Rituals, Sacrifices, and "Epic" Magic

There is something kind of odd about the spell system in 3.X, and thus Pathfinder. In 3.X, only epic level spells end up with really insane requirements. And, of course, in Pathfnder there are no epic level spells. But why is that really necessary? Why shouldn't a 20th level wizard be able to research a 9th level spell that takes a long time to cast, requires expensive or immoral components, and does something really "epic" ? As it stands, the most expensive 9th level spells to cast are Wish and Soul Bind, costing 25,000 gp or more. The spell with the longest casting time is Create Greater Demiplane, at 6 hours.

So the question is: Why are there no 9th-level spells that require the co-operation of six apprentices able to cast 5th-level spells (the focus), seven days of rituals, and a bound marilith as a material component?

Make them, or change the requirement of the existing spells. I do that a lot. I even made lower level spells with increased requirements.

The way I've looked at it is that the level of the spell doesn't reflect the power of the caster, but more-so the power of the spell. Therefore, a powerful spell requires a lot of personal sacrifice and power, while a lower-level spell in comparison to it's higher-level compatriot doesn't require as much sacrifice. So requiring larger commitments from lower-level spells (in my opinion at least) takes away from the importance of the high-level ones.

Good point, but we didn't ever make a ritual or preparation for a lower level spell super difficult. It was more to add flavor to the bit boring "I cast" announcement. Also, I often make it so that a beginning wizard can do a higher level spell with a ritual/long preparation and more cost, and the more he uses the spell, the better he gets so when leveling up it costs less.

It was a lot of fun a while ago to watch a 1st and 3 2nd level PCs go about creating a teleport circle and connect it to their school. There would have been another, shorter, less expensive and lot less worrisome way out of the place they were stuck in, but instead they ransacked the castle of the evil mage and took two tries to make it work - and about a week. The non- magic PCs had their job in finding the ingredients (and avoiding traps in the process) and giving up items they wanted to keep. And all needed to be done before the evil guy came back

And the faces when they found out there would have been another way...