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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ozmar" data-source="post: 2469631" data-attributes="member: 8021">Epic CheeseHere 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-epicQuicken Spell - +4 levelsTwin Spell - +4 levelsDelay Spell - +3 levelsMaximize Spell - +3 levelsEmpower Spell - +2 levels(no problems here...)EpicIntensify Spell - +7 levelsMultispell - you can cast an additional quickened spell, and you can take this multiple timesAutomatic Quicken Spell - taken three times, this will make all spells quick for freeImproved Metamagic - reduces modifiers of all metamagic feats by 1, to a minimum of 1, this will be used multiple times to make MM feats affordableImproved Spell Capacity - used to get higher level spell slots requiredEnhance 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 2421 - Improved Spell Capacity23 - Improved Spell Capacity24 - 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 27Here's one progression:26 - Multispell27 - Improved MetamagicAt 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 = 11x5 Max DBF = 9 x1 Quick Delayed Twin Empowered Fireball = 12x1 Quick Delayed Empowered Fireball = 10x3 Quick Delayed Fireball = 8Level 27 Damage : 600 + 10d6x3x1.5 + 10d6x3 = 862 averageAt this point, IM is the best way to go until we have the max benefit, and that means 2 more feats...Level 3029 - Improved Metamagic30 - Improved MetamagicThus at level 30, all MM feats add +1 (the minimum), and we can go to town...Max Time Stop = 10x5 Quick Max DBF = 9x5 Max DBF = 8This is the "simple plan", which gives us a straight 1200 points of damage. For a little more, we can add...Max Time Stop = 10x2 Quick Max Twin Empowered DBF = 11, 12x5 Max Twin DBF = 9x3 Quick DBF = 8This'll give us 1200 + 480 + 40d6x1.5 + 60d6 = 2100 on averageBut 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 = 8x2 Quick Max Twin Delayed Fireballs = 7Which adds another 40d6 + 40 damage. Ok, so it's another 180 points...Level 30 Damage: 2280So 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 35Auto Quicken Plan32 - Automatic Quicken Spell33 - Automatic Quicken Spell35 - Automatic Quicken SpellNow at 35th level, we do this (all spells are now quick, and we've already taken multispell once):Max Time Stop = 10x5 Max Twin DBF = 9x5 Max DBF = 8x1 Max DBF = 8x4 Max Twin Delayed Empowered Fireballs = 7Level 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 4036 - Enhance Spell38 - Intensify Spell39 - Improved MetamagicHmmm... 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 = 11x1 Intense Enhanced Twin Delayed DBF = 12x2 Intense Delayed DBF = 10x5 Max Delayed DBF = 9x6 Delayed DBF = 8x6 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7x6 Max Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6x3 Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 5Total 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 4241 - Improved Metamagic42 - MultispellIntense 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, 12x1 Intense Twin Delayed DBF = 10x5 Intense Delayed DBF = 9x6 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 = 7x6 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6x7 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5x7 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4x7 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3x7 Delayed Magic Missiles = 2Wham! 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 48We 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: 4/9/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/3/2/2/2/2/1/1That ought to get us somewhere, right? <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=":)" /> 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 11x2 Intense Twin Delayed DBF = x2 10x7 Intense Delayed DBF = 9x7 Delayed DBF = 8(still only using 26 of 40 potential spells in the first five rounds!)x7 Intense Twin Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7x7 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4x8 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3x2 Delayed Magic Missiles = 2Ouch! 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 11x2 Intense Enhanced Delayed DBF = x2 10x7 Intense Delayed DBF = 9x7 Delayed DBF = 8(still only using 26 of 40 potential spells in the first five rounds!)x7 Intense Twin Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 7x7 Intense Delayed Enhanced Fireballs = 6x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Twin Magic Missiles = 5x8 Intense Enhanced Delayed Magic Missiles = 4x8 Intense Delayed Magic Missiles = 3x2 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</blockquote>

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