Epic Spells Lame?

[Old Gumphrey]

Are Epic Spells lame, or is Fell Animate broken? From Libris Mortis, this meta feat allows anything killed by your damage spell to be raised as a zombie under your control for a mere +3 levels. Sounds powerful. Let's say you're a 10th level caster. You can lay down a 10d6 fireball, and anybody that it waxes pops up as a zombie under your control. Now we have this epic spell called Animus Blast...

Animus Blast

It deals 10d6 cold damage and raises up to 20 creatures that it kills as medium skeletons.

Huh?

Right off the bat, it's weaker than the metamagicked level 6 spell. This is even before we realize that the epic (and weaker) version costs four hundred and fifty THOUSAND gold pieces and fifteen THOUSAND xp to develop, and a spellcraft DC of 50 to cast (meaning you need a spellcraft check of +49 to cast this spell without error).

I knew epic spells were strange but what is wrong with this scenario? Is the metamagic feat just too good, or are epic spells really that bad?

 

[frankthedm]

Feat broken and epic is weird.

Undead are supposed to have a HD limit to control. Now if that meta animates them all and some might not be controled, then it is balanced.

 

[Drowbane]

Epic Spell Lame

 

[Crothian]

These epic spells are at least 4 years old and from a different version of the game. More then spells in the ELH have been over shadowed by what's in newer books.

 

[Vorput]

I loved the idea behind the system... but yeah- it becomes difficult to do anything with it.

Someone on these boards created a system... legendary spells- something like that, that I liked a lot. Used the basic epic rules but expanded upon them and made it all more workable.

And the feat does sound rather over-powered.

Vorp

 

[Stalker0]

The epic spell system just doesn't work unless the dm gives a heavy hand to what can be created.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

The meta feat allows up to 2x HD per use, ala standard animation limits. The more I think about it, the less I feel it is broken. Basically the only thing you are assured of success in wasting at 10th level is a horde of low levels...and a horde of low levels isn't really useful for anything other than cool factor. I can see it being put on an acid splash, and then using it to coup de grace something that would make a sweet zombie, like a dragon. So you basically get a free dragon zombie. I think that's an ok trade for a feat really, basically getting around the cost of animate dead if you play smart and get lucky...cause if that coup de grace doesn't kill it, you just completely wasted a 3rd level slot.

 

[Victim]

Epic spells are generally only worthwhile if you're abusing them by making super long duration buffs that take a while to cast or something.

Animus Blast probably would be a decent 6th level spell if you made the HD cap on controled undead explicit.

 

[Jack Simth]

Epic spells are... not for combat situations, unless you're particularly deep into epic, and are okay with 100d6 backlash damage to Destroy your opponent with a 100d20 attack.....

Of course, outside of combat situations, they can be rather easily broken as written.

 

[IceFractal]

I've noticed that most Epic spells seem to be either useless (most damage-dealing Epic spells are worse than metamagiced normal spells), or broken (+1000 to all stats for a year, spellcraft DC 1). This would seem to indicate that there is some ground between the two where you get useful but not broken Epic spells, but that ground is very slim.