What can challenge a TO epic level party? (3.5)

[flappeercraft]

So basically the title. What can challenge a TO epic level party, just don't answer another TO epic level party.

Assumptions for party:
-No infinite loops (Astronomically high is allowed while not infinite)
-APL 21
-4 to 5 man party
-No Epic spells
-Spell points variant (Slightly modified and buffed)
-PB 40
-Custom magic items allowed (as per DMG guidelines)
-1 or 2 party members are Gestalt
-All soruces allowed while 1st party or dragon magazine
-Standard WBL

[emeraldstreak]

What's TO about this party?

[Eldariel]

Anything with equal casting can challenge anything in epic - though TO epic characters have little excuse not to be omnipotent thus removing the whole ruleset from the game. Epic is basically Calvinball where the sky is the limit and just about everyone relevant (every caster) can operate on the same ceiling so the build is much less important than the strategic and the tactical prowess of the users. Thus any high-level Outsiders/Dragons with the appropriate casting are good, iconic examples for instance. Or Demi Liches, Black Ethergaunts (with levels as necessary), Phanes, etc. Just beware that everyone aside from homebrew monsters operates with more or less the same set of powers. And if you allow time travel, things can get ridiculously convoluted and unpredictable. Divination wars are similar.

[AvatarVecna]

The answer to this question is largely going to depend on what exactly you mean by "TO". Theoretical optimization is, at least originally, about "things you don't use at the table because dealing with them in a real game is nothing but problems".

A little while back, I built Thor (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22103835&postcount=106), a Wizard 10/Incantatrix 10 that focused around Persisting tons of super-powerful buff spells and then wading into combat like a Fighter. Thor has Init +22, 60 ft Blindsight, 60 ft True Seeing, +50 Listen/Spot, AC 51, 330 HP (a Barbarian with 12+Con at lvl 1 and 7+Con every other level would need a Con 28 pre-rage to match that all day), takes half damage from weapon attacks, three different types of DR, has a 130 ft perfect fly speed, can pounce for 6 attacks each dealing 12d6+33 pre-Power Attack (17-20/x4 crits), and 10 floating fighter feats he can reassign every day (or more, on the days he doesn't need to cast his Extended Persisted buffs). Is a wizard with all-day combat numbers comparable to a decently-optimized Fighter TO? He sure has a lot of cheesy stuff in his build, but it's ultimately just high numbers; the build is still playing D&D rather than 6th-dimensional contingency chess - and as is, he's pretty vulnerable to Disjunction and Antimagic (mostly 'cause putting in ways around those things went against the point of the build, which was avoiding auto-save/auto-fail bull**** beyond some very basic stuff like Freedom Of Movement). As a side note, if this build was allowed to be the Gestalt build, I would gestalt it with Cleric in a heartbeat for easier access to the buffs of the Cleric spell list, and the possibilities of DMM Persist on top of the usual Incantatrix BS.

Alright, let's go for a good ole-fashioned H.I.V.E. build (http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com/2011/12/hive.html). Your main caster has 24 ranks in every skill in existence, ~59000 bonus feats, and gets some ~700 spells of every level 1 to 9 at CL ~5600. Bring your swarms on the road, because in case all of that wasn't already bad enough, each of your swarms still gets full actions, meaning you can have up to 29 spells per turn. Plus, they have IntYes and Cha +Yes, and if Thor proves anything it's that there's a lot of ways to get Int and Cha to stuff all day if you try hard enough. You could probably take this further in epic, since epic level magic items to boost your UMD check come online, but honestly this is pretty awesome. And that's assuming you don't chain-gate more swarms in with your new super-CL.

Maybe that's still not enough. A bit further back, I bandied about the idea of a Mind Flayer Illithid Savant 6 (ECL 21 build) who takes Leadership and Improved Cohort to pick up a Wilder 10/Thrallherd 10 cohort. Their thralls are a Psion 18 and a Psion 9/Thrallherd 10; their thralls are an ECL 17 thrall of your choice with an ability you want (like spellcasting, psionics, monk abilities, maneuvers...anything) and a Psion 8/Thrallherd 10; their thralls are an ECL 16 thrall of your choice with an ability you want and a Psion 7/Thrallherd 10; their thralls are an ECL 15 thrall of your choice with an ability you want and a Psion 6/Thrallherd 10; their thralls are an ECL 14 thrall of your choice with an ability you want and a Psion 5/Thrallherd 10; their thralls are an ECL 13 thrall of your choice with an ability you want and a Psion 14. Eat all of their brains, starting with the lowest of the thralls and working your way up. From the Thrallherds, steal either their "Powers Known" or their "Power Points/Day"; from the ECL 16/15/14/13 thralls, take whatever ability it was you wanted from them. Once only your original ECL 20 Wilder/Thrallherd is left, eat their brain too; we had them be a Wilder instead of a Psion so they'd be more pretty than smart and would have to contend with a creature has the Powers known of a Psion 18 and a power point total equal to that of the combined pools of a Psion 17, Psion 16, Psion 15, Psion 14, and Psion 13. They shouldn't stand a chance.

Tomorrow, you start with an ECL 20 and ECL 19 thrall; have one be a Wilder 9/Thrallherd 10 with a line of Thrallherd 10s going down just as above, while the ECL 20 can be something else that gives you a high level ability. Eat all the thralls, starting with the lowest level. Do the same thing tomorrow. Repeat this until you either run out of prep time or run out of abilities to steal. Presuming you managed your thrall network efficiently, it shouldn't take you more than a few weeks to have every non-epic ability in the game; at this point, you can only rack up more spell slots, making taking this any further officially an infinite loop. Make sure to pick up a Vermin Lord at some point so you can do the above shenanigans as well. Also, craft your own epic items using your "I have every spell in existence in my spells known" casting.I almost hesitate to ask if such a build is good enough to be TO, because at this point, the optimization of the build is more in how its played than how it's built. You could probably cheat your way to "infinite everything and every ability in existence" far before lvl 21 with a standard PHB Wizard abusing Wish, but it's what you do with all that power compared to the other super-wizards that counts.

[Hackulator]

With max optimization nothing can challenge that party except another similar party or monsters with epic casting who also have max optimization.

[flappeercraft]

With TO in this case I mean basically stuff like a tainted scholar with for example 9^^28 taint or Ubercharger record damage tenfold damage per round. Basically the party should be able to beat both Team primeval and Team Solar twice in a round or 2 without casualties.

Probably most characters should be able to at the very least somewhat challenge this guy (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=54203) and weaken him. With your example AvatarVecna, the hive build would be more appropriate

[tyckspoon]

With TO in this case I mean basically stuff like a tainted scholar with for example 9^^28 taint or Ubercharger record damage tenfold damage per round. Basically the party should be able to beat both Team primeval and Team Solar twice in a round or 2 without casualties.

Probably most characters should be able to at the very least somewhat challenge this guy (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=54203) and weaken him. With your example AvatarVecna, the hive build would be more appropriate

If your definition of 'TO' ability basically means 'big piles of numbers', then the answer to what challenges them is other big piles of numbers. That's practically all half of the Epic example monsters are, so they shouldn't be very hard to come by; it's just a matter of finding the ones that are in the right range of big piles of numbers. Possibly of building some of them yourself with some spellcasting/bonus stat to thing/Incarnum/whatever to enhance them if the book versions are insufficient.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It's worth noting that past a certain level of optimization, neither characters will be able to hurt one another.

[Eldariel]

The numbers are essentially trivial in such a scenario. It's a game of finding something the opponent is not immune to, or forcible removing their immunities, and pre-empting their Contingencies, and immediate actions.

Note that much of TO is not practical. Ubercharger does NI damage but he's still fundamentally a melee character, and there's no need for such damage anyways. Thus in real play he'd be rather weak. Most high damage setups take too much effort to be worthwhile unless you need to blow up planets.

[unseenmage]

Great Wyrm Time Dragon from Dragon Magazine #359 page 38 has the Time Apotheosis (Ex) ability "...it can move backwards and forwards through time almost at will."

[ColorBlindNinja]

Great Wyrm Time Dragon from Dragon Magazine #359 page 38 has the Time Apotheosis (Ex) ability "...it can move backwards and forwards through time almost at will."

We're bringing time travel into this?

That sounds like a headache waiting to happen.

Edit:

Forced Dream can be used in conjunction with Teleport Through Time to erase your own timeline.

[unseenmage]

We're bringing time travel into this?

That sounds like a headache waiting to happen.

...
Hey, I saw the words 'epic', 'TO', and 'challenge'. Time travel might be the only viable option.
Besides, the Time Dragon is supposed to be an epic threat and we are talkibg epic, it's already a headache.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Hey, I saw the words 'epic', 'TO', and 'challenge'. Time travel might be the only viable option.
Besides, the Time Dragon is supposed to be an epic threat and we are talkibg epic, it's already a headache.

Forced Dream + Teleport Through Time counters that sort of thing.

Still, why make the headache of epic play more excruciating by adding time travel?

[unseenmage]

Forced Dream + Teleport Through Time counters that sort of thing.

Still, why make the headache of epic play more excruciating by adding time travel?
To my mind epic play is already the critical mass of headache.

Also, doesn't epic casting already have a Time Seed or similar? If not then it should've.

Also also, as I mentioned the Time Dragon is already part of epic play. It is an epic dragon meant to challenge epic characters. It has 99HD and CR 90 at great wyrm age. Not really any other tier of play it could've been meant for. (Well that and it says 'is an epic dragon' in the article, so there's that.)

[Karl Aegis]

> Immunity to Mind-effecting
> Morale Bonus

Looks like the rules would be a challenge.

[flappeercraft]

It's worth noting that past a certain level of optimization, neither characters will be able to hurt one another.
True, but part of epic level play is bypassing immunities


The numbers are essentially trivial in such a scenario. It's a game of finding something the opponent is not immune to, or forcible removing their immunities, and pre-empting their Contingencies, and immediate actions.

Note that much of TO is not practical. Ubercharger does NI damage but he's still fundamentally a melee character, and there's no need for such damage anyways. Thus in real play he'd be rather weak. Most high damage setups take too much effort to be worthwhile unless you need to blow up planets.
True, you just need to find a way to just bypass immunities at that point or whatever you have is useless regardless of how high your numbers are


Dread Sorcerer King build, Obviouly :smallbiggrin:
I at somepoint was considering him but honestly he would get 1 shot by a monk with the same optimization as the party


Great Wyrm Time Dragon from Dragon Magazine #359 page 38 has the Time Apotheosis (Ex) ability "...it can move backwards and forwards through time almost at will."
That's actually a pretty good idea, I probably will add this

[ColorBlindNinja]

To my mind epic play is already the critical mass of headache.

Also, doesn't epic casting already have a Time Seed or similar? If not then it should've.

Also also, as I mentioned the Time Dragon is already part of epic play. It is an epic dragon meant to challenge epic characters. It has 99HD and CR 90 at great wyrm age. Not really any other tier of play it could've been meant for. (Well that and it says 'is an epic dragon' in the article, so there's that.)

No Time Seed by RAW.

If you want an epic dragon to pose a threat, it has to have epic spellcasting.


True, but part of epic level play is bypassing immunities

Easier said than done.