[Epic] Maximizing ability scores

[Skyrunner]

In my campaign, I have a Epic level wizard (46 to be exact). I like fully statting important people, so I created her stat sheet. It seems that with my meager knowledge of D&D, I can't really increase her intelligence modifier enough to make high saves. For things like AC, Epic Mage Armor & Amulet of Natural armor, say, was the answer. What about ability scores? Any way to increase it to very high levels? (I assume that potions and ability increasing items don't stack.)

[ahenobarbi]

Well you have increases for leveling, +5 inherent bonus to each stat from casting wish, items with more bonus, all that easy.

BTW intelligence does not give you bonuses to saves, does it?

[Gavinfoxx]

So, which houserules are you using instead of epic spellcasting?

You DID get rid of Epic Spellcasting, right?

Also, the actual stats on his sheet shouldn't matter at all, because, due to his spells, it is basically impossible for anyone to actually affect him in any meaningful way whatsoever anyway.

[Seerow]

Just research a Epic spell that gives you +arbitrary amount to your attributes for say 1 year, and recast it each year. Set your stats as high as you want them.

[tyckspoon]

Well, you still get the ability point every 4 levels. Keep throwing that into Intelligence. And if you've run out of other feats to take (or you're just taking Epic Wizard levels instead of random PrCs, so you have enough decent Epic Bonus Feats from that) you can start throwing feats into Great Intelligence.. and if you have enough wealth, you can create an arbitrarily high boost version of the Headband of Intelligence, but that gets way more expensive than it can really be worth pretty quickly.

The way you really want to do it is Epic Spells. You are not restricted to and are not *meant* to be restricted to the pre-written ones in the Epic Handbook; those are just examples of the system, and pretty poor ones at that. Take a look at the Fortify seed: It can provide a cheap and long-duration Enhancement bonus to ability scores, saving throws, natural armor, and spell resistance. Basically, your mage should have Epic Fox's Cunning and Epic Barkskin running at all times, among others- the spell looks something like this:

Seed: Fortify
Duration: 160 hours (default duration 20 hours, Increase Duration factor applied 7 times. This is just shy of lasting a standard week.)
Target: Personal
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Effect: Enhancement bonus to Intelligence.

That's the shell of it; the effect of that barebones version is to give +1 enhancement for a week. That's not terribly useful to an Epic character, but you're not done figuring out this spell yet- the total bonus you can achieve depends on how much you're willing to pay for the spell and how much DC mitigation you can access. Right now, the DC for this spell is:

Base 17 for the seed, +14 for 7 applications of extended duration factor, -2 mitigation for changing the spell from 'touch' to Personal only, -18 for extending the casting time by 9 minutes= 11. Assuming you were talking about the Epic Spell 'Epic Mage Armor' earlier, you already have this character making regular use of a DC 46 spell, so we'll use that as the target number..

46-11 = 35 spare points of DC to increase the effect with. Fortify gets you +1 enhancement bonus per 2 points of DC, so we can pack another 17 points of enhancement into this. So now, for the same cost as the default Epic Mage Armor spell, you have +18 Enhancement to Intelligence for an entire week.

If you have other sources of mitigation available- say, for example, a Rod of Excellent Magic, which will pay up to 2,000 XP on your behalf- you can either make the spell much cheaper to research or jam in more bonuses; the mentioned Rod lets you use XP burn as a mitigating factor, at -1/100 XP, which means you basically get a free extra 20 DC. Which converts to either saving you like a million GP, a couple hundred thousand XP, and 2 weeks of time on the research costs, or letting you shove in +10 more points of bonus to the end spell.

[Skyrunner]

BTW intelligence does not give you bonuses to saves, does it?


The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a wizard’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the wizard’s Intelligence modifier.

I think I may have not been clear enough. I meant the save DC.


So, which houserules are you using instead of epic spellcasting?

You DID get rid of Epic Spellcasting, right?

Uhh, were there any problems with Epic Spellcasting that I was unaware of? :/ I didn't remove any SRD rules...

[Hiro Protagonest]

Uhh, were there any problems with Epic Spellcasting that I was unaware of? :/ I didn't remove any SRD rules...

Yeah. All of it. It's either horribly mediocre or game-breakingly powerful.

And this is considered "bad" in the system where you can destroy the world with a cantrip (I don't think separating protons counts as damage).

[Skyrunner]

Eh, the old Prestidigitation debate ? >.>

((Personally, I think that it does... but that's a whole 'nother topic.))

[tyckspoon]

Basically, the sort of spell I outlined above is about as close as Epic Spells get to being both useful and responsibly used- and even that use is far, far better than any other way to get that result (a +18 Headband of Intellect would cost 3.2 million GP. DC 46 spell: 414,000. One of these is ludicrously overpriced. The other could be paid for by a non-Epic character, disregarding the XP cost.) On the extremes away from that, you have either spells that are completely outclassed by intelligent use of non-Epic magic (the Epic spell system is *horrible* for attack magic, as the most notable example; it is pretty much never worth designing an Epic Spell to blast somebody) or you work the system to its logical (and fairly easily achieved) optimization and Epic Spells make the system into a sandbox godgame. (Which is pretty fun too, but it's usually not what people play D&D for.)

[Skyrunner]

@tyckspoon

Hmm, so Seed:Fortify does those things.

(On the same character) I made up a Seed:Life spell that added 100 to the DC in exchange for going through one of the Life seed's explicit restrictions, no relife-ing people who die of old age... Is such an use even legal? :P

As for the casting DC, the wizard can cast up to DC 58 spells by taking 10.

Attack spells ... cool overkill spells might be nice but efficiency is really out the window :P

[Rubik]

You can also use age to grab an additional +3, and Polymorph Any Object to grab the form of a creature with a much higher Intelligence score than you, and use the spell to make it permanent.

Sarruhks (which are excessively broken, though not for this reason), for instance, have a nice round 30 Int, which everything else stacks on top of.

[Alleran]

You can also use age to grab an additional +3, and Polymorph Any Object to grab the form of a creature with a much higher Intelligence score than you, and use the spell to make it permanent.
Add to this an Elixir of Eternity (minor artifact from Dungeon #112). It removes your maximum age, and every 200 years after you hit venerable, you move up a virtual age category and gain +1 INT. Your physical attributes drop by 1 point every 100 years, but they can't go below 1... and your mental scores have no upper limit. Just hop into a fast-time demiplane and come back out a little while later with a truly ridiculous score.

The elixir might be an artifact, but if a 46th level spellcaster doesn't have at least half a dozen or more artifacts gathering dust in the basement of their personal demiplane, then they're not doing it right.

[Rubik]

Add to this an Elixir of Eternity (minor artifact from Dungeon #112). It removes your maximum age, and every 200 years after you hit venerable, you move up a virtual age category and gain +1 INT. Your physical attributes drop by 1 point every 100 years, but they can't go below 1... and your mental scores have no upper limit. Just hop into a fast-time demiplane and come back out a little while later with a truly ridiculous score.

The elixir might be an artifact, but if a 46th level spellcaster doesn't have at least half a dozen or more artifacts gathering dust in the basement of their personal demiplane, then they're not doing it right.The fun thing is that you can replace your physical stats with those from a PAO, so you get to keep the mentals and replace your physicals.

[Gavinfoxx]

You generally want to remove Epic Spellcasting from the game. Remember, when you make a bunch of simulacrums of yourself, or simulacrums of angels, or just planar bind a bunch of angels, and make them all help you with epic spells, thus making the research time and the cost for any given epic spell be zero, as long as you have a bunch of people to help you cast it... than things get really, really ugly. You can basically spend a week giving yourself arbitrarily high ability scores, statistics, immunities to everything (the very least of which is hit point damage), other abilities that you can expend, etc., for a year...