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dragonsamurai77
2010-10-16, 08:51 AM
I'm in an upcoming god game, and need help inventing a few more epic spells for my character and his cohort.

My character is a half-dragon LG god of fire and magic. He has 4,514,200 gp left, and is guaranteed to cast epic spells with a DC <= 120. He can easily have about 500 level 1 spell slots contributed to a spell.

His cohort is a fire elf wizard with 82,139 gp available for spell development, and a maximum DC of 57.

Any suggestions?

Glimbur
2010-10-16, 10:09 AM
What have you got so far?

Making combat useful Epic Spells is kind of tricky... the default casting time is a minute, it is difficult to get your 500 1st level spells in combat, and you only get two or three a day. Therefore, use them for either long term buffing or for apocalyptic rituals. For example, you know you want a spell that destroys a planet. Buffs for your Int and Con are pretty nice. A spell similar to Origin of Species, but making a more loyal species, is difficult to find a DC for but very powerful. Permanently animate giant statues of yourself made of adamantium or aurorum (book of exalted deeds). The Foresee seed is tempting but it gets very expensive to get more than an hour or so into the future. Nevertheless it would be terribly useful for seeing if one of your plans is going to work. You will want an Epic Dispel but you have to pay for every point of dispelling, which hurts. Alternately, just use a Ward versus Disjunction and Reaving Dispel... your caster level should be enough to ignore regular Dispel Magic.

tl;dr Buffs not in-combat spells.

dragonsamurai77
2010-10-16, 10:21 AM
What have you got so far?

Making combat useful Epic Spells is kind of tricky... the default casting time is a minute, it is difficult to get your 500 1st level spells in combat, and you only get two or three a day. Therefore, use them for either long term buffing or for apocalyptic rituals. For example, you know you want a spell that destroys a planet. Buffs for your Int and Con are pretty nice. A spell similar to Origin of Species, but making a more loyal species, is difficult to find a DC for but very powerful. Permanently animate giant statues of yourself made of adamantium or aurorum (book of exalted deeds). The Foresee seed is tempting but it gets very expensive to get more than an hour or so into the future. Nevertheless it would be terribly useful for seeing if one of your plans is going to work. You will want an Epic Dispel but you have to pay for every point of dispelling, which hurts. Alternately, just use a Ward versus Disjunction and Reaving Dispel... your caster level should be enough to ignore regular Dispel Magic.

tl;dr Buffs not in-combat spells.

That's a lot to think about, and I can only afford a few, so I'll have to weigh my options carefully. Right now, I'm thinking Origin of Species, animated statues, combat buffs, and ward.

By the way, I have right now:
a massive-damage fire spell (mostly flavor)
+80 AC for a whole day
3 great wyrm force dragons for 220 rounds (ritual)

Jack_Simth
2010-10-16, 10:34 AM
*Shrug* how much cheese do you like?

The Summon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/summon.htm) seed lets you summon a Solar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/angel.htm#angelSolar) as a DC 56 Epic Spell. Making that Summon Permanent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableEpicSpellFactors) brings it up to 280. Summoning two makes it 560. You can auto-pass anything under 129, and can put 500 1st level spells into it from rituallists, plus an Epic level spell slot from your cohort - that's 519 points of mitigation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableAdditionalParticipan tsinRituals), leaving a DC 41, which you can very easily make. Sure, Solars aren't much at the level you're working with, but they cast as Cleric-20's... meaning the *next* time you're wanting to make an Epic spell, you've got two more 9th level spells (and another -34 DC from it) in the ritual. So your next Summoning of two Solars needs only be DC 7. The next, DC 0. A very short while later, you're getting another Solar (to three of them), Permanently, with each casting. A very short while later, it's four per step, still at 0 DC. You can get arbitrarily high mitigation that way.

If we ignore that....

1) You want immunity to most annoying stuff - you want a few Permanent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableEpicSpellFactors) Wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/ward.htm). You can, for instance, make yourself Permanently immune to all spells 11th level and lower (oh yes, and Epic spells are technically treated as 10th level spells), with a base DC of 1070 (before Mitigation). Personal (-2), 500 1st level spells donated (-500), and one Epic spell donated (-19), get it down to 549; so you probably can't make that without the cheese from above. Dropping Permanent, though, it's just 214 before mitigation - you can have your followers reduce that to 0, no sweat. As the base duration is 24 hours, you can just use Increase Duration (+2 per +100% iteration) a lot, and make it last 144 days (pre-mitigation DC 500) and have your followers drop it to 0 for you (for no research time and no casting time). Stop off at home every four months to get it renewed. Alternately, you pick spells that are particularly annoying - Disjunction, Antimagic Field, and so on - and make yourself immune to those specific spells with Ward (9th level single spell immunity is just DC 32 - Permanent is 160, well within range for your followers).

2) You want some stat boosters, if you don't have them already. Inherent bonuses are cheaper with Fortify (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/fortify.htm), and can be made Permanent. And regular bonuses can be made to last a really, really, really long time.

dragonsamurai77
2010-10-16, 11:48 AM
*Shrug* how much cheese do you like?

The Summon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/summon.htm) seed lets you summon a Solar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/angel.htm#angelSolar) as a DC 56 Epic Spell. Making that Summon Permanent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableEpicSpellFactors) brings it up to 280. Summoning two makes it 560. You can auto-pass anything under 129, and can put 500 1st level spells into it from rituallists, plus an Epic level spell slot from your cohort - that's 519 points of mitigation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableAdditionalParticipan tsinRituals), leaving a DC 41, which you can very easily make. Sure, Solars aren't much at the level you're working with, but they cast as Cleric-20's... meaning the *next* time you're wanting to make an Epic spell, you've got two more 9th level spells (and another -34 DC from it) in the ritual. So your next Summoning of two Solars needs only be DC 7. The next, DC 0. A very short while later, you're getting another Solar (to three of them), Permanently, with each casting. A very short while later, it's four per step, still at 0 DC. You can get arbitrarily high mitigation that way.

If we ignore that....

1) You want immunity to most annoying stuff - you want a few Permanent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm#tableEpicSpellFactors) Wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/ward.htm). You can, for instance, make yourself Permanently immune to all spells 11th level and lower (oh yes, and Epic spells are technically treated as 10th level spells), with a base DC of 1070 (before Mitigation). Personal (-2), 500 1st level spells donated (-500), and one Epic spell donated (-19), get it down to 549; so you probably can't make that without the cheese from above. Dropping Permanent, though, it's just 214 before mitigation - you can have your followers reduce that to 0, no sweat. As the base duration is 24 hours, you can just use Increase Duration (+2 per +100% iteration) a lot, and make it last 144 days (pre-mitigation DC 500) and have your followers drop it to 0 for you (for no research time and no casting time). Stop off at home every four months to get it renewed. Alternately, you pick spells that are particularly annoying - Disjunction, Antimagic Field, and so on - and make yourself immune to those specific spells with Ward (9th level single spell immunity is just DC 32 - Permanent is 160, well within range for your followers).

2) You want some stat boosters, if you don't have them already. Inherent bonuses are cheaper with Fortify (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/fortify.htm), and can be made Permanent. And regular bonuses can be made to last a really, really, really long time.

Solar abuse is definately out, but spell protection seems like a very good idea.

jcsw
2010-10-16, 11:53 AM
If you have lost empires of faerun, look through that, particularly for the mythal seed.

If not, the best way to get combat usable spells is to make them "contingent on trigger" and set the trigger to a command word. This actually makes them a free action to 'cast'. You can then extend the actual casting them to mitigate the DCs.