Epic Spells: What are they good for?

[CrazyYanmega]

I've been wondering: What is the value of the custom spells you make with Epic Levels and Spellcraft? They seem like a lot of cost and effort for a low chance at reward. Could someone help explain this for me, please?

[Emperor Tippy]

I've been wondering: What is the value of the custom spells you make with Epic Levels and Spellcraft? They seem like a lot of cost and effort for a low chance at reward. Could someone help explain this for me, please?

Go look at the ritual mitigation rules again. And perhaps the Summoning Seed along with, oh, the Planatar, Coutal, and Solar.

[Necroticplague]

They're hard to use, but easy to abuse. if you're just to make the spell normally on your own, you end with overcosted crap you could've done with non-epic spells. If you start taking advantage of every mitigation, you can have it at 0 for only an investment of time (like say, chain-gating solars to contribute their spell slots to helping you).

[Zweisteine]

And if you can't make it a ritual to mitigate the costs, backlash damage always works. At those levels, the cost of a contingent revivify is neglible.

And, of course, once you've made the spell castable, you can do pretty much anything.

[Emperor Tippy]

And if you can't make it a ritual to mitigate the costs, backlash damage always works. At those levels, the cost of a contingent revivify is neglible.

And, of course, once you've made the spell castable, you can do pretty much anything.

Never backlash a permanent spell. You take the full backlash damage every single round of the spells duration. I.e., you die forever.

[TuggyNE]

I've been wondering: What is the value of the custom spells you make with Epic Levels and Spellcraft? They seem like a lot of cost and effort for a low chance at reward. Could someone help explain this for me, please?

Epic spellcasting is the ultimate expression of the strength of T1 classes: the ability to proactively alter yourself or the universe to achieve some lasting desired end during downtime. They are not particularly useful when cast in combat against some enemy, but are stupendously effective when meticulously built up as permanent touch-range buffs that give you and your party immunity to everything conceivable and let's say +20 of every bonus type available to all the rest.

Most of this is achievable because mitigation is unbounded: given enough time and effort, you can make any spell at all into a Spellcraft DC 0, and thus research it either instantly and for free (by strict RAW) or within a day and for a very modest price (by a more sensible houseruling). The fact that epic spells are allowed, even encouraged, to find ad hoc DCs for every conceivable task just makes it even more painfully open-ended.

[Necroticplague]

Never backlash a permanent spell. You take the full backlash damage every single round of the spells duration. I.e., you die forever.

Hilariously, one of the premade epic spells (I think it was epic spell turning) has this problem.

[Karnith]

Hilariously, one of the premade epic spells (I think it was epic spell turning) has this problem.
Actually, multiple premade epic spells have this problem; Enslave (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/enslave.htm), Epic Spell Reflection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/epicSpellReflection.htm), and Origin of Species: Achaierai (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/originOfSpeciesAchaierai.htm) all have permanent durations with backlash damage as a mitigating factor.

[Melcar]

Oh.. just This! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57sUtvNa5o) :smallbiggrin:

[Chronos]

Epic spells are a very poorly-designed system, in that they require DM adjudication, but do not give the DM the tools needed to do so competently, and instead provide tools to make it harder on the DM. They could have said "This is exactly what epic spells can do, under these circumstances, and no more", and then an inexperienced DM could just follow the recipes and worked fairly. Or they could have left out the rules and said "Epic spellcasters can accomplish whatever you think is fair and reasonable for your campaign world, as you negotiate with the players", and then an experienced DM could come up with something suitable. As it is, though, the skeleton of rules they provided are enough to shackle the good DMs, but not enough to facilitate the inexperienced DMs, and so nobody gets good use out of them.

[Icewraith]

I could have sworn the backlash damage was per round of the spell's casting (default casting time is one minute), not it's duration? Of course, it's been a while, but that surprised me.

[hamishspence]

I could have sworn the backlash damage was per round of the spell's casting (default casting time is one minute), not it's duration? Of course, it's been a while, but that surprised me.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/developingEpicSpells.htm

In the footnotes for backlash damage:

For spells with durations longer than instantaneous, the backlash damage is per round.

[Zweisteine]

Well then, it's a good thing I've never actually tried to play an epic character before. It's mostly been thinking about what kind of magic I could do... This revelation is annoying.

[Clistenes]

Epic Spells are great for:

1.-Create anything, from castles to floating cities to islands to living islands to huge areas under a permanent spell effect to Demiplanes to constructs to living beings to new races.

2.-Give yourself huge bonuses to everything that make you untouchable.

3.-Create contingent effects that hurt and kill your foes when discharged. You can easily make the Caster Level, Save DC and Damage always lethal even for gods.

4.-Everything else. Honestly, I only tried to create an Epic Character with Epic Spellcasting once, and while I was writing the Epic Spells I planned to develop, I realized how f*cking boring was going to be to play a character like that, and I discarded it.

The only way a DM can handle it is by not allowing the players to get wealth appropiate to their level (so they can't use the expensive spell components and armies of Simulacrum helpers as mitigating factors), putting a limit to the number of Epic Spells that they are able to develop.

[Karoht]

One example of an Epic Spell used in an interesting way, for both story reasons and for player power, was Alter Planar Trait.

Background: The enemies were homebrewed extra-planar beings who used homebrew/fiat magic, not subject to or affected by things like Anti-Magic Field for example.

So the player created an Epic Spell, one that allowed him to determine certain Planar Traits on any plane of existance he wanted to. He then had to go and get permission from the God of Magic, informed him of the threat and his plan for minimizing it, with the assurance that he would not use it to turn off any other types of magic.

I can only imagine the DM's face when he realized what was up, all too late, when the spell completed and shortly after a pair of Gods from that universe showed up, the DM tried homebrew/fiat magic, only for the response of "nope" from the player.

I'm not sure if this all falls into the scope of Epic Spells, but you get the idea.

[unseenmage]

I always kind of suspected that after a certain point tables that allow epic spells just play the game via flowchart instead of adventure.

DM sets up a flowchart of what could be and the players navigate it without being able to see it.

The biggest difference being that infinite and nigh infinite variables become the new ones and zeroes of the game. All variables less than infinite or nigh infinite just stop getting calculated at all.

But that's just me and how I picture the game if it allows for epic spells, Mirror Mephits, Spellclocks, etc.

Edit: But then my scenario still assumes linear time, which is also all mucked up by high level casting. :smallfrown:
I'll have to think about that one, perhaps if there were just more flowcharts...

[Runestar]

I've been wondering: What is the value of the custom spells you make with Epic Levels and Spellcraft? They seem like a lot of cost and effort for a low chance at reward. Could someone help explain this for me, please?

The way the epic spellcasting mechanics work now, they are mainly good for long duration buffs, where you can dramatically increase the casting time to lower the spellcraft DC and research costs.

Take a look at epic mage armour for an example of a spell which is worth it. +20 AC for days, and you can increase the casting time to 10 minutes for a -18DC mitigator. Or a similar buff spell which adds +16 enhancement bonus to a stat of your choice. You can even tack on the area seed for cheap to benefit the entire party.

[Jack_Simth]

I've been wondering: What is the value of the custom spells you make with Epic Levels and Spellcraft? They seem like a lot of cost and effort for a low chance at reward. Could someone help explain this for me, please?
Sure. Suppose you want to do something Ridiculous (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=789449&postcount=1). Turns out it's Totally possible (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=791074&postcount=9), it just takes a little bit of time.

Given the methods used, you could instead replace the Ridiculous thing with something far more practical. Like, say, +1000 to your AC (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/armor.htm), +1000 Enhancement to all attributes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/fortify.htm), or Immunity to every hostile spell you can think of (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/seeds/ward.htm) - and give it all a duration of 10,000 years.

[Necroticplague]

Funniest thing I've ever seen was an epic spell that granted a piece of ground sentience, with one sla at will: the spell that made it. Let exponential growth do its job until the whole earth is sentient.

[Hytheter]

Funniest thing I've ever seen was an epic spell that granted a piece of ground sentience, with one sla at will: the spell that made it. Let exponential growth do its job until the whole earth is sentient.

That sounds really unnerving, because it wouldn't be a matter of the whole world being sentient; rather, it would mean that the world is a colony of sentient dirt chunks, each somehow distinct from one another but without any clear borders or divisions...

[Necroticplague]

That sounds really unnerving, because it wouldn't be a matter of the whole world being sentient; rather, it would mean that the world is a colony of sentient dirt chunks, each somehow distinct from one another but without any clear borders or divisions...

Well, the final step was to use dark speech to give them all one massive hivemind. Which has the side effect of of giving it the casting of a ridiculously obscenely powerful sorcerer.

[Chronos]

If you want to get really cheesy, you never give any of your epic buff spells a long duration. You give them an instantaneous duration. See, if an epic spell uses multiple seeds, then the resulting spell has a base duration equal to that of the shortest-duration seed. So you just add one of the instantaneous seeds like Energy, and poof, not only do your buffs last forever, they're also undispellable.

Note that this can also be used to give ability-score boosters of whatever type you'd like. Only bonuses of the Inherent type can be made permanent, and they're capped at +5 even with epic magic, but there's nothing that says that you can't make spells for an instantaneous +20 or +30 insight bonus to Int, or morale, or alchemical, or whatever.

[bekeleven]

Never backlash a permanent spell. You take the full backlash damage every single round of the spells duration. I.e., you die forever.

http://i.imgur.com/rnQxo7F.png

[TypoNinja]

And if you can't make it a ritual to mitigate the costs, backlash damage always works. At those levels, the cost of a contingent revivify is neglible.

And, of course, once you've made the spell castable, you can do pretty much anything.

Contingency for your backlash damage doesn't work. People awalys forget that bit.


If backlash damage kills a caster, no spell or method exists that will return life to the caster’s body without costing the caster a level—not even wish, true resurrection, miracle, or epic spells that return life to the deceased. Spells that normally penalize the recipient one level when they return him or her to life penalize a caster killed by backlash two levels.

That is one huge loophole they did think of.

[Necroticplague]

That's why hide life+ beastland ferocity is what you need. The backlash doesn't kill you, the hide life wearing off does.

[Segev]

Indomitability made contingent upon you taking Backlash damage from a spell would ensure that you retained at least 1 hp.

[Vaz]

Never backlash a permanent spell. You take the full backlash damage every single round of the spells duration. I.e., you die forever.

Use Healing or whatever Seed to make it Instantaneous.

But then with enough BoB clones contributing their Epic Spell slots (you have NI infinite; get Wish as a Su/SLA, recreate Body Outside Body, have clones (^4) do the same, etc etc), you have no need of taking Backlash Damage.

Add on Healing for Instantaneous Duration (say Invisibility, my favourite), and you are golden. Incorporate another seed to increase your CL and you cannot be detected.

Wizard 6/Incantatrix 10/Archmage 5 with Shapechange x4 as your SLA, with Miracle or Timestop as the other. This gives you 24 hours of Shapechanging, which gives you the form of a Zodar, which has Wish as an Su. This gives you every other round a wish, so 7200 wishes, recreating Body Outside Body. The maths soon breaks a calculator. Someone better than me at maths can probably work out how many Clones this gets you in 24 hours. Each of these clones mitigate -19 from the final cost.

Using Incantatrix, you Persist and Extend it, so you spend the next day making the spell.

So, yeah, nothing much really.

[Phelix-Mu]

Ritual mitigation is really where it's at. Suck up enough xp costs to do some gating or develop an epic spell for gating in solars or whatever thing that has spell slots.

Also, wyrm rods exist, so once you own WBL, just buy a bunch of unkillable slave dragons and have them help you. Not as efficient as solars, but they are also...well...dragons.

Finally, simulacra/ice assassin/shadow seed of yourself to get more spell slots for the ritual. The game breaks really fast.

Finally, any DM permitting epic spells would do well to ban mythals and shadow seeds, from Power of Faerun, I think it was. These epic spell seeds really put the others to shame, particularly mythal, which has it's own special, especially borked rules.

I once made a spaceship out of sentient colossal oak trees hardened to the strength of adamantine and coated in riverine. The whole ship was made up of like 18k trees or so, and they each could use their actions to activate any of the five mythals that were present on the ship: propulsion, defense, offense, sensors, and utility/crafting. A separate epic spell bound all the trees together under the command of a central sentient "captain," who in turn was subservient to the owners of the ship, designated by magical tattoos+countermeasures.

Other cool stuff I've done:

-Use the Life Seed to bring to life a specially augmented colossal tree carved into a six-limbed statue, Transform it down to Large size, give it maximized mental stats, (and later we added psyreform at will once we had access to Epic Manifesting). This in turn was the center of a mythal that had, among other toys, awaken as a standard action, elemental swarm as a standard action, wraithstrike/gmw/greater mighty wallop/etc on all allies, wings of cover at will, etc, etc. The six-armed thing wielded gattling guns and later got ablative armour to boot (long story).

-Summon a solar permanently, bind it's body/soul to my character's soul/body. The effect was to have a second, subservient consciousness in the body of my character that had the powers of a solar. My character could access the solar's spellcasting, and the solar could use it's SLAs whenever it wanted. The solar was transformed into an incorporeal being bound to my character's body, a kind of mental construct with some limited, ghost-like powers.

- Mass Disintegrate spell that creates multiple disintegration rays that can overlap area or be used to sculpt a broad area of material as per the caster's mental image.

- Sonic boom-boom spell designed to inflict massive damage. It worked.

[SiuiS]

Epic spells aren't hard to do at all, actually.

We have what we have affectionately termed Impulses, spellcraft DC 0 epic spells. Due to having a creation cost of 0 GP, and thus no creation time, we assume casters just shape and chuck raw magic; the maximum effect is still limited by total spellcraft I think, but it's not important as there are limited mitigation factors.

The caster who decides to punch the air and twist reality's nipple into accomplishing something, can.

On the other hand, well, go big or go home; There's little value in an epic spell that does something simple and instantaneous compared to spending the gold to research and develop a higher-than-9th-level normal spell and prep it in your spell slots. So epic spells with actual spellcraft DCs are usually High ceremonial Magics, where during a conjunction of the stars three wizards, a master and apprentices, chant their dark words into the ether while sacrificing magical energies and an unwilling seraph, binding energy for seven days straight into a mystic diagram to permanently align the three separate material planes, combining the home campaign with both eberron and forgotten realms, say, while their enemies try to thwart their defences and stop the spell from culminating.

Epic spells have mostly narrative use; either you've got a fantastic expression of archmastery (instant impulses) and you've got obvious and detectable massive rituals (long duration spells). To enhance this, we actually soft-ban any epic spell with a DC between 0 and 20. Unless you literally have wasted points in construction, somehow.

[Yawgmoth]

If you want to get really cheesy, you never give any of your epic buff spells a long duration. You give them an instantaneous duration. See, if an epic spell uses multiple seeds, then the resulting spell has a base duration equal to that of the shortest-duration seed. So you just add one of the instantaneous seeds like Energy, and poof, not only do your buffs last forever, they're also undispellable.

Note that this can also be used to give ability-score boosters of whatever type you'd like. Only bonuses of the Inherent type can be made permanent, and they're capped at +5 even with epic magic, but there's nothing that says that you can't make spells for an instantaneous +20 or +30 insight bonus to Int, or morale, or alchemical, or whatever. This was a spell that I created in a stupid-high-epic game. Personal range 10 minute cast time spell that did 10d4 fire damage and gave a +50 circumstance bonus to a stat of my choice. Cast it 6 times, laugh.

[SiuiS]

Hilariously, one of the premade epic spells (I think it was epic spell turning) has this problem.

Premade epic spells are designed to demonstrate straightforward application; they clearly show the least resistant path to accomplishment.

Hellball does 200d6 damage. that's an average of 700 damage. You get the same approximate damage for cheaper by shifting the damage die to d20 and only tossing 67 of them, with a much lower minimum of 67 damage, but a higher maximum of 1,340 to the 200d6's 1,200... And with enough mitigation left over to toss another couple dozen d20s.


I could have sworn the backlash damage was per round of the spell's casting (default casting time is one minute), not it's duration? Of course, it's been a while, but that surprised me.

Backlash actually changed through editing and was left sloppy.


Epic Spells are great for:

1.-Create anything, from castles to floating cities to islands to living islands to huge areas under a permanent spell effect to Demiplanes to constructs to living beings to new races.

2.-Give yourself huge bonuses to everything that make you untouchable.

3.-Create contingent effects that hurt and kill your foes when discharged. You can easily make the Caster Level, Save DC and Damage always lethal even for gods.

4.-Everything else. Honestly, I only tried to create an Epic Character with Epic Spellcasting once, and while I was writing the Epic Spells I planned to develop, I realized how f*cking boring was going to be to play a character like that, and I discarded it.

The only way a DM can handle it is by not allowing the players to get wealth appropiate to their level (so they can't use the expensive spell components and armies of Simulacrum helpers as mitigating factors), putting a limit to the number of Epic Spells that they are able to develop.

Point bold; nonpermanent. You actually can't get permanent bonuses with any ease, indeed if at all. There are much better ways.

Point 4; Not exactly true. Every enemy you fight has a massive network of magic at their disposal, made less effective by being spread among many beings. Demon lords, angelic hosts, necromancer kings. Any spell crafting you undergo has two discrete points - when you are researching the spell, and when you are casting it. Both of these are viable temporal beacons for finding you while you're weak and attacking. That's the epic wizard metagame, how to chant from the parapets of your castle for an eon without being disturbed before you finish. What protections do you have in place? I hope not mindblank, or any illusion, or any common abjuration. I also hope all your epic defenses have ablative armoring to prevent disjoining. Those are the first and most obvious things any real threat will be able to handle.

And hell, you haven't had fun until you've tried holding off three legions from Azzagrat supplemented by Asmodean forces through compact... And That's the moment the gods find fit to sic a perfected paragon epic pseudonatural aleax on you. While you've got two hours left of your ritual.


I always kind of suspected that after a certain point tables that allow epic spells just play the game via flowchart instead of adventure.

DM sets up a flowchart of what could be and the players navigate it without being able to see it.

The biggest difference being that infinite and nigh infinite variables become the new ones and zeroes of the game. All variables less than infinite or nigh infinite just stop getting calculated at all.

But that's just me and how I picture the game if it allows for epic spells, Mirror Mephits, Spellclocks, etc.

Edit: But then my scenario still assumes linear time, which is also all mucked up by high level casting. :smallfrown:
I'll have to think about that one, perhaps if there were just more flowcharts...

CR in epics is 1-20. Each number is "how likely are my opponents to be clever?" with 10 being average. :smallbiggrin:


Funniest thing I've ever seen was an epic spell that granted a piece of ground sentience, with one sla at will: the spell that made it. Let exponential growth do its job until the whole earth is sentient.

I don't think that would work, actually. Is there not something that prevents epic spells from being made into items or SLAs?


http://i.imgur.com/rnQxo7F.png

I approve this post.


This was a spell that I created in a stupid-high-epic game. Personal range 10 minute cast time spell that did 10d4 fire damage and gave a +50 circumstance bonus to a stat of my choice. Cast it 6 times, laugh.

Attributes cannot be permanently increased. Note this doesn't say anything about permanent duration, just that if there is no durational end, it's not happening.

[Necroticplague]

I don't think that would work, actually. Is there not something that prevents epic spells from being made into items or SLAs?

Nope. Actually, the rules for giving created creatures sla's actually work out easier if you give them epic sla's than normal ones (for normal sla's, you'd have to figure out what seeds to use and how to combine them, while can just use the epic spell itself easy. Basically, giving them it as an sla just doubled the cost). The spell itself was pricy to develop, but it didn't have many mitigators once it was developed. Sorry for lack of detail, it was a whole ago. I believe that it was just an application of the life seed.

[Vaz]

Point bold; nonpermanent. You actually can't get permanent bonuses with any ease, indeed if at all. There are much better ways.

You mitigate the DC down to nothing, so it takes no time whatsoever (day/50,000, DC is negative, rounded up = 0). It costs no XP either. So there's no down time to develop, just the collection of forces which make the Spellcraft DC lower. Because you're on your Demiplane which you've; pre-epic, so you're not on anyones radar too much yet, and because you're a paranoid wizard, already have precautions etc), you're protected against most non-epic divinations, and like I said, you're not yet epic, so why should you register on anyone's radar yet?

Because you use something like Healing, which is Instantaneous Duration, and combining Epic Seeds uses the shortest duration (Instantaneous is obviously the shortest), the spell takes place Instantly.

[SimonMoon6]

If you want to get really cheesy, you never give any of your epic buff spells a long duration. You give them an instantaneous duration.

Yeah, this is my favorite part of Epic spells. Like to use polymorph but hate to have it dispelled? Make it instantaneous.

And in case a DM wants to say, "Oh instantaneous doesn't count as a 'shorter' duration," you can show him that one of the pre-made epic spells uses this effect to make an instantaneous spell, so yes, that is how they meant for it to work.

So, all the annoying things you might have to do to reduce the DC of the epic spell are things you only have to do once. Of course, it kinda sucks to put all that effort into a spell you'll only cast once in your lifetime, but it's worth it.

[SiuiS]

Nope. Actually, the rules for giving created creatures sla's actually work out easier if you give them epic sla's than normal ones (for normal sla's, you'd have to figure out what seeds to use and how to combine them, while can just use the epic spell itself easy. Basically, giving them it as an sla just doubled the cost). The spell itself was pricy to develop, but it didn't have many mitigators once it was developed. Sorry for lack of detail, it was a whole ago. I believe that it was just an application of the life seed.

Ha!

I actually found it was easier to do a tuff like that without epic magic. I think a spell turret would be able to do much the same thing without caring about epic...


You mitigate the DC down to nothing, so it takes no time whatsoever (day/50,000, DC is negative, rounded up = 0). It costs no XP either. So there's no down time to develop, just the collection of forces which make the Spellcraft DC lower. Because you're on your Demiplane which you've; pre-epic, so you're not on anyones radar too much yet, and because you're a paranoid wizard, already have precautions etc), you're protected against most non-epic divinations, and like I said, you're not yet epic, so why should you register on anyone's radar yet?

Because you use something like Healing, which is Instantaneous Duration, and combining Epic Seeds uses the shortest duration (Instantaneous is obviously the shortest), the spell takes place Instantly.

"Who is going to be an up-and-comer in the next fifty years" is a valid divination, though. And once you already have enemies, it's not about having a demiplane (fastest acquisition was level 13, actually) but how well protected from divinations and such it is.


And, yes, the duration is [instantaneous]. But the effect is permanent, and regardless of duration you cannot get permanent ability boosts beyond the standard +6. That exploit doesn't work because you cannot have permanent boosts; not you cannot have boosts of "duration: permanent".

You can develop a DC 0 spell that boosts your stats, certainly, and just cast it all the time, but the stat boost part cannot benefit from the instantaneous duration; epic spells are capped at and overlap with, the bonus you get from wish.


Yeah, this is my favorite part of Epic spells. Like to use polymorph but hate to have it dispelled? Make it instantaneous.

And in case a DM wants to say, "Oh instantaneous doesn't count as a 'shorter' duration," you can show him that one of the pre-made epic spells uses this effect to make an instantaneous spell, so yes, that is how they meant for it to work.

So, all the annoying things you might have to do to reduce the DC of the epic spell are things you only have to do once. Of course, it kinda sucks to put all that effort into a spell you'll only cast once in your lifetime, but it's worth it.

Any enemy that uses "dispel magic" instead of "remove [PC name]'s boosts" is a sucker and deserves what they get. Your common epic boosts are going to have dispellation and disjunction screens, and possibly custom contingent effects designed to counter cyst on dispellation effects. Epic is one long M:tag game of establishing priority and specificity. Epic is meta; you must be clever. "Mind blank with a dispellation screen and a secondary effect which blocks any effect that specifically gets through the mindblank" for example, will thwart shortsighted opponents who use "ignores mind blank", but won't do jack against "target the ground directly beneath X's feet for divination, pierces base antidivinatory effects".

As a separate topic, the example spells are all terrible and frequently wrong. They cannot be used to establish rules over the general text, as examples are specifically wrong if they conflict with text.

[Rubik]

Note that you can easily boost Spellcraft checks to ludicrous levels in order to achieve insanely powerful effects, but mitigation is (obviously) better because it reduces costs and research time.

[Necroticplague]

Ha!

I actually found it was easier to do a tuff like that without epic magic. I think a spell turret would be able to do much the same thing without caring about epic...

Any enemy that uses "dispel magic" instead of "remove [PC name]'s boosts" is a sucker and deserves what they get.

1.I don't really think so, because their would have to already by a spell for awakening a cube of earth first, which I'm not aware of exists. Closest I can think of is awaken construct, but that would require the earth be animated first, which makes all kinds of wierd, if awesome, powers (like telling the earth to re-arrange itself at your leisure, or grappling).

2.This reminds me of a certain Epic wizard in a strip (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/04/29/episode-689-backfire/)...

[unseenmage]

1.I don't really think so, because their would have to already by a spell for awakening a cube of earth first, which I'm not aware of exists. Closest I can think of is awaken construct, but that would require the earth be animated first, which makes all kinds of wierd, if awesome, powers (like telling the earth to re-arrange itself at your leisure, or grappling).

2.This reminds me of a certain Epic wizard in a strip (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/04/29/episode-689-backfire/)...

Minor Servitor from Savage Species, and Awaken Sand from Sandstorm.

Use the 'Constructs are Magic Items' rules interpretation to buy them 1xday uses of the very spells that made them.


Or make enough Intelligent Magic Item Staffs of those two spells that they become a Hive Mind as per Book of Vile Darkness, give the hivemind Staff Crafting and the Flying weapon enhancement from Magic of Faerun so they're Animated Objects.

In both of the above cases a very very slow version of the grey goo scenario plays out. Non-epic too even.

[Vaz]

And, yes, the duration is [instantaneous]. But the effect is permanent, and regardless of duration you cannot get permanent ability boosts beyond the standard +6. That exploit doesn't work because you cannot have permanent boosts; not you cannot have boosts of "duration: permanent".
Nope. Permanent has a defined rule in D&D - that of duration. This would be the only exception of it. It's an Instantaneous Boost.

Care to provide a link or quote for the +6, limit, I cannot find the quote on the SRD and am AFB. Not that it's relevant to the discussion as the two are seperate; Instantaneous and Permanent.


"Instantaneous: The spell energy comes and goes the instant the spell is cast, though the consequences of the spell might be long-lasting. For example, a cure light wounds spell lasts only an instant, but the healing it bestows never runs out or goes away.
"Permanent: The energy remains as long as the effect does. This meanst the spell is vulnerable to dispel magic. Example: secret word."
- PHB 151

[Arcane_Secrets]

Actually, multiple premade epic spells have this problem; Enslave (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/enslave.htm), Epic Spell Reflection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/epicSpellReflection.htm), and Origin of Species: Achaierai (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/originOfSpeciesAchaierai.htm) all have permanent durations with backlash damage as a mitigating factor.

I know. One of the ideas that I've had for a while that I haven't acted on (yet) is to come up with versions of these spells that don't basically cripple their casters.

[Phelix-Mu]

Speaking of which, I remember some time ago trying to duplicate the math on some of the published epic spells, and coming up wanting. I think they didn't do a particularly thorough job editing those...or, as usual, had the English majors editing the math and the Math majors editing the English.