Actually, that's another problem with epic levels, no ability to dispel magic. After level 30, greater dispelling becomes uselss (but that's another thread).
Hmm. One can create epic spells with the
dispel seed to deal with that, but that does nothing for the numerous epic level monsters that have
greater dispelling as a spell-like ability. But yes, that is another thread.
I thought of the same thing regarding the "cost" of dispelling then recasting an epic spell, but the ones I've seen require no XP, do a pretty decent amount of backlash (which is trivial), and involve ritual casting (which is not really a problem if you just use a few simulacrums).
The
simulacrum issue is a genuine problem, yes. Switching to caster levels will do nothing to help it, however. Only modifying the ritual casting rules and/or the
simulacrum spell itself will do that (as the existing ritual casting rules go by level of the spell slot sacrificed by the additional participants rather than their skill ranks).
I would suggest capping the level of the
simulacrum and abolishing contributions of lower-level slots to the ritual. Doesn't it seem silly that a mighty spellcaster of legend, casting a spell that breaks the boundaries of conventional magical knowledge, might need the contribution of a 1st-level apprentice, casting a spell just one level removed from a mere cantrip? Yet under the existing epic spell rules, this is a possibility. "Quickly, my apprentice, cast
magic missile so I can smite the orcs from the face of the world once and for all with
Golin's Grandiose Genocide!"
As for the backlash damage, I would strongly suggest a house rule that backlash damage can't be applied to any spell that also has a long casting time; any spell with a casting time more than one round is not intended to be used in combat, and outside of combat the backlash damage is meaningless. In fact, I think I'll add this one to my own house rules right now. (You could also make backlash damage more difficult to recover than normal damage, but that's a less elegant and more rule-heavy solution.)
Again, DC 1 spells, cheap to create. Perhaps the only problem is the long casting time, which has always struck me as odd why those extra 11 minutes of a 40 day casting reduces the DC by so much...
Heh. That is sort of amusing.
Switching to caster level can help. First, it eliminates the +Spellcraft item problems.
Eliminating +Spellcraft items does that just as well. And it doesn't have the problems involved in creating one house rule (substituting caster level for skill ranks) to fix the problems caused by another house rule (+Spellcraft items).
Second, it doesn't penalize for low skill points (ex clerics).
I don't feel this is a problem. I already made the case for skill-dependent magic in an earlier post. In any case, if your players hate it that much it should be no problem for an epic cleric to pick up a
headband of intellect to get those extra skill points. There's also a certain matter of class style involved; to put it simply, wizards are the ones stereotyped as diligent researchers and theoreticians, whereas clerics are not, and epic magic is (theoretically) highly advanced, complicated, and obscure.
Next, the numbers themselves would be much lower. I'm not advocating simply replacing the spellcraft DCs with caster level, there need to be additional tweaks (naturally).
If you'd present some of these additional tweaks you mention, then maybe we could look at the whole revised system and see how it works together. In that case, perhaps the thread needs a new name?
