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

[Feanor Starym]

Do that multiple times for Armor, Natural Armor, Insight, Divine, etc., and you'll never be hit again. Sure, it's expensive in gold and XP and time, but you know what? It's probably worth it. You can charge your friends for the money, and the XP can be saved up fairly easily.

Okay, you cast the natural armor one..
now, you need to learn another epic spell.. oh look, you don't have enough ranks in Knowledge:Arcana to permit you to learn another one yet.. i suppose you're going to have to wait until level 37 (when you have 40 ranks) for your second one. now, you cast one for Insight... you have to wait until level 57.. see a trend?

 

[Mortaneus]

Okay, you cast the natural armor one..
now, you need to learn another epic spell.. oh look, you don't have enough ranks in Knowledge:Arcana to permit you to learn another one yet.. i suppose you're going to have to wait until level 37 (when you have 40 ranks) for your second one. now, you cast one for Insight... you have to wait until level 57.. see a trend?

Umm....no....it doesn't work that way.

Your Knowledge: Arcana limits how many epic spells you can have PREPARED, not how many you know. It just determines spell slots, not knowledge capacity. See ELH p72, right column, second paragraph.

 

[SimonMoon5]

Permanent spells are worthless anyway, since one Mord's Disjunction will eliminate them all with no chance to resist.

Of course, you can try making an Instantaneous version, but that takes a little more work (toss in the Energy Seed, etc)...

 

[Squire James]

Of course, Mordenkainen's Disjunction is pretty broken in itself, if you realize that it cannot make an absolutely irresistible Dispel effect with the epic rules. Making a Ward against that specific spell should probably be one of the first spells any high-level wizard should make!

The best rule I know of to reduce abuse of the system is to plant some sort of percentage limit to Spellcraft DC reduction by mitigating factors. I'd put it at about 80%... enough for a DC 200 spell to be reduced to DC 40 for some minor risk of failure. My players would be reluctant to make a 100-day casting time spell if there were even a 10% chance of failure.

As for the "Asmodeus-slayer", in my game anyone who can get within 600' of Asmodeus and retain spellcasting ability pretty much deserves to kill him! Which they could probably do when they gain 30th level... which is about the time just about anyone can deal with anything that isn't in D&DG or the ELH.

 

[kenjib]

OT

SimonMoon - I did the test in your sig and got Dragon. RAR! That's my Chinese Zodiac too.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Squire James:

As for the "Asmodeus-slayer", in my game anyone who can get within 600' of Asmodeus and retain spellcasting ability pretty much deserves to kill him! Which they could probably do when they gain 30th level... which is about the time just about anyone can deal with anything that isn't in D&DG or the ELH.

Well... since the DC increases by only 2 for every 300' ft of extra range, how far do you want to be?

The point however, is pretty clear - it's an instakill spell that has a... fairly wide range of applications and is hideously broken for the level of character who is using it. I even created a "Fiend Lord in a Jar" spell so that you could put Asmodeus on your mantle. And my abuse is pretty straightforward, I've seen some deviously creative ones on WotC's messageboards.


A'koss.