Well folks, it's been a long time since I've made any posts here, but I'm back and under a new account. Who I am isn't really important, but what I am wondering will require some input from some DMs and players who have experience working with the Epic Spell System and people who have different ideas of dealing with magic at levels beyond 20th in general. I'll start with what I know and what I have personally found to be pros and cons of three different systems for dealing with epic magic.
The first system is of course the basic epic spell system presented in the Epic Level Handbook. You know the one. Take a bunch of seeds and factors and mitigating factors, throw them all into a pot, shake it up and throw out some epic magic. It's a simple enough system and it works well enough, but here are some of the issues I have with it. When using this kind of magic, you will spend ridiculous amount of exp and gold researching each epic spell. Also, the main problem I have with it is really the way spell slots are calculated. They have nothing at all to do with a casters' given key ability score modifier. A mind flayer wizard with 40 HD and a base 18 intelligence (+racial +stat points invested + potential inherit of +5, etc.) with a headband of epic intellect +12 can still only cast 4 epic spells per day.
This brings me to my second system, the one I personally use and have the most experience playing with, but still find lacking in a few ways.
Not only does this system keep what was good about the base epic spell system, but it adds to it by allowing mundane spells to be used as seeds and requires epic level casters to actually use some of those bonus feats they acquire post 20th level. I always found it a bit annoying that once a given caster had gotten to 20th level in a caster class, they were better off branching off into prestige classes or multiclassing rather than continuing their progression. Let's face it, once you have acquired the basics of what's printed in the available feats for the ELH, you don't want to spend 40-60 levels of just being a plain ole wizard when there is so much better available to you. By being forced to invest some epic feats to cast higher level epic spells the epic progression for casters actually has a purpose. Also, I always had a problem with the spells being stuck at 10th level with the basic system, regardless of their final spellcraft DC. Feanmerc fixes that too. The most beautiful thing about this system is that it also allows you to use your many meta-magic feats to make use of your lower level spells, which after about 40th level become less and less useful using only the base system. However, the actual lower level spell-slots themselves are usually unused so even though your able to use your mundane spells with epic power behind them, the actual 0-9 spell slots themselves rarely get used at all, particularly on the lower end of that spectrum at high levels, which brings me to our next system. This system is at least to some degree, at odds with Feanmerc because it does render Improved Spell capacity redundant in it's published form which I believe was only intended to be used to meta-magicking mundane spells into effective levels above 9th, but was never considered by the author as a foundational replacement for the feat Epic Spellcasting.
Automatic Metamagic Capacity [Epic, Metamagic]
You can cast spells that exceed the normal limits of spellcasting.
Prerequisites: Ability to cast spells at the normal maximum spell level in at least one spellcasting class, four metamagic feats.
Benefit: When you select this feat you gain one free level of metamagic per round, which you may spontaneously apply to any spell (or spell-like ability) you can cast. This feat replaces the following epic feats: Automatic Quicken Spell; Automatic Silent Spell; Automatic Still Spell and Improved Spell Capacity.
Example: A wizard with Automatic Metamagic Capacity could spontaneously apply the Enlarge Spell feat (or any other metamagic that increases the level of the spell slot required by one) once per round to any spell he casts, without increasing the level of the spell slots required.
Special: A character can gain this feat multiple times. Each time they gain the feat they gain one free level of metamagic per round. This feat stacks, each time it is taken you gain an additional +1 free spell level of metamagic.
Example: A wizard with 3 Automatic Metamagic Capacity feats could spontaneously apply the Maximize Spell feat to a previously prepared empowered delayed blast fireball in a 9th-level spell slot.
This feat, taken a few times and coupled with another feat:
Metamagic Freedom [Epic, Metamagic]
You can stack the same metamagic feat multiple times.
Prerequisties: Four metamagic feats, Spellcraft 24 ranks.
Benefit: You can apply the same metamagic feat any number of times to the same spell, provided you have enough spell slots.
eg. With this feat you could use a 9th-level spell slot to triple empower a fireball spell (for +150% damage).
Normal: Without this feat you can only apply the same metamagic feat once to a single spell.
In the wake of this feat the following feats become redundant:
• Improved Heighten Spell
• Intensify Spell
• Multispell
Improved Heighten Spell should be unnecessary if you already have Heighten Spell. Intensify Spell is simply a combination of two applications of empower spell and one application of maximise spell. Multispell is simply two (or more) applications of quicken spell.
The first of the above feats should be replaced with Metamagic Freedom and any others by Automatic Metamagic Capacity.
eg. A 30th-level Wizard has Improved Heighten Spell, Intensify Spell and Multispell. These should be replaced by Metamagic Freedom and Automatic Metamagic Capacity (x2).
It is also suggested that the following epic feat be removed altogether:
• Improved Metamagic.
this basically makes a new way of using mundane spells and their associated spell slots to be useful in epic level combat. However, this system too has it's flaws. For example, the fact that the spell level isn't adjusted means that the spell save DC isn't going to be as high as it would be if you were using Improved Spell Capacity/FeanMerc, but I guess that's sort of a trade off. I whole-heartedly understand why Improved Metamagic should be removed because if you take it 3 times then each additional time you take AMMC (Automatic Meta-magic Capacity) you get an extra spell per round via quicken spell which gets really broken, really fast.
This brings me to my final concern regarding magic in epic level play. The little dilemma of exactly how many spells a high level caster should be able to cast in combat and how that is determined. Now, my issue with using AMMC and MM freedom in conjunction with quicken spell to cast extra spells is this; every character still only gets one swift action per round(unless they have some ability or effect which grants them more actions), and it seems to imply that you can cast multiple different spells within the limites of your AMMC quota all as part of the same swift action, and to me that just doesn't make sense. Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly don't think that a 10th level wizard, a 40th level wizard and Boccob himself should all be able to cast the same number of spells in a given round of combat, but where I have been having trouble is deciding on how to limit the number of spells a caster can dish out in a round. My first thought was to do it similiar to the way a fighter-type does a full attack action. You could take a feat (basically the same as multispell) but you can only use it as part of a "full attack casting action" but you would be limited to your BAB divided by 5 worth of spells, regardless of how many times you took the feat.
One way I have found to mitigate the XP and Gold burn I was griping about earlier is that each time you want to prepare an epic spell using FeanMerc is to change the ruling so that once your character has researched a given epic spell once with a given final spellcraft DC, they don't have to spend the gold to research it a second time, but they do have to stiill spend the experience. Another way to mitigate the burn factor of developing epic spells is to allow them to take an epic feat which allows them to prepare an epic spell they've prepared before once per day without losing any XP. It also uses up some of those epic feat slots in a rather worthwhile way, I think.
Anyone else have any input on this? I really hope this is just the beginning of a long discussion about peoples' experiences at tweaking the system and experimenting with meta-magic epic spells playing nicely together side-by-side.
I also feel I should add that I really like FeanMerc as a whole and I also really like AMMC as a whole and I allow characters in my campaign to take feats from both rulesets, but ultimately what I want is a system which takes the best of both worlds and simplifies them without making them overpowered, and thus far, I have failed to do so.
The first system is of course the basic epic spell system presented in the Epic Level Handbook. You know the one. Take a bunch of seeds and factors and mitigating factors, throw them all into a pot, shake it up and throw out some epic magic. It's a simple enough system and it works well enough, but here are some of the issues I have with it. When using this kind of magic, you will spend ridiculous amount of exp and gold researching each epic spell. Also, the main problem I have with it is really the way spell slots are calculated. They have nothing at all to do with a casters' given key ability score modifier. A mind flayer wizard with 40 HD and a base 18 intelligence (+racial +stat points invested + potential inherit of +5, etc.) with a headband of epic intellect +12 can still only cast 4 epic spells per day.
This brings me to my second system, the one I personally use and have the most experience playing with, but still find lacking in a few ways.
Not only does this system keep what was good about the base epic spell system, but it adds to it by allowing mundane spells to be used as seeds and requires epic level casters to actually use some of those bonus feats they acquire post 20th level. I always found it a bit annoying that once a given caster had gotten to 20th level in a caster class, they were better off branching off into prestige classes or multiclassing rather than continuing their progression. Let's face it, once you have acquired the basics of what's printed in the available feats for the ELH, you don't want to spend 40-60 levels of just being a plain ole wizard when there is so much better available to you. By being forced to invest some epic feats to cast higher level epic spells the epic progression for casters actually has a purpose. Also, I always had a problem with the spells being stuck at 10th level with the basic system, regardless of their final spellcraft DC. Feanmerc fixes that too. The most beautiful thing about this system is that it also allows you to use your many meta-magic feats to make use of your lower level spells, which after about 40th level become less and less useful using only the base system. However, the actual lower level spell-slots themselves are usually unused so even though your able to use your mundane spells with epic power behind them, the actual 0-9 spell slots themselves rarely get used at all, particularly on the lower end of that spectrum at high levels, which brings me to our next system. This system is at least to some degree, at odds with Feanmerc because it does render Improved Spell capacity redundant in it's published form which I believe was only intended to be used to meta-magicking mundane spells into effective levels above 9th, but was never considered by the author as a foundational replacement for the feat Epic Spellcasting.
Automatic Metamagic Capacity [Epic, Metamagic]
You can cast spells that exceed the normal limits of spellcasting.
Prerequisites: Ability to cast spells at the normal maximum spell level in at least one spellcasting class, four metamagic feats.
Benefit: When you select this feat you gain one free level of metamagic per round, which you may spontaneously apply to any spell (or spell-like ability) you can cast. This feat replaces the following epic feats: Automatic Quicken Spell; Automatic Silent Spell; Automatic Still Spell and Improved Spell Capacity.
Example: A wizard with Automatic Metamagic Capacity could spontaneously apply the Enlarge Spell feat (or any other metamagic that increases the level of the spell slot required by one) once per round to any spell he casts, without increasing the level of the spell slots required.
Special: A character can gain this feat multiple times. Each time they gain the feat they gain one free level of metamagic per round. This feat stacks, each time it is taken you gain an additional +1 free spell level of metamagic.
Example: A wizard with 3 Automatic Metamagic Capacity feats could spontaneously apply the Maximize Spell feat to a previously prepared empowered delayed blast fireball in a 9th-level spell slot.
This feat, taken a few times and coupled with another feat:
Metamagic Freedom [Epic, Metamagic]
You can stack the same metamagic feat multiple times.
Prerequisties: Four metamagic feats, Spellcraft 24 ranks.
Benefit: You can apply the same metamagic feat any number of times to the same spell, provided you have enough spell slots.
eg. With this feat you could use a 9th-level spell slot to triple empower a fireball spell (for +150% damage).
Normal: Without this feat you can only apply the same metamagic feat once to a single spell.
In the wake of this feat the following feats become redundant:
• Improved Heighten Spell
• Intensify Spell
• Multispell
Improved Heighten Spell should be unnecessary if you already have Heighten Spell. Intensify Spell is simply a combination of two applications of empower spell and one application of maximise spell. Multispell is simply two (or more) applications of quicken spell.
The first of the above feats should be replaced with Metamagic Freedom and any others by Automatic Metamagic Capacity.
eg. A 30th-level Wizard has Improved Heighten Spell, Intensify Spell and Multispell. These should be replaced by Metamagic Freedom and Automatic Metamagic Capacity (x2).
It is also suggested that the following epic feat be removed altogether:
• Improved Metamagic.
this basically makes a new way of using mundane spells and their associated spell slots to be useful in epic level combat. However, this system too has it's flaws. For example, the fact that the spell level isn't adjusted means that the spell save DC isn't going to be as high as it would be if you were using Improved Spell Capacity/FeanMerc, but I guess that's sort of a trade off. I whole-heartedly understand why Improved Metamagic should be removed because if you take it 3 times then each additional time you take AMMC (Automatic Meta-magic Capacity) you get an extra spell per round via quicken spell which gets really broken, really fast.
This brings me to my final concern regarding magic in epic level play. The little dilemma of exactly how many spells a high level caster should be able to cast in combat and how that is determined. Now, my issue with using AMMC and MM freedom in conjunction with quicken spell to cast extra spells is this; every character still only gets one swift action per round(unless they have some ability or effect which grants them more actions), and it seems to imply that you can cast multiple different spells within the limites of your AMMC quota all as part of the same swift action, and to me that just doesn't make sense. Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly don't think that a 10th level wizard, a 40th level wizard and Boccob himself should all be able to cast the same number of spells in a given round of combat, but where I have been having trouble is deciding on how to limit the number of spells a caster can dish out in a round. My first thought was to do it similiar to the way a fighter-type does a full attack action. You could take a feat (basically the same as multispell) but you can only use it as part of a "full attack casting action" but you would be limited to your BAB divided by 5 worth of spells, regardless of how many times you took the feat.
One way I have found to mitigate the XP and Gold burn I was griping about earlier is that each time you want to prepare an epic spell using FeanMerc is to change the ruling so that once your character has researched a given epic spell once with a given final spellcraft DC, they don't have to spend the gold to research it a second time, but they do have to stiill spend the experience. Another way to mitigate the burn factor of developing epic spells is to allow them to take an epic feat which allows them to prepare an epic spell they've prepared before once per day without losing any XP. It also uses up some of those epic feat slots in a rather worthwhile way, I think.
Anyone else have any input on this? I really hope this is just the beginning of a long discussion about peoples' experiences at tweaking the system and experimenting with meta-magic epic spells playing nicely together side-by-side.
I also feel I should add that I really like FeanMerc as a whole and I also really like AMMC as a whole and I allow characters in my campaign to take feats from both rulesets, but ultimately what I want is a system which takes the best of both worlds and simplifies them without making them overpowered, and thus far, I have failed to do so.
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