Alternate Epic Magic: Prestige classes without spellcasting advancement

[petermcleod117]

so, i have heard epic spellcasting is pretty broken. I was thinking that, as an alternative, player's who reachlevel 20 might advance in a prestige class that does not grant spellcasting, but instead augments existing spellcasting abilities, sort of like the hierophant druid from 1st edition. Would that work? also, which prestige classes classes would you recommend for this purpose? (the only one i can think of right now is the Hierophant from the DMG).

[Goaty14]

The first question is why you need epic spellcasting in the first place*. You can play epic games perfectly fine whilst just not allowing epic spellcasting.

*And don't go "oh, but we need epic spellcasting as a deus ex machina for the PCs". We don't, because Wish and Miracle already exist for that (and if you have 9ths and neither of those... Extra Spell).

[petermcleod117]

The first question is why you need epic spellcasting in the first place*. You can play epic games perfectly fine whilst just not allowing epic spellcasting.

*And don't go "oh, but we need epic spellcasting as a deus ex machina for the PCs". We don't, because Wish and Miracle already exist for that (and if you have 9ths and neither of those... Extra Spell).

yeah, I agree with you on that part. My thought isn't to make an extra tier of spellcasting, but rather to give the players the ability to augment their existing spellcasting abilities. the concept of an epic spell really doesn't make much sense when you have a wish spell that can do basically the same thing.

[tyckspoon]

yeah, I agree with you on that part. My thought isn't to make an extra tier of spellcasting, but rather to give the players the ability to augment their existing spellcasting abilities. the concept of an epic spell really doesn't make much sense when you have a wish spell that can do basically the same thing.

A sufficient supply of Epic bonus feats will have pretty much the desired result - Epic feats related to spellcasting include things like giving access to actual Level 10+ slots (there are no existing spells in these levels, but it lets you metamagic things that don't fit in 9 levels and prepare extra level 9 spells), automatic free metamagics on everything, the ability to use multiple Quickened spells per turn, and universal metamagic cost reduction. You could do a lot worse than create a 'Generic Epic Spellcaster' "prestige" class with pretty basic requirements and just have it give an Epic Bonus Feat every other level - it'd basically be like taking Epic Wizard, except not assuming the character had 20 levels of straightclass Wizard before hitting Epic.

[Cosi]

Why not just give people accelerated progression in regular spellcasting classes? Incantatrix is already great as a 10 level PrC, as 5 level PrC with the same features it would be totally insane. Or look at the Epic PrCs for inspiration. One thing I would suggest would be working with PCs to create custom PrCs that capture their character concepts. That's a good idea in general, but it's particularly useful in Epic, where you can give out totally crazy class features because the game is supposed to be absurd and broken.


*And don't go "oh, but we need epic spellcasting as a deus ex machina for the PCs". We don't, because Wish and Miracle already exist for that (and if you have 9ths and neither of those... Extra Spell).

The idea (notionally, I agree that in practice it doesn't work out great) is that by giving structured rules for Epic Spellcasting you can allow players to do things like blow up a moon or turn an entire nation undead without having to haggle over the "greater effects" clause of wish, or do hacked together versions that involve powering out thousands of casts of lower level spells. In practice, freeform spellcasting is hard to balance, and it's hard to figure out what to give a spellcaster who already has shapechange and wish.

[ManicOppressive]

I've always personally just allowed spell slots to continue leveling, even though there are no spells to fill them, so that eventually a level 30 caster can persist 9ths, which feels like a good natural cap.

Epic levels in my campaigns are just taken as gestalts, with the caveat that you can gestalt) two PrCs at epic if you want. (The entire Epic Level Handbook is a complete joke in terms of balance, to the extent I'm not even going to try to pick it apart, there's just no valid base to start with.

I tend to allow epic casters to make fun and interesting spells under the category of "epic" but in truth it's just me letting them research spells that, thanks to limited player imagination, are rarely even 8th or 9th level equivalents and use them kind of freely. Epic levels don't really... work if you get too wound up on specifics. They're supposed to be as much of a step up from the people throwing inter-dimensional gates and stopping time as those are above people who throw lightning bolts and stop arrows, and that tends to look pretty insane.

[DarkSoul]

Why not just figure out some sensible limitations for epic spellcasting, that work for you, instead of homebrewing or modifying basically everything else you want to make available to epic spellcasters? Seems like a lot more work than getting epic spellcasting under your control.