Invited To Play An Epic Wilder

[Amphetryon]

What it says on the tin. I've been playing 3.X since it came out, but never got a character above 20th level. Now, one of the local players is inviting me to roll up a level 23 character, with all sources available. I'd like to use the opportunity to play a straight Wilder, as I like the class and won't need many outside sources to muddy the waters. The rest of the group is likely to be a ToB Gish, a Barbarian crit-fisher, a Druid, and an Assassin-type.

My concerns:
1. Aside from the Druid - who is not an optimizer - I'll be the only full caster/manifester, so may have to do more of the heavy lifting.

2. As far as I can tell, Epic Spellcasting/Manifesting is sort of pre-borked. Is there a way to use the seed system that doesn't wreck the game from the get-go?

[Lateral]

Epic Spellcasting and Manifesting is insanely borked, yeah, but as long as you don't go overboard with it it can be all right.

As a wilder, you don't really get enough powers known. Ever. Take Educated Wilder, that will help, and take very versatile powers. Plenty of dorjes and power stones can't hurt, either.

[Analytica]

It´s not entirely straight wilder, but squeezing in two levels of chameleon in there lets you gain two swappable bonus powers known each day through an epic floating feat.

[Tvtyrant]

As long as you don't use helpers epic magic is fine; impossible to afford or cast, but fine. Basically you want to make spells that are weak and then attach as many none-helper based mitigators as possible.

I would suggest asking if the factors from epic casting apply to manifesting, otherwise you don't really get any mitigators. For instance, casting Living Lightning over 100 days gets you a spellcraft check of -60. Adding 30d6 damage to it makes it a spellcraft check of 0, so you do 40d6 once a day but have to spend 100 days casting it and it uses your epic level slots to cast.

Changed my mind, the whole thing is borked. You can get a permanent Chichimek as a pet for a DC of 40.

[Silva Stormrage]

Not sure if you DM would allow this or if you want to play it but a Thrallherd is incredibly fun to play. If you DM allows you to get "Epic Thrallherd" Leadership then you really don't need to worry about your lack of spells because your thralls can cast it for you. Though ya don't get Epic Spell casting with this. Its almost as bad as chain gating solars to help you cast spells.

[tyckspoon]

2. As far as I can tell, Epic Spellcasting/Manifesting is sort of pre-borked. Is there a way to use the seed system that doesn't wreck the game from the get-go?

Yes, for certain definitions of not-wrecked. Basically you use the seed system to construct massive buffs. They look something like:

Base seed: Fortify (DC 17)
Mitigating Factor: Increase Casting time 10x (10 minute cast time, -20 DC)
Mitigating Factor: XP cost 20x (2,000 XP cost, -20 DC; you will be paying this with a Rod of Excellent Magic.)

We have a DC -27 spell right now. Time to start making it useful:
Increase Duration 5x: +10 DC, Fortify spell now lasts 120 hours (this allows you to layer on buffs by casting different spells on different days, which is important as you probably only have the one Rod of Excellent Magic to soak the XP cost.)
Stupid accounting trick: Change from Touch range-> Personal only. Change from Personal -> Area (20 ft radius). -2 for the touch transition, +17 for changing from Personal to one of the cheap area options. Saves you a point of DC in the end; touch to Target to Area would be 16 instead.

So what you have now is a long-term party buff; cast it once in the morning, it's good most of a week. And you're still at DC -2 (or -1 if the silly accounting chicanery is denied.) Let's go ahead and make this spell worth casting.. we'll aim for DC 20 in the end, since it's a nice round number, important to the system, and also happens to be decently affordable and could be cast on a skill check of a 1, let alone taking 20.

Fortify starts at +1 and scales at an additional +1 per 2 DC. So from -2 we can get 11 extra points out of Fortify and land square on that DC 20 goal. That means.. +12 Natural Armor (enhancement. You can stack this with a similar spell from the Armor seed to very rapidly bring everybody's AC to an Epic-worthy level.) +12 to any stat (Con is good for a party buff.) +12 to any one kind of save. (And if there's anything you figure only one person needs, you can get another 7-8 points on there by leaving it as Touch only instead of making it an Area. Want +20 to your casting stat? Why yes, yes you do.)

Basically, functional Epic magic is an extension of the "what are you spending money on +5 for, just Greater Magic Weapon/Magic Vestments it" idea. Your Epic spells do stat buffs much more efficiently and cheaper than the ludicrously over-priced Epic items ever could, but don't really break the game because they're just moving up your base numbers to where they have to be to properly compete with the equally over-inflated numbers you see on Epic monsters.