Epic Magic Big Thread

[The Forsaken One]

Sweet thread, I skimmed it a bit for the last 20 min and I'll have the proper go at it that it deserves later today or somewhere next week as time and spouse permit .

Glad to see you posting Sep! Got high expectactions for this seeing you taking this beast by the horns.

Hope you are well and everythings fine for the rest . Havent read anything about you in your SH threads for a while, even if it was just a couple of lines on how you were doing .

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Do you think this might work?

Seed: Summon
Conjuration (Summoning)

Root Spell: Summon monster IX
Spellcraft Prerequisite: 28
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 75 ft.
Effect: One summoned creature
Duration: 20 rounds (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This seed can summon a single outsider of CR 12 or less. It appears where the caster designates and acts immediately, on his or her turn. It attacks the caster’s opponents to the best of its ability. If the caster can communicate with the outsider, he or she can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions. The type of creature is determined in the spell development process, or the appropriate flexibility factor included.

When the spell that summoned a creature ends, and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast which remain in effect expire. A summoned creature may not use any innate summoning abilities it may have or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any innate planar travel or teleportation abilities that it might possess. It refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilites which would cost it XP if they were spells. When a caster develops a spell with the summon seed that summons an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, the completed spell is also of that type.

Factors: For each additional +1 CR of the summoned outsider, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +2. To summon more than one outsider, increase the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +8 for each additional summoned outsider of the same type. If the caster increases the Spellcraft Prerequisite by +10, he or she can summon a creature of CR 12 or less from another monster type or subtype. The summoned creature is assumed to have been plucked from some other plane (or somewhere on the same plane). The summoned creature attacks the caster’s opponents to the best of its ability; or, if the caster can communicate with it, it will perform other actions. However, the summoning ends if the creature is asked to perform a task inimical to its nature.


***

[Trying to avoid Chi/Rho here]

This powers up the summon seed a little with regard to the CRs of single creatures it is capable of bringing in - a CR 12 creature is now SP 28 instead of SP 32.

Is a flat +8 per additional summoned outsider viable: technically it should only be +4 (if CR (x+2) = CR (2x) - if the CR system worked, of course.) +8 seems safer. Two balors would be USP 52

29th level character w/ Epic Thaumaturgy feat can hit this with no additional mitigating factors.

Even epic monsters might not be a problem: 3 glooms would be USP 80 (and no Epic Thaumaturgy here, so high burn).

A single primal elemental would be USP 74.

A phaethon would be USP 72 - although I'd argue that the Phaethon is closer to CR 40 than CR 34.

Two Phaethons (Phaetha?) (absurd, I know) would be USP 80. A cleric 20/thaumaturge 5 with the Epic Thaumaturgy feat (total -25 SP) taking 25 points of Backlash (-25 SP) can pull this off if he extends the casting time to 1 round.

Oops. Need to rethink that.

Maybe I should include something in the seed which renders creatures with DvR exempt, or there should be a +10 increase for DvR0. Should abominations be beyond the summon seed's remit? Has UK reconfigured equivalent CRs for creatures (not his own system, but a reapproximation of WotC's CRs?)


I feel kind of bad about druids getting stung on the +10 surcharge for summoning non-outsiders when animals, fey and magical beasts, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I didn't want to include a specific get-out clause in the seed, but I'd argue that this counts as an 'area of special expertise' so they'd benefit from a -5 mitigating factor.

A [wild] feat which works the same as the epic [divine] feats might be nice: it would cover summoned creatures of appropriate type, using polymorph seed to assume appropriate types etc. I've thought about this before, but haven't quite found the right combinations.

Edit: a series of epic [wild] feats are definitely in order. Weather seed also plus electricity application of energy.

Hope you are well and everythings fine for the rest .

Ta. I'm doing pretty well. Outside of gaming, I have acquired the dubious title of chef de cuisine which means that I get to sit on my ass at work more. I'm remodelling my house (slowly) with my meagre finances.

 

[Cheiromancer]

One thing that is kind of troubling me is when a 21st level epic wizard can't research an epic spell that exactly emulates a 9th level spell. Using the new version of the Summon Seed, the wizard can't replicate summon monster IX. Even with the "increase casting time to one round" mitigating factor it will still have a Spellcraft Prerequisite of 26, for which 23rd level is required. This is also true for the other seeds. A 7th level base spell becomes a seed with Spellcraft Prerequisite 24; a 21st level caster can barely attempt it.

This version is better than the previous version (Spellcraft 30 or 27th level), but not enough better.

A caster would be better off gaining a 10th level spell slot and researching a spell that is suitably powerful to fill it. Longer casting time and xp/gp costs also apply to make normal spells lower level than they would otherwise be.

The base power of a Summon Seed with a Spellcraft Prerequisite of 24 should be more like a summon monster X.

I can't see how to do this without changing the base spell seeds drastically- essentially reduce the SP by 6 across the board.

 

[The Forsaken One]

I have acquired the dubious title of chef de cuisine which means that I get to sit on my ass at work more.

Gratz

Now to start reading this monster hehe .

 

[Sepulchrave II]

The base power of a Summon Seed with a Spellcraft Prerequisite of 24 should be more like a summon monster X.

I can't see how to do this without changing the base spell seeds drastically- essentially reduce the SP by 6 across the board.

It bugs me as well. But I think a -4 would be adequate: it would bring it on par with a 9th-level spell. Also, bear in mind that no spell can have its SP reduced to less than 24. It would actually be pretty simple to accomplish, via a new mitigating factor: this would mean that multiple seed spells wouldn't suffer a cumulative -4 to the SP for every seed they involved.

Epic spell involves only one seed............................................... -4

 

[Cheiromancer]

I don't think you've posted your rules yet for multiple spell seeds... have you? Or for a few other things, like those rules for aggregates, or the magnum opus. Unless you snuck an edit in when I wasn't looking.

You have to admit that reducing spell seeds by 6 would make the energy seed very elegant- 10d6 for 10 SP, and +1 d6 for +1 SP. And this would help address SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS' concern that 18d6 at 21st level was useless.

You could think of it as a partial compensation to wizards for no longer being able to add their Int modifier to their spellcraft checks. I'm already thinking of the change in base casting time (1 standard action vs 1 minute, worth +20 in the old system) as being a partial compensation for not allowing items of spellcraft +30. And the mitigating factors have pretty much been halved across the board- giving a little bonus at the front shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Cheiromancer]

A Summon seed of 24 for a CR 12 creature would also be very elegant. My -6 suggestion, but then add back +2 for having the casting time become one standard action instead of a round. Or just by fiat.

I think you should build in an exception for druids; they can summon animals, fey or elementals for the standard cost instead of paying +10. Or tie the kind of monsters easily summonable to the kind of knowledge that the character has 24 ranks in. Knowledge (arcana or religion) gives outsiders, Knowlege (nature) gives you animals, fey and elementals, say. If you have lots of ranks in both, your summoning is much more versatile. Various feats can give you the ability to summon oozes or vermin or whatever.

A phaeton in UK's rules has a CR of 92. That's his own system of CR (maybe we should call it KR for "'Krust's Rating"?), but he suggests multiplying by 2/3 to convert to the WotC system. (Multiply by 1/2 for dragons, or anything else that WotC deliberately underrates.) So CR 61 or thereabouts. A balor is KR 28, or CR 19. Using the CHI/RHO system two balors would be equivalent to one CR 27 monster. USP of 54 according to my suggestion- very close to your USP 52.

CHI/RHO multiplies the base CR by the square root of the number of critters. Two CR 20 monsters should be as hard to summon as one CR 28 monster.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I don't think you've posted your rules yet for multiple spell seeds... have you? Or for a few other things, like those rules for aggregates, or the magnum opus. Unless you snuck an edit in when I wasn't looking.

No, not yet. I'm holding off on them because they'll need revision in the light of various tweaks necessary to the first four sections.

You have to admit that reducing spell seeds by 6 would make the energy seed very elegant- 10d6 for 10 SP, and +1 d6 for +1 SP. And this would help address SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS' concern that 18d6 at 21st level was useless.

I do. I was trying to take a nap just now, but couldn't get my mind off of it. The formula for all seeds becomes (2 x Spell Level) +4. This has occurred to me before, but in all cases (e.g. fortify) I've erred on the side on underpowering Epic Spellcasting and slowly loosening the vice, so to speak, rather than trying to rein things in. At (2 x Spell Level) +4, a 10th-level spell also becomes SP 24, which is the magic number...

You could think of it as a partial compensation to wizards for no longer being able to add their Int modifier to their spellcraft checks. I'm already thinking of the change in base casting time (1 standard action vs 1 minute, worth +20 in the old system) as being a partial compensation for not allowing items of spellcraft +30. And the mitigating factors have pretty much been halved across the board- giving a little bonus at the front shouldn't be a problem.

The 1 action casting time compensates primarily against 'take 10' on the skill check and an assumed +10 ability modifier as the baseline to the old Spellcraft check.

As this is an open work, I'm simply going to retool the whole shebang to see how it looks.

Edit: thinking of doubling development costs at this stage.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Edit: thinking of doubling development costs at this stage.

Why that? Or are your increasing the power of the spells even though you are lowering the DC? Aka wizards still generally get the same power per spells @ the same levels as they used to per the epic system but you are just making the power growth more in line with level devellopment by taking out the variables like INT and Item dependancy by reducing it to roll instead of taking 10 and making it purely based on spellcraft gained by ranks/feats?

In that case I have no idea if you should edit the spell cost. It would entail and should even result in a rework of the devellopment cost but on the other hand epic spells are VERY expensive already and alot of them already cost damage, experience or hefty materials at casting.

(this obviously to prevent weird variables and potential abuse by crafting + SC items and buffing your int to 400 by chaining epic buff spells.)

By making it a roll and not taking 10 have you given thought to a failcheck/mishap table to entail a certain risk of toying with transvalent magiks.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Edit: thinking of doubling development costs at this stage.

Well, this is an easy dial to adjust. You only have to change one rule. It's trivial compared to going through and changing the spell seed formula to [(spell level x 2) + 4]. Or to further fine tune those spell seeds to reflect the variety of casting times and components of the base spells.

According to the DMG, new spells cost 1000 gp/spell level and take 1 week/spell level to research. The spellcraft check is pretty easy; only 10 + spell level. I should hope that a 21st level wizard with maxed out spellcraft could make a DC 20 check to learn a 10th level spell.

As written it will cost 24,000 gold and 960 xp to learn the USP 24 spell that corresponds to a 10th level spell. Only 24 days though, as opposed to 70. If 1 xp = 5 gp (the usual conversion rate) then you've tripled the cost in order to reduce the research time to about 1/3. And you've even added in the option of doubling the time in order to halve the cost; this makes epic spell research even more similar to standard spell research (50% more expensive at 2/3 the time).

I don't know if the spell research rules in the DMG are any good, though. I've never seen them used. Folks just buy scrolls instead. (Is the "copy from a scroll" formula the one you are going to use for tablets?)

I suspect that the cost should increase quadratically with the difficulty of the spell. But I doubt this a surprise to you; you know I like to square numbers!

How about USP squared times 50? 28 800 gp for a USP 24 spell (20% more than now), but a USP 40 spell will cost 80,000 gp, twice its current cost. And higher level spells will cost even more; USP 60 is 180,000, for example, three times what the current rule suggests.