Build challenge

[Korivan]

So, this is the challenge, how many spells can you manage to cast in one round. All Books and resources are open for use.



Sorry, I should have limited to arcane casters. Also, explain how you arrive at this.


Mine is , 5 pre epic, 8 epic, 1 standard, 1 quicken ( or 4 epic), 1 belt of battle, 1 eyes of the oracle, 1 clarity

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Infinite spells per round.

My personal best is 15, though.

[Eldariel]

Spells-to-Powers Erudite does Infinite. Sorcerer does "as many as he has". Ask if you wish for me to extrapolate.

[Talic]

Extrapolate, please. I like a good thought exercise.

[lsfreak]

I know only little of Planar Shepard, I don't have the book, but wouldn't a Planar Shepard with Astral as his home plane get infinite? That is, if you allowed an Eberron class in the "standard" world.
EDIT: Missed the arcane part. Pick up any other class after 5th level planar shepard, preferably sublime chord.

[Emy]

Spells-to-Powers Erudite does Infinite. Sorcerer does "as many as he has". Ask if you wish for me to extrapolate.

I'm not sure what this is, but I bet it involves Dweomer of Transference.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

I thought it involved rocking out with Metaconcert.

[Ganurath]

Following the logic that metamagic feats can be freely converted into metapsionic feats, a Psion could Persist a Temporal Acceleration pre-epic, especially with cost reducing abilities. With a Ring of Sustencence, one only needs two hours of rest in instances where one would normally need eight hours, including replenishing power points. Giving time for actually manifesting, one could expend one's entire power point supply 12 times, leaving just enough to spare to manifest Persistent Temporal Acceleration the following realtime round.

Naturally, this only works with Elans, because anyone else would either starve or die of old age before they got tired of showing up Epic Magic.

[Eldariel]

Simplest first; Sorcerer. You need:
Complete Mage (necessary, contains Arcane Fusion & Greater Arcane Fusion)
Player's Handbook II (necessary, contains Celerity)
Spell Compendium (optional; here for Favor of the Martyr)
Dragon Magic (likewise optional; here for Arcane Spellsurge)
Metamagic Reducers (for added effect; I suggest Incantatrix [Player's Guide to Faerun], Practical Metamagic [Races of the Dragon] and Easy Metamagic [Dragon Magazine])


Basic tools:
(Greater) Arcane Fusion
Celerity

This makes it available earliest on level 10 when you get access to 5th level spells (Arcane Fusion). The basic functionings:
1. You cast Celerity for action (or if it's your turn already, go to step 2)
2. You cast Arcane Fusion (allows you to cast a 4th level spell and a 1st level spell with casting time 1 standard action or less), casting Celerity (you can use Swift Actions to use Immediate Action-abilities on your own turn) + 1st level spell.
3. 1st level spell resolves (make it happen first; Arcane Fusion states you choose the order), Celerity resolves giving you another Standard Action to cast anything with - rince and repeat as long as you have 5th level slots left; you can Magic Missile something to all hell with all your 1st level slots.

Now, it really gets fun with Greater Arcane Fusion, which allows you to cast 4th and 7th level spells (it's an 8th level spell). Therefore, instead of casting all your 1st level spells, you can use the same combination (using the lower slot for Celerity) to cast all your 7th level spells, and lower! You can also cast Limited Wish mimicking Favor of the Martyr to avoid being Dazed (although multiple instances of Daze would likely all apply to the next turn, as you aren't skipping it, just being dazed, so there's no reason they'd somehow see you're Dazed and apply to the next non-Dazed turn instead; in short, you'd only lose 1 turn after N Celerities). This would allow you to unleash your level 8 slots worth of spells.


Now, add Arcane Spellsurge and you can cast any number of metamagicked spells (it's a 7th level spell, so you can just cast it during your first Fusion, same as you can do with Limited Wish: Favor of the Martyr) in the combo, as they all are reduced to 1 Standard Action or less.

Then, apply the metamagic reducers. Suddenly, you can cast Twinned Greater Arcane Fusions into Twinned Celerities (you need 4 levels of reduction, meaning Arcane Thesis for both spells, and Easy Metamagic, Practical Metamagic and Incantatrix level 10 ability for Twin Spell. This gets you double the actions and allows you to offensively start casting your 9th level spells in the loop. I guess you could add Repeat Spell to do it all over the next turn, but chances are you don't really need to. Besides, you'd need to burn 2 feats (Repeat Spell + Easy/Practical Metamagic: Repeat Spell) just to cut down the number of Greater Arcane Fusions/Celerities you need to cast to make it happen - so not worth it.


Now, you're basically doing the following:
1. Cast Twinned Celerity (4th level slot thanks to Arcane Thesis: Celerity + Practical+Easy Metamagic: Twin Spell + Incantatrix's Improved Metamagic)
2. Cast Twinned Greater Arcane Fusion with your first standard action (8th level slot) to cast Arcane Spellsurge, Limited Wish: Favor of the Martyr and two more Twinned Celerities. Then just use all your Celerities to unload your entire spell arsenal Twinned on whatever target you desire, casting new Twinned (Greater) Arcane Fusions (you can frankly use the normal one as you only need it to cast Celerities) to get more Standard Actions (which all your normal spells are, regardless of how much metamagic you apply to them) and keep unloading.

Note that as you're Incantatrix, you'll have a bunch of other Metamagic, and since you have Improved Metamagic, they'll be cheap to apply so you can cast some pretty impressive spells in addition to being able to do it all as an Immediate Action.


The net result is that you can cast however many spells you happen to have as an immediate action, and probably have a bunch of actions left over (just beat someone in the face with those or trod around the globe something).


I'll get to the Erudite next.

[Keld Denar]

A Beholder Mage can do really silly things with (Greater) Arcane Fusion as well...

[Eldariel]

Alright, Erudite:
Convert Spell to Power (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a)

Now, the first thing to note is that you can replace an expensive material component with extra 2pp cost. Second is to note that spells cost as much to manifest as spells of equivalent level. There's this spell in Expanded Psionics Handbook called "Mental Pinnacle", which essentially makes a Wizard into a Psion for 1 round/level, granting 3*level power points and an access to few powers. It also has an expensive material component in Fox's Cunning.

Now, the powers don't matter, but the power points are nice. You can manifest Mental Pinnacle for 13 PP total, and generate 3*ML PP (ML 5 or higher generates more than you spend), and repeat. Basically, this means you can generate any number of power points you want given the actions. Now, manifest Fission. This duplicates you. Then, manifest Affinity Field. Then you (the non-copy) can start manifesting Synchronity [Complete Psionics], which grants you a readied action. As a Metamind, this doesn't end up costing you anything. Thanks to Affinity Field, this affects you and your duplica, granting both of you a new Standard Action. You keep manifesting Synchronity (or hell, have your duplicate manifest Synchronity so it's YOU doing the real stuff) while you start e.g. manifesting Mental Pinnacle. After that has given you as many power points as you want (no time passes), you can start using the Synchronity-actions to manifest any spells you've learned, giving you infinite output.


Note that this isn't the only way, but it was the easiest off the top of my head. It's worth noting that an Erudite could also learn e.g. the Greater Arcane Fusion+Celerity-combo showcased above and use that instead, but as applying Metapsionics is harder than Metamagic, he'd have to spend a lot more time to get it all done (he can use both sides of Greater Arcane Fusion to duplicate Celerity twice to get an extra action out of the deal), while momentarily starting to loop Mental Pinnacle to maintain as many power points as he wants.

This all is mostly a result of arcane casting being totally busted, and Synchronity being rather insane too. But yeah, all you need is an infinite PP and infinite action loop and you're free to go off. Spells-to-Powers Erudite gets both in abundance.

[Gorbash]

Well, it's no match for 10-15 spells per round, but Cleric/Ordained Champion with DMM (Quicken) can:

Spend a standard action to cast a spell
Spend a move action to channel a spell into his weapon witch will affect the next target he hits
Spend a swift action to cast a spell from War domain
Spend a free action to cast a spell via DMM (Quicken)

Simple enough.

[Eldariel]

Sorry, I should have limited to arcane casters. Also, explain how you arrive at this.

Ah; then the "all my spells" Sorcerer is my take. I'm fairly sure it goes up to thousands pre-epic (basically just how many spells you happen to have; pimping out Charisma, spell levels and so on goes pretty high). There might be a recovery method (one exists for Wizards [Mordenkainen's Lucubration + Sanctum Spell + Repeated/Twin Spell], but they can't cast all their spells in one turn that easily so it's a moot point; I guess you could go Ultimate Magus, but meh, that cuts room from Incantatrix and you could still only restore Wizard's spells).

If you're interested in exact numbers, be an Illumian with Aeshkrau sigils to derive your bonus spells from Str (you can use Dragontouched or such to gain the Dragonblood subtype for Swift Arcane Spellsurge; you don't really need it, but it's nice to have). Then pump the **** out of your Str the day before; as an Incantatrix, persisting the buffs isn't hard. So Shapechange into highest Str form you can find (there's that Firbolg Giant in MM2 for 36, for example), Persistent Greater Consumptive Field (you can Wish for it, I guess, and Persist with Metamagic Effect) [Spell Compendium] to basically add infi to your Str, persist Bite of the Werebear [Spell Compendium], Giant Size [Spell Compendium], Girallon's Blessing & Fuse Arms [Spell Compendium], Draconic Polymorph [Draconomicon], Greater Visage of the Deity [Spell Compendium], Holy Transformation [Spell Compendium] for something like 36+Big Number (Consumptive Field)+16 Enhancement [Bite]+12 [Fuse Arms]+8 Untyped [Draconic Polymorph]+32 Size [Giant Size]+4 Untyped [Visage]+4 Sacred [Transformation]. This gives you Str 124+Consumptive Field, and thanks to being an Illumian, this determines your bonus spells per day. Thanks to Persist (from Metamagic Effect of Incantatrix) on all of them, you can rest the night and get the slots available without problem. This is of course without looping anything into infinity or any such, although that's certainly doable too.

As a bonus, you can kick royal ass if you feel like it. Persist few combat buffs like Girallon's Blessing and such and you can deal few thousand points of damage with a full-round attack (which you can use Greater Celerity to take any number of; although you could just Persist Heroics to use some maneuver that's a full-round action and then use two castings of Celerity for each full-round attack using the "action completion" rule in PHB of being able to start a full-round non-attack action as a standard action and then using your next standard action to finish it).

[Keld Denar]

Before the Sage put the kaibosh on Divine Impetus, it was also possible for a Cleric to drop about 30 Flame Strikes in a round.

Cleric4/OrdainedChamp5/RubyKnightVind7/Cleric4

Take the PHBII Domain Spontinaity ACF for War and you can spontaneously convert prepared spells for War domain spells, which are automatically quickened thanks to OC. Then, just burn Turn Undead attempts to gain swift actions with Divine Impetus and you can convert all of your 5th+ level spells into Flame Strikes and drop them all in a single round.

Of cource, this requires some pretty wonky fluff (RKV is WeeJas, OC is Heironeous/Hextor) and a pretty loose interpretation of what exactly a "domain" spell is, and of course, the liberal reading of Divine Impetus that is contradictory to what the Sage ruled.

Still, ~20 15d6 Flame Strikes in a round would be pretty impressive. I think you could even squeeze in some Sanctified One of Kord (again with the fluff mishmash) and your FSs would be 3/4 unresistable Holy damage.

[Doc Roc]

Late in the thread (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1198921&highlight=spock) there's a really clean explanation of one of the infinite spells per day tricks, and you can segue from there directly into the old arcane fusion loop to do infinite 7th and lower, which for us, with spock, is just straight old infinite spells, basically.

[Eldariel]

Hm, I just realized that using some tricks learned from Pun-Pun, we can chain our Str into an arbitrarily high number thus getting an arbitrarily high number of spell slots. Even for the simple Sorc 5/Incantatrix 10/X 5.

EDIT: Although that would be pointless as it includes Manipulate Form. Nevermind.

[Flickerdart]

which are automatically quickened thanks to OC.
You can only cast one Quickened spell per round without Epic feats, regardless of how many swift actions you take. It's in the feat description.

@V: I see. Nifty!

[Gorbash]

Ordained Champion's spells are not quickened, their casting time is reduced to swift action.

[Chronos]

f you're interested in exact numbers, be an Illumian with Aeshkrau sigils to derive your bonus spells from Str (you can use Dragontouched or such to gain the Dragonblood subtype for Swift Arcane Spellsurge; you don't really need it, but it's nice to have). Then pump the **** out of your Str the day before;Wouldn't it be easier just to go Tainted Scholar? Those guys literally gain bonus spell slots faster than they can cast them.

[Doc Roc]

I've pushed across 30 9th level spells per day with a recent build of mine, that's actually street legal. It was a tainted scholar build... :|

[Eldariel]

Oh yeah, Tainted Scholar; I never think of the class since it's so obviously and ridiculously insane, not to mention completely unplayable due to effectively requiring you to be little more than a husk of taint to work out.

That said, Str wins out, I think. Depravity caps at 125 if I recall correctly, while Str is 124 before applying Consumptive Fields, which is another...say we have 30 base CL (not unreasonable with the Beads), which gets us +15 CL. This puts us at 45, which with other casting of Consumptive Field gets us to +7.5 rounded down, or +7 to the 17, or 52 (this is because the bonuses from Consumptive Fields overlap). A third casting gets us to 56, fourth to 58, then 59 capping out at 60, so ~+60 Str, putting it at about 184 or +87. That should be 19 bonus level 9 slots ((87 - 9)/ 4).

Or wait, does Depravity exceed the scale given in the book for higher Wises? 'cause if so, it wins out trivially. Bleh, either way it should result in a sufficient number of spells.

[Doc Roc]

It does indeed scale. :|

Cancer Mage + the rage disease + illumian = infinite, easy, as well. We jokingly call him Phillip Morris.

[Eldariel]

It does indeed scale. :|

Cancer Mage + the rage disease + illumian = infinite, easy, as well. We jokingly call him Phillip Morris.

Oh swell. See, I never really bothered about that particular class as I knew it's totally busted without even trying, so I never really got into the Taint-rules. Bother.

But Cancer Mage is cheating 'cause it's from an unupdated 3.0 source! 3.5 is so much more fair with its Incantatrixes, Planar Shepherds, Dweomerkeepers, et al. :smalltongue:

[Doc Roc]

Thoughts on spock? he's pretty fancy if I say so myself :)

[Eldariel]

Thoughts on spock? he's pretty fancy if I say so myself :)

Preeetty scary. When Shadowcraft Mage, Tainted Scholar & Halruaan Adept appear in the same build, you know something is going on. Funnily it's the innocous Chameleon that working neck slick there to make magic happen.

But yeah, I think infinite spells of any variety as an immediate action is all good. The Wizard-spells wording is pesky though. That's what led me off in the first place. I never really thought of adding a Wizard-only spell to Sorc-list, but now that you mention it, it seems to do work out pretty well (I was actually thinking of such just when posting to this thread right after having fooled around with Mordenkainen's Lucubration and Rary's Conversion).


I frankly don't find anything to add to the build right off the bat, which is pretty awesome :P

[Emy]

Thoughts on spock? he's pretty fancy if I say so myself :)

Wouldn't the Spock mechanism work out just as well for a wizard as it would for a sorcerer? To get off-list spells, I mean. Trade your prepared wizard spells for whatever happens to be written in your spellbook(s).

[Doc Roc]

There's a picard version noted right below spock that does just that, in fact. :)