21st level cleric, should i take epic spellcasting?

[Question]

See above........all the epic spells im looking at are crazily expensive and difficult to cast........

 

[Matafuego]

I wouldn't.
I'd take Improved Spell Capacity.
But I also believe the Epic Spell System needs some SERIOUS reworking...

 

[Joker]

I wouldn't.
I'd take Improved Spell Capacity.
But I also believe the Epic Spell System needs some SERIOUS reworking...

Seconded.

Though Automatic Quicken Spell is also nice, unless it's been nerfed somehow which is wholly possible.

 

[Jack Simth]

Then you're looking at the wrong ones.

At 21st, you're barely into Epic. You've got maybe two to four Epic spell slots if you take the feat. You're not going to be casting Vengeful Gaze of God anytime soon.

You might, however, be casting something custom. Perhaps, say, an 11 minute (extra time, 1 minute per -2, max 10 extra minutes, so -20 mitigating factor) Armor (base 14 DC for +4 Armor bonus to armor class) with an extra 20 points of AC (+2 per point of additional Armor bonus to AC - +42 to your Spellcraft DC) for a +25 Armor bonus to armor class for 24 hours that only affects you (Change from Touch to personal, -2 Spellcraft DC) for a final spellcraft DC 34; if you have an Int of 10, and Max ranks in Spellcraft, you can manage that by Taking 10 - so you have an 11 minute ritual in the morning to give yourself some decent Armor, similar to Mage Armor. As a DC 34 spell, it costs 306,000 gp, 12,240 xp, and seven days to research. But you get a Force Armor bonus of 25 all day, every day that you have some time to cast. And you can still use your pre-Epic Shield, Ring of Deflection, Amulet of Natural Armor, Gauntlets of Dexterity, et cetera.

If you want to be cheesy, you mitigate it all the way down to 0; either with Epic leadership and ritual casting, or Permanent Summons of things with spellcasting (mitigated by time), and make all your Epic spells Permanent and DC 0 - no research time, no research costs, no XP costs, RAW.

But I also believe the Epic Spell System needs some SERIOUS reworking...

Well, yes. Most of the cheese goes away if you house-rule that the research costs are based on the pre-mitigation DC, and that the Mitigating factors only apply to the spellcraft checks needed.....

 

[Question]

DC 0? What kind of mitigating factors would that involve?

 

[Jack Simth]

DC 0? What kind of mitigating factors would that involve?

Extra Time and Additional Participants are the most commonly used, I think.

Time:
Takes an extra 10 minutes: -20.
Takes an extra 100 days: -200.

Participants:
Basically, it's -(2*spell level donated -1); so a Wizard-1 donating a 1st level spell slot gives you a -1 spellcraft DC. No RAQ limit on the number of additional participants. So if you have a Leadership score of 25, and half your followers are Adept-1's (NPC class - gets a 1st level spell at 1st level), and your Cohort can cast a 9th level spell, you get -17 for a 9th level spell from your Cohort, and -81 from a 1st level spells from each of your followers, for a total from that of -98.

Oh, and they stack; If the ritual takes 10 extra minutes, you get an extra -20 mitigating facot for the 11 minute ritual, for a running total on the above scenario of -118. If you can find a CR 6 or less outsider that can cast spells (Aasimar Wizard-5, perhaps), you can Permanently Summon multiples for more participants, to make later rituals even easier (base DC 110 for CR 6, DC 100 for CR 5, DC 90 for CR 4, DC 80 for CR 3, DC 70 for CR 2 or below), still without spending any XP or GP.

Getting dripping with cheese, starting up without Leadership at all, your 100 day, 11 minute spell gets a Spellcraft break of -220. Summoning a Couatl Permanently has a DC of 150 (base summon: DC 14, summons a CR 2 Outsider, +2 for each +1 CR over 2, Couatl is CR 10 Outsider, so DC 30; *5 for Permanent), making for a 65 day, 11 minute casting time (-130 from the days, -20 from the extra 10 minutes), and a Couatl has 4th level spells available. Each 4th level spell donated to your ritual is a -7 mitigating factor. Every two Permenently Summoned Couatl's is seven less days on Permenently Summoning the next (for your 0 day, - gp, 0 xp next researched Epic spell). After you've got enough that it's not meaningfully time consuming, you switch over to Planetars and Solars (both of which have 9th level spells available). This, of course, assumes that you're good-aligned. After a while with Planetars and Solars, not only do you have an army of high CR critters (A Solar is CR 22....) but they are utterly loyal (Summons have no choice), and have 9th level spells which can be drawn on to Mitigate whatever you want. A Permanent +100 Force Armor bonus to AC has a base spellcraft DC of 1030; with -17 for each Solar adding a 9th level spell slot, you need a mere 61 solars (which gives you -1037 in mitigating factors - you could drop one of them, and spend an extra 5 minutes casting - it's permanent, who cares). And then the next day, apply it to everyone in the party. Before Mitigating Factors, Vengeful Gaze of God has a spellcraft DC of only 619 (although with that many Solars helping you out, you'll want to tack on something so you can do this from home - Reveal and Transport, say, so you can zap someone from the comfort of your own demiplane - you've got room).

Mind you, if your DM house-rules that development costs are pre-mitigating factors, the cheese basically vanishes - the Permanent Couatl spell costs 1,350,000 gp, 54,000 xp, and 27 days to develop. You shouldn't be able to pull that off at all for a long time. And once you have, you won't be developing stepping-stone spells due to the expense involved; you'll be taking your 65 days for each Couatl you summon, until it's time for you to switch over to Solars. You'll miss out on adventures trying this. With that house rule. But it's a house-rule, and this is the rules forum, so......

 

[Artoomis]

...If you want to be cheesy, you mitigate it all the way down to 0; either with Epic leadership and ritual casting, or Permanent Summons of things with spellcasting (mitigated by time), and make all your Epic spells Permanent and DC 0 - no research time, no research costs, no XP costs, RAW....

In theory, then, as a Epic Sorceror you could make up new Epic spells on the fly. Wow. That's kind of like having this Epic power behind that you shape on the fly as you launch it, limited pretty much only by your imagination.

Well, maybe. I do not understand the Epic rules very well at all.

 

[Jack Simth]

In theory, then, as a Epic Sorceror you could make up new Epic spells on the fly. Wow. That's kind of like having this Epic power behind that you shape on the fly as you launch it, limited pretty much only by your imagination.

Well, maybe. I do not understand the Epic rules very well at all.

In theory, yes. But then, you're stopping somewhere for X amount of time to slowly weave together a spell (extra time mitigating factor), or asking all the other spellcasters you can find to sit there and feed you high-level spell energy so you can weave it together (additional participants), or drain your spirit (XP costs), or drain away your health (backlash), or whatever, as in order to do this, you HAVE to mitigate it all the way down to 0. So at 21st, you can stop for 11 minutes and give someone a +7 Force Armor bonus for the next 24 hours, or youself a +8 Force Armor bonus for the next 24 hours (touch to personal is a -2 mitigating factor), without burning XP, taking backlash, or taking spell energy from others. Umm.... meh.

 

[Artoomis]

In theory, yes. But then, you're stopping somewhere for X amount of time to slowly weave together a spell (extra time mitigating factor), or asking all the other spellcasters you can find to sit there and feed you high-level spell energy so you can weave it together (additional participants), or drain your spirit (XP costs), or drain away your health (backlash), or whatever, as in order to do this, you HAVE to mitigate it all the way down to 0. So at 21st, you can stop for 11 minutes and give someone a +7 Force Armor bonus for the next 24 hours, or youself a +8 Force Armor bonus for the next 24 hours (touch to personal is a -2 mitigating factor), without burning XP, taking backlash, or taking spell energy from others. Umm.... meh.

But if you are using spell energy from other, previously summoned, creatures, you've got, potentially, a large bank of spell energy to draw from. You've got, potentially, lots of 9th level spell slots to draw from (see above post of summoned Solars).

Which means you could do almost anything, right? And right on the spur of the moment, too, right?

Well, at the very least that sounds really, realy Epic.

 

[Jack Simth]

But if you are using spell energy from other, previously summoned, creatures, you've got, potentially, a large bank of spell energy to draw from. You've got, potentially, lots of 9th level spell slots to draw from (see above post of summoned Solars).

Which means you could do almost anything, right? And right on the spur of the moment, too, right?

Well, at the very least that sounds really, realy Epic.

Yep, that's about right, as the rules are laid out as written.

Then again, all of this assumes you're pulling it off at 21st, which is just barely Epic....

And you'd have to be dragging the Solars around with you, and they aren't permitted to use their own teleporational abilities (because they're Summoned), so it gets kinda awkward unless you're at your home base.

Did I mention I reccommed house-ruling Epic spellcasting such that GP, XP, and Time development costs are based on pre-mitigating factor DC's?