Attack bonus from Epic Spellcasting?

[Biggus]

Is there a way to increase attack bonus using any of the Epic Spellcasting seeds? I can find lots of ways to raise AC but none to raise attack bonus apart from Str or Dex increases.

[Mike Miller]

Just out of curiosity, what is your goal?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Divine power raises your BAB to equal your HD, so raise your HD (there are numerous ways) and cast that? Or you could make an epic spell that allows you to cast other spells (both on-list and off; it's doable with wish and miracle, so an epic spell could certainly do so).

[Biggus]

Just out of curiosity, what is your goal?

It's not so much a goal as that I became aware of an imbalance. I was a creating an advanced dragon with Epic Spellcasting and noticed that its AC with all its buffs up was so high that it couldn't hit itself except on a natural 20, and that made me realise that you can give yourself almost unlimited AC with ESC but as far as I can tell you can't increase your attack bonus except by boosting Str or Dex.


Or you could make an epic spell that allows you to cast other spells (both on-list and off; it's doable with wish and miracle, so an epic spell could certainly do so).

That's certainly within the power of an epic spell, but I don't know of any way to do it within the existing rules. Likewise it would be entirely reasonable to make an epic version of, say, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, which would do what I wanted, but AFAIK there's no way to do that within the existing rules either.

As it happens, I'm currently experimenting with nonstandard epic spells, I'm DMing a game which will soon go to epic and so I'm trying making various epic spells to find at least the more obviously broken parts of the system.

[pabelfly]

Divine power raises your BAB to equal your HD, so raise your HD (there are numerous ways) and cast that? Or you could make an epic spell that allows you to cast other spells (both on-list and off; it's doable with wish and miracle, so an epic spell could certainly do so).

I'd love to know how to get extra HD beyond the obvious of gaining a level.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'd love to know how to get extra HD beyond the obvious of gaining a level.Two easy ways I can think of off-hand are a friendly bard giving them to you and catching lycanthropy (including Complete Divine's curse of lycanthropy spell).

[Beni-Kujaku]

I'd say something like Seed(Transform)+Seed(Fortify)(to increase your HD and stats accordingly) could give you an instant lycanthropy (bypassing the fact that Curse of Lycanthropy only manifests during the next full moon)‚ with probably a +4 to Spellcraft DC per HD of the creature you want to be a lycanthrope of (twice as much as the regular cost because you're actually gaining those HD‚ not just accessing more powerful forms)‚ +18 to be able to choose Colossal forms‚ +5 to change you into something of another type‚ +20 (one action casting time)‚ +2 (dismissible by caster)‚ for a total of DC 82+4/HD of the form you're choosing.


Alternatively‚ just stacking on Fortify may give you what you wish. That's a Spellcraft DC 117 for a +50 bonus to Strength‚ which may or may not be enough to overcome the dragon's AC.

[Jervis]

I'd love to know how to get extra HD beyond the obvious of gaining a level.

Also Polymorph into a Bargheist or Dusk Giant and eat people


Two easy ways I can think of off-hand are a friendly bard giving them to you and catching lycanthropy (including Complete Divine's curse of lycanthropy spell).

The best target for this I believe is Werebaleenwhale. Though don’t count on leveling after applying that template

[Rebel7284]

Two easy ways I can think of off-hand are a friendly bard giving them to you and catching lycanthropy (including Complete Divine's curse of lycanthropy spell).

In addition to this, there is polymorphing into one of two creatures that gain temporary HD by devouring sentient creatures. Admittedly somewhat evil.

Note that an epic bard can give a lot of HD. Here is a pre-epic build I designed for this: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?622924-Rebel-s-Optimization-Showcase-Nood-the-Legend-Maker
Epic Inspiration [Epic] improves your base inspiration ability, allowing a sufficiently epic bard to grant dozens of temporary HD.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Also Polymorph into a Bargheist or Dusk Giant and eat people

"What? Do you want that dragon slain or not? Now give me your firstborn child, there's less food in it and I wouldn't want to be full before reaching max HD!"



The best target for this I believe is Werebaleenwhale. Though don’t count on leveling after applying that template

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work with curse of lycanthropy since it mentions "common lycanthropes" and werebaleen whales are anything but; in fact, there's a specific rule in the spell that says "As a rule, the lycanthrope's animal form can be any predator between the size of a small dog and a large bear.", so that's right out. A were-polar bear, or even a were-dire tiger (if you stretch the definition of "common"), on the other hand...

[arkangel111]

If you have multiple Epic spells to play with it's quite easy to get infinite stats. making your atk easy to buff. first buff your skill to cast, i think it's arcana, use backlash to drop yourself to near 0 so you can get an insane buff on it. Heal up, use the seed that buffs a stat but make it last 24 hrs and let you buff any stat, and buff your casting stat insanely high using backlash and your new buffed skill You can stack this a 3rd time if you want by having a 24 hr buff to hp or con that lets you do even more backlash damage for an even bigger buff. This is best done on a wizard because you can skip buffing the skill and instead have only 2 spells that buff a stat at 2 differing levels. you can even throw some stupid ad hoc mods on there like only under a full moon with a first born son named Jimmy the great wizard of awesomeness, while holding 2 sticks from an oak tree and standing on 1 foot. With ad hoc modifiers technically the more specific you make your requirement the more you can pump your numbers.
really that whole book is practically just dragon mag in print, it's so insanely broken that everything needs DM approval.

[Biggus]

If you have multiple Epic spells to play with it's quite easy to get infinite stats. making your atk easy to buff. first buff your skill to cast, i think it's arcana, use backlash to drop yourself to near 0 so you can get an insane buff on it. Heal up, use the seed that buffs a stat but make it last 24 hrs and let you buff any stat, and buff your casting stat insanely high using backlash and your new buffed skill You can stack this a 3rd time if you want by having a 24 hr buff to hp or con that lets you do even more backlash damage for an even bigger buff. This is best done on a wizard because you can skip buffing the skill and instead have only 2 spells that buff a stat at 2 differing levels. you can even throw some stupid ad hoc mods on there like only under a full moon with a first born son named Jimmy the great wizard of awesomeness, while holding 2 sticks from an oak tree and standing on 1 foot. With ad hoc modifiers technically the more specific you make your requirement the more you can pump your numbers.
really that whole book is practically just dragon mag in print, it's so insanely broken that everything needs DM approval.

Yes, as I mentioned earlier part of what I'm trying to do is stop people being able to do things like get infinite stats...

I've spent the last few months going through the ELH trying to make it playable without constant DM fiat. I've rewritten most of the monsters and improved a lot of the epic feats (see my previous threads), now I'm on the hard part, Epic Spellcasting. My players are level 19 now so I'll soon find out how successful I've been.

[Zanos]

If you have multiple Epic spells to play with it's quite easy to get infinite stats. making your atk easy to buff. first buff your skill to cast, i think it's arcana, use backlash to drop yourself to near 0 so you can get an insane buff on it. Heal up, use the seed that buffs a stat but make it last 24 hrs and let you buff any stat, and buff your casting stat insanely high using backlash and your new buffed skill You can stack this a 3rd time if you want by having a 24 hr buff to hp or con that lets you do even more backlash damage for an even bigger buff. This is best done on a wizard because you can skip buffing the skill and instead have only 2 spells that buff a stat at 2 differing levels. you can even throw some stupid ad hoc mods on there like only under a full moon with a first born son named Jimmy the great wizard of awesomeness, while holding 2 sticks from an oak tree and standing on 1 foot. With ad hoc modifiers technically the more specific you make your requirement the more you can pump your numbers.
really that whole book is practically just dragon mag in print, it's so insanely broken that everything needs DM approval.
A little known rule of epic spellcasting is that backlash damage is suffered every round if your effect has a duration. So this is really just a complicated way to kill yourself.


The real cheese for mitigating epic spellcasting is to summon up or create a bunch of other spellcasters and use the rules for contributing spell slots to an epic spell to mitigate the cost down to nothing.

[arkangel111]

I thought you were looking for a way to break it, my bad. I guess for seeds themselves I don't think so but if you look at other pre-epic spells especially in the cleric list you can find some that boost attack bonus by a set amount. Also I think bard has quite a few. Wizards and sorcerers I know can boost up to their hit die and there is always the +20 to hit TrueStrike, but I don't think there is a seed that even replicates that. For the most part I can't really think of a reason why you would only want to boost your attack. If you boost strength you get not only + to hit but also 1.5x damage. if your concerned about players breaking epic casting your best bet is to not allow it unless the player can specifically tell you what it is they wish to do and then write it yourself using the rules as a guide.
As it is just allowing 10th+ spell slots your players will be able to add metamagic to spells not originally intended to be used with it. You will likely have your hands full with just that. If instead you want some easy quick rules for new spells just let your players remove caster limits or add a rider effects to existing spells. Honestly I think epic spellcasting is a losing battle since the rules are so poorly written. Caster's can already break your game pre-epic and if they want to do it they don't really need help from the ELH at all.
Do you even know if any of your players are intending on delving into it? You may be creating a bunch of work for yourself that may not even be necessary. I'm speaking from experience here, but it sucks to spend days/weeks/months on a project to have a group completely ignore all of your work and stick to the tried and true. I just spent the last few weeks prepping to give my players a monster template for a random set of monster's based on what I thought might compliment each player's playstyle. Every single player passed on the option and I'm left with weeks worth of work sitting in my GDrive gathering dust.

Edit: @Zanos I don't remember the clause stating it was an every round thing, I thought there was a clause about every round if it's a multi-round spell to cast. I'll have to look back through it.

[Crichton]

Edit: @Zanos I don't remember the clause stating it was an every round thing, I thought there was a clause about every round if it's a multi-round spell to cast. I'll have to look back through it.


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


It's in the footnote attached to Backlash damage in the table of Mitigating Factors

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's in the footnote attached to Backlash damage in the table of Mitigating FactorsIt's always better to have instantaneous buffs, in other words.

[Biggus]

I thought you were looking for a way to break it, my bad. I guess for seeds themselves I don't think so but if you look at other pre-epic spells especially in the cleric list you can find some that boost attack bonus by a set amount. Also I think bard has quite a few. Wizards and sorcerers I know can boost up to their hit die and there is always the +20 to hit TrueStrike, but I don't think there is a seed that even replicates that. For the most part I can't really think of a reason why you would only want to boost your attack. If you boost strength you get not only + to hit but also 1.5x damage. if your concerned about players breaking epic casting your best bet is to not allow it unless the player can specifically tell you what it is they wish to do and then write it yourself using the rules as a guide.

The creature I made which has ESC (a dragon) has already got most of the nonepic attack-boosting spells. Even at nonepic levels there are more spells which boost your AC (and stack with each other) than your attack bonus if you can cast both Sorcerer and Cleric spells, ESC only makes this worse by offering a whole range of ways to buff AC but none at all to boost attack bonus directly.

I've brought in a number of measures to limit epic buffing; taking inspiration from Greater Magic Weapon, bonuses granted have a caster-level based limit, and from the way similar magic items "interfere" with each other when too many of the same kind are worn together, that you can only have one epic spell of each seed active at a time.



Caster's can already break your game pre-epic and if they want to do it they don't really need help from the ELH at all.

This is true, but I've nerfed or banned all the really heinous pre-epic exploits and it seems to be working ok so far.



Do you even know if any of your players are intending on delving into it? You may be creating a bunch of work for yourself that may not even be necessary. I'm speaking from experience here, but it sucks to spend days/weeks/months on a project to have a group completely ignore all of your work and stick to the tried and true. I just spent the last few weeks prepping to give my players a monster template for a random set of monster's based on what I thought might compliment each player's playstyle. Every single player passed on the option and I'm left with weeks worth of work sitting in my GDrive gathering dust.

Gah, that sucks dude. I've not had that much work wasted at once but I've experienced that in lesser ways, not least my PCs getting lucky and killing an enemy I spent days designing before they even got an attack in.

One player has indicated interest is ESC and in any case I've already made it clear it exists in this campaign. Some of their enemies will have it whether they choose it or not, so it won't be a totally wasted effort either way.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Do you even know if any of your players are intending on delving into it? You may be creating a bunch of work for yourself that may not even be necessary. I'm speaking from experience here, but it sucks to spend days/weeks/months on a project to have a group completely ignore all of your work and stick to the tried and true. I just spent the last few weeks prepping to give my players a monster template for a random set of monster's based on what I thought might compliment each player's playstyle. Every single player passed on the option and I'm left with weeks worth of work sitting in my GDrive gathering dust.Maybe you should offer your players a cohort apiece with the content they can play on the side? Maybe a secondary party whose job is to do some things while the main party is doing others, and the group plays both of them?

Otherwise, maybe start a new campaign with the homebrewed content as a required part of each player's build?

[YellowJohn]

To the best of my knowledge, there is no epic seed that can directly boost skills (Fortify will boost indirectly through the stat, but won't boost the skill). Have I missed something?

As for increasing BAB, maybe add it as an option for the Fortify seed? It feels like a good fit.

Epic copies of non-epic spells can be achieved using the 'Shadow' seed in Lost Empires of Faerun.
Or Mythals, but... probably best not to go there...

Two relatively simple rules to help kerb the worst abuses of Epic Spellcasting:

1) "Instantaneous" is not the shortest duration, in the same way that a zombie doesn't have the lowest Constitution. Combining a duration seed with an instantaneous seed creates a duration spell with an instantaneous rider. No sneaking permanent durations in through the back door.

2) Cost of an epic spell is calculated before adding mitigating factors.

I design assuming 1, but not 2.

[Melcar]

It's not so much a goal as that I became aware of an imbalance. I was a creating an advanced dragon with Epic Spellcasting and noticed that its AC with all its buffs up was so high that it couldn't hit itself except on a natural 20, and that made me realise that you can give yourself almost unlimited AC with ESC but as far as I can tell you can't increase your attack bonus except by boosting Str or Dex.



That's certainly within the power of an epic spell, but I don't know of any way to do it within the existing rules. Likewise it would be entirely reasonable to make an epic version of, say, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, which would do what I wanted, but AFAIK there's no way to do that within the existing rules either.

As it happens, I'm currently experimenting with nonstandard epic spells, I'm DMing a game which will soon go to epic and so I'm trying making various epic spells to find at least the more obviously broken parts of the system.

Well limited wish makes you hit no matter the AC, using epic magic for something as trivial as hitting nigh unlimited AC seem like a waste…?

[Biggus]

As for increasing BAB, maybe add it as an option for the Fortify seed? It feels like a good fit.

I had considered that, this thread was mostly to check that there wasn't an existing way I'd missed before I added a houserule.



Epic copies of non-epic spells can be achieved using the 'Shadow' seed in Lost Empires of Faerun.
Or Mythals, but... probably best not to go there...

I'd somehow missed that, thank you.



Two relatively simple rules to help kerb the worst abuses of Epic Spellcasting:

1) "Instantaneous" is not the shortest duration, in the same way that a zombie doesn't have the lowest Constitution. Combining a duration seed with an instantaneous seed creates a duration spell with an instantaneous rider. No sneaking permanent durations in through the back door.

2) Cost of an epic spell is calculated before adding mitigating factors.

I design assuming 1, but not 2.

I hadn't thought about the first one, thanks. As for the second, I'm going to set a fairly high minimum DC (about 30) to stop epic spells being developed on the cheap, and also limit the number of extra casters you can have (the most problematic mitigating factor) so think that about covers it.


Well limited wish makes you hit no matter the AC, using epic magic for something as trivial as hitting nigh unlimited AC seem like a waste…?

I'm a bit puzzled what you mean here. Limited Wish only affects a single attack and costs 300XP per casting, it doesn't seem like it makes other attack-boosting spells pointless?

[Melcar]

I had considered that, this thread was mostly to check that there wasn't an existing way I'd missed before I added a houserule.



I'd somehow missed that, thank you.



I hadn't thought about the first one, thanks. As for the second, I'm going to set a fairly high minimum DC (about 30) to stop epic spells being developed on the cheap, and also limit the number of extra casters you can have (the most problematic mitigating factor) so think that about covers it.



I'm a bit puzzled what you mean here. Limited Wish only affects a single attack and costs 300XP per casting, it doesn't seem like it makes other attack-boosting spells pointless?

I was assuming a game with epic magic would have limited wish permanently on somehow… either through costum items or permanency 😊

[Crichton]

I'm a bit puzzled what you mean here. Limited Wish only affects a single attack and costs 300XP per casting, it doesn't seem like it makes other attack-boosting spells pointless?




Who's using Limited Wish to land a single roll when Surge of Fortune exists? If you're gonna spend an action to get a sure-hit, might as well make it a Nat 20 to potentially crit and if you have the cash to develop epic spells. you probably have the cash to buy or commission an item of SoF. Heck, even using your Limited Wish to duplicate the effects of SoF is better than just using it to land a roll.

[YellowJohn]

I was assuming a game with epic magic would have limited wish permanently on somehow… either through costum items or permanency 😊
I can't think of a way to do this. The nearest I can think of is a personal mythal granting quickened limited wish as an at-will spell-like. technically legal, but not "permanently on" and you'll struggle to get it to cover more than one or two attacks/round.

[Biggus]

I was assuming a game with epic magic would have limited wish permanently on somehow… either through costum items or permanency 😊

How would you do that?