dispel magics, that's going to be huge. If you have an
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abjuration wizard, they've been preparing for this moment their whole lives. They want to
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want to counterspell and dispel magic all day because they're the best at it. These are the things you want to know
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Make a list, work it through with your party. Don't take too long on it because preparation can bog down the actual fun and plans often
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fall apart when you engage the enemy. So prepare, but don't overprepare
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Don't put too much thought into it. Just generally figure out what are your different tactics
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Maybe make some flow charts in your mind of like if this happens, we can do this, that sort of stuff
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If you're a spellcaster, there are certain spells you want to make sure to have against spellcasters
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Now, some of these obviously won't work if you are too low of level to cast them, but the principle is still there
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Archmages could be encountered at any level, so I'm just going to go through any spell that seems like it's definitely worth bringing against an archmage because it'll probably countercounter some of their most nasty tricks
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The first two are kind of obvious. Dispell magic and counterspell. Those can really turn the tides against an archmage because their effects they try to get up or their spells they try to cast
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you can prevent them or reject them. That's obviously going to be big for your party
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Another one is disintegrate. If you get put in a wall of force or a force cage
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there's pretty much nothing you can do about it unless you have disintegrate. I always prepare it as a wizard just in case someone tries to pull those kind of high chinks
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I usually end up disintegrating force walls and force cages more than actual people
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which is disappointing, but it really helps when your monk and your rogue get put in a
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force cage and they can't get out and you free them with your disintegrate they'll love you forever
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line of sight is not to be underestimated as a tool for you many spells and arkmage will use
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will require that they see their target either the point they're casting at for an area or an actual
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individual that they're targeting if you can avoid being seen you can really put the archmage on their
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back foot one very simple spell that can do this is fog cloud fog cloud is heavily obscured vision
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so you can't even see like five feet in front of you. If the Archbages can't see anybody, they're going to have to dispel the fog or use a
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wind spell to get rid of it. And that can burn a whole turn of theirs as they just try to deal with your fog
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They might try to teleport out if they have something where they don't require sight like
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a dimension door. But still you making them pretty much use a turn to get out of there This works best if you can kind of corner them in an area where they can just walk out of the fog cloud without being punished You should have someone nearby or have them like in a corner where to come out of the fog cloud
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They'd be like right next to one of your martial classes or something like that. But yeah, fog cloud will do just right
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Along that line of obscuring vision is sleet storm. It does the same thing as fog cloud, but in a huge area
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And it can cause people to lose concentration, even though they're not. taking damage. And so if anyone has a boost to their concentration checks as a result of taking
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damage, that won't happen because they're not actually taking damage. They're just making a
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regular concentration saving throw. They also are going to have difficult to rain and have a hard
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time moving around. This spell is a huge one as long as your party's not going to be too
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worried about getting stuck in it as well. If you have some way to see through it, I once had a DM
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make me a custom magic item I was interested in where I could see through fog glass
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and sleet storms and sandstorms, that sort of stuff. And that was really cool because it was almost like when people do the darkness spell
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and they have devil sight to see through the darkness, but with fog. So if there's some way you can avoid disabling your party too much
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and it's like a net gain to try to get an archmaids to stop concentrating
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while you can kind of close in on them without them casting spells with that line of sight
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it can really help, even though it seems like it might be a bad thing for getting your whole party involved
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It could actually be a net gain for you, so sleet storm is great. Two level one spells again to prepare our shield and absorb elements
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Shield can help you if you need to avoid an attack or a magic missile. And absorb elements will help you greatly if elemental spells are used against you by the archmage
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Taking that resistant damage instead of full damage will really help you stay up and ready to fight
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Plus if you're a martial class, absorb elements will empower your next strike
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So get hit with a fireball and then your sword starts glowing with fire and you can turn it right back on the arc mage with extra
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damage. This is one reason the magic initiate fee is so good for even a fighter because they can get
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some cantrips like booming blade to empower their attacks. I mean, sometimes extra attack is better
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than that, but it's still an option, a cool one. And you can choose one spell, like absorb elements
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to just always have ready that you can do once per day. And that's a great way to defend yourself
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A cantrip you might want to consider a shocking grasp because an argmage probably has a lot of
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counterspe and shield spells ready as well. And so if you can disable their reaction with shocking
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grasp all the better. So if someone can get in close, perhaps one of your wizards
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Shock and they won't have that reaction to counterspell another person in your party
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who needs to maybe get off a very important spell that the archmage would have countered. And so if you don't have other options like just get farther away out of counterspell's range
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shocking grasp can just remove that reaction altogether while dealing damage. Illusion spells can be helpful too to get an archmage to waste a spell
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If you use mislead or major image, you can make it appear that there's an
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enemy that there really isn't, the archmage will cast a citigrate on something that isn't there
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wasting a turn, wasting a spell slot, and saving your butt. If there's some sort of arcmage
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or arch cleric or whatever that's using the silence spell, it's good to have a spell that doesn't
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require verbal components like catapult. Catapult, you could take something from your inventory or
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from the ground, and just with the motion of your hand, because it only has somatic components
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you could send it flying at the archmajor, whoever is concentrating on silence, to make them
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end it. Obviously you could just try to get out of the area of silence, which isn't usually that big
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but if that's not an option, at least you have some ace up your sleeve that only requires somatic
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components. Archmages that fly are going to be a big challenge, so spells like Earthbind can be
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very helpful, or anything that could make them fall prone out of the sky. But Earthbind is a very
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direct spell that can make them fall to the ground and get beat up by all your martial classes
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Some archmages might be tricky and use things like invisibility illusions or anything like that And so having true seeing detect magic or see invisibility can be very helpful to avoid getting tricked by a trickster archmajor
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If he gets stuck in a fog cloud that is not advantageous to you or even worse, like a cloud kill
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I recommend having something like warding wind or gust of wind so that you can blow away that cloud
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If an archmajor is using a spell that is based on you being able to hear them, you could actually make yourself death by using the blindness deafness spell or the warding wind spell
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warding wind is usually focus on that it makes a bunch of wind blow around you very fast blow away gas and protect you from range
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attacks but it also makes you deaf it is deafening it could make it so any sort of verbal part of a spell that you're
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supposed to hear in order for the spell to succeed you wouldn't and a lot of archmage might not notice that
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because that's not this isn't a tactic that's usually used you could also cast blindness deafness
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on the archmaid to make it so they can't even see anybody or anything so it becomes very hard for them to cast many of their spells
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Another weakness of an archmage is they're usually not very strong and so if you can make them do a strength saving throw, you could really screw them up
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Watery sphere is a spell that does this and restrains them and puts them in water, which means they can't verbally cast spells
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And so if you can get an archmaid stuck in a watery sphere, they're restrained, they can't cast their spells that require their voice and they're sitting down
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basically you might win right there because strength saving throws are not likely to be passed by the
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average wizard next one is a tactic I really love and I just used it last week where I was facing a powerful
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spellcaster and I was a weaker spellcaster I succeeded on a dominate person's spell and then for a
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whole minute I was able to make that spellcaster waste all of their spells and all their metamagics
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they were a sorcerer I also made them use delayed blast fireball right at their feet so that they did a
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fully charged delayed blast fireball while they were wasting all their spells. And I just had to get some distance between me and them so they blew themselves up
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And so even though I was the weaker spellcaster, I was not favored to win. I got that dominate person and I succeeded so I was able to end them completely
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I also in that fight tried using a tactic of telekinesis to pull away their arcane spell focus
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So if you're fighting an archmage that relies on a certain item to basically be a
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a proxy for material components, then you can take those away and then the spellcaster
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will be limited to only components that they have on them or spells that use only somatic and
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verbal. So if you're afraid of their force cage spell or they have some sort of contingency
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spell you want to avoid, you could take away the contingency statuette that they have of themselves
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if you see it or if they're using their arcane focus, they have it out in their hand. You could
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use telekinesis to do a pull and take away that item. This is pretty rare of an effect that telekinesis
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allows you to take items from people. D&D 5th edition doesn't usually let you do that because it's not
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very fun for enemies to do that to the players. But telekinesis is an exception. You can actually pull
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things from archmages and anybody. If it's a fighter, you can pull away their sword, but they're
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better at being strong. Again, archmages probably aren't going to be very strong. And so it might be
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pretty easy to use your telekinetic powers to pull away their arcane focus and basically make them
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a sitting duck. If you're having a difficult time avoiding a spellcaster's counter spells, you could
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use globe of invulnerability because that makes it so counter spell can't even affect you as long as
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they're outside of the globe. Simple. Speaking of archmages holding things like telekinesis pulling
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away their arcane focus, you can actually make them drop everything they're carrying and run away with
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the fear spell. If an archmage fails their saving throw against fear, they're going to
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going to drop everything they carrying It says so in the spell and run away You can pick up their arcane focus and components whatever they were planning on using and just keep it and then again they become a sitting duck Fear is not to be underestimated especially because it makes them drop what they carrying
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Another spell that could be useful is slow because it makes spell casting have a 50-50 chance
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of taking two whole turns and actions to cast. This stunts the action economy of an archmage so badly that they won't recover because they'll be dead
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All right, so those are the spells I recommend that I think, are best to have. There are obviously going to be others that are more situational, and some of these
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were situational. But these are spells, I believe, are great at being prepared for everything that a
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spellcaster might throw at you, and knowing how to take them on. Speaking of which
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next I want to talk about knowing your enemy. The more you know about your archmage that you're going to
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go up against ahead of time, the better. If they are all about explosions and evocation, you'll prepare
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for that with protection from energy, for example. If they're all about enchantment and you're high enough
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level, you could do a mind blink. Or you know that you're going to have to bless the party ahead of time
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to give them that D4 on their saving throws because you don't want to be charmed or have dominate
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person, turn your allies against you. And it might even be worthwhile to stay near a paladin who
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gives you an aura boost to your saving throws, because if that spellcaster doesn't specialize in
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area of effect spells, you want to be close to that paladin to just avoid those targeted ones that
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going to try to turn you against each other. Another point to consider is if you could sabotage the archmage ahead of time
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If you have a thief rogue, it's time to put them to work. Have them sneak in not necessarily to where the archmage is, but maybe into their private quarters
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And if they haven't properly protected things, you could even take their arcane focus that they
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rely on or their spellbook. That'll really make them mad. Or you could even swap them out for a counterfeit, so when they try to use their arcane
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focus, they fail. And they really are a sitting duck in battle. they'll be looking at their fake arcane focus with a panic in their eyes
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If the archmage is used to like preparing and having a protected domicile where they sleep and study
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you might want to actually try to steal things and sabotage the archmage while they're out and about
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Because if you can take something from them while they're just out in public, they probably don't have an alarm spell because it's more of a stationary thing
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And so that's the time to really do your sabotage work. You want to aim for material components that are very costly, like ruby dust for a forced
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cage, those sorts of things, those will be the best ones to take because they're not just
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proxied by an arcane focus. And so even if the caster doesn't have their arcane focus, if they have like a special
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item that they can summon as an arcane focus, which happened to me the other night, you can still disable some of their more powerful spells
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If you're a battlemaster fighter or anyone that has a superiority die with a battle maneuver
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you could do a disarming attack against an archmage to make them drop something that's important like their arcane focus
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Then kick it away and enjoy the less spellcast. thing that they can do. So I hope some of these tips were helpful for you if you have an
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Archmage battle coming up or if you remember an Archmage battle that you had that didn't go very well
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Let me know if any of these tactics would have helped you or you think will help you in your upcoming battle
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I'd love to hear about it. So cast message in the comments below and cast Rary's Talopathic
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bind on me and you by subscribing so that you always know when I come out with a new video
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Right now we're trying to do weekly videos. Check out our website as well, Fluteslut.com. Opal and I are doing weekly content there, and we actually have a lot more articles than we have videos currently
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So if you like this video, check it out. There is an article dedicated to this very topic of taking down an archmage that you can review
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So if you didn't take notes, you can bookmark that and reference at any time
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So again, I'm flutes. It's been a pleasure. Go take down those arc mages
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Let me know how it goes. And I will see you later. Thank you
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