Epic Spellcaster and Level 0-9 spells

[willardthor]

Greetings.

In the epic spell progression of casters, such as Wizard and Cleric, no new spell slots are obtained; only the caster level increases.

Let us disregard epic spells, and that a high caster level is useful for penetrating SR and crafting items.

What role do (offensive) level 0-9 spells play on epic levels? Do they become useless? Their save DC does not scale on-par with epic monsters and epic-level characters.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,
Willard.

[EyethatBinds]

Saves do scale with level, in a sense. While the basic 10+Stat+Spell level remains the same, you can increase it with Epic Spell Focus and increased scores. The spells continue to increase their durations and Epic Spellcasting can get you 10th and up spell slots. An Empowered Heightened Metorswarm can really screw up someone's day.

[Urpriest]

Unless you are using very heavy DC optimization (since you do get higher level slots with feats, you can at least Heighten to some extent, though probably not enough) you have to focus on spells that don't offer saves. Note that NPC saves at least won't scale very fast since epic save scaling is slower, it's just the epic monsters where you'll need to break out your many no-save solutions.

[Karnith]

Generally speaking, the best offensive spells don't offer saves; epic-level play just reinforces this with absurdly-high numbers. If you're looking for pure HP damage, Maw of Chaos (which is uncapped, mind), metamagic'd Orbs of X, and the like still deal respectable damage and offer no save against the damage that they deal.

[Krobar]

Spells don't become useless, but one thing I've found in epic games (at least OUR epic games) is this: the higher you get into epic levels, the more you just need to beat things to death with your swords. Buffs are still very handy. Scrying can still be very handy. Gating, teleporting, and a lot of other spells are still very handy. But with all the immunities and protections most epic BBEGs have there often ends up being no substitute for "HULK SMASH!"

[Rebel7284]

Buffs don't have a save and neither does some of the best battlefield control. :)

For example, if you find a monster that doesn't have freedom of movement, solid fog is still amazing.

Quickened haste on the party is always nice.

Readied wall of stone/wall of force to break line of effect can be quite effective.

Also Ray Deflection can greatly limit your opponent's actions if you can't pick up that epic feat to deflect rays (it also stops touch attacks too!).

Celerity is only a 4th level spell, and once you get immunity to daze a Twinned celerity gives you even more action abuse.

Antimagic field is also a spell. :P

Also, don't underestimate the out of combat utility of spells.

[Chronos]

You can also take the approach of just spamming so many saving throws that your opponent will roll a 1 eventually. By the time you're far enough into epic that the DCs on even 9th-level spells are too low, you should have multiple instances of Automatic Quicken and Manyspell, and so can effortlessly cast several spells each round.

Unless, of course, your opponent has the ability to not auto-fail on a 1, as some epic monsters do.

[Zanos]

Saves do scale with level, in a sense. While the basic 10+Stat+Spell level remains the same, you can increase it with Epic Spell Focus and increased scores. The spells continue to increase their durations and Epic Spellcasting can get you 10th and up spell slots. An Empowered Heightened Metorswarm can really screw up someone's day.
You need improved heighten spell to heighten spells past 9th level. So you're looking at sacking one feat for that, then sacking another feat for each +1 dc you give the spell for the higher level spellslots themselves. I'd rather just take a bunch of instances of improved metamagic and stack loads of metamagic on a single spell with no save.


Alternatively you can take epic spellcasting and craft a spell that gives +50 or so int for a week, which is within range of a spellcraft check without stacking ludicrous amounts of reducers.
EDIT: Missed disregarding Epic Magic. It's broken, this is one of the least abusives abuses of it.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Some things are highly resistant to direct spells. Nothing is immune to all spells.
There's plenty of spells that still work even if the enemy makes it's save and spells that don't allow saves.
There's plenty of SR:no spells that work on enemies with magic immunity.

You just have to find the right one for the situation.

[willardthor]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.


Saves do scale with level, in a sense. While the basic 10+Stat+Spell level remains the same, you can increase it with Epic Spell Focus and increased scores. [...] Epic Spellcasting can get you 10th and up spell slots. [...]

Unless you are using very heavy DC optimization (since you do get higher level slots with feats, you can at least Heighten to some extent, though probably not enough) [...] Note that NPC saves at least won't scale very fast since epic save scaling is slower, it's just the epic monsters where you'll need to break out your many no-save solutions.

I took another look at ways to increase save DC of spells on epic levels.

In the epic level progressions, saving throws increase at a pace of +1 every 2 levels (at least).

A Wizard gains 2 feats every 3 levels.

The means by which an epic Wizard can keep improving the DC of his spells is


Keep taking the Great Intelligence feat. Save DC increases slower than saving throws.
Take the Epic Heighten Spell feat and keep taking the Improved Spell Capacity feat. Save DC increases faster than saving throws, but a wizard relying on this approach to make his spells hard to resist till run out of steam real fast.
Take the Epic Heighten Spell feat and keep taking Improved Metamagic. Save DC increases faster than saving throws, for all spells. (does this even work?)


Regardless of whether option 3 works or not, build options for a viable epic Wizard which relies on offensive spells which offers saves is very limited. Assuming option 3 doesn't work, this then reinforces:


[...] you have to focus on spells that don't offer saves. [...]


Generally speaking, the best offensive spells don't offer saves; epic-level play just reinforces this with absurdly-high numbers.

Thank you guys for reminding me about Logic Ninja's "Being Batman" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104002) Wizard guide :) I was hoping this wouldn't be "the answer", since the space of useful offensive spells shrinks dramatically if a Wizard relies on these spells to succeed.

This does answer my question regarding spells and save DC; many offensive spells become useless (those that offer saves), but not all.


Spells don't become useless, but one thing I've found in epic games (at least OUR epic games) is this: the higher you get into epic levels, the more you just need to beat things to death with your swords. Buffs are still very handy. Scrying can still be very handy. Gating, teleporting, and a lot of other spells are still very handy. But with all the immunities and protections most epic BBEGs have there often ends up being no substitute for "HULK SMASH!"

This is one thing I have noticed as well; as my epic Psion has advanced in levels, the most useful thing the Psion can do is to buff and flail away with a sword. Not very Psion-y.

Another thing I have noticed is that information and initiative means everything. So epic combat is like cloak-and-dagger; attack is gathering intelligence on your enemy (through magic, conversation, and writing, say), and defense is counter-intelligence. Not very much in the spirit of D&D.


Buffs [...] wall of stone/wall of force [...] Antimagic field [...]

Thanks for the tips and tricks :) (I liked the Wall of Force line-of-effect breaking one). These are not offensive spells, however.


Celerity is only a 4th level spell, and once you get immunity to daze a Twinned celerity gives you even more action abuse.
You can also take the approach of just spamming so many saving throws that your opponent will roll a 1 eventually. By the time you're far enough into epic that the DCs on even 9th-level spells are too low, you should have multiple instances of Automatic Quicken and Manyspell, and so can effortlessly cast several spells each round.

I'd prefer not to have to resort to spamming actions, or breaking the action barrier, to succeed as an epic Wizard (the GM wouldn't like it). This also sounds like a very boring combat; wait for the foe to roll a 1.

[willardthor]

Which brings me to what I was really getting at (sorry for (mis-)leading you):


Some things are highly resistant to direct spells. Nothing is immune to all spells.
There's plenty of spells that still work even if the enemy makes it's save and spells that don't allow saves.
There's plenty of SR:no spells that work on enemies with magic immunity.

You just have to find the right one for the situation.

(I'm adding "item crafting" to the "Let's disregard")

Since not even a high caster level is needed to make certain offensive spells succeed, then there is really no reason to take epic Wizard levels, is there?

[Rebel7284]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.
I'd prefer not to have to resort to spamming actions, or breaking the action barrier, to succeed as an epic Wizard (the GM wouldn't like it). This also sounds like a very boring combat; wait for the foe to roll a 1.

Time Stop, the most overpowered action economy breaking spell, is core... breaking the action economy is part of the class. When you count the fact that Multispell exists, it becomes difficult to NOT break the action economy.

And yes, epic level wizard is pretty unexciting. It's often better to take something with class features.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Since not even a high caster level is needed to make certain offensive spells succeed, then there is really no reason to take epic Wizard levels, is there?

That's not true. Aside from protecting against enemies dispelling your buffs and BFC (which is important enough on it's own) and helping overcome SR it also makes a lot of spells more effective. Larger areas, more range, increased effects and longer durations help quite a bit even if many spells have their effects capped at CL20.

A lot of enemies have either dispel SLAs or spellcasting of their own so protecting the buffs you need to be competitive at that level is quite important.
Don't underestimate the effects of having higher CL than the opposition.

[137beth]

Don't forget about magic items!

WBL increases exponentially. A full caster should be getting ability-score boosting items. So your casting stat will increase as ~(a*b^x)/(x^2), faster than any polynomial. This means, among other things, that:
your spells per day will actually increase exponentially, due to the bonus spells granted from a high ability score. And 9th level spells per day, in particular, will increase at a rate proportional to your main casting stat. So actually, your nonepic spells per day increase substantially faster the higher you go.
Also, save DCs will increase rapidly.

Despite your save DCs skyrocketing after ~level 25 (unless you invest in epic spells. If you focus more on boosting your spellcraft, you won't have as much to spend on boosting your save DCs. In that case, your save DCs might not start skyrocketing until level 30+, if the game even gets that high,) don't depend on save-or-lose spells. It is a good idea to keep at least three SoL spells around, one for each save, due to some monsters having particular weak saves. If you know a monster's weak save, you can end a fight right away. However, a lot of epic monsters have tons of immunities which negate most kinds of save-or-lose spells.
Ultimately, battlefield control and buffs are the way to go: the other members of your party can use their enormous WBL to boost their damage, and you can make it easier for them to attack with BC/action-economy-breaking. Weapon damage immunity is a lot rarer than other kinds of immunities, so this is usually a reasonable strategy.

[karkus]

*scissor noise*

Mostly what s/he said. While Antimagic Field doesn't perfectly negate Epic spells and effects, it will do just that to their nonEpic counterparts, as well as having a good chance of actually do the same thing to the Epic spells.

And yeah, while Mage Armor is a first-level spell, it still gives you a +4 to AC in a pinch.

[Karnith]

Mostly what s/he said. While Antimagic Field doesn't perfectly negate Epic spells and effects, it will do just that to their nonEpic counterparts
Except for instantaneous Conjuration spells, of course. And undead minions. Also, it only extends to a very small range. If you're trying to strip buffs and suppress items, Disjunction or chained Dispel Magic are generally better bets.

[137beth]

Time Stop, the most overpowered action economy breaking spell, is core... breaking the action economy is part of the class. When you count the fact that Multispell exists, it becomes difficult to NOT break the action economy.

And yes, epic level wizard is pretty unexciting. It's often better to take something with class features.
In 3.5? You should have switched to a prestige class with full spellcasting progression at level 6. Getting to epic doesn't change that--prestige classes with full spellcasting are basically always preferable to pure wizard or sorcerer. This remains true from level 6 through level 1000+, the prestige classes give you the same spellcasting and better/actual class features.

[Rebel7284]

In 3.5? You should have switched to a prestige class with full spellcasting progression at level 6. Getting to epic doesn't change that--prestige classes with full spellcasting are basically always preferable to pure wizard or sorcerer. This remains true from level 6 through level 1000+, the prestige classes give you the same spellcasting and better/actual class features.

Outside of some VERY corner cases, this is indeed true. However, as this conversation is specifically about epic, I was focusing on epic in my response. :)