A question about V and level 9+ spell slots

[Stormthorn]

Can you use those to gain really high finite levels? Like, say a level 20 spell slot rather than a level 10. Because if so then V could take an arbitrarily high slot (af befitting his off the charts level) and have cast an Enchanced (x2)Quickened Maximized Empowered Twined Sunburst to deal 90d6 points of damage.

Of course, then the lich might pull an Intensified Energy Drain to zap 16 levels off both the splices.

[Zevox]

I'm not sure what you mean. How do you think she could use what to gain higher spell levels?

Well, here, perhaps I should just explain how spell slots work. All spellcasters up until level 20 gain spell slots based on their level, to a maximum of 9th-level spell slots. From there, the only way to gain higher-level spell slots is via the epic feat Improved Spell Capacity. That lets you gain one spell slot of a level up to 1 higher than your current highest - so the first time you take it, you can gain 1 spell slot in any level up to 10th (any caster worth their salt will, of course, choose to take the 10th level slot, since he doesn't have any of those yet). And to gain even higher slots, you have to keep taking that feat multiple times. So you need it twice for access to 11th-level slots, three times for access to 12th-level slots, etc. You can get bonus slots for a (very) high ability score, but only if you have at least one slot from the feat first.

So to get access to a 20th-level slot, either Jephton or Ganoron would have to have taken that feat 11 times. Which seems unlikely, given it would require a minimum level of 36 (if I've done my math right; I was a bit hasty calculating it) and for him to have taken no feats other than those and Epic Spellcasting since hitting epic levels.

Zevox

[Godskook]

Well, we now know that one of them is, at his max, level 28, and likely level 21-25. Either way, he's level 12 now, at best. At worst, he's level 5. No matter what, that splice-member is nigh-useless now.

Actually, V's probably screwed unless he gets out now. If he waits even one more round, he risks losing teleport(a level 5 spell that the conjurer probably has prepared and the sorcerer could still cast if he knows).

And yes, teleport can get him out, since Cloister only blocks incoming traffic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html).

[ericgrau]

No, he has a fixed spell progression for the higher level slots. So depending on her level he might be able to cast at most level 10 spells, or at most level 11 spells, or etc. if she's higher level than that. So far we haven't seen anything higher than 10th level, so that might be his limit. I'm a little fuzzy on the epic rules, so I dunno if there's already been some indication that V is high enough level to cast higher level spells. But even then she'd be able to cast at most X level, not some arbitrarily high level just from burning more mojo.

[Stormthorn]

So...V cast an 11th level spell. So...one of his soul binds is at least level 39 then?

[Zevox]

So...V cast an 11th level spell. So...one of his soul binds is at least level 39 then?
*blinks* Er, no. Where did you get that idea? To cast an 11th-level spell, one of them only needs to have the feat Improved Spell Capacity twice, which an epic caster could have as early as level 24 (or 23, if he didn't take Epic Spellcasting, but clearly these two both did).

Zevox

[Stormthorn]

When you mentioned something above about a minimum level of 36 i assumed you where refering to the level the feat could be taken at. If so then to take the feat twice you would need to be level 39.

I assumed it was minimum feat level you where refering too because if its a feat you can take at level 21 then you would need a minimum level of 50+ to be able to cast a 20th level spell (take it at 21, then at 24,27,30,33,36,39,42,45 and so on)

If my assumption was wrong then it was probably was because it was based upon something wrong in the information i drew it from. In this case, YOURS.

[TheGrimace]

Zevox gave you only the answer and not the equation.

Minimum level of 36 is accurate (probably, I haven't actually done the calculating) because it has a minimum level of 21, you get a bonus feat every 3 character levels, and a bonus feat every x class levels, where x is an integer dependent upon you class. I think x is three for wizards... could be four....

Either way, those class feats are the reason he can get it at 36, and not wait until 50 something or other.

[Zevox]

When you mentioned something above about a minimum level of 36 i assumed you where refering to the level the feat could be taken at. If so then to take the feat twice you would need to be level 39.

I assumed it was minimum feat level you where refering too because if its a feat you can take at level 21 then you would need a minimum level of 50+ to be able to cast a 20th level spell (take it at 21, then at 24,27,30,33,36,39,42,45 and so on)

If my assumption was wrong then it was probably was because it was based upon something wrong in the information i drew it from. In this case, YOURS.
Wrong on both counts. I was saying that level 36 was the minimum level to have 11 copies of the feat. You can take it as soon as you hit epic levels. And at epic levels, a single-class character gains bonus feats - for wizards and sorcerers, one every 3 levels after 20, so 23, 26, 29, etc.

So to have 11 epic feats requires a minimum level of 36. Feats are acquired at 21 , 23 (bonus), 24, 26 (bonus), 27, 29 (bonus), 30, 32 (bonus), 33, 35 (bonus), and 36. And that's assuming you don't take the feat Epic Spellcasting to gain access to actual epic spells. Which both Ganoron and Jephton did. So for them, the minimum is actually 38.

And actually, now that I think of it, Jephton would need an even higher level. He has Archmage levels, which will slow the rate at which he gains epic bonus feats by as much as 5 levels.

Zevox

[Jube]

As someone who's DnD knowledge only extends to basic ADnD stuff, a question on my mind.

How do the epic spell slots even work? What level do spells even go up to?

By the logic of this thread, you can for any given finite level have any given finite level of spell slots. Are there spells up to say 15th level? Or are you just casting maximised/quickened versions of your other ones?

What's the point in having a lv20 spell slot I guess, does it have any spells to go in it?

[B9anders]

As someone who's DnD knowledge only extends to basic ADnD stuff, a question on my mind.

How do the epic spell slots even work? What level do spells even go up to?

By the logic of this thread, you can for any given finite level have any given finite level of spell slots. Are there spells up to say 15th level? Or are you just casting maximised/quickened versions of your other ones?

What's the point in having a lv20 spell slot I guess, does it have any spells to go in it?

They are useful only for metamagic enhanced spells.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Here's an example;

Ereshkigal is a deity. She has access to *counts* 30th level spell slots and some serious metamagic feats. As a sorceress, she doesn't need to prepare her spells in advance and she's facing an Elder Titan with 70 HD and 1015 HP which has a true ressurection contingency. Obviously, 9th level spells aren't going to cut it so she has several options:

1) She uses a 30th level spell slot with the Unname spell, a 9th level spell that is fortitude save or be permanently erased from the universe. Her DC for 9th level spells is 58 which the titan, with his items, can easily make. So she uses Improved Heighten and Twin Spell to increase the spell level to 30, giving it +20 to its DC and casting twice from a single slot. The titan fails his save and is blasted from the universe.

2) She uses Energy Drain with Splitray, Twin, Repeat and Intensify. That's 128 negative levels. Even if the Titan somehow survives, all his spell slots are gone which makes him an easy kill.

3) She uses a Polar Ray with Splitray, Twin, Acid Admixture, Cold Admixture, Fire Admixture, Lightning Admixture, Empower, using mastery of energy to turn all of it to fire and using Searing Flame. That's 750d6 points of fire damage that ignores fire immunity, an average of 2625 damage. It kills the titan twice over, using up both his ressurection contingency and his life.


And the truly scary thing? There are 20th level munchkinized wizards that can cast the above spells.

[Trixie]

Can you use those to gain really high finite levels? Like, say a level 20 spell slot rather than a level 10. Because if so then V could take an arbitrarily high slot (af befitting his off the charts level) and have cast an Enchanced (x2)Quickened Maximized Empowered Twined Sunburst to deal 90d6 points of damage.

V's levels are not off the charts. Really, that whole triple digits level fallacy was laid to rest a dozen times and yet, people still cling to it :smallsigh:

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Of course, there are ways to buy down metamagic cost.

Ultimate Magus PrC and Metamagic School Focus, to name a few without dipping into Easy Metamagic (dragon magazine).

And, as a nice contender, we also have
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Improved_Metamagic_(SRD_Epic_Feat)
Which can reduce metamagic cost further.

You can very conceivably be belting out those Quickened Spells at just-next-to-0 cost at level 10. I had a character casting 3rd quickened spells at level 11 through a combination of Practiced Spellcaster, Easy Metamagic, Quicken Spell, Metamagic Spell Focus, a specialized wizard, and Ultimate Magus, with 10 levels of wizard casting, 4 levels of sorceror (Beguiler) casting. (Before anyone claims broken, this is all feats taken to duplicate a Lesser Rod of Quickening...).

Anyways, those spell slots may not be cast from legit. locations.

[Great Dane]

Here's an example;

Ereshkigal is a deity. She has access to *counts* 30th level spell slots and some serious metamagic feats. As a sorceress, she doesn't need to prepare her spells in advance and she's facing an Elder Titan with 70 HD and 1015 HP which has a true ressurection contingency. Obviously, 9th level spells aren't going to cut it so she has several options:

1) She uses a 30th level spell slot with the Unname spell, a 9th level spell that is fortitude save or be permanently erased from the universe. Her DC for 9th level spells is 58 which the titan, with his items, can easily make. So she uses Improved Heighten and Twin Spell to increase the spell level to 30, giving it +20 to its DC and casting twice from a single slot. The titan fails his save and is blasted from the universe.

2) She uses Energy Drain with Splitray, Twin, Repeat and Intensify. That's 128 negative levels. Even if the Titan somehow survives, all his spell slots are gone which makes him an easy kill.

3) She uses a Polar Ray with Splitray, Twin, Acid Admixture, Cold Admixture, Fire Admixture, Lightning Admixture, Empower, using mastery of energy to turn all of it to fire and using Searing Flame. That's 750d6 points of fire damage that ignores fire immunity, an average of 2625 damage. It kills the titan twice over, using up both his ressurection contingency and his life.


And the truly scary thing? There are 20th level munchkinized wizards that can cast the above spells.

So what you're saying is that it sucks to be anyone in a 3.5 game who ISN'T a spellcaster? :)

Seriously, not to change the subject, but who would want to be a non-magic user at *this* level? Can melee characters do anything remotely this cool, or do they just thwack harder? (I've only played 4ed)

[Stormthorn]

Minimum level of 36 is accurate (probably, I haven't actually done the calculating) because it has a minimum level of 21, you get a bonus feat every 3 character levels, and a bonus feat every x class levels, where x is an integer dependent upon you class. I think x is three for wizards... could be four....

I never said he had tripple digit levels. He has at least 75 levels and probably more like 90 tho.


You are correct as to the level 36 thing then. I was unaware that wizards continued to gain bonus feats (let alone that they gained them at an accelerated rate) at epic levels. Im used to thinking in tersm of Sorcerer where you get no bonus feats for your first 20 levels.

As a side note, i still dont like being condescended too. Not all of us can afford all those books with their rules and whatnot. It doesnt mean im an idiot and its no excuse for you not keeping a civil tone. Because your respone of:

*blinks* Er, no. Where did you get that idea?
is just dripping with contempt and, to be frank, if you feel that way you can GTFO and leave me to wonder about in ignorance. I dont want enlightenment if it comes from a ****.


1) She uses a 30th level spell slot with the Unname spell, a 9th level spell that is fortitude save or be permanently erased from the universe. Her DC for 9th level spells is 58 which the titan, with his items, can easily make. So she uses Improved Heighten and Twin Spell to increase the spell level to 30, giving it +20 to its DC and casting twice from a single slot. The titan fails his save and is blasted from the universe.

2) She uses Energy Drain with Splitray, Twin, Repeat and Intensify. That's 128 negative levels. Even if the Titan somehow survives, all his spell slots are gone which makes him an easy kill.

3) She uses a Polar Ray with Splitray, Twin, Acid Admixture, Cold Admixture, Fire Admixture, Lightning Admixture, Empower, using mastery of energy to turn all of it to fire and using Searing Flame. That's 750d6 points of fire damage that ignores fire immunity, an average of 2625 damage. It kills the titan twice over, using up both his ressurection contingency and his life.


And the truly scary thing? There are 20th level munchkinized wizards that can cast the above spells.

Now i feel really sad that i dont have those fancy rules books. I would love to see how these spells and feats work.
Why would a spell as powerful as Unname be a level 9 spell? It seems a lot more potent than a save-or-die spell at the same level. Shouldnt something like that be an epic spell with a huge ad-hoc cost for ereasing something from existance?

[Zevox]

As someone who's DnD knowledge only extends to basic ADnD stuff, a question on my mind.

How do the epic spell slots even work? What level do spells even go up to?

By the logic of this thread, you can for any given finite level have any given finite level of spell slots. Are there spells up to say 15th level? Or are you just casting maximised/quickened versions of your other ones?

What's the point in having a lv20 spell slot I guess, does it have any spells to go in it?
Spell slots for level 10+ are indeed limited only to metamagic-enhanced level 9 or lower spells. There are no spells that are level 10+ on their own. I know that the Forgotten Realms setting has an explanation for this - after a major disaster in which a 12th-level spell was used by a mad archmage to siphon off the divine power of the Goddess of Magic, the new Goddess of Magic, Mystra, banned all level 10+ spells from being cast within that world ever again, because they were simply too dangerous to the stability of the Weave, the source of magic for that world (and to her personally, now that that spell existed). Anything more powerful than 9th-level from then on had to be converted to epic magic, or simply researched originally as epic magic. For other settings, I don't know if there's an explanation.

But note that there is a difference between epic magic and level 10+ spell slots. Epic magic is a whole different beast, which you need to take a different feat (Epic Spellcasting) to gain access to. A caster gets only one epic spell slot per 10 ranks in Knowledge (Arcana), which makes those spell slots very hard to come by (you can have 2 of them to start with, but won't get a 3rd until level 27 at least, and from there need 10 more levels for every further slot you want). And epic spell slots do not have a "level" (although for the purposes of DC and other things that are based on a spell's level, they're treated as being level 10) - they're just epic slots, and can only be filled by epic spells. And epic spells can do, well, just about anything, if you have a high enough spellcraft modifier to research them successfully.


As a side note, i still dont like being condescended too. Not all of us can afford all those books with their rules and whatnot. It doesnt mean im an idiot and its no excuse for you not keeping a civil tone. Because your respone of:

*blinks* Er, no. Where did you get that idea?
is just dripping with contempt and, to be frank, if you feel that way you can GTFO and leave me to wonder about in ignorance. I dont want enlightenment if it comes from a ****.
I'm afraid this is a case where tone simply does not convey well in pure text. That statement was not intended in the least to sound contemptuous, merely confused. I apologize for any offense - again, it was entirely unintentional.

(Incidentally, the epic level rules are completely available online, if you'd like to see them for yourself. They're available in any site with a copy of the SRD. The one I use personally is here (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/home.html). Heck, I myself don't have the Epic Level Handbook either, and all my knowledge of those rules comes from that site.)

Zevox

[Raenir Salazar]

Dragonlance I believe the Gods of Magic entombed all knowledge of 10+ Spells into a special tower guarded by mages of all 3 orders in an 2 dimensional plane guarded by balors.

[SoC175]

I never said he had tripple digit levels. He has at least 75 levels and probably more like 90 tho.
If you assume that the levels just stack. If it works like gestalt characters he has less than 30 levels.

[Stormthorn]

Ok. Im sorry for freakin out.

So...if he was a getalt then what happens for his wizard levels and the other wizards levels? And does that modify how the Energy Drain effects him?

[Haven]

If you assume that the levels just stack. If it works like gestalt characters he has less than 30 levels.

The fact that the disjunction destroyed the antimagic field, as well as the "you'll be so high level you can't gain experience" suggests they stack, though.

[Mando Knight]

So what you're saying is that it sucks to be anyone in a 3.5 game who ISN'T a spellcaster? :)
That's the general idea by the time you get to around level 10 or so.


Seriously, not to change the subject, but who would want to be a non-magic user at *this* level? Can melee characters do anything remotely this cool, or do they just thwack harder? (I've only played 4ed)
Not really, unless they're made using the Tome of Battle classes, which have tactics that are basically the prototypes of 4E's Powers. In 3.5, all a higher level fighter can do is spend his feats on improving his charge attacks, while a high-level wizard gets to jaunt around the multiverse firing spells with half-mile ranges using nothing but a 5 gp pouch of random items and a tattered spellbook.

[TheGrimace]

someone who's DnD knowledge only extends to basic ADnD.


First, I totally know what you mean.

Second, the phrase, "basic ADnD" is really funny, because A stands for Advanced.

I have only knowledge of Basic Advanced Dnd...

Funny?

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Seriously, not to change the subject, but who would want to be a non-magic user at *this* level? Can melee characters do anything remotely this cool, or do they just thwack harder? (I've only played 4ed)
Meele characters (if built correctly) have defencive abilities. Batting ranged attacks (spells included) back at the attacker. Taking finger of death to the face and not only not dying but also not taking the secondary damage. Walking through walls of force. Being untargetable by spells no matter what.
Offencively though, meele characters usually suck.


Why would a spell as powerful as Unname be a level 9 spell? It seems a lot more potent than a save-or-die spell at the same level. Shouldnt something like that be an epic spell with a huge ad-hoc cost for ereasing something from existance?
The downside is that you must know and be able to speak the creature's true name. A deity has no problem with that. A mortal would have to research stuff in advance.

[B9anders]

The fact that the disjunction destroyed the antimagic field, as well as the "you'll be so high level you can't gain experience" suggests they stack, though.

No. They would stack for his effect character level for determining challenge rating, xp etc, without necessarily stacking for caster level.

[Volkov]

Can you use those to gain really high finite levels? Like, say a level 20 spell slot rather than a level 10. Because if so then V could take an arbitrarily high slot (af befitting his off the charts level) and have cast an Enchanced (x2)Quickened Maximized Empowered Twined Sunburst to deal 90d6 points of damage.

Of course, then the lich might pull an Intensified Energy Drain to zap 16 levels off both the splices.

Intensified is much better than maximized+empowered.

[JaxGaret]

Not all of us can afford all those books with their rules and whatnot.

Hypertext d20 SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/)

All the rules well-organized right there, for free, for you to look at for yourself any time you like.