Why all the hate on epic magic?

[erok0809]

I've noticed in my lurking here that most people seem to dislike epic magic, saying it's "broken" and the like. I get that it can do just about anything since you can just ad hoc the DC's to produce an effect not listed on the DC adjustment table, but the DM has to approve whatever it is you make. Is the dislike stemming from that when we talk about RAW and stuff that we're assuming a mostly permissive DM, and thus we can break the game wide open even easier than casters already can? Or is there some specific reason I'm missing? I ask because some of the most fun I've had with the D&D system is making a bunch of cool epic level spells that I know will never see actual game time, but exist in the game universe at my table now, because I wrote them. It seems unfair to bash epic magic all the time because of a mechanic that the DM should be regulating anyway. So can someone clarify this for me?

[Malroth]

The fact that the spells do next to nothing at DCs less than 60 without mitigating factors, but with them can have thousands of effects thrown in for free if enough mitigating factors are thrown in.

[tzar1990]

It's a couple things:

First, the DCs are way off - some effects are totally overpriced, others are way undervalued. Even two versions of the same effect can have radically different difficulties, depending on how you get there.

Secondly, and more importantly, you don't NEED to ad-hoc anything to break it. Using just the DC Adjustment Table, you can produce all kinds of bull and get the DCs trivially low.

[PersonMan]

Basically, Epic Magic is often either stupidly overpriced (pay massive amounts of gold, XP and then make a crazy high Spellcraft check for an extra 4d6 damage!) or easily made stupidly underpriced (sure, I need the 180 other ritual people, but with Leadership that's no problem...).

The other issue is that, in my opinion at least, any mechanic that relies on "run it by the DM" isn't good as a mechanic. It can work, sure, but it's only a good mechanic in the same way that "get your food and I'll check to see if it's acceptable" is a well-thought-out list of food to bring.

[TSED]

On top of this, there's the obvious infinite-loop problem. Make an epic spell to increase your [relevant skill to make epic spells]. Cast that, make a new epic spell.

Next thing you know, your level 21 wizard has 10^9999^9999^9999^9999d6 of every damage type, will save for half, SR no, capable of targeting anything on the plane that the wizard wants it to selectively. And the DM can't really say no, because it started as a completely reasonable progression.

[Eldariel]

The biggest problems with Epic Magic are:
1) The DCs are way too high unless you work for them. Just to replicate non-epic spells, the DCs tend to be higher than what you can hit on level 21; so in effect, Epic Magic without resources poured into it is worse than non-epic magic, while being absurdly expensive, taking long time and having absurd skill checks.
2) It's based on a skill. Skills are the easiest things to buff in the game. This means it's trivially easy to get skill bonuses to completely negate the Spellcraft check. So if you put effort into it, any effect is doable on level 21.
3) Mitigation. Oh boy, mitigation. Level 21 casters tend to have access to spells like Gate, Planar Binding, Simulacrum, Ice Assassin, etc. that can produce spellcasters. Spellcasters can join the circle and provide you with mitigation effects by using their spell slots. Unlike pumping skill, this negates all the costs - time, gold and indeed the check. You can come up with basically any effect you want and mitigate the DC to 0 without any backlash damage or such annoying side effects. Mitigation should never be able to cut more than ~50% of the spell's cost but such a rule doesn't exist.

[Andion Isurand]

Here are a couple of added changes I've made for my use of epic spells.

Epic Level Handbook, pages 71 to 102
Any portion of text that mentions "final Spellcraft DC" is amended as follows:
"The final Spellcraft DC of any given epic spell, must match or exceed the single highest Base Spellcraft DC found among the seeds it incorporates."

Lost Empires of Faerûn, page 44
The Seed: Mythal is amended as follows:
"Mythals are unique. Any epic spell that is developed to incorporate the mythal seed, may only have one instance of itself in effect at any one time. Only the most recent casting applies."

[137beth]

One of the most annoying things about epic spells I think is that the system is simultaneously infinitely-scaling and completely nonscaling. When crafting an epic spell, there are a lot of choices for giving it "higher numbers" for the cost of a higher spellcraft DC: more affected targets, more boosts to overcome SR, more damage, wider area, more duration, more everything. After a few more levels, you'll want to adjust the spell for even higher numbers, since there is no benefit of any kind to having a spell with a DC lower than your spellcraft modifier. Except, as written, there is no way to further modify an already-created epic spell--you have to remake it from scratch with altered numbers, using an enormous amount of gold, xp, and time and rendering your previous version of that spell obsolete. The system would be a lot better if you could "upgrade" old epic spells instead of remaking them from nothing.
That's assuming you aren't stacking huge loops of mitigating factors, which is its own issue.
Also, a lot of it depends on whether basic custom magic items are allowed. If they are, everyone eligible to cast epic spells will want a +<as high as you can afford> item to spellcraft. Skill bonuses are cheap, a measly 100*bonus^2 up to +30 (which even a nonepic character can afford!), and 1000*bonus^2 after that. With exponential WBL, anyone with a party crafter and a thought bottle will see spellcraft bonuses skyrocket. Without custom items, the rate your spellcraft increases at drops from superpolynomial to linear. What is normally a small decision: the question of whether to allow simple custom items which give a bonus to one skill, is suddenly an enormous determining factor in PC power. Unless, again, you allow for unlimited mitigating factor stacking, in which case it doesn't matter because you have unlimited power at DC 0 anyways.

I've successfully used epic spells in a campaign before. However, I had to use a fair amount of house rules, and I my campaign setting has a cosmology meant for epic characters. Ultimately I think the epic spells could have been a lot better if they had gone through more revisions and playtesting (I'm not sure if they were even playtested at all...or a fair amount of the ELH, for that matter), but as it is now you pretty much have to use a bunch of house rules to make it work.

[facelessminion]

Why do people find epic magic annoying?

Because primary casters have more than enough going for them without pretty much granting them GM status as well.

[sideswipe]

On top of this, there's the obvious infinite-loop problem. Make an epic spell to increase your [relevant skill to make epic spells]. Cast that, make a new epic spell.

Next thing you know, your level 21 wizard has 10^9999^9999^9999^9999d6 of every damage type, will save for half, SR no, capable of targeting anything on the plane that the wizard wants it to selectively. And the DM can't really say no, because it started as a completely reasonable progression.

yep. doesnt take much does it. a few epic spells created will get this.

[Clistenes]

I dislike Epic Magic because it is too big a break in the rules. Once you get Epic Magic, if you use it properly, you are more powerful that anything in the game, deities included, as in "Hello Lolth. Goodbye, Lolth. BANG!! You are dead know.".

Epic Magic can make a character untouchable unless attacked with even stronger Epic Magic. It also can be used to create a spell that bypasses any defence except stronger Epic Magic and insta-kills everything.

The DM can't give the villains Epic Magic before the PCs get it (unless he purposely design their Epic Spells to be ****ty) because otherwise they would be invincible and the PCs couldn't win. Once the PCs start to meddle with Epic Magic, the DM has to give their antagonists Epic Magic of their own or artifacts of similar power so the PCs don't win too easily.

Where were those uber-powerful NPCs when the PCs were level 20?

Epic Magic is very difficult to integrate, unless you are playing a game that focuses on divine-level politics, and all the encounters must be focused on neutralizing the Epic Magic of the casters. And of course, the non-caster classes feel more useless than ever.

EDIT: Another option would be to open a new Universe and introduce strange Cthulian entities custom-made to counter the PCs' Epic Magic.

[Jack_Simth]

I've noticed in my lurking here that most people seem to dislike epic magic, saying it's "broken" and the like. I get that it can do just about anything since you can just ad hoc the DC's to produce an effect not listed on the DC adjustment table, but the DM has to approve whatever it is you make. Is the dislike stemming from that when we talk about RAW and stuff that we're assuming a mostly permissive DM, and thus we can break the game wide open even easier than casters already can? Or is there some specific reason I'm missing? I ask because some of the most fun I've had with the D&D system is making a bunch of cool epic level spells that I know will never see actual game time, but exist in the game universe at my table now, because I wrote them. It seems unfair to bash epic magic all the time because of a mechanic that the DM should be regulating anyway. So can someone clarify this for me?

As has been said in multiple ways by multiple people: Because it's broken in the 'does not work as probably intended' sense.
If you do not use mitigation, it's really hard to do anything level appropriately useful with it.
If you do use mitigation, there's no clear place to stop. There was an Epic Spell Challenge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=789449&postcount=1) a while back, which was fully answered by Post Nine (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=791074&postcount=9) with a bare-minimum Epic wizard.
But you say "All spells must be approved by the DM! That's how they're fixed!" But as noted... that's a pretty poor mechanism.

[Krobar]

Why do *I* not like it? It's a royal PITA, and the mechanics of it suck.

So we have a house rule: Epic spells can only be cast by those of Divine Rank 1 or higher.

[Lightlawbliss]

...
So we have a house rule: Epic spells can only be cast by those of Divine Rank 1 or higher.

Guessing you don't use "Deities and Demigods".

[sideswipe]

Guessing you don't use "Deities and Demigods".

yep. unless the really high rank gods wake up and realise their power, none of them have epic spells.

i did devise a way using some of the high rank deity powers for them to gain epic spellcasting, but they don't gain it naturally.

[Darkweave31]

Probably because without cheese it's useless, but with cheese it's starts to rub up against pun-pun.


I've considered just using wish as a way to mimic epic spells with an ad hoc spellcraft DC to determine if it backfires on you in some way or not... It involves much less math and gives the DM more control to reign in shenanigans if necessary.

[Phelix-Mu]

There are generally two forms of "epic spells."

Form 1: The way the Epic Level Handbook made the sample spells that it presents. Almost all of those spells are trash, and several achieve what normal spells could be made to do, but with an accompanying near-death experience/huge loss of xp/burning through enough gold to solve world hunger twice over.

Form 2: Using the epic spell seeds to make spells from scratch, using the Spellcraft DC mitigation from the book in a slightly more optimized way. Which is to say, more optimized than totally not optimized. It doesn't take much, and even with bottom limits on mitigation (like no DC 0 spells, or the aforementioned DC not less than the highest DC of seeds involved), it's very possible to totally remove the hinges from the game and fire up the cosmic wood-chipper and toss in the whole of the campaign. Of particular problem is the use of multiple spell slots from various casters to lower the DC. That system there is basically designed to spiral out of control.

Finally, the last note are the mythal and shadow seeds from Lost Empires of Faerun. Using the mythal seed as presented is a huge issue, as mythals basically create free magic for approved users within a huge radius on a nearly perpetual basis with no cost (aside from the initial cost of creating the mythal, which was supposed to be considerable, until we use mitigation). Want at will xp-less wish for you and your friends within 300' of some area? Yeah, that's not even that hard to do. Want standard action xp-less mass awaken? And there is much more besides that.

Shadow seed is broken because I can basically order up a copy of whoever I feel like. It can be permanent, though that gets expensive fast (though that can be mitigated as well). The immediate use, ofc, is to make copies of epic characters/npcs with class levels, and use them to create ability-spamming loops, or to help mitigate other epic spells. It's basically an inefficient ice assassin, but with fewer limitations and can also be used to copy spells, items, and pretty much anything. The created things aren't quite real, but there is no given downside, since they are otherwise perfect copies. Want a copy of that great wyrm gold dragon that you couldn't quite make friends with? Done. Want to talk to Elminster? Done.

[Immabozo]

plus, this forum judges things on RAW, and RAW, there is no definition for, or standard for, what a DM will approve or disapprove. But by RAW, epic spells, as has been said, will do anything, anywhere, any time, in any way and do it better than gods could.

On the other hand, epic fighters get pounce. YAY!

[Jack_Simth]

Shadow seed is broken because I can basically order up a copy of whoever I feel like. It can be permanent, though that gets expensive fast (though that can be mitigated as well). The immediate use, ofc, is to make copies of epic characters/npcs with class levels, and use them to create ability-spamming loops, or to help mitigate other epic spells. It's basically an inefficient ice assassin, but with fewer limitations and can also be used to copy spells, items, and pretty much anything. The created things aren't quite real, but there is no given downside, since they are otherwise perfect copies. Want a copy of that great wyrm gold dragon that you couldn't quite make friends with? Done. Want to talk to Elminster? Done.
... and here I thought the obvious use of the Shadow seed was to duplicate 10th level spells (which all epic spells count as for anything related to spell level) and then copy the effects of spells you don't have the spellcraft to do directly.

[Psyren]

It's the really bad kind of broken. The kind where it is either useless or massively overpowered with no middle ground, unless you design a whole bunch of highly specific ad-hoc situational modifiers (custom mitigating factors in this case) that can only be used for each specific spell; in which case you may as well just homebrew something and throw out the general rules altogether.

For plot spells it's great - as we saw in OotS with Cloister and Familicide, you can use it to pull off really boss-level magic that changes the course of entire campaigns. But functionally, it's no different than just dropping a random single-use artifact into the world that does the same thing for your big bad to use. For its stated goal - providing the players a way to create custom and world-altering magic, and lessening the administrative burden on the DM for vetting, approving and balancing said magic - it utterly fails.

[Necroticplague]

Easy: the ONLY thing stopping it from getting ridiculous really, really, fast is for the DM to put his foot down and say "no, you cannot use several hundred low level spellcasters to help fuel your permanent instantaneous transformation into a physical god with all the good traits of epic monsters." And if you need the DM to intervene to stop it from being broken, that's a pretty good indicator that it is broken. I believe its Called "Oberani Fallacy", in which saying DM intervention can make something not broken meaning its balanced, which isn't useful because it can be theoretically said of anything.

[Karnith]

plus, this forum judges things on RAW, and RAW, there is no definition for, or standard for, what a DM will approve or disapprove. But by RAW, epic spells, as has been said, will do anything, anywhere, any time, in any way and do it better than gods could.
Of course, if you're at all following the rules for developing them, the epic spells that most DM would approve of (i.e. the ones that don't break the game via mitigation) are going to be huge wastes of time and money; it normally takes hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of gold to effect what normal spells can do. If you aren't using mitigation cheese, epic spells are pretty much just good for a relatively narrow range of buffs.

On the other hand, epic fighters get pounce. YAY!
Only in the first round of combat, though. Because moving and full attacking is so OP that you should only be able to do it once per encounter.

[Immabozo]

Only in the first round of combat, though. Because moving and full attacking is so OP that you should only be able to do it once per encounter.

dont they get it whenever they charge?

[Karnith]

dont they get it whenever they charge?
Maybe we're talking about different things; Dire Charge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#direCharge) only functions if you charge an enemy during the first round of combat.

[Tvtyrant]

I personally use Incantations which are 10+10 minute per spell level casting time versions of 0-10th level spells. It also has an additional cost of (10gp x spell level) squared.

[Immabozo]

Maybe we're talking about different things; Dire Charge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#direCharge) only functions if you charge an enemy during the first round of combat.

huh, I swear normal pounce was an epic feat

[Sartharina]

Isn't the ELH a 3.0 supplement? There, pounce was only available on the first round of combat as well.

[Psyren]

Isn't the ELH a 3.0 supplement? There, pounce was only available on the first round of combat as well.

Correct; unfortunately, they updated ELH to 3.5 (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20030718a) and didn't touch Dire Charge, so we're stuck with the janky/weak version.

[Karnith]

Isn't the ELH a 3.0 supplement? There, pounce was only available on the first round of combat as well.
It is, but Dire Charge was updated to 3.5 in Draconomicon, intact with the first-round restriction.

[Psyren]

It is, but Dire Charge was updated to 3.5 in Draconomicon, intact with the first-round restriction.

Argh, that's even worse x_x

[TypoNinja]

Epic Magic is bad because its either not worth the effort, or if you bother to optimize it, ends the game.

*DM begins adventure introduction, player interrupts*

"I cast Summon McGuffin"

"Ok, you've stolen the power core from the Armageddon Engine, good work"

*DM begins adventure introduction, player interrupts*

"I cast Summon McGuffin"

"Ok, the upset woman standing before you is the Elf Queens daughter, good work averting war"

*DM begins adventure introduction, player interrupts*

"I cast Summon McGuffin"

"Right then, the object now sitting in a small puddle of stale beer on the bar in front of you is the single most righteous soul in all of creation. Asmodeus needed it to finish his world conquest plans. Delivering it to Mount Celestia should stall his plans for the next eon or so.

Summon Mcguffin. Divination, to find/know what you'll want. Teleportation/planeshift (transport seed I think?), to bring it to you. Dispel, to pierce magical protections around your target.

[Clistenes]

You can even make the Epic Spell contingent and cast it on a staff or wand, and when you point it at an enemy and say the command word (move action) it discharges. With minimal OP you have an attack that makes 150d6 of unnamed damage with a Reflex save of DC 80 for half damage and whose caster level is 50 for the purpose of beating SR, and that with the least amount of optimization.

Demogorgon's stats in Savage Tide gave him CR 33, 869 hp, SR 46, and Ref save +35...Cast the contingent epic spell twice on the same staff (with the same command word), go to Demogorgon, point the stick at him, say the command word, and the toughest demon in the game is toast with zero chance of survival. And that's the lowest level of optimization (and a limit of 200 mitigation points from the assistance of fellow spellcasters).