Serious inquiries only please - 100th level adventure hook and module in development

[Ozmar]

...a wizard can do 160,000 points of damage in a single round, and that is if you make your saving throw. Of course it involves a ton of feats and a Intensifed timestop and a bunch of other fun spells too, but it can be done and without Epic spells.

Will you be using 3.5 rules? B/c I don't think that time stop can be used that way anymore (nor even whether it properly should have been in 3.0). In my previous epic campaign, I learned that I had to interpret time stop carefully so it was not eligible for the persistent spell feat. It produces an effect of 1d4+1 apparent rounds, but it's "duration" should be considered instantaneous. And as the current version makes clear, IMO, you cannot "cast" a meteor swarm in time stop and have it "go off" when the time stop effect ends. I played that way for a while, and it is completely broken. Don't do it!

But I do like the massive damage rules for planetary rupture. Cool!

 

[CRGreathouse]

Give me a few more days with the character -- I'm out of state for a conference and I'm a little busy to throw the finishing touches on the characters.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Give me a few more days with the character -- I'm out of state for a conference and I'm a little busy to throw the finishing touches on the characters.

No hurries, Yair and I are having fun making 100th level guys.

Will you be using 3.5 rules? B/c I don't think that time stop can be used that way anymore (nor even whether it properly should have been in 3.0). In my previous epic campaign, I learned that I had to interpret time stop carefully so it was not eligible for the persistent spell feat. It produces an effect of 1d4+1 apparent rounds, but it's "duration" should be considered instantaneous. And as the current version makes clear, IMO, you cannot "cast" a meteor swarm in time stop and have it "go off" when the time stop effect ends. I played that way for a while, and it is completely broken. Don't do it!

But I do like the massive damage rules for planetary rupture. Cool!

I don't want to get into the math, not yet, way too much, but it involves an Intensified Timestop, 3 feats in multi spell, automatic quicken spell 6, Heightened, twin spell, Improved metamagic 10, Improved spell capasity 10, enhance spell 9, and I can't find the damn feat now, delay spell, but I know there is one that changes the base hit dice from d6 to d8 and d8 to d10 and d10 to d20, I just can't find it. I swore it was in the EPHB.

Anyway, with an intensified timestop you get ten rounds to cast spells. You cast enhanced, Twin-spell, quickened, intensified delayed - delay-blast fireballs to go of in ten rounds (5 from delay feat and 5 from the spell) You can do this 5 times a round from (because you can cast 4 quickened spells a round and with it twined it is basically 10 spells a round) each time having them go from 10 rounds to 9,8,7,6, and then you could either continue to cast more delayed blast fire-balls or switch to Horrid wilting which has a nasty fortitude save and no energy type to be resisted. Basically do the same thing.

What you end up with when the time stop wears off is a total of 100 spells going of when the delay spell effects take effect. Each spell doing 100d20, maximized to 2,000 and since it is intensified it is then doubled to 4,000 and twined 8,000 X 100 spells = 800,000 points of damage, save for half .

I haven't worked out all the feats, but that could be a nasty bit of damage and I don't think I used all of the feats I could.

I will flesh out the character and better do the example a bit more clearer to use as an example why we need to stick to the core books we listed above for character creation and perhaps an arguement against allowing Time Stop

 

[DM-Rocco]

No hurries, Yair and I are having fun making 100th level guys.



I don't want to get into the math, not yet, way too much, but it involves an Intensified Timestop, 3 feats in multi spell, automatic quicken spell 6, Heightened, twin spell, Improved metamagic 10, Improved spell capasity 10, enhance spell 9, and I can't find the damn feat now, delay spell, but I know there is one that changes the base hit dice from d6 to d8 and d8 to d10 and d10 to d20, I just can't find it. I swore it was in the EPHB.

Anyway, with an intensified timestop you get ten rounds to cast spells. You cast enhanced, Twin-spell, quickened, intensified delayed - delay-blast fireballs to go of in ten rounds (5 from delay feat and 5 from the spell) You can do this 5 times a round from (because you can cast 4 quickened spells a round and with it twined it is basically 10 spells a round) each time having them go from 10 rounds to 9,8,7,6, and then you could either continue to cast more delayed blast fire-balls or switch to Horrid wilting which has a nasty fortitude save and no energy type to be resisted. Basically do the same thing.

What you end up with when the time stop wears off is a total of 100 spells going of when the delay spell effects take effect. Each spell doing 100d20, maximized to 2,000 and since it is intensified it is then doubled to 4,000 and twined 8,000 X 100 spells = 800,000 points of damage, save for half .

I haven't worked out all the feats, but that could be a nasty bit of damage and I don't think I used all of the feats I could.

I will flesh out the character and better do the example a bit more clearer to use as an example why we need to stick to the core books we listed above for character creation and perhaps an arguement against allowing Time Stop

NOTE: even if I can't find the feat that increased the hit dice, changing them from d6s into d8s, etc, What you end up with when the time stop wears off is a total of 100 spells going of when the delay spell effects take effect.

The delayed blast fireball (which you could change the energy on with arch mage) 100d6, maximized to 600 and since it is intensified it is then doubled to 1,200 and twined 2,400 X 50 spells = 119,000

The Horrid Wilting does 100d8 maximized to 800 and since it is intensified it is then doubled to 1,600 and twined 3,200 X 50 = 160,000

119,000 + 160,000 = 279,000 points of damage, save for half .

 

[Ozmar]

I don't want to get into the math, not yet, way too much, but it involves an Intensified Timestop, 3 feats in multi spell, automatic quicken spell 6, Heightened, twin spell, Improved metamagic 10, Improved spell capasity 10, enhance spell 9, and I can't find the damn feat now, delay spell, but I know there is one that changes the base hit dice from d6 to d8 and d8 to d10 and d10 to d20, I just can't find it. I swore it was in the EPHB.

Hmmm... the theory is sound. Perhaps this would work? I would be very interested in seeing it statted out. Mayhaps a powerful bad guy will use this trick against my PCs someday to put them back in their place...

PCs can get so arrogant once they reach 30th level...

Ozmar the Prepared DM

 

[Yair]

No hurries, Yair and I are having fun making 100th level guys

Actually, I'll be leaving on Sunday for two weeks on a conference. I'll keep on working on my rouge a bit, but comes sunday I'll be offline for two weeks.

Regarding the wizard: timestop is broken. Utterly, completely, broken. Of course, lots of stuff is, but still.
What I'm more interested in is how the wizard fares without using timestop. He should still be able to whip out several spells in a single round, but I'm curious as to the save DCs and spellcaster level for SR that he can pull. (In other words: I'm curious how effective he is at affecting others without timestop.)

 

[Ozmar]

(In other words: I'm curious how effective he is at affecting others without timestop.)

Sure... but what if you don't care to eliminate time stop from the game? I am inclined to want to keep everything in unless it is so broken that it dominates everything else in the game.

One thing I did in my game was to create an epic spell that many epic spellcasters developed. Or maybe it was an epic feat... Anyway, the net effect was that if anyone cast time stop within 300 feet of you, you would be included in that time stop effect. Thus the two of you could battle it out in the time stop. It allowed you to respond to or interfere with whatever the other wizard was doing in his time stop. The net effect was that the archmage PC in my game was very nervous about using time stop, because he didn't want to face the arch-lich in a one-on-one duel for 5 rounds...

Ozmar the Tricky

 

[Ozmar]

One thing I did in my game was to create an epic spell that many epic spellcasters developed. Or maybe it was an epic feat...

Oh yeah! It was the Spell Stowaway feat. I ruled that when applied to Time Stop, the two mages were able to interact with each other during the time stop's apparent duration. Good feat for the Epic Spellcaster to have...

 

[Ozmar]

Epic Cheese

...I think the 100th level wizard is completely broken. ...a wizard can do 160,000 points of damage in a single round, and that is if you make your saving throw. Of course it involves a ton of feats and a Intensifed timestop and a bunch of other fun spells too, but it can be done and without Epic spells.

Anyway, I'm going to finish him and post him and give you the example of the massive damage combo. Not because I think we shouldn't have mages, but to show how we may have to limit a few feats.

Here is my analysis of this.

Executive Summary: The Epic Wizard is not broken, because what you suggest is a very poor tactic that requires the wizard to put ALL of his eggs in one vulnerable tactic. No wizard worth his high intelligence score would do that. It would leave him too vulnerable to survive.

Here is my analysis:

The trick relies on the following feats:

Non-epic
Quicken Spell - +4 levels
Twin Spell - +4 levels
Delay Spell - +3 levels
Maximize Spell - +3 levels
Empower Spell - +2 levels
(no problems here...)

Epic
Intensify Spell - +7 levels
Multispell - you can cast an additional quickened spell, and you can take this multiple times
Automatic Quicken Spell - taken three times, this will make all spells quick for free
Improved Metamagic - reduces modifiers of all metamagic feats by 1, to a minimum of 1, this will be used multiple times to make MM feats affordable
Improved Spell Capacity - used to get higher level spell slots required
Enhance Spell - +4 levels, damage cap increases by 10 dice, and this can be taken multiple times (+10 dice, another +4 levels)


This "trick" requires an EXTREME number of Epic Feats. No problem for a 100th level character, but how many do you need to be "really" effective?

Once you intensify time stop, you have ten rounds. So you want to maximize your potential. (Note that you can only get the most out of this trick with the official "Delayed Blast Fireball", however, if you "simply" maximize your time stop, you can use Delay Spell on any spell and get similar effects.)

It would be interesting to create a matrix and detemine how potent Epic level wizards can be if they focus on this trick at epic levels... (I actually kinda did this in Excel. I'll walk through my thoughts here...) In other words, what is their damage potential by character level? It may not be as overwhelming as it appears... (One thing to consider is that if they focus on this trick, then they are not getting any of the other awesome options they could be getting along the way.)

What is the minimum for this trick?

You could use Time Stop normally, and take your chances. But you never know how long it will last! So in order to be certain, you would like to Maximize your Time Stop. But that's +3 levels! So...

Level 24

21 - Improved Spell Capacity
23 - Improved Spell Capacity
24 - Improved Spell Capacity

(Note that these feats require 30 ranks, and so are not available until level 27: Intensify Spell, Automatic Quicken Spell, Improved Metamagic)

We have to assume that he gets a minimum Int to use these upper level spell slots... Which means he needs at least 33 Int at level 21 (34 by level 24).

Now, at 24th level, you can at least maximize your time stop. This gives you one maxed time stop per day (using your 12th level spell slot). How can you fill it?

DBF = Level 7, 20d6. Again, you want to max damage and eliminate uncertainty. But a max DBF uses your 10th-level spell slot, so you can only make one. The rest have to be empowered (+2 levels), and use four 9th-level slots.

At this point, in order to get anything more, you have to quicken spells (+4 adjust) and delay them (+3 adjust), so that's one 4th level (using the 11th level slot) and up to 4 1st-level spells (using 8th-level slots). There's no decent 4th level spell (i'm just looking at the SRD for now) so let's just heighten a fireball and use magic missiles for the level 1 spell.

Damage output = 120 + 80d6x1.5 + 10d6 + 20d4+20 points. Average damage = 645. This trick uses 4 8th-level, 4 9th-level slots and your 10th-, 11th- and 12th-level slots. Hardly worth in, IMO...

Level 24 Damage: 645.

What is the next step? You really want to get that Improved Metamagic, which you can start taking at level 27. You also get a feat at level 26, so what should that be?

There are several feats in this trick that make it sweet, so you want to prepare for the higher levels.

Multispell - this gives you +1 quick spell per round, and its effects stack(!), but we haven't really made best use of the spells we can cast yet. Ultimately, this will be key to multiplying our potential.
Enhance Spell - damage cap increases by 10 dice, but requires +4 slots, and its effects stack. This will also be key, but we really need IM to reduce these slot increases, and AutoQS to get free quickens. (Note: with Sudden MM feats, we could probably eke out a little more damage potential at earlier levels. We haven't committed all of our sub-epic feats yet.)

These feats all require 30 ranks, so a min char level of 27...
Intensify Spell - only need this once, but not before we can make the most out of a regular maximized time stop. Ultimately, we'll want to intensify all our spells.
Automatic Quicken Spell - we will ultimately want this three times to quicken all our spells for free.
Improved Metamagic - this reduces all our spell slot modifiers by 1, and its effects stack. We can't take enough of these, since Enhance Spell can be taken ad infinitum.

Level 27

Here's one progression:
26 - Multispell
27 - Improved Metamagic

At level 27, we get immediate gains, because now our trick that cost us these spell slots {12, 11, 10, (x4) 9, (x4) 8} now only costs {11, 8, 9, (x4) 8, (x4) 6} for the same spells. This allows us to up the damage ante a bit...

Max Time Stop = 11
x5 Max DBF = 9
x1 Quick Delayed Twin Empowered Fireball = 12
x1 Quick Delayed Empowered Fireball = 10
x3 Quick Delayed Fireball = 8

Level 27 Damage : 600 + 10d6x3x1.5 + 10d6x3 = 862 average

At this point, IM is the best way to go until we have the max benefit, and that means 2 more feats...

Level 30

29 - Improved Metamagic
30 - Improved Metamagic

Thus at level 30, all MM feats add +1 (the minimum), and we can go to town...

Max Time Stop = 10
x5 Quick Max DBF = 9
x5 Max DBF = 8

This is the "simple plan", which gives us a straight 1200 points of damage. For a little more, we can add...

Max Time Stop = 10
x2 Quick Max Twin Empowered DBF = 11, 12
x5 Max Twin DBF = 9
x3 Quick DBF = 8

This'll give us 1200 + 480 + 40d6x1.5 + 60d6 = 2100 on average

But wait! There's more! We've already taken multispell once, (and by now our Int gives us another 8th-level spell slot) so we can throw in:

x3 Quick DBFs = 8
x2 Quick Max Twin Delayed Fireballs = 7

Which adds another 40d6 + 40 damage. Ok, so it's another 180 points...

Level 30 Damage: 2280

So now we're smoking. We have three paths to pursue next: we could try to auto quicken everything, or we could intensify our time stop and start throwing another five rounds of spells (as well as intensifying our fireballs), or we could enhance the fireballs and start getting more damage dice. I really don't know which is better...

If we intensify, then we are starting to run out of useful spell slots. We're already using all of our top tier spell slots on this trick. Doubling the number of rounds will wipe us out. Similarly, enhancing the damage caps will give a 50% increase, but require higher spell slots. Let's get some free quickenings in first...

Level 35

Auto Quicken Plan
32 - Automatic Quicken Spell
33 - Automatic Quicken Spell
35 - Automatic Quicken Spell

Now at 35th level, we do this (all spells are now quick, and we've already taken multispell once):

Max Time Stop = 10
x5 Max Twin DBF = 9
x5 Max DBF = 8
x1 Max DBF = 8
x4 Max Twin Delayed Empowered Fireballs = 7

Level 35 Damage: 1200 + 600 + 120 + 960 + 80d6x0.5 = 3020 points (average)

It still doesn't make sense to Intensify things, b/c it will require two more IM feats to reduce it and (most important) we can't even take full advantage of 10 rounds of time stop, b/c we quickly run out of spell slots! The primary problem is that the first five rounds have to be filled with Delayed DBFs, as those are the only ones that will last past the time stop.

So let's enhance things first, and then look into increasing our spell slots. (note that I haven't taken into account the many ways to continue increasing Int, which drives the number of available high level spell slots. If we can create a +50 Int item, then we can really open this up... But I've only assumed max human int, all level increases are int, +5 inherent, and +6 enhancement.)

Level 40

36 - Enhance Spell
38 - Intensify Spell
39 - Improved Metamagic

Hmmm... once we Intensify the Time Stop, we've run out of useful spell slots real quick...

First five rounds, we need to come up with 15 Delayed DBFs (min spell slot 8)
At level 40, we have 6 8s, 5 9s, 2 10s, 1 11, and 1 12... and the Intense Time Stop takes our 11th level slot. So we can't even fill our "15 spells" that we can cast in our first five rounds... Then we have to fill the next five rounds with modified fireballs, because a delayed enhanced fireball (which equals a regular DBF) has a base level of 5, not 7.

Intense Time Stop = 11
x1 Intense Enhanced Twin Delayed DBF = 12
x2 Intense Delayed DBF = 10
x5 Max Delayed DBF = 9
x6 Delayed DBF = 8
x6 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7
x6 Max Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6
x3 Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 5

Total level 40 damage: 360 + 480 + 600 + 120d6 + 1440 + 720 + 60d6 = 4230 damage (average)

hokay... running low on spell slots... but let's take one more IM and another Multispell... We'll fill the "lower-level" slots with magic missiles.

Level 42

41 - Improved Metamagic
42 - Multispell

Intense Time Stop = 10 (note: we can potentially cast 80 spells in the time stop, but we only have 63 prepared spells (not counting cantrips...) - clearly Multispell has lost its value until we increase our number of available spells...)
x2 Intense Enhanced Twin Delayed DBF = 11, 12
x1 Intense Twin Delayed DBF = 10
x5 Intense Delayed DBF = 9
x6 Delayed DBF = 8
(this basically is our limit for the first 5 rounds of time stop... that darn DBF is 7th level!)
x6 Intense Twin Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7
x6 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6
x7 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5
x7 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4
x7 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3
x7 Delayed Magic Missiles = 2

Wham! Now we're at level 42 with: 1440 + 480 + 1200 + 120d6 + 2880 + 1440 + 1400 + 700 + 350 + 35d4+35 = 10,432 points on average...

But our poor mage has a "one shot" that eats all his spells. He has only 1st level spells remaining. At 42nd level, I'm thinking that don't cut it. No wizard in his right mind would prepare this monstrosity, because he'd be otherwise defenseless.

But let's continue...

Level 48

We now need more and more spell slots. We take more Improved Spell Capacity, but it's use is limited somewhat by our intelligence. Of course, the wizard should be looking for any and all ways to boost his Int, so let's grant him another item that gives him +12 to Int (replacing the old +6), and four more ISC feats... By level 48 he has a 46 Int, and the following spell slots available: 4/9/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/3/2/2/2/2/1/1

That ought to get us somewhere, right? A total of 84 non-cantrip spell slots.

Intense Time Stop = 10
x10 Intense Enhanced Twin Delayed DBF = 16, 15, x2 14, x2 13, x2 12, x2 11
x2 Intense Twin Delayed DBF = x2 10
x7 Intense Delayed DBF = 9
x7 Delayed DBF = 8
(still only using 26 of 40 potential spells in the first five rounds!)
x7 Intense Twin Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7
x7 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6
x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5
x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4
x8 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3
x2 Delayed Magic Missiles = 2

Ouch! Still using nearly all our spells, but at level 48 we get: 7200 + 960 + 1680 + 140d6 + 3360 + 1680 + 1600 + 800 + 400 + 10d4+10 = 18,205 (average)

Now we're using lots of high-oomph slots which could be used to enhance more, so lets increase our Enhance feat and take three more IMs to reduce it. We're now at level 54, with a total of 8 IM feats, so all of our MM feats cost +1 slot...

Level 54

(Basically, its the same spread, but using enhance whenever possible to generate a heck of a lot more damage...)
Intense Time Stop = 10
x10 Intense Enhanced Twin Delayed DBF = 16, 15, x2 14, x2 13, x2 12, x2 11
x2 Intense Enhanced Delayed DBF = x2 10
x7 Intense Delayed DBF = 9
x7 Delayed DBF = 8
(still only using 26 of 40 potential spells in the first five rounds!)
x7 Intense Twin Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7
x7 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6
x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5
x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4
x8 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3
x2 Delayed Magic Missiles = 2

Level 54 Damage: 9600 + 1280 + 1680 + 140d6 + 4480 + 2240 + 2400 + 1200 + 600 + 10d4+10 = 24,005 (average)

And now we're really running out of options. The only way to really get more "oomph" out of this is to greatly increase our number of spell-slots by increasing out Intelligence and taking more Improved Spell Capacity.

I think I'll leave off at this point. Suffice to say that the character advanced to 100th level can do a great deal of damage (although I'd be surprised to see it up to 160,000... but I'd grant that it may be possible.)

Conclusion: Even so, this is a sub-optimal character, b/c he devotes nearly all his resources (and practically all his spell-casting resources) into a one-shot whammy, which, by the way, is not always guaranteed to deliver its damage potential. Energy immunities, improved evasion, or even more prosaic defenses such as incorporeality or simply deceiving the arch-fool-wizard with an illusion or a decoy combine to make this a very poor tactic, IMNSHO...

Ozmar the Epic Number Cruncher

 

[Yair]

Ozmar the Epic Number Cruncher

That was some epic number-crunching there indeed.
You're right at these levels and under your assumptions, but I'm not sure these conclusions will still hold at level 100 and with +50 to Int. More importantly, this calculation is not really meant to be a viable tactic as much as to demonstrate the over-effectiveness of the wizard. No one needs to do THAT MUCH damage, but a wizard could partly rely on this tactic to attain immense damage potential without fully investing all his resources into it. He may not reach the full potential we (read: you) are calculating here, but even a fraction of this is truly frightening and unbalanced.

P.S, note the direct damage itself isn't necessarily a winning strategy at level 100. I can certainly see contingent or frequent true resurrections and even more powerful effects at this level.
Or quickened contingent true resurrections, as you don't to wate an action on it...