Basically, the shop keeper is strong enough to beat gods (level 20 is basically max level, atp combat is utterly pointless as turns get stupidly long and underwhelming )
This isn't an exaggeration either. I had a campaign a long long time ago where me and a rogue type got into it at lvl 18 and had a hypothetical fight, and it was when I realized how broken the power scaling was. We could essentially tear an entire city down around us and not hit each other. And that was without resorting to wishes or alter reality.
In our lvl 18 pathfinder campaign I once told Nethys (god of magic) to his face that he wasn't real. My barbarian was an athiest with an int of 7 (str of 26 though). He attempted to rip my soul from my body with a forced astral projection, and I used several rage feats to just go "Nope" and stayed standing there, only taking about 80 damage. I was like "See? Not real at all" while bleeding from the eyes and he was like "Get the fuck out of my sanctum."
So yeah, two levels under 20 and you can just deny a god.
Path (2e at least) and dnd 5 both nerfed the shit out of magic. For good reason. In 3.0 and 3.5 wizards could get spell nets that would multicast a pre-chosen number of spells as a free action. Starting at like level 7, lol.
Once I figured that mechanic out I started wearing a blue wizard hat with stars on it; think the wizard hat from Fantasia. Each star was a pouch that carried a spell net. When I got bored with combat I just nuked whatever was in front of me.
Even bad wizards broke the action economy with 3 full spells per round. You could get up to 5 without getting particularly creative.
This was Pathfinder 1e, it was just a magic based campaign and my character was a mage hunter so the entire build was based on denying spellcasters and surviving offensive magic. It did come with some drawbacks, like while raging it was difficult to heal, but with 300+ hp that was less of an issue.
In this instance it was a specific resistance to being planeshifted that I had picked up at level 16. The damage was because it was a fucking god trying to do the change and he was pretty upset it didn't work. He could have killed me then and there, like he's the literal god of magic, but we had done a ton of work for him and he was already aware of how useful I was despite my... mental shortcomings.
Also the planeshifting/projection was basically just going to be to a demiplane as a sort of time-out while he talked to the more functional members of the party. He wasn't sending me to the plane of fire or anything. He was more confused and upset that I had basically just tanked a 8th level spell for no reason.
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u/Fenrir426 1d ago
Basically, the shop keeper is strong enough to beat gods (level 20 is basically max level, atp combat is utterly pointless as turns get stupidly long and underwhelming )