Can someone explain how it works? I can't follow the mechanics. As far as I can follow, there's these spell seeds, and you need to make spellcraft checks in ritual form, but there's also slots, then it jumps right to some effects. It really seems like I have some pages stuck together, but all the numbers are there.
Basically, it looks like "This sentance no verb."
Epic Spellcasting
Moderator: Moderators
-
RadiantPhoenix
- Prince
- Posts: 2668
- Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:33 pm
- Location: Trudging up the Hill
I believe the expected procedure is this:
* Decide what you want to do
* Find a non-epic spell that does something like what you want to do
* Apply modifying factors to that spell to get the parameters you want
* Calculate the DC
* Apply mitigating factors until the DC is low enough for you
* Ask DM permission
* Research spell
Once you've learned an epic spell, casting it is straightforward:
* You have some number of epic level spell slots, calculated based on your ranks in certain knowledge skills
* When you decide to cast it, you make a spellcraft check
* If you succeed, you cast the spell
* if you fail, the spell fails but is used up
The spell seeds are sample spells pre-converted to epic level spell form to make your job easier.
* Decide what you want to do
* Find a non-epic spell that does something like what you want to do
* Apply modifying factors to that spell to get the parameters you want
* Calculate the DC
* Apply mitigating factors until the DC is low enough for you
* Ask DM permission
* Research spell
Once you've learned an epic spell, casting it is straightforward:
* You have some number of epic level spell slots, calculated based on your ranks in certain knowledge skills
* When you decide to cast it, you make a spellcraft check
* If you succeed, you cast the spell
* if you fail, the spell fails but is used up
The spell seeds are sample spells pre-converted to epic level spell form to make your job easier.
Radiant is completely wrong.
The Spell Seeds are the sum total of what sort of effects you can have.
What you do is:
1) Take a Seed, or multiple Seeds.
2) Apply all the factors, increasing the base DC.
3) Apply all reductions.
4) Research spell.
5) Roll spellcraft check. You succeed, you cast the spell, you fail, your slot it used up.
So for example, to make a spell that provides a permanent bonus to intelligence, you take the Fortify Seed:
That's DC 17 for a +1 enhancement bonus of 20 hours. So you increase the bonus by 18 to get a +10 bonus. Then you multiply by 5, to get Permanent Duration, for total DC of 35X5=175.
Then you mitigate it by 20 by adding 10 minutes to the casting time, then mitigate an additional 155 by increasing the casting time by 78 days.
You now have a DC of 0, so it takes 0 days, 0 XP, and 0 gold to research the spell, then you cast it.
The Spell Seeds are the sum total of what sort of effects you can have.
What you do is:
1) Take a Seed, or multiple Seeds.
2) Apply all the factors, increasing the base DC.
3) Apply all reductions.
4) Research spell.
5) Roll spellcraft check. You succeed, you cast the spell, you fail, your slot it used up.
So for example, to make a spell that provides a permanent bonus to intelligence, you take the Fortify Seed:
That's DC 17 for a +1 enhancement bonus of 20 hours. So you increase the bonus by 18 to get a +10 bonus. Then you multiply by 5, to get Permanent Duration, for total DC of 35X5=175.
Then you mitigate it by 20 by adding 10 minutes to the casting time, then mitigate an additional 155 by increasing the casting time by 78 days.
You now have a DC of 0, so it takes 0 days, 0 XP, and 0 gold to research the spell, then you cast it.
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
What?Kaelik wrote:Utter madness
I never really looked at the epic stuff, but now I'm kinda happy about that. This sounds utterly ridiculous. Not just because of the fail math behind the spell creation, but because of the complex process in itself... if you are an epic character, or a god or demi-god, this sounds like nothing I'd like to do as a player.
Last edited by Antariuk on Mon May 02, 2011 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
"No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style." - Steven Brust
@Antariuk
Compared to some other high-level shenanigans, that's not a complex procedure at all.
@Kaelik
You are, of course, totally correct. However, Epic Spell Development includes an explicit "Mother may I?"-clause:
DM: Your spell wasn't approved because I feel like a dick and wanted you to waste a feat on epic spellcasting. I'll only approve useless stuff like Hellball.
alternatively, with a reasonable DM:
DM: Your spell wasn't approved because it has no cost and no development time, which I think is a tad bit to strong. I'll allow it if you only mitigate to DC 20, so you don't get something for nothing.
Compared to some other high-level shenanigans, that's not a complex procedure at all.@Kaelik
You are, of course, totally correct. However, Epic Spell Development includes an explicit "Mother may I?"-clause:
Epic Level Handbook wrote:Approval: This is the final step, and it's critically important. You must show your epic spell development work and reasoning to your DM and get his approval. If you[sic] DM doesn't approve, then the epic spell cannot be developed. However, the DM should explain why the epic spell wasn't approved and possibly offer suggestions on how to create an epic spell that will pass muster. Extending the approval process further, the DM must approve each epic spell contained in this book before you can develop it for your own character.
DM: Your spell wasn't approved because I feel like a dick and wanted you to waste a feat on epic spellcasting. I'll only approve useless stuff like Hellball.
alternatively, with a reasonable DM:
DM: Your spell wasn't approved because it has no cost and no development time, which I think is a tad bit to strong. I'll allow it if you only mitigate to DC 20, so you don't get something for nothing.
Last edited by Aharon on Mon May 02, 2011 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
Aharon wrote:alternatively, with a reasonable DM:
DM: Your spell wasn't approved because it has no cost and no development time, which I think is a tad bit to strong. I'll allow it if you only mitigate to DC 20, so you don't get something for nothing.
So I guess "reasonable" is code for "doesn't understand that DC 20 is identical to free".
Except for the fact you are in the wish economy and 7200 xp is less than chump change.Aharon wrote:Huh? DC20 costs you 180000gp, 4 days of development time and 7200 xp. That's hardly free.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
]I want him to tongue-punch my box.
The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.
I assumed standard WBL was in use, where this amount of gold is roughly 20% of your WBL at 21st level. If gold is free, the Epic Spell system obviously doesn't work. Any amount of gold is chump change with Wish economy, and any amount of XP costs can be circumvented with Thought Bottle, if you want to go that way.
And DC 20 was just an arbitrary number I threw in. It could be 5, or 10, or 30, or whatever else is considered reasonable for the effect you get. The above cost probably is even too high for a spell that might be dispelled anyway - unless you play with fast time trait planes, you won't be able to replenish it for quite a while because of the long casting time.
And DC 20 was just an arbitrary number I threw in. It could be 5, or 10, or 30, or whatever else is considered reasonable for the effect you get. The above cost probably is even too high for a spell that might be dispelled anyway - unless you play with fast time trait planes, you won't be able to replenish it for quite a while because of the long casting time.
Last edited by Aharon on Mon May 02, 2011 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
I assure you it doesn't work even with "wealth by level, and no tricks for increasing this".Aharon wrote:If gold is free, the Epic Spell system obviously doesn't work.
fixed quote tag --Z
Last edited by Koumei on Mon May 02, 2011 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
Aharon wrote:I assumed standard WBL was in use, where this amount of gold is roughly 20% of your WBL at 21st level. If gold is free, the Epic Spell system obviously doesn't work. Any amount of gold is chump change with Wish economy, and any amount of XP costs can be circumvented with Thought Bottle, if you want to go that way.
Epic WBL is super big too, like by an order of magnitude. There are basic swords that seriously cost like 8 million gold.
That being said, Epic spells do not have a coherent system, but are simply outlines of what is expected. The problem is that setting the whole world on fire as a standard action is in all ways directly allowable by the rules, but creating an effect as interesting as Rope Trick is almost completely DM fiat.
Last edited by K on Mon May 02, 2011 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
@K
=> WBL
It's seriously not that big. It's pretty much exactly 2 orders of magnitudes, from 10^5 up to 10^7. At 20th, your WBL is 760000gp, at 40th, it's 13600000gp. That's less of an exponential development than what you go through from 1st to 20th.
=> DM Fiat
Well, that's basically what I said. Without DM fiat, the system allows shenanigans like Kaelik's DC 0 spell above, and is completely broken.
But as it already assumes so much DM fiat, why not go with it? It's at least slightly more standardized than the DMG guidelines for researching non-epic spells, it gives you a solid starting point instead of 9 bullet points with such wisdom as "If a spell is so good that you can't imagine a caster not wanting it all the time, it's either to powerful or too low in level." and a table of reasonable damage caps that are probably broken by half the spells that were published later.
@Koumei
I would agree with "It doesn't work well even with WBL". As K said, it requires lots and lots of DM fiat.
=> WBL
It's seriously not that big. It's pretty much exactly 2 orders of magnitudes, from 10^5 up to 10^7. At 20th, your WBL is 760000gp, at 40th, it's 13600000gp. That's less of an exponential development than what you go through from 1st to 20th.
=> DM Fiat
Well, that's basically what I said. Without DM fiat, the system allows shenanigans like Kaelik's DC 0 spell above, and is completely broken.
But as it already assumes so much DM fiat, why not go with it? It's at least slightly more standardized than the DMG guidelines for researching non-epic spells, it gives you a solid starting point instead of 9 bullet points with such wisdom as "If a spell is so good that you can't imagine a caster not wanting it all the time, it's either to powerful or too low in level." and a table of reasonable damage caps that are probably broken by half the spells that were published later.
@Koumei
I would agree with "It doesn't work well even with WBL". As K said, it requires lots and lots of DM fiat.
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
No, it totally is that big. The magic sword cost table goes up to 8 million gold on enhancement bonuses alone. And that's not even counting the fact that the table has an open-ended "add +10 to the enhancement bonus and reroll" portion of the table. Or the fact that 39% of results on the chart are "add +6 or more in bonus equivalents and roll again". You have like a 1 in 6 chance of getting an item valued at over six million. That chart is nuts.Aharon wrote:@K
=> WBL
It's seriously not that big.
-Username17
Um... why on earth is a DC 0 spell that provides a +10 enhancement bonus broken?
I mean, yes, the thing where you can make a spell that permanently summons a Couatl under your command at 0 DC, and then do that until you have enough to mitigate a spell that summons a Solar permanently under your command at 0 DC, and then use them to mitigate a spell that that summons multiple Solars, until you can ritual cast arbitrarily high Epic spells that can all be mitigated to DC 0, including Creating a life form with a list of Ex abilities that are everything you ever wanted, and one of which is the ability to True Mind switch with you, then having it do so is super broken.
But really, I'm not sure why having a +10 enhancement bonus is broken. I would think it would assumed that any level 21 Wizard with epic spellcasting would have a +14 enhancement bonus to all his stats and everything else he can stack on for free anyway.
I mean, yes, the thing where you can make a spell that permanently summons a Couatl under your command at 0 DC, and then do that until you have enough to mitigate a spell that summons a Solar permanently under your command at 0 DC, and then use them to mitigate a spell that that summons multiple Solars, until you can ritual cast arbitrarily high Epic spells that can all be mitigated to DC 0, including Creating a life form with a list of Ex abilities that are everything you ever wanted, and one of which is the ability to True Mind switch with you, then having it do so is super broken.
But really, I'm not sure why having a +10 enhancement bonus is broken. I would think it would assumed that any level 21 Wizard with epic spellcasting would have a +14 enhancement bonus to all his stats and everything else he can stack on for free anyway.
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
@Frank
So if people use the system of randomly distributing wealth by using the treasure tables, you get more than if you use WBL. That isn't really new, though, you could probably get some really fancy stuff by using the tables in the DMG, too. Plus, the ELH has a caveat explicitly stating that you probably shouldn't roll treasure randomly at epic levels.
@Kaelik
Actually, I thought you just wanted to show how the principle of mitigation can be used to get effects for free. In my second post, I already noticed that the actual effect you proposed isn't that powerful and added that a DC 20 for this effect would probably make it too costly. Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part.
So if people use the system of randomly distributing wealth by using the treasure tables, you get more than if you use WBL. That isn't really new, though, you could probably get some really fancy stuff by using the tables in the DMG, too. Plus, the ELH has a caveat explicitly stating that you probably shouldn't roll treasure randomly at epic levels.
@Kaelik
Actually, I thought you just wanted to show how the principle of mitigation can be used to get effects for free. In my second post, I already noticed that the actual effect you proposed isn't that powerful and added that a DC 20 for this effect would probably make it too costly. Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part.
-
Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
If you hand out Epic Treasure at all, you violate those WBL tables. The Epic WBL tables don't correspond to anything. None of the formulas presented in the ELH square with any of the others.Aharon wrote:@Frank
So if people use the system of randomly distributing wealth by using the treasure tables, you get more than if you use WBL. That isn't really new, though, you could probably get some really fancy stuff by using the tables in the DMG, too. Plus, the ELH has a caveat explicitly stating that you probably shouldn't roll treasure randomly at epic levels.
-Username17
Uh, I can hand out Epic Treasure just fine, if I want to. Just no 8 million gp swords at 21st level, but Rings of Universal Elemental Resistance (216000 gp). You don't hand out Boccob's blessed books at 1st level, either.
Average treasure/encounter at 21st is 87000 gp, so the party gets 2 encounters without treasure, and one where they get some non-epic trinkets and the ring - or they get the non-epic trinkets on the first two encounters, and the ring after that.
You, as the DM would have to use monsters that aren't very item reliable - outsiders and dragons, for example - and not getting really big amounts of treasure doesn't feel very rewarding, but those problems aren't new to the epic WBL system, they apply at the higher non-epic levels too.
To summarize: It's a WBL problem, not an epic problem. Your thoughts on WBL in the Tome already show why it isn't the best idea.
Random item creation lulz:
To stay with the 8000000 gp sword example:
You have to roll 16-30 to get to table 4-9 (weapons). Then, you have to roll 100 to roll on table 4-10. Then, you have to roll 98-100 to get a weapon of this market price or above (I'm aware there are other ways to get similarly expensive items, but there are lots and lots cross-references, and I don't want to go through all of them. This is just the most obvious way.)
This is a probability of 0,000045.
With a probability in the same order of magnitude, you can get a ring of water walking (15000 gp) at first level:
Critter has a minor magic item 96-100, minor magic item is a ring 45-46, ring is a ring of water walking 99-100, for a probability of 0,00002.
Average treasure/encounter at 21st is 87000 gp, so the party gets 2 encounters without treasure, and one where they get some non-epic trinkets and the ring - or they get the non-epic trinkets on the first two encounters, and the ring after that.
You, as the DM would have to use monsters that aren't very item reliable - outsiders and dragons, for example - and not getting really big amounts of treasure doesn't feel very rewarding, but those problems aren't new to the epic WBL system, they apply at the higher non-epic levels too.
To summarize: It's a WBL problem, not an epic problem. Your thoughts on WBL in the Tome already show why it isn't the best idea.
Random item creation lulz:
To stay with the 8000000 gp sword example:
You have to roll 16-30 to get to table 4-9 (weapons). Then, you have to roll 100 to roll on table 4-10. Then, you have to roll 98-100 to get a weapon of this market price or above (I'm aware there are other ways to get similarly expensive items, but there are lots and lots cross-references, and I don't want to go through all of them. This is just the most obvious way.)
This is a probability of 0,000045.
With a probability in the same order of magnitude, you can get a ring of water walking (15000 gp) at first level:
Critter has a minor magic item 96-100, minor magic item is a ring 45-46, ring is a ring of water walking 99-100, for a probability of 0,00002.
Last edited by Aharon on Mon May 02, 2011 5:50 pm, edited 4 times in total.
-
Swordslinger
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 953
- Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:30 pm
No, Kaelik is absolutely right. You can do that with the epic seed system completely legally. Arguably, the DM may prevent you from making the DC 0, but a DC 1 spell is almost as good and the rest is perfectly legal.Antariuk wrote:What?Kaelik wrote:Utter madness
I never really looked at the epic stuff, but now I'm kinda happy about that. This sounds utterly ridiculous. Not just because of the fail math behind the spell creation, but because of the complex process in itself... if you are an epic character, or a god or demi-god, this sounds like nothing I'd like to do as a player.
It's one reason why the seed system is totally terrible and epic 3E works even worse than high level 3E does.
-
RadiantPhoenix
- Prince
- Posts: 2668
- Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:33 pm
- Location: Trudging up the Hill
Honestly, an epic game isn't really what you were doing at 1-10th level, it's more comparable to what you were essentially doing 11-20th level, just without the DM trying to keep things relatively sane. By the rules, you can do pretty much anything, so long as at least one person has Epic Spellcasting. You basically just dick around with little to no fear of reprisal, because few things are serious challenges. You're Superman and all his Alternate Company Equivalents with the requisite varying levels of concern for the little people, you can do whatever the hell you want.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
-
Draco_Argentum
- Duke
- Posts: 2434
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
The problem with Kaelik's spell isn't that its broken. Its a concocted example to show the massive flaw in the epic spell system.
It only produces two types of spells.
Type 1: Legitimately cool spells with a DC of way too high.
Type 2: Kaelik's spell, its more boring than the time I bored into a log full of wood borers but the DC is small enough that you would use it.
There really isn't a lot of middle ground that involves making spells with a cast time short enough to use yet also more epic than level 9 spells.
It only produces two types of spells.
Type 1: Legitimately cool spells with a DC of way too high.
Type 2: Kaelik's spell, its more boring than the time I bored into a log full of wood borers but the DC is small enough that you would use it.
There really isn't a lot of middle ground that involves making spells with a cast time short enough to use yet also more epic than level 9 spells.