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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3109325" data-attributes="member: 141">I figured that an epic wish would start at about SP 40; it would consist entirely of flexible factors (at a 2:1 rate), and so could replicate any effect of SP 20 or lower.  In many respects wish would be better; being able to replicate resurrection, for instance, which at USP 26 should be too hard to do with no mitigation.  But it is stuff like that which makes wish so troublesome.  You could still true res people until they get to 25th level or so; afterwards you could ret-con some sort of existential debt whose implications take a while to become obvious; the attention of legions of inevitables are attracted or ancient death gods are awakened or something.  To avoid these repercussions you need to use the proper 2*CR seed.Actually, what worries me most about the 2*CR meta-seed is Greybar's Ascent to Lichdom.  While one can quibble about details (the phylactery, the conditional/delay aspect, etc.) the 2*CR meta-seed guarantees that one can, in principle, turn yourself into a creature with a higher CR.  What is especially troubling is that you can't rule out this kind of thing. The precedent for becoming a lich already exists; furthermore a character could easily arrange being transformed into a vampire.  Just be killed by a captive vampire, and have it killed before you arise into unlife.  And if it can be done by non-epic characters it seems unreasonable to make it a USP 100 effect (or something equally difficult to achieve).But if you can increase your CR with some kind of epic necromantic spell, why not increase your CR by some kind of draconic apotheosis spell, which grants the half-dragon template?  Or celestial/infernal apotheosis which makes you a half-celestial or half-fiend?  Etc..    I'm in that horrible existential state of not wanting to allow it, but not wanting to rule it out, either.****I wonder if it might be better to say that, at some level of abstraction, there is no difference between clerical and arcane magic.  Or between the different kinds of spellcasters.  Thus at high levels (or with the appropriate feats) the different types of casters are mechanically equivalent.In my previous post I sketched out some feats that could narrow and even eliminate the difference between sorcerers and wizards.  I feel that there is already very little difference between wizards and clerics.  Where the difference exists, it is mostly in favor of the cleric.  Which troubles me; there are a lot of advantages (hit dice, BAB, armor proficiencies, turning) that clerics have that wizards don't- do they have to be superior in epic spells as well?I wonder if you've given this any thought?  Perhaps, given that a cleric's power flows from his god, the power of the cleric's epic spells should be capped based on the divine rank of the deity he worships/serves, and that to exceed this cap would be fairly feat intensive.  Those extra feats would serve to accentuate that epic magic is something that arcane casters do best.  I was thinking that the cap might be hit fairly soon; maybe in the mid-twenties.  Perhaps a SP of 20 + divine rank might be the cap?  For clerics that do not worship a deity, a rank would have to be assigned based on the generality (i.e. lack of utility) of their domains.  Someone with boring domains like Good and Protection might have a virtual DR of 20 (the maximum possible), while a twinked-out character with Elf and Travel or something might be deemed to virtually worship a demigod (DR 5, capping spells at SP 25).  A feat could raise this cap by +4 or something.  Or a cleric could just mitigate the spells down to the permitted zone.[edit] Let's not bring warlocks into the mix!  If we have a system that fits everybody else, I'm sure we'll find a place for them. <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=":)" />  I wonder if it is helpful to think of casting time and spell-slot as eliminable components to a spell, along the lines of somatic, verbal and material components.  Still Spell eliminates somatic components, Silent Spell eliminates verbal components, Eschew Material Components eliminates material components (well Ignore Material Components does, anyway), and Quicken Spell eliminates the casting time as well.  A spell so modified is naked and could be studied to see how to eliminate the spell-slot as well.  This spell-slot-component-removing metamagic feat would have the other component-removing feats as prerequisites, of course.Now how many levels of metamagic would eliminating the cost of a spell-slot?  That is, how many levels of Improved Metamagic would it make sense to lose if it meant ensuring that the spell-slots are not expended?  I'd say between 8 and 12; that's based on my theorizing with Ad Libitum Spellcasting.  But I would hate to make this feat (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth#Myth.2C_legend_and_poetry" target="_blank">Amaranthine Spell</a>, let's call it) just an epic metamagic feat; that would cement the hold of IM on the conventional caster, not erode it.Hmmm.  If Amaranthine Spell is a +10 metamagic feat that eliminates the spell slot, the +10 levels cost is kind of irrelevant; an amaranthine spell is effectively of zero size, and so you can pack any number of them into a 10th level spell slot.  It's analogous to having Eschew Material Components; it makes a tiny bit of bat guano enough for any number of fireballs.  Which means you can apply Amaranthine Spell to all the cantrips you know, and they will all fit inside your 10th level slot with enough room left over for a 10th level spell.  And if you have an 11th level slot you can pack all your 1st level spells in that one, and so on.If you use Amaranthine Spell in this way, you can't mitigate its cost with Improved Metamagic.  That's because Improved Metamagic can only be applied once per round per feat, and only for a moment; not enough to keep the spells at zero size indefinitely.  However, if you knew Amaranthine Spell and had 10 levels of IM you could cast one spell per round without expending it from its slot. If you had a size zero Amaranthine Spell hidden in a high level ISC slot then it could be modified by other IM spells, though.  Why not?  It'd still be a true spell, though, not a SLA.Kinda nifty.  I wonder if it is overpowered, though; if it is, it might not be by much.  Amaranthine might be +12 instead of +10, say.  But aside from this tweaking I think it looks good.</blockquote>

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