Epic spells book/tome/compendium?

[Aaron]

Hi there.

Does anyone know if there is an Epic spells sourcebook outside the ELH?

Third parties publications are ok.

At least, can someone point me to sources outside the ELH with epic spells inside, even if they aren't entirely dedicated to them?

 

[smakko]

Dragon Mag #297 has some epic spells in it, I think. THere might be other back issues that have them.

Maybe in some of the Forgotten Realms books? I know they had at least one PrC that dealt with Epic Spells (Elven Spell Master or something like that).

 

[Magesmiley]

If I recall, Frostburn and Sandstorm both had at least one Epic spell in them (Ice Age and Global Warming come to mind as the names). There might've been more.

 

[Aaron]

Thanks!

I checked your suggestion and you are both right.

So, it seems that epic spells deserve no love from third party publishers, isn't it?

 

[Runestar]

Champions of ruin has some neat epic spells. Unfortunately, they are all but unusable with DCs in the high hundreds.

Player's guide to faerun has a few as well, though they pretty much suck.

 

[thompsja]

The thing about Epic spells is the ritual aspect. With the Epic Spellcasting rules as written, every caster will have given themselves a +5 to every stat, that is permanent. If you assume that the Epic caster has about 30 people who can contribute a 3rd level spell, they can drastically change a charcter. I recommend that you add two house rules:

1. Ritual casting cannot make up more than 50% of the mitigating factors
2. A caster is limited in bonuses by level - Energy seed spells are limited to 1 die/level, fortify stat bonuses are limited to one point per level.

The reason for rule #1 is that it's pretty easy with ritual casters to cast a powerful effect that lasts for days. Since all epic casters have at least two spells they can cast per day, it's possible to have a dozen enchantments going at once, if the duration is long enough. This damps down the power of such an effect.

Rule two is suggested to make higher level people better. With casting, it's all about reducing DCs to cause the effect, so that spells don't cost very much XP. With the number of things available to mitigate costs, it would be nice to have 35th level people cast better spells than 25th, aside from the idea that the 35th level guy will have a Spellcraft skill 10 points higher.

To answer your original question, there's a few things here and there on the Net about Epic spells, with some suggestions. There's a couple of spells in the Book of Exalted Deeds. Honestly, with the abuse possible in it, there aren't that many published spells.

 

[GreyLord]

I don't know of many with Epic Level spells, I think many of those were left up to your imagination, or applying Meta-magic feats to the existing spell list.

There is the Advanced Players Guide from Sword & Sorcery.

Of more use is Deities and Demigods, which doesn't have epic level spells in it, but it does have divine abilities which could give you ideas of what you could include in epic level spells perhaps.

 

[Aaron]

The thing about Epic spells is the ritual aspect. With the Epic Spellcasting rules as written, every caster will have given themselves a +5 to every stat, that is permanent. If you assume that the Epic caster has about 30 people who can contribute a 3rd level spell, they can drastically change a charcter. I recommend that you add two house rules:

1. Ritual casting cannot make up more than 50% of the mitigating factors
2. A caster is limited in bonuses by level - Energy seed spells are limited to 1 die/level, fortify stat bonuses are limited to one point per level.

The reason for rule #1 is that it's pretty easy with ritual casters to cast a powerful effect that lasts for days. Since all epic casters have at least two spells they can cast per day, it's possible to have a dozen enchantments going at once, if the duration is long enough. This damps down the power of such an effect.

Rule two is suggested to make higher level people better. With casting, it's all about reducing DCs to cause the effect, so that spells don't cost very much XP. With the number of things available to mitigate costs, it would be nice to have 35th level people cast better spells than 25th, aside from the idea that the 35th level guy will have a Spellcraft skill 10 points higher.

To answer your original question, there's a few things here and there on the Net about Epic spells, with some suggestions. There's a couple of spells in the Book of Exalted Deeds. Honestly, with the abuse possible in it, there aren't that many published spells.

Interesting suggestions.

I have modified the ritual aspect making each spell slot contributed by other spellcasters reduce the DC by 1 for level of spell added. So a 9th level spell mitigates only for 9 points of DC.

But I'll introduce your suggestions too.