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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3061297" data-attributes="member: 141">I know that in 3.5 there was a big crackdown on anything that boosts saves.  In fact, I was kind of surpirsed that they didn't change the Epic Spell Focus to +1.  I suspect it was because the 3.5 team knew there was a problem at epic levels with save bonuses outstripping save DCs.  I also know that the system doesn't normally let you take the same feat multiple times to get a stacking bonus.  Well, I suppose Toughness is a counterexample- but weapon focus, weapon specialization and so on all have these limits.  The higher level versions (greater weapon focus, etc.) have restrictions to ensure they can't be taken too rapidly.  To judge whether Epic Spell Focus needs a similar restriction depends on the play style.  If your players are casting spells on targets whose KR is well short of their own, it could be unbalancing if you let people take ESF unrestrictedly.  But with equal KR opponents (or opponents higher than their KR) they will need all the help they can get.  In fact, +2 might not give enough benefit compared to what else they could take with that feat slot.Epic Spell Focus is not, I don't think, the right tool for the problem.As a result I think that wizards will naturally steer away from effects that require a saving throw and go towards things that don't:  Epic buffs and summonings, maybe conjurations epic ice storm and the like; expecially spells for which spell resistance is not relevant.Well, I only thought of the split DCs yesterday.  Perhaps my enthusiasm will fade with time.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  More likely I will just be distracted by the next unconventional idea.  Since you are the one ultimately responsible for this document, I am freed to be unconventional, even flighty.I agree. The issue of the x10 "epic surcharge" on items is lurking in there somewhere too.  Otherwise that headband would only be 13% of the wizard's wealth.  The fact that +6 is the highest non-epic stat buffing item is part, I think, of the general trend to limit save DCs at non-epic levels; it was too easy in 3.0 for these to get unreasonably high.  This problem reverses itself at epic levels, where it is the save bonuses, not the save DCs, that are unreasonably high*.  Trying to extrapolate from one side to the other is therefore very difficult.  (*I mean the save DCs for the player characters' spells; save DCs based on monster hit dice can be quite unreasonable too.)I don't think it would be incoherent to say that the auroch's strength spell is impossible, and yet is the basis of an epic spell seed.  The realities that constrain spells at non-epic levels might make its expression impossible (although a 1-hour version might be researchable).  But this is at the "geometry level" of valent magic.  At the "calculus level" of transvalent magic, things are different.</blockquote>

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