The False Wizard
Welcome again to Masters and Minions, where I strive to give you interesting NPCs and encounters that can be placed easily into your game. Since this week is Wand Week, I made an NPC who poses as a powerful wizard by utilizing a vast quantity of wands.
The elven rogue Calvorn has been posing as a wizard in order to “ward” the vaults of nobles. These “wards” consist of little more than promises and illusions in the form of magic aura and silent image spells, and while he is doing his work, he insists on complete and total privacy, dumping all of his target’s valued possessions in his portable hole. Then, when his illusory wards are in place, he uses his wand of silent image to create images of all the goods he stole, and shows off the vault to his “client,” warning him that the wards will all go off if the objects are touched (and thus preventing him from trying to touch them). If caught, he disappears with his cape of the mountebank.
Several of these nobles have gotten to talking and managed to put two and two together, and have now cobbled together a reward for this phony’s capture. The reward stands at a meager 3,000 gp, but the total reward is said to be ten times that if the stolen wealth is returned to the nobles. Sadly for those nobles, most of their wealth has been squandered on wine and women, and the rest has gone toward replacing spent wands.
Calvorn’s Tactics
Calvorn avoids combat by any means necessary, and begins and ends a fight by fleeing with his cape of the mountebank. Because of this approach to combat, PCs interested in recovering Calvorn’s stolen goods and bringing him to justice must beat him at his own game, using stealth or guile to get the drop on him, or at least using dimensional anchor to keep him from fleeing. If unable to escape, Calvorn reluctantly uses his wand of fireball to attempt to blast the PCs into oblivion. Anyone able to get his portable hole from him (it is kept on his person at all times) will find it filled with 10,000 gp worth of art objects and magic trinkets.
Twin Wands (Su): Once per day Calvorn can cast spells from two wands simultaneously, as long as both wands are 3rd level or lower and the spell doesn’t require more than a standard action.
Note: Calvorn’s CR has been increased by one because he has significantly more treasure than an NPC of his level typically does.