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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sepulchrave II" data-source="post: 3058389" data-attributes="member: 4303">I was mulling over the destroy seed and disintegrate again today on the bus. It's not necessarily that I'm fixated on this seed (and the factors which apply to it), but I'm unusually anxious to get it right. I was considering the respective daily resources available to the conventional disintegrator and the destroy seed specialist, and it occurred to me that, by 39th level - with 13 epic feats under his belt - the destroy seed specialist can be churning out 11 really nasty epic spells per day: assuming that it takes two feats to purchase the 'augmentation' of destroy to its highest power (8d6/+1), and the remaining feats are spent on additional epic spell slots. [General Edit in view of lousy math]:These spells won't be (quite) of the magnitude of vengeful gaze of god, but even with no mitigation and an SP of 42 we're still talking up to 11 x 368d6 (1288hp) epic disintegrates. My initial feeling was 'OMG, that has to be way overpowered.' It is somewhat.In contrast, by level 39, the caster who has decided to go the metamagicked nonepic disintegrate route can now fill 9th through 14th-level spell slots with Intensified disintegrates - this caster has 23 x 480hp disintegrates available through the course of the day. If he switches out one of his Multispell feats for Improved Heighten Spell, he can also match the DC of the epic disintegrate on two of these, and have somewhat more competitive DCs on many more. Or he can Quicken a bunch of them.[Edit]: This weighs in at 14,168 damage (epic disintegrate vs 11,040 damage (metamagicked nonepic disintegrate). The conventional caster is burning all of his 9th-level slots to achieve this in addition to his 10th+ slots - which the epic caster is not. Question: Is the metamagic versatility which the conventional caster enjoys sufficient to offset his consumption of 9th level slots? He can be filling his 8th-level slots with Intensified cacophonic bursts, or Quickened Empowered disintegrates (or whatever). But he can't cast gate or wish.In other words, I'm [edit: not] satisfied that a feat which allows exponential factors [edit: for the destroy seed] is necessary to make epic spells which deliver damage competitive with metamagicked nonepic spells.[Edit: Unfortunately, the math just made me revise my position]. Possible Solution:Metannihilator [Epic][Epic Magic]Prerequisites: Epic Spellcasting, (Maybe Empower Spell), Spellcraft 30 ranks, Spell Focus (Transmutation), ability to cast disintegrate as an arcane or domain spell.Benefit: Your base damage when devising and casting epic spells which contain the destroy seed is increased to 80d6. If you use factors to further increase the damage of the spell, you gain +4d6 to the damage delivered by the spell for each +1 increase in the Spellcraft Prerequisite. [Other benefits?] Herald of Eschaton [Epic][Epic Magic]Prerequisites: Epic Spellcasting, Metannihilator, (Maybe Empower Spell), Spellcraft 42 ranks, Spell Focus (Transmutation), ability to cast disintegrate as an arcane or domain spell.Benefit: Your base damage when devising and casting epic spells which contain the destroy seed is increased to 120d6. If you use factors to further increase the damage of the spell, you gain +6d6 to the damage delivered by the spell for each +1 increase in the Spellcraft Prerequisite.Other possible solutions:1) Increase the prerequisite ranks for Herald of Eschaton (probably 48), and retain the 160d6 +8d6/ +1SP.2) Keep the base damage at 80d6 for Herald of Eschaton, but change the factor to +8d6/+1SP.3) Stiffer prerequisite feats for Herald of Eschaton (another epic feat, at least)4) Screw it. 368d6 without mitigation is too cool. Let's do it anyway.</blockquote>

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