Epic Magic Big Thread

[Sepulchrave II]

Two separate thoughts, here.

1) I think the key to reining in mitigating factors is a seed-by-seed account of what works with what; i.e. add an addendum in the conditions of each seed re. how a spell with that seed can be mitigated against. Destroy = backlash; Call = ritual, or whatever. I think that this is actually pretty intuitive. Scaling effects (target -> area etc.). should also be included in the conditions section. As I mentioned before, this is a lot of work - which is why I've kind of avoided it. I think it's time to grasp the bull by the horns, though.

It will make each seed entry very long (I've no problem with that); but it will also make combination very tricky (can an epic spell which uses both the destroy and the call seed use rituals, backlash, both or neither? (Sorry, couldn't resist). Ironically, I think the answer to this is dialectical - i.e. we need a new mitigation mechanic where compound spells (i.e. spells which involve more than one seed) are involved.

Or maybe mitigation is determined solely by the base seed. In my forays into combining seeds in epic spells, I decided on three categories of seed:

(B) Base. Determines basic parameters.
(S) Secondary. Mechanical impact, but less important.
(D) Descriptive. Necessary for the spell rationale to 'hang together.' This is a tricky one to define.

2) Meditation upon the Vow of Poverty. This is an example of how a character can be made effective without reliance upon gear. An alternative mechanic which is gear-independent in epic spellcasting might gain some pointers in this regard.

 

[Cheiromancer]

As much as it irks me, I think that it's necessary to assume that gear and feats are part of the balance equation - as much for epic spellcasting as any other aspect of the system. If you detach epic spellcasting from the equation - if you were to design a system that scaled perfectly ad infinitum - without reliance on those aspects, you then have the problem of the 100th-level caster who is balanced before feats and gear are considered still buying the +50 headband (or whatever) and gaining an unfair advantage over the caster without.

It would be nice to find a way of discouraging infinite specialization on the part of spellcasters. If someone has spent 35 feats honing their mastery of the disintegrate seed they can probably destroy the game world. And then where would folks adventure? As much as possible I would prefer not to write those 35 feats. The system might still fall apart, but not as quickly as if I were actively cooperating with those trying to break it.

I think the key to reining in mitigating factors is a seed-by-seed account of what works with what; i.e. add an addendum in the conditions of each seed re. how a spell with that seed can be mitigated against.

That does sound like a lot of work! There are lots of seeds- we have about 30 right now, and more will come. We'll probably need a table of what works with what. I think an awful lot could work with ritual spells if you allow them to transmit effects via weather, or via the special sensor that the reveal seed can create. You may also want to compel/destroy/banish creatures that are bound in a summoning circle, though it should be easier to bind them than destroy them forever. (I have a thought: we might need a constrain seed, - perhaps it is a sub-seed of compel - specifically for binding, geasing and forbidding type effects. It could be worded to bypass some of those pesky mind blank type immunities.)

Anyway, back to detail work.

I've taken a stab at drafting a third bullet-point for the conjure seed. I was thinking of spells like verdigris, raise island and eclipse when I wrote it. Exponential factors play a role- it isn't practical to make islands without them. Wall of stone and wall of thorns will be added to the list of base spells. I took the liberty of widening them to make them match the level of true creation:

• Large quantities of crude, unformed matter may be conjured; earth, stone, snow, water, vegetable matter, etc.. The material is never of particularly high quality; brambles, bushes and small trees, but not valuable lumber; assorted stones that can be shaped into a crude fence, but not marble suitable for carving, etc. A 10-ft block of solid stone can be made (12-ft, actually), or a 20-ft radius hemisphere of earthen material (loose stones, dirt or clay, in whatever proportions the caster desires), or enough shrubs, trees and brambles to densely cover a 400-ft square (or 225-ft radius circle) to a depth of 10 ft. (The volumes of material made are more or less according to the proportions of 1:10:1000). The material forms quickly, but not so quickly as to do damage to creatures caught in the area.
  Factors: Increasing the amount of crude material requires the addition of special volume factors. To create an additional quantity of material equal to the base volume, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2. To increase the base volume of material 100-fold, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +20. To increase the base volume of material 10,000-fold, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +40. To increase the base volume of material 1,000,000-fold, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +60, and so on. Only half the cost of the volume factors may be mitigated.
  Factor: Solid material may be conjured quickly enough to cause damage to those in the area of effect. Double the volume factor and add a base energy seed corresponding to the desired damage. The damage will be bludgeoning unless another type seems more appropriate (brambles might do slashing damage, say).

[edit] I messed this up a little: I forgot that wall of thorns wasn't instantaneous. I'll think about this later.

Sorry for introducing exponential factors again- but if they are included in a specific seed's factors, along with limits to mitigation, they might be safe enough to use. One could do the same thing with a suite of "Voluminous Conjuration" feats, I suppose, but I'd prefer not to rely on them. Let the spellcasters use their feats for something else than enhancing epic spellcasting; or if they are truly monomaniacal, let them stock up on nice, boring, linear improvements like more Epic Spellcasting Slots.

 

[Greybar]

Re: Vow of Poverty

There was an arena game I played in on RPOL called Exodus that was for CR25 combatants. The lead people there had rewritten Vow of Poverty based on the playtest experience that it was underpowered (especially for melee types) when compared to optimized CR25 opponents. I can't reach www.rpol.net, so the site may be dead, but I have some of the materials on another computer. I had enjoyed playing a monk/sacredfist/kensai with vow of poverty, for instance.

Re: Gear and high levels
I don't want to stray too much from the focus of this thread (epic spells), and so I'd like to confine the idea to the limiting attributes (and thus spell buffs). However, I think using a system like Upper Krust's we can covert the special effects of gear that might be seen as necessary into feat-equivalents (0.2 KR each), and then remove the wealth (0.2 KR/level) thus creating a 1 feat/level of "intrinsic gear points" that would be simpler to account for than mega-gold-pieces. Ideally (to me) this would mechanically state how you get your attack to be +10 to hit with +10d6 fire damage. The flavor that it is a sword or a burning fist or elementally manifested extension of your will becomes irrelevant. Think of how superhero games like Champions or Mutants and Masterminds do it, and I think you'll see my idea of epic characters. At level 50, why shouldn't your fighter start to seem like Superman?

Re: my mechanism from earlier.
I think that the curve I want for the enhancement bonus is the square root of KR + attribute. At level 20 someone with a 16 attribute can still get a +6 enhancement layered on (over +33%), but at level 50 someone with a (20+(50*2)/5)=40 attribute only gets a +9 enhancement (less than +25%). I'd make it steeper if I could keep it simple, and true at lower levels.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

With regard to the whole 'teetering edifice' argument, I'm going to make a very dangerous digression here and suggest we start a new thread. It should be aimed specifically at addressing issues other than epic spellcasting, i.e:

1) BAB and Save Progressions
2) Some kind of 'Cakra' system to bypass ability-boosting items.
3) Character wealth
4) Rebalancing SRD epic monsters, esp wrt. save progressions & SR

This may be biting off way more than we can chew, but I'm in no hurry. The new thread should heavily inform (and be informed by) this one.

Really, I guess I'm saying that implementing any revision to epic spellcasting cannot be done in a vacuum.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Re: massive creation effects.

My original idea was to use aggregates. Here is a draft.

AGGREGATE: REIFIED VISION
Conjuration (Creation) [Closed]

Subseeds: Conjure (B, 20), delude (S, 20), fortify (D, 14), foresee (D, 12), transform (D, 14)
Spellcraft Prerequisite: 80
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute; see text
Range: 0 ft.
Area: Up to twenty 30-ft. cubes (S)
Duration: 40 hours, then instantaneous; see text
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

The conjure seed (20), delude seed (20), transform seed (at 14), fortify seed (14) and foresee seed (12) may combine in an aggregate which allows the concrete manifestation of an illusion as visualized by the caster.

The caster may shape reality within the spell's area to conform with his or her will. Terrain may be modified, and structures created or removed to the extent of the caster's imagining: exacting detail with no craft check necessary is possible with a Reified Vision. The vision begins as a shadowy outline of the caster's wishes, which slowly gains substance and form. The area (twenty 30-ft. cubes or 540,000 cubic feet) is fully shapeable. A spell making use of a Reified Vision must be specify a particular result: a different vision requires the development of a separate spell.

• A Reified Vision has a special duration: over the course of forty hours, it slowly becomes more substantial, until it achieves concrete reality.

• A Reified Vision may not have its area shape modified – for example to a sphere or hemisphere – in order to allow subsequent area increases. Its area may otherwise be increased by using the normal factor: every additional group of twenty 30-ft. cubes increases the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4.

• Other factors and mitigating factors may be applied as normal to a Reified Vision (for example, to increase its range).

• A Reified Vision which creates inherently valuable materials is limited in the same manner as the conjure seed: for each 2 (5?) gp in value created, the caster must spend 1 XP.

• A Reified Vision cannot trap or directly harm subjects within its area of effect when invoked, although it might displace them to the limit of its area.

• Whilst normal living vegetation (such as trees and flowers) can be conjured by a Reified Vision, animal life (or other life) is beyond the scope of its power: this also requires the use of the life seed (modified to a congruent area spell), and possibly other factors as determined by the GM.

Specific uses of a Reified Vision might include:

• Erect a Temple to Your Deity. (+20 for increasing the area by 500%). You conjure forth a temple compound covering three acres. The central worship place is a massive, vaulted dome over one hundred feet high and covering twenty thousand square feet. Other buildings, including chapels, a scriptorium, meditation chambers, courtyards, a kitchen, dormitories and so forth surround it.

• Conjure a Fortress. (+60 for increasing the area by 1500%). You create an edifice of black granite with steel gates, pierced by arrow slits and topped with a crenelated battlement. The main tower is one hundred feet in diameter at its base, and its buttressed walls are twenty feet thick; it tapers to a pinnacle fifty feet wide. Machiolations project at irregular intervals from the walls. The tower is five hundred feet high, and its thirty stories can comfortably house a small army: designate space within the tower as you see fit. The tower is perched on a one-hundred foot high outcrop of rock, which can only be reached by a narrow bridge thirty fathoms long. A barbican of similar design guards the far end of the bridge.

• Raise a Small Town from the Ground. (+140 for increasing the area by 3500%). You create a small town, with a marketplace, inn, taverns, workshops, wells, a guildhouse and six hundred private residences: any individual building may be up to three stories high. The town covers some fifteen acres, and is surrounded by a curtain wall fifteen feet thick and twenty feet high above a ten-foot ditch. The town has cobbled streets, two fortified gates, and a well-developed sewage system.

• Demonstrate Your Ego and Authority. Erect a three-hundred foot high statue of yourself. Cover it in gold leaf for an extra 500 XP.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Hmmm. Hallucinatory terrain looks like the basis; that's where the 20 thirty-foot cubes comes from, and the 40 hour duration. Why not mirage arcana? Anyway, this is the vision that is made real, probably through material obtained by virtue of conjure (major creation) and shaped by transform (which is emulating fabricate).

Dunno about fortify. Does foresee stand in for the skill checks that would otherwise need to be made? I'm looking at the 4th level divination spells and nothing jumps out at me.

And what does [closed] mean? Does that mean you can't add a flexibility factor?

Do you have other examples of aggregate spells?


Very cool, btw. Very cool indeed.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Aggregate: Magical Weather
(School Determined by Base Seed) [Open]

Subseeds: Weather (S, 18), fortify (D, 14), transform (D, 14)
Spellcraft Prerequisite: 46
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 2 miles
Area: 2-mile radius circle, centered on you
Duration: As base seed, but no longer than 48 hrs; see text
Saving Throw: As base seed
Spell Resistance: As base seed

The weather seed (18), fortify seed (14), and transform seed (14) may combine to allow the potential of a spell with a huge area of effect. Other seeds may be added to the pattern to achieve a specific result.

A Magical Weather effect demarcates the limit of Epic Spellcasting power – at least in terms of the area of an epic spell, and the grand scope of Magical Weather is most appropriate to games where the PCs are major political players. The seed which is introduced into the Magical Weather pattern becomes the base seed for all purposes except area and range, with a number of additional restrictions:

• A seed or effect with an instantaneous duration may not legally combine with the Magical Weather pattern.

• A seed which combines with the Magical Weather pattern must be congruent with it – i.e. it must be an area seed, or a seed which has been modified to permit combination in an area spell.

• Magical Weather does not normally last longer than 48 hours, regardless of the duration of the base seed, and the base seed determines the duration if it is shorter. The duration of Magical Weather may be extended by factors as normal, however, and Magical Weather can be made permanent by applying the relevant factor.

• Magical Weather, as a spell made with the weather seed, takes 10 minutes to manifest after it is invoked.

• Other factors, such as increasing the area of the Magical Weather or increasing the difficulty of the Save DC to resist its effects are figured as normal. The base area of a Magical Weather spell is a two-mile radius circle – the range need not be modified by factors separately if the area is increased, and automatically increases to correspond to the new radius. Magical Weather is considered to be an immobile emanation centered on the caster which affects all who enter its area of effect.

The actual type of weather (sleet, wind, fog etc.) which accompanies the magical power of the pattern is discretionary, although it should be appropriate to the effects of the spell. Specific combinations with the Magical Weather pattern might include:

• Nullify All Magic within a City. Add ward as the base seed (+16, for the antimagic effect, +22 for increasing the duration by 1100%). All magic items, spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural powers within 2 miles are suppressed for 40 hours. USP 86 before mitigating factors. Weather type: an eerie calm.

• Render an Enemy's Army Weak and Helpless. Add afflict as the base seed (+12, +15 for changing the afflict seed to an area centered on you, +4 for assessing an additional –4 penalty to an ability score, +16 for designating an unlimited number of targets within an area spell). Enemy creatures within 2 miles suffer a –10 penalty to Strength for 48 hours. USP 93. Weather type: a wind or fog which leeches the strength from the targets.

• Enslave a Barony to your Will. Add compel as the base seed (+22, +15 for changing the compel seed to an area centered on you, +10 for a stricter compulsion, +196 for increasing the radius by 98 miles). All creatures within one hundred miles are forever loyal to you. USP 289. 72,250 XP (permanency). Weather type: perpetual, brooding stormclouds.


Note that both this draft and the one above are prototypical, but should indicate the way that I'd like aggregates to work. Descriptive seeds (D) are tricky to gauge - i.e. "the spell involves some kind of fortification" or "the spell involves some kind of transformation" or "the spell involves some kind of vision," or whatever - I also think they can be judiciously included or removed in order to achieve a semblance of "balance" - but we are really defining what 'balance' is in the context of aggregates.

[Open] and [Closed] are (working titles for) the mechanism of whether the aggregate involves a base seed or not. I'd like to change the names, but that's not high on my list of priorities.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

More Thoughts About Mitigation

I've been thinking about the natural sympathy between some kinds of mitigating factors and certain seeds - e.g. destroy with backlash etc., and wondering whether a kind of normal value vs. reduced value might be in order; i.e. destroy would receive the full benefit from backlash, but only half the benefit from (say) ritual mitigation - in the unlikely event that you found yourself with an hour free to disintegrate someone. This would be a simple mechanism, which would only necessitate a minor tweak or two to seed descriptions . The entry would be "Preferred Mitigation." Some seeds might have two or three preferred mitigating factors. Weak seeds (contact, foresee) could have the entry (Preferred Mitigation: any).

Backlash
Rituals
Extended casting time
Power Components
XP Burn

If the Preferred Mitigation for the call seed was (say) Rituals, a spell incorporating other mitigating factors would still be possible - albeit at reduced efficiency. Power components would be half as effective, you'd need to sustain twice as much backlash at the climax of the rite etc.

I wonder if power components should be the preferred mitigating factor for the fortify seed. Kind of makes sense. It might look like this:

Afflict: Any
Animate: Any
Animate Dead: Power Component, XP burn
Awaken: Any
Banish: Power Component
Call: Ritual
Compel: XP burn
Conceal: Any
Conjure: Any
Contact: Any
Delude: Any
Destroy: Backlash
Dispel:
Energy: Backlash
Force: Any
Foresee: Any
Fortify (Creature): Power Component
Fortify (Object): Power Component
Harrow: XP Burn, Backlash
Heal: Ritual, XP Burn, Extended Casting
Life: Ritual, XP Burn, Extended Casting
Polymorph: Power Component
Reflect: Power Component
Reveal: Any
Slay: XP Burn, Backlash
Summon: Power Component, XP burn
Time: ?
Transform: ?
Transport: Any
Ward: Power Component, Extended Casting
Weather: Any

As I threw this together in about six minutes, I expect there are lots of holes.

Edit: I think artifacts should always retain their full value - after all, they're artifacts.

Edit: (Random Thought): Afflict is still kind of wimpy, isn't it? Maybe greater bestow curse would make a better root.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I think artifacts should always retain their full value - after all, they're artifacts.

Depends on the artifact, I suppose. You wouldn't use the left eye of palambaron to animate the dead.

(Random Thought): Afflict is still kind of wimpy, isn't it? Maybe greater bestow curse would make a better root.

It's a great little debuffer. Although awfully similar, thematically, with harrow. You could add greater bestow curse effects at a higher level, but the basic seed is fine. I do notice, however, that blindness has a medium range while bestow curse has a range of touch. In my parallel version to your system I gave an increased flexibility in the minor effects which could be traded in for increased range:

[sblock=variant Seed: Afflict]
Necromancy

Root Spell: Blindness/deafness, bestow curse
Spellcraft Prerequisite: 8
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: Permanent (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

The afflict seed bestows some negative condition upon the target as determined by the caster. At a Spellcraft Prerequisite of 8, the caster can choose from one of four effects:

• Afflict one of the target's senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch or a special sense that the target possesses. If the target fails its saving throw, the sense selected doesn't function for the spell's duration, with all attendant penalties that apply for losing the specified sense.
  Factor: For each additional sense beyond the first which is affected by this seed, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +4.
  
• Afflict one of the target's ability scores with a –2 penalty.
  Factor: For each additional –1 penalty assessed to the ability score, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +1. This seed cannot afflict a character’s ability scores to the point where they reach less than 1.
  
• Afflict the target with a –2 morale penalty on attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks and saving throws.
  Factor: For each additional –1 penalty assessed to all four of these categories, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2.
  
• Afflict the target with a –2 penalty on caster level checks, a –2 penalty to spell resistance, or a –2 penalty to some other aspect of the target which is specified in the development process.
  Factor: For each additional –1 penalty assessed to any of these categories, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +1

Conditions
If a spell is developed which targets an ability score or a sense, the specific ability or sense to be targeted may be chosen at the moment of casting, without including the spell flexibility factor. If instead the specific ability score or sense is determined during spell development the base range changes from touch to 75 ft. [/sblock]

[edit] latest version of afflict in post 204

I can't quite get my mind around your aggregate system. I don't know why the [weather] seed gives range and area but not duration, or what the [fortify] and [transform] seeds are doing there.

I don't know why you have to research a new reified vision spell everytime you want to cast it a slightly different way. I don't know how you decided [conjure] was reified vision's base seed instead of [delude], or why the statistics are from hallucinatory terrain instead of mirage arcana.

It all seems too expensive. It seems like you can do anything as soon as you are 80th level, but not so much before it.

Maybe with more examples and the text of chapter 5 it will all become clear, but right now I don't understand what you are doing.

Re: Mitigating factors

Cabals are just too powerful; nowhere else can you get -70 in mitigation factors, not without ruinous cost. But with cabals it is routine; you could conjure a fortress every day. Maybe if it had to be combined with duration factors; for periods longer than a month, it is 1 day per point. So to get a 70 point mitigation you'd have to have a ritual 70 days long, and could get a total mitigation of 140. But then you'd kinda have to enable individuals to go for 70 days too. Maybe bring back the hundred days of the ELH? Then it's like devoting the time and effort to make a magic item. Only instead of a magic item, you get an epic effect.

Idea: Suppose you have to spend a feat to learn a particular epic spell. Would that make it easier to cast?

Idea: Or suppose you have to wait a year (or month, or week, or day) between castings of a spell. What would that be worth as a mitigating factor? And if it were a particular day of the year/month/week that it had to be cast, or a particular hour of the day?

Would these two work together?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I like your afflict - it's tidy; although the clause in 'Conditions' re. the range and limitation seems a bit contrived. But I like the idea of rendering all aspects of a seed into a single SP where practical.

I can't quite get my mind around your aggregate system. I don't know why the [weather] seed gives range and area but not duration, or what the [fortify] and [transform] seeds are doing there.

Like I say, it's a draft. I haven't even glanced at these for months (until this morning) so there will be holes. It's very mixed up - the duration is from a prior set where hallucinatory terrain was the root of the delude seed - note that I changed the SP to that of screen quickly as I cut & pasted it: in fact, if screen is the root of the delude seed, then the vision should take 24 hrs to reify. Which is nicer, anyway. Arguably, mirage arcana would make a better candidate - that was also a root in delude until I decided that screen should supersede it because it's all-encompassing.

Fortify is a descriptive seed - it has no mechanical impact on the spell. It describes the necessity of fortifying, of making something stonger, more stable, more real. Likewise transform is descriptive - although it should probably be omitted: it was included primarily to increase the SP; although if pressed, I'm sure that I could make a case as to why it should be there. Both aggregates also assume a far greater degree of mitigation than I am currently comfortable with, for reasons which we have discussed at length: there is therefore a certain degree of redundancy in insisting on the high SPs.

Conjure is the base seed of the reified vision because ultimately you're making something out of nothing.

Aggregates should act as a means of bypassing very high SPs which would otherwise be unattainable. In the original ELH system, there were a few very sketchy spells. The original intention was to create a 'superset' of epic seeds which could handle them:

Raise island - reified vision.
Rain of fire - magical weather.
Soul scry/dominion - remote manifestation
Origin of species - its own aggregate

Some kind of mechanic for:

Longevity Spells
Spells which curse families through generations
Transmogrifications which irrevocably (i.e. instantaneously) change the form of a subject
Spells which manipulate the passage of time in an area
Infusions of shadowstuff into epic conjurations and evocations
Spells which create eidolons or scions - free willed simulacra
Spells which reincarnate the deceased in any form with equal ECL

Some kind of channeling mechanic (summon + transform); some kind of planar substitution mechanic (summon + transport). Etc.

All of these need some kind of guiding mechanics - many are archetypical; many, players IME, simply want to do. In most cases, seeds alone are completely incapable of handling them.