Epic level combat.

[Silva Stormrage]

Hello I have never actually encountered epic level combat and was wondering what Epic level play is actually like. It doesn't seem all that different from normal dnd, epic feats are not that special, stop progressing in Bab and saves regularly but so do monsters. Obviously this is without epic spellcasting. What exactly is so different with epic level combat that most people instantly shy away from?

[Boci]

Look at the wealth of epic level characters for one.

[ImperatorK]

Book keeping is a nightmare. Also it's basically rocket tag, because on epic levels everything has tons of immunities and powers and stuff.


stop progressing in Bab and saves regularly but so do monsters
Not true, monsters still get full BaB and their good saves.

[Silva Stormrage]

Book keeping is a nightmare. Also it's basically rocket tag, because on epic levels everything has tons of immunities and powers and stuff.


Not true, monsters still get full BaB and their good saves.


Oh thats interesting I never knew that monster kept advancing like that. I wonder why they did that.

So the main problem everyone has is the massive list of immunities from high WBL and stacking buffs on everyone?

[ImperatorK]

Oh thats interesting I never knew that monster kept advancing like that. I wonder why they did that.

So the main problem everyone has is the massive list of immunities from high WBL and stacking buffs on everyone?
Maybe. Two people are hardly everyone. :smallwink:

[Deimess]

My understanding is the first rule of epic combat is win initiative. Everything else hardly matters. Especially if there is a caster in either party.

[Garagos]

I think one of the main reasons epic levels are somewhat feared is that it requires A LOT more work by the DM especially, but the players too really. Planning encounters against a party of epic level characters usually requires advancing monsters, adding classes, or just making epic level NPCs in addition to all the story and dungeon layout type stuff. This may not sound too bad until that monster you spent 2 hours advancing to an epic challenge rating is taken down in 1 round before it gets to act by 2 or 3 spells from 1 character.

I also believe that some of the role-playing value kinda goes out the window too. When you're walking around at 30th level, you're probably not gonna wonder if the adventurer who's trying to start trouble with your group is more powerful than you or not like you would when you're 8th level. You're gonna tell him to piss off or else. You start to feel that in most situations your characters have little to fear.

These are just my own observations from playing in a campaign thats lasted for 5+ years which now has PCs ranging from 32nd to 35th level.

[AmberVael]

Unless properly regulated, Epic play escalates to absurd levels. Certain mechanics (particularly classes) become entirely unusable, and magic shenanigans only get worse and worse. Level 20 casters are bad enough, but level 30 casters even without epic spells are horrifically powerful. We're talking like "dominate the world in a day" powerful.

Of course, not all epic characters are like that, but that's a problem too. Balance just goes out the window, and what might be slight power differences in pre-epic become gaps of impossible proportion.

Now, you CAN play decent epic games, and they can be very tactically rewarding, as well as fun roleplaying environments, but you have to have a trustworthy group and a shared understanding of what level of optimization you're trying to play at- and you need a group that is mechanically savvy, or it becomes pretty impossible to keep a decent hold on things.

[Yukitsu]

Hello I have never actually encountered epic level combat and was wondering what Epic level play is actually like

It's like being forced to pull out your own teeth with sausages. Undercooked, poorly made, rancid sausages. It's a lot of work, leaves you feeling ill, and if you manage to get out of it before you lose any teeth, you're lucky or smart.

[NichG]

The main problem with by the books epic level combat (and other stuff) is that the characters have pretty much already gotten all the real versatility they're going to ever have (barring epic spellcasting), and thats 'all of it'. Numbers grow from there, but epic feats aren't really that incredible, so a Lv 80 wizard and a Lv25 wizard look very very similar.

What this comes down to is that a party that so desires can be immune to everything it's possible to be immune to in pre-epic play. With the corrolary that there is no way for them to ever become immune (or develop resistance to) things that are impossible to be immune or resistant to in pre-epic play, more or less. So an epic dragon with energy drain breath sounds cool, but its boring since via the application of a simple 4th level spell it just becomes a dragon without a breath weapon.

Or since dragons are casters, it uses Disjunction, and the party counters with contingencies and other defensive trickery, until you've basically got a mage battle rather than a fight with a dragon.

So my answer to that is, you need to make new stuff coming in through the level horizon both for enemies and for players to keep things fresh at that level. Have enemies that can manipulate time (they attack you when you were lower level, or play games with hard to resist time hopping or whatever), and have there be things epic characters can do to gain resistance to time manipulation. Have enemies that have weird defenses (can only be harmed in an antimagic field, temporarily immune to spells of lower or equal level to the last spell cast upon it, etc). An epic party basically has huge versatility, so you don't need to worry that they won't have the tool to deal with things - it becomes about figuring out what that tool should be.

But all of that is non-standard, so its not indicative of what by the book epic level combat is like.

[Tyndmyr]

Non-combat becomes fun with physics and an exploration of what it is like at the very tippy top of the power pyramid. Combat becomes Xanatos speed chess. Preparation becomes a big thing.

I don't actually dislike this, but I'll admit that my laziness factor tends to result in me not DMing it. Also, it's not something for new players or the faint of heart. It's not bad, IMO...but it's certainly something that requires a number of factors to pull off well, so it's definitely not appropriate for everyone.

[Crow]

Bear in mind that most people who reply to this thread will have never played in an actual epic level game, and much of what you will hear is hyperbole gathered from long-dead threads of old.

That said, I have only played epic in the level 20-25 range, and here, if the DM doesn't allow obvious cheese, the game is much the same as regular level 17+ gameplay. My group was fairly low-op though.

What your group allows and of course the optimization level of the group will change how you experience Epic.

My experiences of Epic play. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178400)

[Big Fau]

Hello I have never actually encountered epic level combat and was wondering what Epic level play is actually like. It doesn't seem all that different from normal dnd, epic feats are not that special, stop progressing in Bab and saves regularly but so do monsters. Obviously this is without epic spellcasting. What exactly is so different with epic level combat that most people instantly shy away from?

Take a look at the Hecatoncheires (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#hecatoncheires). See that Full Attack? And Combat Reflexes? Melee characters drop like flies against that BS, even at level 57 (never mind just rolling those attacks).


That is considered a "standard" encounter at that level. You have to face 3 more encounters just like that one. Have fun.

[rayne_dragon]

Bear in mind that most people who reply to this thread will have never played in an actual epic level game, and much of what you will hear is hyperbole gathered from long-dead threads of old.

That said, I have only played epic in the level 20-25 range, and here, if the DM doesn't allow obvious cheese, the game is much the same as regular level 17+ gameplay. My group was fairly low-op though.

What your group allows and of course the optimization level of the group will change how you experience Epic.

My experiences of Epic play. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=178400)

I've actually played in a mid-level epic game (around level 24 iirc) and at first as I was reading this thread I was thinking "it's not that bad, it's like lower level play" then someone mentioned xanatos speed chess and all the repressed memories came flooding back. Now part of it might have just been a crappy DM, but epic level combat is terrible. Not optimized? Might as well fall down on a sword now and save yourself the trouble of having an encounter.

Now that's still a bit of hyperbole. It probably depends a lot on your group and DM. For some it could be a long-awaited reward of getting to trample encounters, for others it's a nightmareish disaster. A good DM might even be able to find the right balance between too easy and too hard, but it's probably quite hard as all the different choices made at different levels have by epic levels probably made quite a huge difference between an optimized character and a character with little to no optimization, so making encounters that are fun for the whole party is probably very hard.

[AmberVael]

Combat becomes Xanatos speed chess.

Let me give an example and elaboration on this.

In the current epic game I am playing, my character is an epic Psion. She ended up in a fight against about uh... lets put it around 100 devils (most of them pushovers at epic level) and decided to wipe out about 50 of them with a twinned Energy Wave.

In response to this, an enemy spellcaster used a readied action to place a forcecage in front of my spell, at just the right position to block its effect.

However, I had manifested Synchronicity earlier in the turn (I had Schism active), so I preempted their readied action with a readied action to Energy Stun them so they couldn't cast Forcecage.

But it turns out they had a contingent Dimension Hop which carried them out of the way of my Energy Stun, so I couldn't disrupt their first spell.

...not willing to let that stop me, I reminded the DM that I had Sense Danger active, which would allow me to manifest a single power as an immediate action in the first turn of combat. I used that to manifest a Wall of Ectoplasm to interrupt their Forcecage.

To which a second enemy spellcaster responded with Celerity and a Time Stop, then placed a Wall of Force in front of my Energy Wave.

Xanatos speed chess. A single action that escalated into an absurd series of immediate and contingent counter actions that involved three people.

This is the kind of thing I expect in epic level play- granted, I play with an optimized bunch, but this is the kind of thing that can be done... and we're trying to keep our optimization sane. If you want, you can so very easily snap the system in half, if you know what you're doing.

[Douglas]

I have some significant experience with high-op epic combat, and it can mostly be summed up by this phrase: "what the **** is he NOT immune to???"

Initiative actually is not the ultimate most important thing. Preparation is.

How powerful an attack is becomes far less important than how reliable and difficult to resist it is. All energy damage is useless without Searing Spell. Aside from a few specific tricks, anything that allows a save is worthless because save bonuses are much easier to boost than save DCs. Most debuffs will be completely ignored. Energy drain either does nothing or grants your foe a boost depending on whether he's undead. Targeted spells are highly risky due to Spell Turning. Contingencies can screw up almost any plan.

As strange as it might seem, straight up damage with a weapon - a fighter's forte - ends up being one of the best attacks you can get. Pretty much all of a caster's offense can and will (in high-op) be preemptively negated by an immunity, but a well chosen weapon with appropriate buffs or abilities to negate concealment and the like can only be outright negated entirely by things that negate practically everything - straight up damage immunity, for instance, which is so broken it's generally banned on principle by even the most permissive DMs.

Spellcasting and/or gear to replace it is still necessary - if you don't have all those immunities something will use the hole in your defenses to kill you - but once those are all in place it comes down to trading practically unavoidable damage, usually through weapon attacks that auto-beat everything but AC.

[Silva Stormrage]

Let me give an example and elaboration on this.

In the current epic game I am playing, my character is an epic Psion. She ended up in a fight against about uh... lets put it around 100 devils (most of them pushovers at epic level) and decided to wipe out about 50 of them with a twinned Energy Wave.

In response to this, an enemy spellcaster used a readied action to place a forcecage in front of my spell, at just the right position to block its effect.

However, I had manifested Synchronicity earlier in the turn (I had Schism active), so I preempted their readied action with a readied action to Energy Stun them so they couldn't cast Forcecage.

But it turns out they had a contingent Dimension Hop which carried them out of the way of my Energy Stun, so I couldn't disrupt their first spell.

...not willing to let that stop me, I reminded the DM that I had Sense Danger active, which would allow me to manifest a single power as an immediate action in the first turn of combat. I used that to manifest a Wall of Ectoplasm to interrupt their Forcecage.

To which a second energy spellcaster responded with Celerity and a Time Stop, then placed a Wall of Force in front of my Energy Wave.

Xanatos speed chess. A single action that escalated into an absurd series of immediate and contingent counter actions that involved three people.

This is the kind of thing I expect in epic level play- granted, I play with an optimized bunch, but this is the kind of thing that can be done... and we're trying to keep our optimization sane. If you want, you can so very easily snap the system in half, if you know what you're doing.

Okay but that doesn't seem so much epic level as... normal level 20 high op play? And as a side note that would be really fun IMO :smallbiggrin:.

[AmberVael]

True, but it becomes a lot more readily accessible and affordable at epic.

[Big Fau]

Okay but that doesn't seem so much epic level as... normal level 20 high op play? And as a side note that would be really fun IMO :smallbiggrin:.

That's before you use your Epic slots. Once those come into play, the campaign may as well be over.


At that point, the first person to start brainwashing people may as well have a Death Note and a picture phone book.

[Trebloc]

Hello I have never actually encountered epic level combat and was wondering what Epic level play is actually like. It doesn't seem all that different from normal dnd, epic feats are not that special, stop progressing in Bab and saves regularly but so do monsters. Obviously this is without epic spellcasting. What exactly is so different with epic level combat that most people instantly shy away from?

My group is currently level 29 and still going strong and having fun in the epic level game.

I think the biggest part of why we enjoy it so much is that everyone works together to make it enjoyable. Also, I imagine our book selection keeps away some of the brokeness as we only use Core, PH2, MIC and TOB.

I always see others claim how broken epic is due to some of these powerful hijinks. Those are all well and good and certainly powerful, but often can't be done more than a couple times per day. It's not unusual for our group to run through at least 20+ challenging combats, in addition to multiple misc traps/encounters that also require some kind of resource use in a single day. Sure, go nova in the first couple of combats, then be useless for the next dozen.

As I said, it's the entire group + DM working together to make things enjoyable. No goofiness like planes where time flows differently, no super-broken epic spells, casters taking the time to throw out buffs for the other party members...etc. Also due to the large number of encounters that typically happen during a day, a certain amount of resource rationing has to happen. And anything that we find that makes the game not enjoyable, we usually discuss it and fix it.

[Boci]

As I said, it's the entire group + DM working together to make things enjoyable. No goofiness like planes where time flows differently, no super-broken epic spells, casters taking the time to throw out buffs for the other party members...etc. Also due to the large number of encounters that typically happen during a day, a certain amount of resource rationing has to happen. And anything that we find that makes the game not enjoyable, we usually discuss it and fix it.

What about stuff like ring of freedom, ring of evasion and third eye of a poorman's mindblank for everyone due to high wealth?

[Silva Stormrage]

What about stuff like ring of freedom, ring of evasion and third eye of a poorman's mindblank for everyone due to high wealth?

Well that costs you your two rings slots and most casters would be able to put up mindblank anyway. And enchanters are kinda screwed epic levels if they have no way of overcoming mind affecting immunity...

[AmberVael]

Here are some observations I've made about epic building and mechanics. I'm just one person, and my experience has been in relatively regulated play on these boards and not really anywhere else, so they may have underlying assumptions and biases that make them more or less accurate across the board that I wouldn't know about. So...

1) There isn't a whole lot of increase in options
This one is easy to misread, so let me clarify- a lot of the epic play I've been in is, as stated earlier, similar to optimized level 20 play. The reason behind this is that there really aren't many epic exclusive mechanics- so what I'm trying to say here is that epic does not add a new set of rules to the game. Most of what you do in epic can be done earlier, to an extent.

2) Those options already available, however, become much more common
Each character does have more options that they can use, and that's what really starts happening in epic. While in earlier levels you'd have to prioritize one thing over another, and really budget yourself, in epic... things just explode. Immunities? You can have them all! Spell list for a necromantic character? Buy all the necromancy spells ever printed, it isn't prohibitively expensive anymore, you're epic! Want to make a non-spellcasting dip with a spellcaster to say, pick up mettle? Not a problem- after 20th level, only thing that needs to be advanced is caster level. Pick up Practiced Spellcaster and you can pick up 4 non caster levels post epic with no problem whatsoever (for this reason, interestingly, dual casters can also be more effective, so long as you can find more PrCs or levels to progress both classes). So while all the combos and mechanics aren't necessarily new, they see a LOT more use, and you can have a character with many more of them...

3) Properly picked epic feats can be pretty awesome
For some characters, epic feats are terrible, and there just isn't much selection. However, for spellcasters, (and Binders and Warlocks, interestingly enough), epic feats can be really big deals. Multispell is basically a simple way to trounce the action economy more (particularly for sorcerers and psionicists, who can apply Quicken as needed), Improved Metamagic is just the standardized and cheapest way to broadly lower metamagic costs, and things like Epic Vestiges and the Epic Warlock feats (which can net you thinks like double eldritch essences, or supernatural at will Shades) can open up an array of very potent and versatile abilities.
If it fits in your build, it can be well worth your time to pick up some epic levels of a prestige class, which can also net frequent epic feats (Epic level incantatrix gives extra usages of Instant Metamagic and an extra free epic feat every three levels).

4) Certain mechanics break down
As I stated earlier, I'm playing a Psion. What I didn't mention is that this character is in fact a gestalt Psion//Incarnate.
I love Incarnum, and it is a really cool system... but so far, it has been less than helpful to me. I'm not using any of the biggest psionic/incarnum cheese, but even if I were, I wouldn't have needed a full meldshaper class for it.
The problem is that once you hit epic, there are so many ways that you can get the kind of effects that incarnum offers, that it basically just becomes redundant. I spent class levels and feats acquiring things that I could have picked up a lot cheaper, and basically now all that it can offer me are a few passive bonuses.
I've had a similar struggle when creating a binder, as I had much the same problem (though it was less drastic there).
More generally, save or dies, in my experience, also become nearly meaningless. With the glut of immunities, difficulty of increasing DCs while absurd ease of increasing Saves and access to class features, saving throws sky rocket, mettle and evasion become almost expected, and if you find a creature without mind blank, you are lucky- Save or lose/die need to become "just dies" or they are really without use except against mooks (granted, using them against mooks can be useful and have a good place in a game, it's just not quite the same).
Dispels don't work either, at least as written. Once you start getting into higher caster levels (particularly as it becomes easier to boost them above your level), you start surpassing the CL cap of the higher dispels by a larger and larger margin, until dispelling things becomes a crap shoot. A lot of the people I play with usually remove the cap on Greater Dispel magic and higher level dispels, because no one wants to pull out Disjunction at this level.
Also, as kind of a side note, I think archers become a lot more hit and miss. There seem to be a number of ways to complete negate the threat of ranged weapons, and a clever character can utilize those to their advantage. As if Windwall wasn't enough.


This is mostly just in addition to what Douglas has already said, because he's pretty much hit it on the head. This does assume a level of optimization though, which some may not have or be interested in (Crow probably has a better example for less optimized epic and high level play).

[Trebloc]

What about stuff like ring of freedom, ring of evasion and third eye of a poorman's mindblank for everyone due to high wealth?

Ring of Freedom is a godsend. Grappling is such a pain and paralysis isn't a whole lotta fun for a PC.

Yes, mindblank can be a little annoying (from a DM point of view). Ring of evasion as well, but that's hardly a guarentee to stop all Ref-based damage.

And of course, those are item slots used up. But really, other than the third eye, neither the ring of freedom or ring of evasion are expensive pre-epic.

Or are you referring to the baddies carrying that stuff? In which case, while it might not be entirely realistic, not every baddie carries these realtively cheap items, but that's used from a fun perspective for the PCs. If every baddie had them, then that's a sizeable portion of the spell list that's unuseable for the PCs. Sure, the BBEG and some of the higher-up croonies will likely have that kinda stuff, the regular goons likely won't.

[NichG]

It's a side issue, but one thing that's always bothered me about high end D&D is the following:

Save or dies have the same or higher DC than 'save or be mildly inconvenienced' type spells.

That means that the second category of spell becomes absolutely useless against anything that isn't immune to your save or die.

So as far as monster design, either you give the monster such high saves that they save against any DC, give them immunity to all 'shut down' powers and save or dies (these can be ablative defenses, so the fight still ends with an SoD or whatever), or you have to use large groups of creatures so that when two or three go down a round to SoDs, there's still stuff to fight.

I generally tend to think 'heroes against a single huge really impressive creature' when I think epic, rather than 'heroes against armies', so that has always posed a bit of a problem to me. A scaling DC system might be the answer (e.g. spells have 75% base DC for SoDs, 100% base DC for between cases, or 125% base DC for minor debuff and damage spells depending on what they do. So a DC 28 spell could 'really' be a DC 21 SoD or DC 35 save or take damage)

[Big Fau]

That means that the second category of spell becomes absolutely useless against anything that isn't immune to your save or die.

Save or Dies are poorly designed anyway, seeing as they either end the encounter or just reduce the number of enemies by X, where X is the number of targets. And Save or Lose spells tend to be applicable against multiple enemies, whereas SoDs are usually single-target.

[opticalshadow]

the biggest gripe with epic combat is, in lower and mid levels you can pretty much play how you want, prepare spells you like, and just a few you should. you can generally walk about without care or fear.

in epic you have to know what happens day to day. you will spend hours on in scrying and prepping for what your dealing with, combat last only a few seconds but takes so much longer to deal with, your enemies are more likly to cheese ony ou as you would on them, and one bad dice roll can be gg.

that said, its awesomely fun IMO, yeah its alot mroe work, but if your on here reading threads liek where you keep your phylactery or how to handle this or that situation, you can see just how awesome it is to truely outsmart the situation, or set up the perfect exsecution. theres nothing more awesome then end game when your nigh immortal where you travel planes just to use the bathroom, for no other reason then you can. you can set up a fortress in the abyss when your bored and see how long before your contingcy spells send you back home.


but it requires alot of maturity between players and dm's, it requires a dm to knwo the rules, and players who come prepared.

[Trebloc]

So as far as monster design, either you give the monster such high saves that they save against any DC, give them immunity to all 'shut down' powers and save or dies (these can be ablative defenses, so the fight still ends with an SoD or whatever), or you have to use large groups of creatures so that when two or three go down a round to SoDs, there's still stuff to fight.

I generally tend to think 'heroes against a single huge really impressive creature' when I think epic, rather than 'heroes against armies', so that has always posed a bit of a problem to me.

The heroes against a single enemy really poses a problem come action economy time. A group of 4 epic PCs against a single epic baddie? It's tough to make that challenging, though certainly possible. I try to mix things up so that everyone feels useful. Some fights against groups of goons, some against a single toughie. This way, a variety of spell selections and tactics can prove useful.

However, you don't have to give enormous saves or immunities to everything. There's no fun in a PC's spells/abilities never having a chance to work. The best advice I can give is to mix it up, alot. If you're just throwing a Balor treadmill at the group, that's boring. Hit the group at all sides with any kind of encounter you can dream up -- epic allows you to do this. You don't have to throw completely broken encounters at the group, but I find a wide variety works with my group to keep them on their toes.


that said, its awesomely fun IMO, yeah its alot mroe work, but if your on here reading threads liek where you keep your phylactery or how to handle this or that situation, you can see just how awesome it is to truely outsmart the situation, or set up the perfect exsecution.

This has certainly led to some great times at my table when the PCs come up with a brilliant solution. At the same time, it's also common at my table where the PCs come up with the idiot solution, so it all balances out.


but it requires alot of maturity between players and dm's, it requires a dm to knwo the rules, and players who come prepared.

I think this is the best advice to have. Everyone needs to help eachother and know what they're doing. Else, you do end up with combats that last hours. I think at my table we do a great job of steamlining epic play.

Players take the time to look things up themselves instead of asking the DM what the DC for a 100' jump is, which in turn means the DM has to stop the entire game and look it up for that lazy PC. When it's their turn at combat, they have 15 seconds to decide what they're doing, or they lose their turn. Players help eachother add up the damage done. Players also help the DM by tracking damage on monsters. A pseudo-metagaming thing we do is give out the baddies AC after a round or two of combat to speed things up.

The players have also made sheets for themselves to account for common buffs, and lists of their magic items and how to activate them.

[Calanon]

That's before you use your Epic slots. Once those come into play, the campaign may as well be over.


At that point, the first person to start brainwashing people may as well have a Death Note and a picture phone book.

This gave me an idea for a game :smalltongue:

[Endarire]

I've had 4 major experiences with Epic.

1: It was my first 3.0 campaign. We started at level 30. The lot of us, GM included, were mostly unfamiliar with the rules. Even though I should have ruled the world as a gish, I didn't know what I could do besides hurt people. So I did.

2: I did an Epic one-shot as a Paladin/Wizard gish, again at 30. The group found an epic Slaad Rogue "in a tavern," and we went about killing a small number of very powerful creatures. It was 'meh.'

3: I was the primary DM for a 3.5 game that started at L1 and lasted about 18 months of real time. For the final battle, the group hit 21, and I told them this was a taste of Epic. We destroyed an alien invasion (that used the Tarrasque as a hull for their mothership) by uniting two sides of a flat planet into a spherical planet, crushing them in the atmosphere. During this, Death showed up (Nerull) and we fought him in a perpetual time stop. We only won because we had a friendly godling counterspell everything Nerull did.

4: Research! I've read the physical ELH. I've checked the rules on the SRD. Man, do most Epic things suck! Epic rules feel more like the vast pool of arbitrary and funky things from 2E. As I've posed elswhere, what can you do in Epic that you can't do pre-Epic, short of have the [Epic] qualifier? Casters are already arbitrarily powerful. Things are can easily become immune to everything but HP damage, and sometimes even that!

I'm highly disappointed at official Epic feats in general. Non-casters get hosed, except for Exceptional Deflection, Infinite Deflection, and Reflect Arrows. Casters get Spell Stowaway (for time stop, etc.), Multispell, Auto-Quicken, and Epic Spellcasting..

[Incanur]

Xanatos speed chess. A single action that escalated into an absurd series of immediate and contingent counter actions that involved three people.

This matches my experiences in epic-level play. I can't deal with that level of complexity.

"Time stop! Maw of chaos! Dimensional lock! Prismatic sphere!"

"Disjunction! Then time stop for me too! Forcecage with Scupt Spell!"

"Battlemagic perception to counter!"

"Counter your counter!"

"Celerity!"

"Miracle to reverse everything that just happened!"

"My contingency goes off.."

:smallconfused::smallannoyed::smallsigh::smallmad: :smallfurious::smallredface::smallfrown:


As strange as it might seem, straight up damage with a weapon - a fighter's forte - ends up being one of the best attacks you can get.

If so, that's only after somebody cuts through the magical defenses. Otherwise you'll get the full attack reflected back in your face (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/reflect.htm). A high dispel check becomes ideal at epic levels.


Dispels don't work either, at least as written. Once you start getting into higher caster levels (particularly as it becomes easier to boost them above your level), you start surpassing the CL cap of the higher dispels by a larger and larger margin, until dispelling things becomes a crap shoot. A lot of the people I play with usually remove the cap on Greater Dispel magic and higher level dispels, because no one wants to pull out Disjunction at this level.

Using epic spells to dispel can get around this, though it's expensive. Much depends on how the DM rules epic spells interact with disjunction. I decided Seed: Ward can stop the dread abjuration. If not, I think epic combat would become disjunction tag. Auto-dispel everything and follow up with a chained greater dispel magic to suppress all their items. That's assuming enemy NPCs rather than monsters. I don't think I ever used epic monsters beyond the solar.

[Wings of Peace]

My personal experience with epic is that it's essentially rocket tag. Melee characters will have an easy time dealing enough damage to kill the baddies, Casters will have an easy time making their spells incinerate the baddies, and caterers will have an easy time making the now well cooked baddie into sandwiches for your party.

[DeAnno]

Combat at the tactical level is basically centered around trying to get off Disjunctions to rip down defenses (this is hard and typically there are several layers of countering and counter-countering) and then murdering people with lots of damage. At the strategical level, lots of scrying and counterscrying (various illusions), and lots of teleporting and counter teleporting (dimension lock, redirect teleport, even AMF.)

I don't have too much experience with high level Epic Spellcasting, but I'd bet it centers around those same basic goals.

[NichG]

I've played in and run campaigns that have gone into epic level, and the whole disjunction/rocket tag thing never really came up. Sure, its one way to play, it may even be a fixed point for optimal play, but none of us really wanted to play that way so we didn't.

That said, I ran an encounter for my group as a lark that used that kind of thing. Each PC (stocked to the brim with powerful post-epic homebrew stuff) fought a single optimized by-the-book Lv20 wizard/Iot7V one on one (with a caveat of no summoning, in order to prevent a Solar meltdown that'd just make the fight crawl). It was grueling, though each of them won in their own way, but the fight averaged perhaps 15 rounds for each of them. It was fun once, but it'd get really annoying if all the fights were like that.

[Runestar]

This matches my experiences in epic-level play. I can't deal with that level of complexity.

"Time stop! Maw of chaos! Dimensional lock! Prismatic sphere!"

"Disjunction! Then time stop for me too! Forcecage with Scupt Spell!"

"Battlemagic perception to counter!"

"Counter your counter!"

"Celerity!"

"Miracle to reverse everything that just happened!"

"My contingency goes off.."

I lol'ed, cuz this reminds me of magic: the gathering so much, especially blue vs blue counter wars. :smallbiggrin:

[Hunter Killer]

I like to run Epic with one large combat per session and a lot of roleplay before or after that. Otherwise, it's just too much work to prepare.

I have to agree with the posters who said it was rocket-tag. Definitely lots of spells, abilities, and whatnot flying back and forth. It's wild.

[AmberVael]

If so, that's only after somebody cuts through the magical defenses. Otherwise you'll get the full attack reflected back in your face (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/reflect.htm). A high dispel check becomes ideal at epic levels.

Using epic spells to dispel can get around this, though it's expensive. Much depends on how the DM rules epic spells interact with disjunction. I decided Seed: Ward can stop the dread abjuration. If not, I think epic combat would become disjunction tag. Auto-dispel everything and follow up with a chained greater dispel magic to suppress all their items. That's assuming enemy NPCs rather than monsters. I don't think I ever used epic monsters beyond the solar.

No one I know actually uses epic spells. It appears to be universally regarded as dumb and something to be ignored (and for good reason).

[137beth]

No one I know actually uses epic spells. It appears to be universally regarded as dumb and something to be ignored (and for good reason).

Depends on how much of your WBL you put into spellcraft items. Because gold increases exponentially, the bonuses items can give you to spellcraft can increase very, very rapidly. Which in turn makes your epic spells much more powerful. If your only source of spellcraft bonus is normal skill ranks, than epic spells are going to suck. But if you are willing to invest in appropriate magic items, they can become powerful even for epic levels.

[Douglas]

Depends on how much of your WBL you put into spellcraft items. Because gold increases exponentially, the bonuses items can give you to spellcraft can increase very, very rapidly. Which in turn makes your epic spells much more powerful. If your only source of spellcraft bonus is normal skill ranks, than epic spells are going to suck. But if you are willing to invest in appropriate magic items, they can become powerful even for epic levels.
That doesn't do a thing about the real problem, which is research costs. Anything worth researching is going to takes months or years and cost millions upon millions of gold.

What does help with research costs is the other real problem - mitigation. Put enough of it in and you can make an animated object out of the planet for free, and it's ridiculously easy to use other epic spells to conjure up unlimited amounts of fodder for ritual casting mitigation.

Epic spells as written in the book generally go one of two ways:
1) The potential of mitigation is ignored and no one ever bothers with epic spells except for a very few extremely specialized effects that nothing else can even do anything similar to.
2) Mitigation is used and epic spells near-instantly make all full casters almost omnipotent.

[Essence_of_War]

Crow,

That piece about your experience of epic play was VERY enlightening. Thanks! :smallbiggrin:

[Eldan]

I first read the title as "Epic Level Wombat".

I am disappointed.

[Incanur]

I lol'ed, cuz this reminds me of magic: the gathering so much, especially blue vs blue counter wars. :smallbiggrin:

Battlemagic perception does that, especially if neglect to turn it into an immediate action.


I have to agree with the posters who said it was rocket-tag. Definitely lots of spells, abilities, and whatnot flying back and forth. It's wild.

Either y'all misuse the concept of rocket tag or I don't understand it. For me, rocket tag means straightforward offense that almost always succeeds. Under those circumstances, whoever acts first wins. Think two barbarians with pounce and whirling frenzy at level one. Elaborate counterspell wars and time-manipulation tricks are a different animal entirely.


No one I know actually uses epic spells. It appears to be universally regarded as dumb and something to be ignored (and for good reason).

Does mage's disjunction dominate under those circumstances? I suspect it would, because without epic spells only countering and blocking line of effect can stop it. (Would wings of cover work? Maybe (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124453).)


Epic spells as written in the book generally go one of two ways:
1) The potential of mitigation is ignored and no one ever bothers with epic spells except for a very few extremely specialized effects that nothing else can even do anything similar to.
2) Mitigation is used and epic spells near-instantly make all full casters almost omnipotent.

A succinct summary.

[AmberVael]

Depends on how much of your WBL you put into spellcraft items. Because gold increases exponentially, the bonuses items can give you to spellcraft can increase very, very rapidly. Which in turn makes your epic spells much more powerful. If your only source of spellcraft bonus is normal skill ranks, than epic spells are going to suck. But if you are willing to invest in appropriate magic items, they can become powerful even for epic levels.

I never said they were dumb because they were underpowered. Though they certainly can be, particularly if your DM does not like mitigation or skill bonus items (which must be custom made).

What I really meant though was that the epic spell system is a faulty system, and by "no one actually uses" I was saying "all the DMs I've had have banned them."


Does mage's disjunction dominate under those circumstances? I suspect it would, because without epic spells only countering and blocking line of effect can stop it. (Would wings of cover work? Maybe (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124453).)

I assume it would dominate, but it is one of the things my groups tend to avoid because it'll break our system. I don't think it's ever outright banned, but no one wants to have it used against them, so no one uses it.