[3.5] Rules for "balancing" epic spellcasting, PEACH

[Masaioh]

It seems almost half of the threads I see on these forums mention that epic spellcasting is so uber gamebreaking that nothing else is even viable in comparison and there is no way to balance it. I'm trying to change that.

The first rule would be that, when creating an epic spell, you cannot decrease the pre-mitigation spellcraft DC by more than 75%, rounded up. For example, a spell with a DC of 133 without mitigation could not be mitigated by more than 99.75, rounded to 100. The final DC could not be below 33. The IC explanation is that mere mortals and even most gods cannot fully control magic this powerful, and epic spells are bound to fail at times no matter how many precautions you take.

The second rule would be that the research time and cost would be calculated with the mitigation added to the unmitigated DC, instead of using the final DC. IC explanation is that these methods would make the spell more complicated, expensive, etc.

Does this some balanced? Unbalanced but less broken?

[Fortuna]

As far as I can see, that just makes it broken instead of overpowered.

Not to try to shoot you down or anything, but that simply makes epic casting all but unusable without some seriously stinky cheese, unless my memory fails me.

[Glimbur]

Say I want to make an Epic Lightning Bolt. Let's use the Energy seed. We could cast a regular lightning bolt as a DC 19 spellcraft check, if we're willing to wait a minute to do it. Make it take a standard action, and we're throwing a normal lighting bolt with a higher save DC at DC 39 spellcraft. But that's an awful amount of damage, I want to be able to take out half of someone's health if they fail the save.
Take a 21st level fighter with Con of +6. That's 10+5.5*20+6*21, or 236 hp. We want to reliably do 118 damage, then. That's 118/3.5, or 34d6. That requires adding 24d6 to our spell. The spellcraft DC is now 87. A 21st level character has 24 ranks in Spellcraft and maybe a +10 Int mod. This spell is not castable without working at your Spellcraft modifier.
All I've really shown is that epic spells are unfeasible to use in general combat. More math to talk about buff spells and other non-combat uses would be nice, but I have to go.

[NemoUtopia]

One of the problems with the epic spellcasting system as it stands is certainly the ability of drawbacks to completely negate the difficulty but not address the actual ridiculousness involved. The example spells printed in the book are reasonably well done, but the rules for epic magic just don't address certain things, and I find the lack of some kind of printed 'synergy' benefit to bring certain combinations more in line (like the aforementioned lightning bolt). I really liked the idea of their epic spell system, but the first thing that underwhelmed me was how even though (as written) you need 20 primary casting stat or higher and max ranks in Spellcraft and your class-typed-knowledge just to research the darn thing...your 'amazing' once per day wonder is worse than an actual level 9 spell. Not to mention the cost/time involved. I mean, realistically speaking you need Skill Focus and a bunch of dual-skill +2 splash feats (and all applicable synergy benefits) to do anything you can't outdo with Meteor Swarm while taking a drawback and making an in-combat skill check. Oh, and look at all those feats you effectively lost.

That said, it lets you break the per-caster-level cap and the twenty/twenty-five dice issue even before it becomes an issue for you. One of things I think would help balance things is to have drawbacks add to the time it takes to cast an epic spell, but not the cost. So you'd really have three different target numbers: casting DC, pre-drawback DC for gp purposes, and (pre-drawback DC) - (drawback modifier) = a vewy vewy long time to research. Using the example in the OP, it would still be 33 DC to cast, but have the cost of a 133 DC spell and take the time of a 233 DC spell to research. Of course, this is a 'band-aid' kind of fix that doesn't address some of the issues, which is the DC in the first place. Oh, and that's ignoring that divine characters get significant perks while the arcane types get no benefit for what's supposed to be their strength over divine casters (overt-blastiness).

So really, if you want to balance (because re-balance requires balance in the first place) epic spells you need to mess with the seeds and the DC modifiers almost no matter what you do. Reward people who do focus on higher Spellcraft and Knowledge modifiers, but make a certain baseline of effect attainable starting at level 21 to at least make it worth taking the epic-level magic feat for effectively 10th level (and possibly higher later) spell slots. To use the lightning bolt example, you should gosh-derned at least be able to cast a 21d6 lightning bolt. You should really be able to cast a 21d6 chain lightning or lightning shower (meteor swarm hack), but for simplicity let's not go that far. We'd be adding 11d6 and still arriving at a DC of 61. That's like...seriously unnaceptable. 24 ranks in spellcraft, assumed +10 ability modifier, and +2 synergy bonus (from Knowledge) are all we can count on. From that bonus of an assumed +36, a natural 20 isn't going to cut it unless you have Skill Focus and the DM allowing greater synergy benefits. If you're a divine caster (9th level cap of 20 damage dice), that's more acceptable, but the evoker who specializes in blowing things up should be able to not need a natural 15 to cast a spell that isn't even on par with his 9th level slots (yes, I remembered the specialty school bonus). "Hi, I'm Bob the Boomstick, but to match my current damage cap I need to fry myself with unpreventable damage."

I'm still working at what's considered a reasonable baseline, but it needs to be based on the existing balance theory (even if it is flawed) to really be a viable system. I'm still (still, still, STILL) tinkering with it, but I think just halving the 'reduce to standard action' is a tremendous step. Dropping the DC of the above spell to 51 means that Bob the Boomstick doesn't need the extra feat and DM fiat to have a 25% chance of success. Most combat spells fall in the 'standard action' category anyway, so it sets a better baseline for what most people would consider a 'functional combat spell'. Generally speaking though, it involves lowering the base cost of seeds and certain modifiers, but leaving scaling modifers (like adding damage dice) alone or changing 1 die : 2 DC to 3 die : 4 DC.

[hamishspence]

One of the things I've noticed, is that there isn't much in the way of "casting epic spells on the fly"

Maybe the epic spellcasting system should not have gold costs and XP costs. Instead, the player, when confronted with a problem, grabs at reality and tries to bend it to their will, as far as it will go.

This would need to be combined with heavy limitations on mitigation, but it might avoid the problem of people mitigating spells down to 0 DC to avoid costs.

I figure that if epic spells don't need researching- but they can't be mitigated to absurd levels by having fellow casters, this should (with a bit of rebalancing) make them useful without allowing cheesy combinations.

It would probably work something like this:

Player: "I want to do this" (Describes what the spell will do)

DM: "You can, but..." and lists any disadvantages- like damage, or XP burn.

[DracoDei]

It seems almost half of the threads I see on these forums mention that epic spellcasting is so uber gamebreaking that nothing else is even viable in comparison and there is no way to balance it. I'm trying to change that.

The first rule would be that, when creating an epic spell, you cannot decrease the pre-mitigation spellcraft DC by more than 75%, rounded up. For example, a spell with a DC of 133 without mitigation could not be mitigated by more than 99.75, rounded to 100. The final DC could not be below 33. The IC explanation is that mere mortals and even most gods cannot fully control magic this powerful, and epic spells are bound to fail at times no matter how many precautions you take.

The second rule would be that the research time and cost would be calculated with the mitigation added to the unmitigated DC, instead of using the final DC. IC explanation is that these methods would make the spell more complicated, expensive, etc.

Does this some balanced? Unbalanced but less broken?

Having read this thread to this point, I agree with everything in the above post, plus making the costs "cheaper" and probably some caps on assisting caster based mitigation (I think there was a thread on this earlier). I also think that to avoid repeated costs as you level up, you should be able to select one or two aspects of the spell to scale (damage, radius, range, DC?, etc), when you first create the spell, and then later create new versions with those factors increased and only paying the incrimental XP and GP costs, but taking the full research time for each variation. The "full time" thing just so you aren't handing out scaling versions to use at a given level depending on how lucky the caster is feelling with his Spellcraft rolls that round for NOTHING.

This may be in the abstract since I have never actually played with Epic spellcasting, but I think these boards have given me enough grasp of the theory to be able to say the above with some degree of confidence.

[hamishspence]

I figure Epic spellcasting should start as comparable to the less cheesy uses of Wish, and scale up from there- but slowly- not a massive leap.

I'm not sure if dropping research times and costs altogether, as I suggested earlier, would compensate for minimal ability to mitigate factors.

[lesser_minion]

My understanding is that a lot of people don't think epic spellcasting is worth the research costs unless you mitigate down to zero.

It's a "rapes the game completely or does nothing at all" mechanic.

However, I think the imbalance may be a complete non-issue, because the mechanic as written simply fails to add anything to most games.

The game would be a lot better if there was a useful custom spell mechanic available at every level (and if it didn't break when used at really high levels), and to do that, it really needs to play ball with spell slots, or at least with spell points, as opposed to suddenly having its own set of arbitrary restrictions.

Ideally, such a mechanic would also hook into the magic item rules.