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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Simth" data-source="post: 2380340" data-attributes="member: 29252">All right....Epic spellcasting is a method by which very powerful spells can be crafted - there are a specific set of rules, base "seeds", a set of enhancements (which increase the Difficulty Class), a set of mitigating factors (which decrease the Difficulty Class), and a final Difficulty Class for a spellcraft check that you have to pass to be able to both make and cast the spell. It also has expenses involved in development - GP, XP, and time based linearly on the final DC of the spell. One of the mitigating factors is additional participants. You get -1 to the DC for a 1st level spell slot, -3 for a 2nd, -5 for a 3rd, -7 for a 4th, and so on. No limit is listed for how much mitigation you can get from additional participants, but normally that's okay, as you won't be able to round many up. Epic Leadership, however, gives you lots & lots of followers. Followers can have levels in unspecified classes, some of which could be spellcasting classes. If you make an assumption, such as 1/4th of them are either Wizards or Clerics, then you can estimate how many spell slots your followers will have available to put into your epic spell. With a leadership score of 40, you have a particular number of followers of a given level. Dividing each of those numbers by 4 to get the assumed number of spellcasters at that level gives the number of additional participants (and the highest level of spell they have available) you can get, just from your followers, for cutting down the DC of your epic spells. With 1/4 Wiz/Cleric followers (Druid would work just as well, but cleric followers are likely with you being a cleric base yourself) you can get a DC modifier on your Epic Spellcraft DC's for making Epic spells in the range of -356 to -388 (depending on rounding - is 7/4 1 or 2? is 1/4 0 or 1?). Thus, any Epic spell you develop, before mitigating factors, that has a base Spellcraft DC of under 356 can have a final DC of 0 just by roping in your followers to aid your spellcasting. With a final Spellcraft DC of 0, the spell takes no time to research, no gold to research, and no XP to research. To cast it, however, you need all your followers to gather round and give you their highest spell slot - which you can likely do, what with them being your followers. The specific example was a spell to make you pretty much immune to dispelling (epic spells, however, can still dispel your defense against dispelling via the Destroy and Dispel seeds). This is a nice spell to have up because it's a pain to get hit by a Disjunction or a Dispel Magic. The Ward seed has the option of making you immune to a specific list of spells, by rules laid out in the Ward entry. A Ward against Dispel Magic, Greater Dispel Magic, Disjunction, and AntiMagic Field gives a base DC of 60 before enhancements and mitigating factors. With the Permanent Enhancement (which multiplies the pre-mitigated DC by 5) that's a DC of 300. Without Epic Leadership, there's pretty much no way you are going to be able to make that for a long, long time (well.... if it's a 100 day ritual, you can squeeze out a -220 (-20 for 10 extra minutes, -200 for 100 extra days), and get the different dispel defenses one at a time (ward against a 9th level spell has a base DC of 30; making it permanent makes the DC 150; an extra 10 minutes (-20), and an extra 65 days (-130) put that DC to 0), but that takes a year or so of continuous down time, while Epic Leadership can get all four anti-magic spells stopped in under a day with a leadership score of 40). Your followers can spend most their time off-screen (they are building a town for you, say, and maintaining a base of operations - a safe retreat point), and only come into use when you want to cast a spell, pick up a few wands, or whatever. However, that same DC reducing resource can be used for a good many epic spells - want to Transfrom into a dragon, with all the Su and Ex abilities? A Gold Dragon Wyrm takes a DC of 21 (base seed) +18 (size difference) + 5 (Type change -> Dragon) +10 (Supernatural Breath Weapon) + 10 (Crush, Ex ability) + 10 (Ex Tail Sweep) + 10 (Ex Frightful Presence) +10 (Ex immunities) + 10 (Ex Spell Reistance) + 10 (Ex Blindsense) + 10 (Ex Keen Senses) + 10 (Su Alternate Form) + 10 (Ex water breathing) + 46 (23 HD over 15) for a base spellcraft DC of 169. To get that to 0, you need mitigating factors worth 169 points (Transform is permanent by default, so no need for that pesky *5 Permanent enhancement). 169 1st level spell slots from your 1st level followers will cover it. With the Gold Dragon's Alternate Form ability, you can even follow the party into dungeons by shaping yourself into a human as a standard action up to three times per day (for as long as you wish - you could spend all your time shaped as a humanoid form, if you wanted). The only things missing from being an actual Gold Dragon would be the spell like abilities (Luck, Detect Gems, bless, geas, sunburst, foresight), the hit points, class skills, feats, and inherent Sorcerous spellcasting... but you would still have all of your cleric spellcasting available. As a half-celestial Cleric, however, you may want to go the Solar route:21 (base Transform Seed) + 10 (Su Protective Aura) + 10 (Su Tounges) + 10 Regeneration + 10 (Ex or Su Damage Reduction) + 10 (Ex Darkvision) +10 (Ex Low Light vision) + 30 (Ex Immunity to Cold, Acid, and Petrification) + 20 (Ex Resistance to Electricity and Fire 10) + 14 (7 HD over 15) for a base DC of 145. Additional Participants can drop that down to 0 for you with 145 1st level spell slots from your followers. Nifty, no?</blockquote>

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