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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ozmar" data-source="post: 2474297" data-attributes="member: 8021">Thanks. Math major, grad school, etc...Yeah? Well... Let's look at that for a minute... Let's say our 100th level mage "only" takes enough ISC feats to take full advantage of his 80 Int. (Note that 80 Int is really what's broken here, but that's another issue...) With an 80 Int, he has 4 bonus 23rd level spells, so that means that he has a maximum of 35th level spells (and he has two of those spell slots) so starting from level 1, his bonus spells are 9/9/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5/5/4/4/4/4/3/3/3/3/2/2/2/2/1/1/1/1, so his total spell slots are 4/13/13/13/12/12/12/12/11/11/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5/5/4/4/4/4/3/3/3/3/2/2/2/2, for a grand total of 226 non-cantrips per day. (Note that we have assumed he is using 19 of his 28 remaining feats between level 54 and 100 on ISC.)Not too shabby, BUT, if he wants to maximize his intense time stop potential, he must spend 80 of these 226 spell slots, which is well over 1/3 of his daily potential. (If he "twins" an intense time stop *shudder*, then he will blow 2/3!) I submit that any wizard who uses 1/3 of his spells in one fight, let alone one attack, is hurting. Wizards need to be smarter than this. (Especially ones with 80 Int!) Well, using HW is certainly wise against certain targets. (Although some, I am sure, will be more resistant to it, and it does start at 9th level, and cannot be used in the first five time-stopped rounds.) Of course the key for an Epic Wizard is to know his enemy, and to defeat him with the least expenditure of energy possible. And I like how you are thinking with the other spells as well (although, again, MD is too risky IMO at higher levels, due to the increased liklihood that your target is actually carrying one or more artifacts!) The Epic Wizard certainly needs to consider dozens if not hundreds of variables and choose his tactics with the utmost of care. That's my point really: that this one intensified time stop tactic is not really a good one, and (my second point) is that time stop is not "broken", and (I guess my third point) is that, even without time stop (if you choose to nerf it) the epic wizard is not any less a complex and difficult character to play. As others have pointed out: [DM] Denied! [/DM] No DM worth their salt would allow this. That's clearly an abusive wish. Anyone wishing that he had just rested 24 hours would (at the very least) be transported into the future precisely 24 hours. At worst, he falls into an unwakable sleep for precisely 24 hours, allowing his foes to loot and/or kill him in the meantime.And what is this wish usable as a "permanent spell-like ability usable at will once a round"? This is not the first time I've heard of that hack, but when others have told me about it, it turned out that they were wrong by the RAW. Can you tell me how you think it is done? B/c I very much doubt it is possible. (If it is possible by the RAW, then that's another patch I need to make for my game!)(Open question for all: How can you get wish as a permanent Sp ability? Anyone? Bueller? I'd really like to see this...) Eh. *shrug* At this level you've got a few dozen scrolls of wish and 50,000 XP in reserve. But remember that wish is "non-epic" magic. Look out for epic spells. Those might be designed to achieve the effects you suggest, but wish should not. Well, yeah, big IF. Wish could be broken if the DM allows it to be. Don't allow it, man! Don't give in to the players when they beg. Don't succumb to the temptation to give your NPCs awesome tactics just b/c they can use a wish.I think you draw the wrong conclusions from the results of this. Sure, you probably can do 400,000 points of damage. But that does not make time stop broken, because the tactics you are using to deliver this much damage are very poor tactics. I believe that the wizard is required to devote way too much of his resources to deliver the payoff, and it is not a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination, which makes the tactic subpar.Anyway... I am tired. Kill time stop if you like, but I recommend that you allow it and wrestle with all the implications. If nothing else, it will be good practice for thinking about all the OTHER thousands of possible tricks (epic spells, nasty spell combos, etc...) that a 100th level wizard might have up his robes.Ozmar the Weary DM  <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=":)" />[Edited for clarity - removed (some) spelling errors.]</blockquote>

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