Epic Magic Big Thread

[Eridanis]

Oh, my. I've been looking forward to this for years!

I'm going to print this out and give it a comprehensive look-through on the train tonight.

 

[the Jester]

Wow- great start, Sep! I'm leaving for Burning Man today, so I won't have time to give this the thorough read-through it deserves for a week or so, but I can't wait to see where it's at when I get back!

 

[Sepulchrave II]

For the Feats, I notice that certain feats provide a -20 mitigating bonus.

I might consider allowing these bonuses to be applied before research time, cost, and xp cost are all calculated, because these are areas where the caster is specifically empowered to be better at this type of magic.

This isn't a bad idea in theory, although if I did it I'd be tempted to reduce the mitigating bonus - as will be shown, I've reigned in mitigating factors seriously and -20 is pretty hefty. Also note that development costs are substantially reduced from the 3.0 version. I've avoided the use of factors which effectively reduce the Unmitigated Prerequisite (otherwise it wouldn't be unmitigated anymore).

E.g.

DESTROYER OF LIFE [DIVINE][EPIC]*
Your ability to channel negative energy for destructive ends is supreme.
Prerequisites: Wis 25, Cha 25, Epic Spellcasting, any other Divine feat, ability to rebuke undead
Benefit: You may devise and cast epic spells usiing the slay or destroy seed which incorporate your ability to channel negative energy. If you commit your full daily complement of rebuke undead attempts to a specific epic spell which you develop which uses the slay or destroy seed as its base seed, you gain a –10 mitigating factor to the final Spellcraft Prerequisite of that spell. Furthermore, the XP cost, development time and development cost are reduced by X. All of your rebuke undead uses must be available to you when the spell is cast.

The problem is, how does one determine 'X?' Is it a static number, or a fraction of the total cost?

There was another feat "Efficient Epic Spell Developer" or somesuch, which reduced these factors, but it fell by the wayside somewhere. Maybe I should try to revive it.

really like the idea of feats that utilize the ability to channel energy. However, I would recommend not automatically requiring all of the attempts for that day. The number of turning attempts is not a specific number for all channelers. It can benefit from both feats (Extra Turning) and high ability scores (charisma).

This was the original basis of the feats: i.e. one turn undead use per -1 mitigating factor. It can get messy with pumped up Charisma scores, however, and one of the guiding philosophies behind the system is to not let nonepic buffs screw with a predictable power curve: one of the main issues with the original system is the huge number of variable factors. I really wanted to minimize this.

Likewise, with bards, the Runesong feat would need to be something like -1 mitigation per 2 uses of Bardic Music - a 40th-level Bard would thus gain a -20 DC. This just struck me as an ugly mechanic. I was aiming for simplicity with factors. Also note that these are epic spells - it simply felt 'appropriate' that a [Divine] feat which powered an epic spell should use all of the cleric's turn/undead uses for that day.

I would also recommend being able to utilize channeling energy during rituals.

I like the flavour of this. It might be tricky to implement, though. I think that ritual mitigating factors might benefit from contributed spell slots or from turn/rebuke undead uses, but not both.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Factors are up. This is where the holes start to appear.

Thanks for support, Cheiro. I'll answer what I can, but my brain is dead at this point.

Re Animate Dead:
I find the wording confusing. The various exceptions and conditions relating to the number of HD that can be controlled take a few readings to assimilate.

It's inelegant, and could use revision.

I don't know what the "similar" in "For each additional 2HD of similar undead created" means.

A spell developed with the seed could create e.g. a ghast - each additional 2HD of ghasts would increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +1. On reflection, it might be better to simply allow any corporeal nonextraplanar undead without insisting on a flexibility factor. I admit that animate dead isn't one of my strong points - any alternative wording which is workable is welcome.

I wonder why the CR of exotic undead is not included in the formula. A powerful (nontemplated) undead with relatively low hit dice could have one cost. Then if a template is reversed engineered the cost might suddenly increase.

Create undead and create greater undead were used as the basis for the judgement on these factors - the template adjustment (double the CR adjustment as an additional factor) is semi-arbitrary, but feels about right. Alternative suggestions welcome.

Re Call
I am eager to see how this works in Bind Graz'zt. As it is it seems that "unique creatures with great status (such as demon princes) may ignore the calling effect of this spell altogether if they so choose." Which makes it kind of useless.
I don't know if the Special entry overrides this ability to ignore a call. I suspect it does, or the reference to the reveal seed doesn't make much sense. Does the +60 factor implicitly include the compel seed?

Yes, it overrides it - the wording could be clearer. The +60 is a holdover from the old system's adjustment for the summon seed's ability to call unique entities, and is an arbitrary (although not unreasonable, I think) number.

Re Destroy
I would suggest that the damage after a successful save be 1/8 the damage if the save is failed. That way a +20 to the spellcraft prerequisite has approximately the same effect as just taking the seed twice. A way of boosting only the damage on a failed save would be nice. It could be a way of making a "no save" damaging effect; one that would be quite expensive, of course. Maybe +2 DC to increase the save damage by 1d6? To make a 40d6 no save disintegrate would then cost a whopping +92.

Err. Or you could just jack up the Save DC by +30 and add +64d6 damage instead...

Re Divination
I think the "For each additional question posed, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2." in the third bullet point is superfluous.

Probably. I can't really see anyone asking more than 10 questions.

Re Fortify
I don't know what you mean by "the final Spellcraft Prerequisite". Is this the mitigated or unmitigated spellcraft prerequisite? Do you count other factors too?

It's a holdover from a prior draft. It'll probably crop up again. Keep checking.

Re Summon
Can you use this to call unique creatures?

No. At least, that wasn't my intention. Hence the addition of call.

Re Polymorph
I notice that if a humanoid is polymorphed into another humanoid, all his gear merges with his new form. That seems odd.

New polymorph rules. I might be missing something.

 

[Jack Simth]

Okay, so I make an Epic spell to summon, say, a Coatle; now, I want my Coatle to have a bit more survivability, so I tack on some Heal in such a way that it ends up with what's effectively fast healing 10. Just for grins.

Well, Summon is SR: No, and Saving Throw: None.

Heal is SR: Yes(Harmless) and Saving Throw: Fort Negates(Harmless).

With the way you've got the Saves and SR set up in the overview, my Summoned Couatle with Fast Healing 10 now has SR: Yes(Harmless) and Saving Throw: Fort Negats(Harmless).

So now my Coatle decides to reach out and hit someone with some amount of SR.

The way SR is written, if a spell allows SR, and the SR penetration check is failed, the target with SR is completely unaffected by the spell's effects.

The Coatle is the spell's effect. The seed I added to give a little bit more oomph to my Coatle means that under a great many circumstances, it's now completely useless.

Or am I misinterperting something?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Okay, so I make an Epic spell to summon, say, a Coatle...

I see your point. What do you suggest?

 

[Jack Simth]

I see your point. What do you suggest?

I'm honestly not entirely certain.

Perhaps the ELH "Primary Seed" rule is appropriet; but then, people will be making Conjour Seed as the primary, and tacking on the Energy seed so what's conjoured is lit napalm in the target's square, and claiming energy's SR: Yes and Save: Reflex Half doesn't apply (silly Orb spells and precident).

Perhaps we could say that only things that directly affect something that isn't part of the spell permit SR - but again, people will be making Conjour Seed spells where the energy seed is "merely" used to set off the "mundane napalm" (silly Orb spells and precident).

As difficult as it would be for the DM with annoyed players, I suppose the best way to keep it reasonably balanced would be to make it explicitly DM call, with a handful of basic examples/guidelines - using Heal to grant Fast Healing to a Summoned Creature doesn't give the spell SR or a save, as it's the summoned creature (the spell effect) being affected, not the thing the creature hits. However, using the energy seed to grant a summoned creature a breath weapon permits SR for the breath weapon (and thus, the spell becomes SR: See Text and Save: See Text) as the energy seed is being used to affect the target the summon uses it's spell-granted breath weapon on (blech, stupid preposition at a sentence end!).

Or something. I'm as I said, I'm not really sure. I find it a might easier to point out things that are trivially bizzare than it is to actually FIX them.

Edit: Blech, Ay jest kan't spel tody, kan ay?

 

[Cheiromancer]

One of the nice features of this system is that Sepulchrave is giving some insight into the design process. A literal and narrow interpretation of the rules is going to break them somehow, either by not allowing what should be allowed, or by allowing something that shouldn't.

Special abilities on a creature might be calculated by assuming that the fast healing and breath weapon bumps up the CR of the creature it is being granted to. The DM can assign a CR to a Coatl with fast healing and breath weapon, and the resulting number can be fed into the Summon seed. It'll probably be cheaper that way than trying to combine the Summon, Heal, and Energy seeds anyway.

I'll give some thought to the other issues.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm curious, Sep, are you eyeballing these numbers and using your best judgment, or have you playtested epic games? I personally have no conception of what a game would be like when wizards have the ability to deal 64d6 damage with DC 50 saves, or teleport every piece of gold in the world into their front yard, or polymorph a planet into the sound of one hand clapping.

Such ideas are interesting in theory, but do they lend themselves to interesting gameplay? I'm not trying to hate on your work; I'm legitimately curious if you have designed these rules with actual gameplay in mind.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Sep has a story hour that has gone well into epic levels. I believe the campaign is currently well ahead of the SH, but several different epic spells have been cast.

Until the mitigating factors have been posted I can't see if it is practical to design spells that transform planets or teleport all the gold in the world. The system is supposed to work well up to level 40 or so, and tolerably well up to 50 (and maybe higher!).