Epic Magic Big Thread

[Pyrex]

Example 1: A pearl of power (1st) is a slotless item that costs 1,000 gp. Its base price can be calculated to be 500 gp. A pearl of power that works 3 times per day would cost

(2 x 500) + 500 + 500 = 2000 gp​

I don't think PoP's are slotless. While being used, they occupy one of your hands; you can't activate a pearl that's sitting in your backpack, you have to use a move action to put something away, then another move action to retrieve the pearl, and finally a standard action to activate it.

On another topic, given that given the magic item creation guideline that an extra spell is worth Level*Level*1000gp (i.e., Pearl of Power); and given that over half of the Rings of Wizardry are priced at Level*Level*1000gp*5(Max number of Wizard spells by level)*2 I would then posit that the cost of each individual spell slot granted by the ring has already been costed with the *2 multiple powers multiplier. (Under this pricing structure Ring1 costs twice as much as it should, Ring2 spot-on, Rings 3-4 are undercosted and Rings 5-9 match up as well)

 

[Cheiromancer]

I put a preliminary build for Jake on page 11. I've kept him a generalist wizard but I think it would be a really good idea that he take levels of archmage. He can sacrifice a few slots for things like arcane reach, which will save him precious USP for certain spells (he can keep them range touch instead of close, which is valuable). That requires two Spell Focus feats; I'd just ditch the GSF. Improved Counterspelling might be handy too. The archmage ability that reflects countered spells on the attacker would be excellent against a metamagic specialist like Matt. Without AMC and MF the lower level spell slots aren't worth as much; might as well sacrifice them to feed archmage abilities.

Matt has a lot of spell slots available, and 8 levels of metamagic makes them pretty powerful. Matt can also switch around metamagic deployments on the fly. If he learned delay spell along the way he could cast a quickened, maximized time stop at the first round of combat, and then cast a slew of spells that will go off just as the time stop ends. Jake's non-epic spells aren't capable of such effects, so he'll need to parallel this exploit with far fewer epic spells. One epic spell to emulate a quickened, maximized time stop - I don't know how he'll use the resulting 5 round window.

Some long duration buffs will be needed, too, to replicate these week long mind blanks and such that Matt has. And a variety of attack spells.

I hope 15 epic spells is enough. He could get more, but if he gets many more his equipment will really start to hurt.

[edit] Actually, forget what I just said about the archmage. There's no epic progression for this class, and taking it will mean no epic bonus feats until the missing 5 levels of wizard are made up.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

The current thread is starting to get kind of unwieldy: some people who see it will think "500 posts? I won't bother reading that."

We're also at a point where where issues tangential to the main thrust of the thread are beginning to dominate; we're losing the plot, so to speak. This is natural, but I submit that this thread has run its course, and we need to start a new one. I'm starting to suffer from information overload, and clutter offends my Virgoan sensibilities. I'm feeling the need for a blank page.

I have a proposal:

1) We start a new thread. I would suggest that this new thread initially focuses specifically (although not exclusively) on seeds. It seems to me that this is pretty fundamental, and we're not going to make too much progress until we've got them hammered into a reasonable shape. Furthermore, I would suggest we set ourselves a concrete deadline. I'm generally an optimistic kind of guy, so how about this: we finish the seeds by the end of the year. Sounds dangerously plausible, doesn't it? We can transfer Matt, Jake, Thomas & Mr. Utility over for reference.

2) We start an additional (3rd) thread, if we deem it necessary. This thread can embrace all of those nagging 'other' concerns: saving throws, character wealth, item prices etc.

What do you think?

 

[Cheiromancer]

I've been downloading the thread at intervals so I could search for particular bits of old information. It's almost 500 pages of text, and quite unwieldy. And yeah, we've been moving sideways for a couple of pages.

I am not sure a new thread is the best answer. We really need a forum; that way there could be a thread on optimized Matt, Jake, Thomas and John S. Mill (Mr. Utility). And a different thread for the different seeds. Threads could be spawned as necessary; discussion about the power curves, and so on. Otherwise we'll get endlessly sidetracked (at least, I will).

How about we get a publisher's forum? What do you want your publishing company to be called?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Jake:

I'm assuming that Jake's Epic Spellcasting feats also subsume any Humfs?

I think that using # of Spellcraft ranks for USPs is probably a good medium - Jake may have developed higher USPs (which require mitigation); he also probably has some lower USP spells (which he developed at earlier levels). We need to think more about how we cost spell upgrades at some point, as well.

At present, I'm thinking that epic spells are gonna need to be pretty damn potent to contend with Matt. Good.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

How about we get a publisher's forum?

Okay.

What do you want our publishing company to be called?

Edit/

Jacobean Publishing.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Actually I felt that Jake was short of spell slots compared with Matt. Matt has 22 slots of levels 7, 8 and 9 which can be boosted immensely and flexibly with. Going full-out with Epic Spellcasting Jake can only manage 9 slots.

I was thinking upgrades are priced on the difference in USP. I was thinking of him taking a USP 24 spell and boosting it by +3 to get a USP 27 spell at a cost of 3000 gp extra. An oversimplification, but it shouldn't make a lot of difference.

Heavily mitigated spells will be a pain if they involve expensive components and/or lots of xp payments. They through off the wealth by level guidelines, and could prevent characters from leveling up when expected. Item crafting feats will also screw things up. I don't know if you have a rule of thumb for handling such things. I liked to use "wealth audits" of characters to ensure their wealth was appropriate to their level, but I never found a good way of modifying the numbers for characters who made their own items (who would thus have less xp but more cash) or who used lots of limited wishes and what not. Well, we never got to those levels of play, so it never came up.

My formulas indicate that a player who stays a level behind the rest of the group in order to earn more xp in order to spend them on stuff will be able to spend about 3000 xp per level without falling further behind. That's with xp assigned according to a formula that takes the square of CRs, but otherwise as in the PHB. With the official exponential xp system... well, it's broken, so it is hardly worth discussing. But players get a lot more xp for being a little bit behind. This is worth a thread in its own right!

[edit]

Just "Jacobean"? Or Jacobean Press? Jacobean Publishing?

I've posted a thread in Meta asking how this would be accomplished.

[edit2] Jacobean Publishing it is... but it sounds like Morrus doesn't want to sell any more forums. Did Deborah Balsam from Dog Soul get in touch with you? I bet she'd let us use Dog Soul's forum. I know her- she's good people. Jacobean Publishing could be an imprint of Dog Soul.

[edit3] In Pricing robe of the archmagi I complain about the discrepancy between the DMG price and price when you work things out. The robe should be 130,500 (91350 after the alignment discount), but is only 75,000. I'm thinking that alignment restrictions are not appropriate for PC created (or improved) items; they don't reduce the utility of the item in any way. They are better for equipping villains with.

I'm thinking that as a general rule, non-standard items should be priced according to Skip's formula, without faux restrictions, and then a fixed, ad hoc discount applied to reconcile things with the DMG.

For a robe of the archmagi the ad hoc discount would be 55,500 gp; the difference between the formula price and the book price. If a player wished to improve the item to give a +8 armor bonus, SR 32, +5 resistance bonus on saves and +4 spell penetration, they'd calculate the cost as follows:

SR 32 is 200,000
+8 armor bonus is 64,000 x 1.5 is 96,000
+5 resistance bonus is 25,000 x 1.5 is 37,500
+4 bonus vs SR is at least 24,000 x 1.5 is 36,000
(I'm guessing bonus squared x 1500)

Total: 369,500 - 55,500 = 314,000

The augmented robe would still retain its alignment restriction, but wouldn't get the full 30% discount for being restricted to a particular alignment. And it has to pay the surcharge- or most of it, the ad hoc discount applies. If we followed the weird pricing scheme that the robe of the archmagi followed (no surcharge, 30% discount) it would cost only 219,100 gp.

I think this is a good way of remaining faithful both to the section on pricing magic items and to the description of the robe.

Oh, and SR 32 is probably the highest we should follow the (SR - 12 ) x 10,000 formula. Above that we should do something different. Although I still disagree with you on the use of a cubic formula. It should be quadratic.

 

[Greybar]

Well, I haven't done that much with it, but this discussion prompted me to go ahead and post the idea for Intrinsic Gear that I mentioned many pages back. Hope you find it interesting.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Oh, and SR 32 is probably the highest we should follow the (SR - 12 ) x 10,000 formula. Above that we should do something different. Although I still disagree with you on the use of a cubic formula. It should be quadratic.

I wonder if the prices of *more* epic items should increase by the cube.

Say weapons. If you define epic as:

a) Any weapon with a combined bonus total of +11 or higher;
b) Any weapon with a +6 or higher enhancement bonus to hit and damage, or
c) Any weapon with an epic special quality (like fiery blast)

and calculated the price of an epic weapon with the formula bonus^3 x 200, levelling a flat epic surcharge of 200K (the epic 'speed bump' - some of this is a good thing). You'd get:

+6 longsword (basic model) = 243,200
+4 frost keen speed wounding longsword = 466,200
+6 unholy power mace = 748,800
+10 everdancing vorpal greatsword = 2,633,400

Which makes a lot more sense than the current rules.

• Fighters don't have to shell out as much at low epic levels. The basic model is available at 25% of wealth at level 23. Using ELH prices and UK's wealth guidelines, it wouldn't be available until level 32. According to the ELH and the ELH guidelines, level 26.
• A souped up version of a nonepic weapon (say you wanted to add speed to your +4 frost keen wounding longsword - costs you an extra 338K instead of however much it was before. How this weapon should be otherwise costed is not adequately explained in the ELH.
• The +10 everdancing vorpal greatsword, at 2.6Mgp instead of 10.5Mgp: a fighter gets it at level 48 instead of level 75 (UK wealth rating). According to the WotC wealth rules, he'd get it at level 53 ish. I suggest a cubic method of pricing items might be a better fit with UK's cubic wealth rules. Interesting 2:3 ratio.

Any of these weapons (even the ones with an enhancement bonus to hit and damage less than +6), should be considered 'epic' for the purposes of creation feat prerequisites and the ability to penetrate epic DR.

And a 48th level fighter should be as viable to play as a 48th-level Matt, right?

Edit: Epic special abilities are lame.

Edit: that's fiery blast

 

[Cheiromancer]

That's a very interesting idea, Sep. I'm game to change the pricing rules. The long gap when you are nominally epic yet can't afford a +6 weapon strikes me as odd. Sure you need a speed-bump, but the jump from 200,000 gp to 3,600,000 is too much.

It was pointed out to me yesterday that any item that costs more than 200,000 gp is epic, and takes an epic feat to craft. The crafting rules introduce an xp speed bump as well; a 200,000 gp item takes 8,000 xp to craft (non-epic) and a 200,100 gp item takes 12,001 xp. And 200 days, of course. I wonder if the cost should be (gp/100 + 6000 xp) rather than (gp/100 + 10,000). That would make it segue more smoothly.

I'm wondering if the "magic shop" mentality is at all appropriate at these levels. Should we assume that people are making the items? Should we look more closely at the xp and time costs? The feats aren't a problem; I did a search on psychic reformation and while Karinsdad thought it was "borderline broken" because it enabled people to discard low level feats (like toughness) at mid-levels, and qualify easily for prestige classes without suffering suboptimal choices for several levels, I couldn't find anyone who thought that emulating it with a limited wish was a bad thing. So if Matt (or Jake) want to take a few years off to craft 1 million gp worth of items, the lack of a feat is the least of their worries. The ELH system said that epic spell research proceeds at the rate of 1 day per 50,000 gp. I wonder if that same rate would be better for epic items. It would make the epic crafting feats seem, well, epic.

These would be new threads in our wished for forum. Some of the publishers haven't posted *anything* in their forums thus far. I wonder if they would let us work there if we asked nicely?

[edit] And yeah, epic fighters should be fun to play. I'm thinking a few Spell Stowaway feats could be a very unpleasant surprise to an epic fighter, especially if they were broadly worded. Being able to stowaway on time stop and epic spells that emulate it. Being able to stowaway on teleports and dimension door type magic at the cost of a feat. Stuff like that.

They don't meet the prerequisite for the feat, but I think it would be great if they could get the benefit somehow. It would put them back on an equal footing with mages.