[short rant] My only beef with EPIC...

[kenjib]

Perhaps they should have known better than to try an open-ended design model for powerful magic in the first place.

It doesn't take a game design theory guru to realise that any such system which has pretensions exceeding a minimal level of open-ended complexity and power leaves the barn door wide open to abuse. But hey, hindsight's 20:20...

There's bad...and then there's bad. The Sovereign Stone magic system has something roughly similar for creating spells, for example. However, it uses a formula of (target * duration) + (area * range). This formula is much more robust due to the relationship that multiplication adds. Sure, it can be abused, but nowhere near the Epic Level spell seed stuff. When I saw the Epic Level spell seed guidelines I was, frankly, shocked that they would print such crap. You'd get much better results just winging the DC and costs entirely.

 

[Impeesa]

Lightweights, all of you. First, mitigating factors are applied *after* the x5 multiplier for permanency. While the DC's for the premade spells in the ELH really can't be trusted to begin with, you'll find a lot of homemade spells are a lot less broken now.

That, and there are much better ways to break the system. I can have a level 27 caster with ~2000 for ability scores. Here's a hint: it involves Legendary Commander and all the adepts in your campaign world.

--Impeesa--

 

[Dark Eternal]

Lightweights, all of you. First, mitigating factors are applied *after* the x5 multiplier for permanency. While the DC's for the premade spells in the ELH really can't be trusted to begin with, you'll find a lot of homemade spells are a lot less broken now.

That, and there are much better ways to break the system. I can have a level 27 caster with ~2000 for ability scores. Here's a hint: it involves Legendary Commander and all the adepts in your campaign world.

--Impeesa--

See, I guess that what confuses me is this:

Are we supposed to try and find ways to break the system, or are we supposed to try and find ways to make it function as is?

I guess that I'm just lucky that my players think that it's the latter - our games would be screwed in short order if they were looking for ways to make stuff disfunctional.

Edit: Truncated sig.

 

[seasong]

Dark Eternal: Personally, the first thing I look for is how to break the system. Any system can be broken - my question is usually "how easy is it?". If it's too easy, then I need to take that into consideration when I'm explaining to the players what I want to achieve in the campaign.

Also, the easier it is to break, the more administrative overload I'm going to have, looking over character sheets, to make sure that they are neither overpowered nor underpowered compared to other characters and the campaign I have planned. My goal is usually to achieve some equilibrium between the various characters' abilities, and the easier the system makes that on me, the happier I am.

As it stands, epic spell casting isn't as easy to break as I thought. I mean, you can still do really wrong things with it, but it requires more sacrifice and planning, and most of my players won't go to that effort just to see me say "No" - most abuses I deal with come from building something that the system says is "just fine", but which I look at from a number crunching standpoint and realize is going to destroy my Big Bad Guy without breaking sweat, or is going to overshadow the other character designs.

edit: fixed typo

 

[Ashardalon]

Interesting...

I would argue that the increases in the save DC and spell penetration should be more costly than they are officially... There are certainly issues with the epic spell system, but some are just misunderstandings (or errors in the sample spells. )

 

[Al]

Which is fine, if you don't mind taking the 8d6 damage each round for the rest of your (rather short) life. Backlash damage is applied each round for the duration of the spell.

Answer: Hide Life

The Epic caster's most useful ally...

Of course, the best way to abuse epic spells is to cast uber-combat spells with a high xp burn, take a nasty xp hit, and then immediately recoup a greater amount of xp from killing something about 10 (or so) CR points higher than you.

 

[Creeping Death]

So here's the math.

Wizard, level 21
Spellcraft 24 ranks
- Skill Focus +2
- Skill Roll +26
- We want a DC of 10, however, for development costs.

Armor Seed DC 14
- natural armor bonus +4
- duration 24 hours
- DC +2 per extra +1 AC

-8 DC: Backlash 8d6 (max 48 hp damage, you should have average 50 hp)
-18 DC: 10 minute casting
-20 DC: 10 day casting

Total: DC -32
To get a DC 2 (for net DC 10 after permanence) needs +34

+34 DC: AC increased by +17 (to natural AC +21)

x5 DC: Permanent

Final DC 10

Other ways to reduce cost:
- Each 200 XP cost translates directly into +1 AC.
- Have a 17th level friend or cohort contribute an 9th level spell slot, for another +8 AC.
- Change to personal range for +1 AC.

Regardless, cost to develop will be about 90,000 GP, 2 days, and 3,600 XP.

Give it a cost of 1,400 XP, one friend or cohort's 9th level spell, and you have a +36 natural armor bonus for a net cost of 4,000 XP, 12 days, and 90,000 GP.

And once it's developed, it costs 1,400 XP and 10 days per buddy in your party. If you have 3 friends (standard 4 party), you will expend a total of 8,200 XP, which will put you just a bit behind your compadres (and they'll likely recompense you pretty well).

Your math is wrong... Let me using your numbers show you how it is done:

Armor Seed DC 14
- natural armor bonus +4
- duration 24 hours <-- since we are making it permanent, this is unnecessary
- DC +2 per extra +1 AC <-- we want +17 ac, so we are at 34.

14 + 34, Total DC is 48.

Now we make it permanent, x5 DC

48 x 5 = 240

Now we start taking things away:
We can't do backlash, that would kill us, but we have this:

-18 DC: 10 minute casting
-20 DC: 10 day casting

so we are now down to 202. You are either going to need alot of friends that will stay with you the entire casting time to contribute one of their highest level slots and you are going to have to increase the casting time to 100 days, and you will still most likely need an item that could boost your skill bonus in spellcraft.

Not worth it, especially if your DM makes you pay your "friends" for their time and their spell slots.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

Interesting...

I would argue that the increases in the save DC and spell penetration should be more costly than they are officially... There are certainly issues with the epic spell system, but some are just misunderstandings (or errors in the sample spells. ).

IMO, you shouldn't even be able to adjust up the Save DC and Spell Penetration qualities of an EL spell. That way, there's far less risk of Wizards insta-nerfing monsters far beyond what they should be challenging.

As far as the sample spells go... Heh, I truly pity the groups who are trying to make heads or tails of the spell system using the examples as a guide...


Cheers,

A'koss.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Seed: Armor

Base DC 14 for +4 AC

+18 more = +36 DC = 50 DC

Permanent = 46 DC x 5 = 250 DC

Change to personal = 250 - 2 = 248 DC

Increase casting time by 10 minutes = 228 DC - 20 = 228 DC

Increase casting time by 100 days = 228 DC - 200 = 28 DC

Caster takes 18d6 damage (easily taken) = 28 DC - 18 = 10 DC

Totals: 10 DC, 90,000 gp, 2 days, and 3600 xp

So, basically, for a 1/3 of a year of work, the cost of a ring of regen, and less than a wish worth of xp, you have +22 AC for the rest of your life by making a laughable DC10 spellcraft roll.

ELH, page 91:

For spells with durations longer than instantaneous, the backlash damage is per round.

 

[Dark Eternal]

I like the high-level rules, though there are some problems. In general, the rules are fine with me.

But WHY THE HECK is everything named just like it was in the core books, but with the word EPIC tacked on to the front? Is this just a total lack of creativity?

Almost every feat and magical item suffers from this!

I can almost update my 17th level character's equipment list to an epic list just by putting "Epic" in every item name.

I'm sick and tired of reading through that book and every tenth word is Epic! Epic! Epic! It ain't that great of a word. They could have left it on the cover, and maybe in the intro a few times, but I swear they use it more often than they use the word "the."

[/rant]

We now return you to your regularly scheduled messageboards.

With my campaigns, I generally rename things like crazy anyways to make them fit more smoothly into the 'feel' of the campaign setting. While the excessive overuse of the 'EPIC' qualifier in the ELH does irritate me, they don't have those names in my campaign, which at least means I won't have to say/hear them a thousand times while gaming.

(And yes, I posted on topic just to be obnoxious. )