Mycontil Last Resort + Eldritch Spellblast

[Jowgen]

So I've been toying around with the Eldritch Theurge's spellblast essence invocation, which allows one to use the Eldritch blast as a vehicle to have any spell that affects an area (explicityly works for personal range spells) to go-off where it hits.

Mycontil's Last Resort is a 9th nuke-self spell that expends all your spellslots and deals area damage equal to 8 times the number of spellslots remaining to those within 10 ft, 6 times n within 11-20 ft, and 4 times from 21 to 30 ft. Reflex half, sadly and the caster gets no save and takes maximum damage.

If fired via a spellblast from outside 30 ft, the maximum damage you as an affected creature could take from the spell is 0, negating that drawback of the spell.

Lets take a basic Warlock x Sorcerer Theurge who got themself up to 18th level sorcerer casting. They'll have a basic allottment of 39 spells (discounting the 9th level slot used to cast the Spellblast, plus a minimum +6 bonus slots from Cha 20, for 45 slots total.

So that is 360 damage (Ref half) to all creatures within 10 ft of of the poor sod who got hit with an Eldritch Blast, potentially from 250 ft away if Eldritch Spear was used. On a failed save, this'll comfortably one-shot pitfiends, balors and old dragons.

I'd like more.

Beyond just boosting Cha for more spell slots, any thoughts on how to add more megatons to this nuke.

[Zarvistic]

How about a wizard instead, with arcane manipulation? Big multiplier there.
Possibly ring of wizardry on top too for another multiplier.

[Darg]

The spell description says you take damage. It never says your damage is a function of the area. Most area spells never mention the caster takes or doesn't take damage because they don't need to.

I wouldn't say that you bypass the damage, but it is open to interpretation.

[Jowgen]

The spell description says you take damage. It never says your damage is a function of the area. Most area spells never mention the caster takes or doesn't take damage because they don't need to.

I wouldn't say that you bypass the damage, but it is open to interpretation.

Spellblast changes one of the fundamental assumptions under which the spell was written, i.e. it being a personal range spell, so some degree of interpretation was always going to be required.

The caster is no longer in the blast radius, so it fluff wise it would make no sense they'd be damaged.

Purely in game terms, it's a burst spell, they are not in the Area, and "burst spell affects whatever it catches in its area", so that tracks.

Even if we ignore the Area Burst factor, the spell only states "Maxiumum damage", meaning it has to refer back to the previous sentence that gives out the damage formula. And that formula makes any damage dependent upon distance from the "you", which in this case has been changed to no longer refer to the caster but to the new point of origin of the spell.

[RaiKirah]

I don't think this actually works, but Empower Spell Like Ability (Spellblast) might affect the selected spell in addition to the EB damage. Even if not, Sudden Empower should, and potentially both could be used depending on how permissive you're feeling in your reading.

[Goaty14]

I don't think this actually works, but Empower Spell Like Ability (Spellblast) might affect the selected spell in addition to the EB damage. Even if not, Sudden Empower should, and potentially both could be used depending on how permissive you're feeling in your reading.

It does not. Maximize/Empower both key off of "variable, numeric effects". Mycontil's Last Resort deals a fixed numeric amount of damage, so neither applies.

[RaiKirah]

It does not. Maximize/Empower both key off of "variable, numeric effects". Mycontil's Last Resort deals a fixed numeric amount of damage, so neither applies.

The number of remaining spell slots is inarguably variable. Whether that counts for Maximize/Empower is less clear.

[Darg]

The number of remaining spell slots is inarguably variable. Whether that counts for Maximize/Empower is less clear.

What the feats do is effect "variable, numeric" effects, not variable components. Spell slots are the components and the spell deals a fixed amount of damage per component spent. There is nothing variable about the effect.

[daremetoidareyo]

Snowcasting, energy sub, energy admixture, + meta magic reduction can double your damage

[Anthrowhale]

Technically, there are no personal range spells with an area because range constrains area. Hence, by RAW, Mycontil's Last Resort only affects the caster.

[RaiKirah]

What the feats do is effect "variable, numeric" effects, not variable components. Spell slots are the components and the spell deals a fixed amount of damage per component spent. There is nothing variable about the effect.

I get what you're saying, and I even - mostly - agree. I just think there's a semantic argument to be made here that the damage is a variable (8d[Remaining Spell Slots]) and thus could qualify, though admittedly it's weak.

I do contest the assertion that the spell slots are components of the spell; a 5000G finger bone is the material component needed to cast the spell, and once cast it converts whatever spell slots are left to damage. If you have no spell slots left the spell still goes off, it just doesn't do any damage.

[Kalkra]

By RAW, it seems to count any and all spellslots you have, not just ones from the class casting the spell, so if you could swing a 1-level dip or two and still get 9th-level spells, you could boost the damage a bit that way. After that it's just a question of how much cheese you want. Like, with Shadowcraft Mage cheese you could conceivably get to Mycontil's Last Resort at level 10 or so, and then dip 10 classes, or 9 dips and 1 level of Tainted Scholar for extra bonus spells. If you want to go even farther, there's things like Illithid Savant and whatnot.

[Fouredged Sword]

Don't rings of wizardry give you a ton of extra spell slots? If you can get 4 ring slots and about a quarter of a million gold you can double your 1-4th spell slots.

That should give you somewhere between 16 and 24 extra spell slots to discharge depending on your casting stat.

[tyckspoon]

It's just spell slots? No reliance/reference to spell or slot level? Forget Sorcerer, be a Wizard. Fill all of your level 4+ slots with (Rary's) Mnemonic Enhancer. Use the 'prepare more spells' version of it to prepare 6 Cantrips per cast. The limits to this are a: the number of instances of Mnemonic Enhancer you can get access to, and b: the time you have to cast it, as the spellslots created by this explicitly fade after 24 hours even if not used. The Rapid Spell metamagic can get around a lot of that, reducing the cast time to 1 minute from 10 and allowing you to pack way more casts into whatever your permitted prep time is.

[Fouredged Sword]

It's just spell slots? No reliance/reference to spell or slot level? Forget Sorcerer, be a Wizard. Fill all of your level 4+ slots with (Rary's) Mnemonic Enhancer. Use the 'prepare more spells' version of it to prepare 6 Cantrips per cast. The limits to this are a: the number of instances of Mnemonic Enhancer you can get access to, and b: the time you have to cast it, as the spellslots created by this explicitly fade after 24 hours even if not used. The Rapid Spell metamagic can get around a lot of that, reducing the cast time to 1 minute from 10 and allowing you to pack way more casts into whatever your permitted prep time is.

Pearl's of power could re-ready the enhancer a bunch of times.

[Darg]

It's just spell slots? No reliance/reference to spell or slot level? Forget Sorcerer, be a Wizard. Fill all of your level 4+ slots with (Rary's) Mnemonic Enhancer. Use the 'prepare more spells' version of it to prepare 6 Cantrips per cast. The limits to this are a: the number of instances of Mnemonic Enhancer you can get access to, and b: the time you have to cast it, as the spellslots created by this explicitly fade after 24 hours even if not used. The Rapid Spell metamagic can get around a lot of that, reducing the cast time to 1 minute from 10 and allowing you to pack way more casts into whatever your permitted prep time is.

Twin spell, repeat spell, and Echoing spell are great for this. Especially echoing spell.

[Jowgen]

I have found a ludicrously expensive but highly effective means to utterly break this spell.

The Ring of the Mystical Elite, or even it's lesser version, from Dragon 324.

The pricetag is a forbidden school and a whopping 306k gold (182k for the lesser), but in exchange it gives you bonus spells equal to your caster level in spell levels (half CL for lesser).

At the most basic, a 20th level caster using the lesser version could get themselves an extra 20 cantrips, i.e. 160 extra damage. On a greater one that's 40 cantrips, 320 extra damage.

Now one route would be to use caster level shenanigans to get this even higher, but an alternative and potentially simpler solution is UMD.

When donning the ring, one can emulate being a caster of x level. The number of cantrip slots and therefore damage added = (UMD-20) x 2 x 8.

Considering how comparatively easy skill checks are to boost, this can quickly get very ludicrous. A mere DC 50 UMD check would translate into 480 extra damage.

Or, you know, same result with a simple consumptive field.

So while the monetary investment is huge, and the spell is a do or die kind of deal, with this it is now something that can reasonably be power-scaled up to the level where it could one-shot some deities on a (obviously) successful save. Not nessecarily Hades with his ludicrous 1,712 HP, but something like Vecna should be doable.

[Endarire]

This somehow yearns to be comboed with antimagic field immediately afterward so as to prevent others from escaping or healing.

[Doctor Despair]

Eh, Hades has a super low will save relative to ALL the other Greater Deities, so he has enough problems without needing to worry about someone sprinting at him like a Grunt stuck with a plasma grenade, haha

[Jowgen]

So some additional considerations:

The Ring of the Mystical elite is clearly the most effective way to scale up the damage of this spell combo to the highest level possible.

To one-shot the 1712 HP Hades, the spell must be fuelled by 431 spell-slots (as he's guaranteed to pass the reflex save).

This means that at the time of preparing our spells and getting those slots, we have to have a Caster Level of 216.

If going the UMD route, the only way I know to get this high is to abuse the Masochism spell, combined with an AoE spell and a barn of chicken. Boosting UMD checks otherwise doesn't get high enough (e.g. Loresong for Compentence = 4+1/2*CL; Improvisation for Luck =1/2*CL; Moment of Prescience for Luck +25.

If looking to actually boost the CL that high, things get trickier.

Lets assume we have a base CL of 40 to work with (e.g. Circle magic).

We add Orange Prism Ioun stone, Prayer Bead Karma, and Raistlin's Frog to get us to 50.

We now call/bind a creature native to the Demonweb Pits and cast planar bubble on them, to get access to the enhanced magic planar trait of doubling CL for evil spells.

This this gives us a CL of 100 for the purpose of casting Consumptive Field, adding +50 to our caster level, which with the doubling from the planar trait applied after gets us to CL 200 for the casting of:

... greater consumptive field, which adds 100 CL now (SO many dead chickens).

Now, even discounting the doubling bonus of the planar trait, this still nets us a caster level of a 50 base, plus 50 consumptive, plus 100 greater consumptive for CL of 200 flat.

Now this does leave us short 16 CL.

A couple of extra CL boosters at the start could make up that difference, or we need to provide the 31 remaining spellslots in a different manner.


Also, for good measure, as I read it it might be possible to apply Violante Spell like ability to the Spellblast and that should then apply to the Last Resort damage. So that if our target deity isn't totally vaporised by our one-shot spell, they will have to deal with the Vile damage; e.g. an evil deity having to humiliate themselves by going to a site Hallowed/Consecrated in a good aligned deities name to get healed.


An entirely different consideration to add to this: the main weakness of Mycontil's Last Resort is that it's basically a single win/loose shot, so instead of greatreach blasting, it might be doable to place it in an elder glyph of warding. Prepare one of these each day after preparing spell. Build up a little stock of deity-murdering Nuke boxes.

[Anthrowhale]

It's raw legal to use Consumptive Field to boost Greater Consumptive Field and vice versa cyclically to achieve nigh infinite caster level. This is discussed in some detail here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?527654-Death-Cults-a-BBEG-guide).

[Jowgen]

It's raw legal to use Consumptive Field to boost Greater Consumptive Field and vice versa cyclically to achieve nigh infinite caster level. This is discussed in some detail here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?527654-Death-Cults-a-BBEG-guide).

I know, but despite the ludicrous damage numbers invovled, I am trying to maintain a thin veneer of PO, rather than going full TO. So, using each thing once.

[Anthrowhale]

Erupt still seems like a better nuke to me.

Suppose you have a Sorcerer / Rainbow Servant with caster level 216.

The sorcerer casts Persistent Mark of the Enlightened Soul sacrificing a 9th level sorcerer spell slot to get a 50% increase in damage for level 8- spells vs. evil creatures then casts Alternate Source Sanctum Cooperative Invisible Enervate Energy Admixture[Fire] Erupt (using arcane thesis cheese). Since damage is abstract, this presumably only multiplies damage by 3 dealing 6480 fire damage in a radius of just over 4 miles to all living evil creatures with a fortitude save for half damage. An airburst a mile off the ground is probably preferred in most cases.

[frogglesmash]

1. Illumian
3. Aeshkrau
4. Cancer Mage
5. Festering Anger
6. Some form of Immortality
7. Fast Time Plane
Result: An arbitrarily high number of spell slots waiting to be converted to damage.

Find a way to sleep through your stay in the time chamber so you don't go mad from the solitude.

[ExLibrisMortis]

A sorcerer/warlock theurge with some rings of wizardry (100 000 gp for IV, 160 000 gp for combined I-II-III), good Charisma, and Arcane Preparation + Arcane Manipulation could do pretty well.

With 36 Charisma and 20th-level sorcerer casting (too lazy to consult tables for spell slots--if anyone asks, you're a kobold), you get spell slots of 60/16/15/15/15/9/8/8/8/4 (you break three 9th-level slots into 54 cantrip slots, because that's a reasonable thing to do, clearly :smalltongue:).

Total number of slots is 157 (not counting the slot used to cast Mycontil's last resort), for a neat damage total of 628. The rings honestly have a pretty small part in this, as they're only providing 24 slots.

[Anthrowhale]

Perhaps Snowcasting + Flash Frost + Lingering spell make Last Resort eligible for Empower Spell?

[Raishoiken]

As much as i want to empower this spell; since "random" means that the process through which the effect is determined isn't meant to be something we can simply predict, knowing our spell slots before casting the spell as opposed to a dice roll, and most importantly the fact that the spell lacks any random numeric effects at all :
Saving throws and opposed rolls (such as the one you make when you cast dispel magic) are not affected, nor are spells without random variables .

It could have been potentially argued that it would work in absence of the above since it does say that all damage being increased is part of the second sentence but it isn't the most stronk point

[Anthrowhale]

...and most importantly the fact that the spell lacks any random numeric effects at all .

Lingering spell adds a random numeric effect..

After the spell is cast, lingering tendrils of energy persist, dealing 1d6 points of damage of the appropriate energy type at the beginning of your next turn ...

It's normally an absurdly lame form of metamagic, but enabling empower spell is potentially pretty good.

[Raishoiken]

Lingering spell adds a random numeric effect..

It's normally an absurdly lame form of metamagic, but enabling empower spell is potentially pretty good.

super good, especially since that second sentence in the feat extends its effect to the entirety of the damage

[Anthrowhale]

super good, especially since that second sentence in the feat extends its effect to the entirety of the damage

Let me expand on Snowcasting + Flash Frost + Lingering + Empower Spell a bit.

Maximize Spell seems nigh-pointless because maximizing 1d6 is not impressive.

Energy Admixture seems nigh-pointless because an (1d6+18)*1.5 elemental damage is not very impressive.

Energy Substitution[Fire] makes the spell eligible for Silver Pyromancer 3's Smiting Spell which deals +50% damage vs. evil creatures. (Requires Turn Undead, LG)

Mark of the Enlightened Soul + Sanctum Spell + a 9th level sorcerer spell slot causes +50% damage vs. evil creatures.

Touch of the Blackened Soul + Sanctum Spell + a 9th level sorcerer spell slot causes +50% damage vs. good creatures.

Energize Spell causes +50% damage to undead. (Requires no rebuke undead, nonevil)

Enervate Spell causes +50% damage to living creatures. (Requires no turn undead, nongood)

[Raishoiken]

Let me expand on Snowcasting + Flash Frost + Lingering + Empower Spell a bit.

Maximize Spell seems nigh-pointless because maximizing 1d6 is not impressive.

Energy Admixture seems nigh-pointless because an (1d6+18)*1.5 elemental damage is not very impressive.

Energy Substitution[Fire] makes the spell eligible for Silver Pyromancer 3's Smiting Spell which deals +50% damage vs. evil creatures. (Requires Turn Undead, LG)

Mark of the Enlightened Soul + Sanctum Spell + a 9th level sorcerer spell slot causes +50% damage vs. evil creatures.

Touch of the Blackened Soul + Sanctum Spell + a 9th level sorcerer spell slot causes +50% damage vs. good creatures.

Energize Spell causes +50% damage to undead. (Requires no rebuke undead, nonevil)

Enervate Spell causes +50% damage to living creatures. (Requires no turn undead, nongood)

wouldn't one only need arcane thesis and one other metamagic cost reducer to make the lingering frozen resort not cost extra to cast iirc?

[Anthrowhale]

wouldn't one only need arcane thesis and one other metamagic cost reducer to make the lingering frozen resort not cost extra to cast iirc?

Arcane Thesis and a Metamagic Rod of Empower Spell will do it. All that extra stuff is for yet more damage.