Immortals Handbook - Grimoire (Artifacts, Epic Magic discussion)

[Pssthpok]

Is there ANY limit to the amount of Automatic Metamagic Capacities you can have? If not, then what's stopping a Demi-deity Wizard 30 from using Multifaceted to get himself as many AMCs as he wants, with the occassional Great Intelligence and Legendary Intelligence.

Tact?

Class?

Taste?

Good character building?

 

[dante58701]

Even if you waste divine abilities on feats like that...your enemies likely won't and will just blast you into the next universe with their drastically more potent divine abilities. Divine abilities are better spent on defenses. Sure, you could go Multifaceted and go on the offense...but you wouldn't last very long in a real fight.

 

[EarthSeraphEdna]

Tact?

Class?

Taste?

Good character building?

What's so far-off about a demigod mage that keeps on amasses more and more raw arcane power?

Even if you waste divine abilities on feats like that...your enemies likely won't and will just blast you into the next universe with their drastically more potent divine abilities. Divine abilities are better spent on defenses. Sure, you could go Multifaceted and go on the offense...but you wouldn't last very long in a real fight.

There are quite a number of defensive spells available, and with that many Automatic Metamagic Capacities, you can throw up several quickened defense spells at once. If you bring in the Spell Compendium, you become extremely versatile. While your peers are still destroying mountains and countries, you're blowing up entire planets and creating stars.

Anyway, I'm thinking that a good guideline for the "recommended" number of AMCs a spellcaster-type immortal should have is: [1/2 Caster Level - 9, rounded up]. This keeps consistency with the core non-epic rule that the minimum caster level for a spell is [Spell Level ×2 - 1].

A 1st-level spell takes CL 1st, a 2nd-level spell takes CL 3rd, a 3rd-level spell takes CL 5th, a 4th-level spell takes CL 7th, a 5th-level spell takes CL 9th, a 6th-level spell takes CL 11th, a 7th-level spell takes CL 13th, an 8th-level spell takes CL 15th, and a 9th-level spell takes CL 17th. (Of course, spontaneous casters like sorcerers require one more caster level to access spells.)

So why don't we continue this progression for epic spells? A 50th-level spell would require CL [50 ×2 - 1], which is caster level 99th. A 99th-level wizard should have a number of Automatic Metamagic Capacities equal to [1/2 Caster Level - 9, rounded up], so he should have 41 AMCs. He can cast a 9th-level spell augmented with those 41 AMCs and he has a 50th-level spell.

How does this guideline for "recommended maximum number of AMCs" sound?

 

[Pssthpok]

What's so far-off about a demigod mage that keeps on amasses more and more raw arcane power?

It's tacky, blatantly over-optimized tripe?

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Besides, there are so many feats that just add cool factor to a mage that I would think it boring not to take any. Examples: Automatic Writing, Improved Familiar, Various feats from Complete Arcane/Mage, Item Creation (Who Doesn't want to have an army of Iron/Mithril/Plutonium/Dark matter Golems?) and other feats that fit the flavor of your character even if they don't make your character any stronger. Taking all AMC feats might make you a spellcasting powerhouse, but if thats all you do, that seems pretty boring to me.

 

[EarthSeraphEdna]

It's tacky, blatantly over-optimized tripe?

If you really don't want players to take Automatic Metamagic Capacity as 50% of their feats and divine ability slots, then maybe there should be an actual hard rule dictating the maximum amount of AMCs a character can have, instead of just an unspoken and ill-defined recommendation.

 

[Anabstercorian]

If you really don't want players to take Automatic Metamagic Capacity as 50% of their feats and divine ability slots, then maybe there should be an actual hard rule dictating the maximum amount of AMCs a character can have, instead of just an unspoken and ill-defined recommendation.

Seconding this. Rules endorse behavior. If your rules are directly endorsing weird and annoying behavior, you need to change the rules.

 

[Pssthpok]

Maybe 1 feat per relevant ability modifier?

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

Reading between the lines, you could say that the ability to cast spells at the normal maximum level means that you can only use one AMC feat to cast 10th-level or greater spells for every two levels above 17th.

So at 30th-level with 10 AMC feats you could still only cast a maximum of 15th-level spells, even though you could apply the full 10 levels of AMC to any existing 5th-level spell or below.

The only exceptions I would suggest are characters with the magic portfolio allowed to take up to the above number plus their divine rank (or double that for double Magic Portfolios)...and even that probably needs curtailing to +1 per status (rather than rank) if DDQ is used.

 

[Kerrick]

So why don't we continue this progression for epic spells? A 50th-level spell would require CL [50 ×2 - 1], which is caster level 99th. A 99th-level wizard should have a number of Automatic Metamagic Capacities equal to [1/2 Caster Level - 9, rounded up], so he should have 41 AMCs. He can cast a 9th-level spell augmented with those 41 AMCs and he has a 50th-level spell.

Yeah... except that UK and I agree (though we disagree about how you should get those spells) that epic spells should be 1/3 levels, not 1/2. A L50 spell would be CL 141, and you'd need 150+ in your spellcasting stat.