Level 21 Wizard Challenge

[sonofzeal]

Step 1, Research Spell that creates single Coutal Ally permanently, mitigate to DC 0, 0 XP.

Mitigate how exactly?

If we don't want to use assistants, we can also just figure out the Spellcraft DC we can make:
-We can have 24 ranks
-+2 from K: Arcana synergy
-~+14 Intelligence as a base (more if we're truly utilizing Polymorph Any Object, but that is probably excessive)
-+15 Divine Insight
-+20 Guidance of the Avatar (assuming no custom items)
-some miscellaneous bonuses.

The above add up to about +65 or so, so we can expect to hit ~DC 75 consistently. We can also easily get -42 by taking 42d6 Backlash Damage (averages 147; simple Con 24 is gonna get us by that) and for permanent spells, -220 from casting time (which is made quite trivial by Genesis and fast time progression planes). All we need are ways to consistently cast Heal, such as Shapechange into Planetar & preparing it.

So we can quite easily generate DC 120 boost spells without any XP cost or such, and actual permanent spells of DC ~350 without much pain (note that XP costs are less painful on permanent spells for obvious reasons; not using Thought Bottles here).


DC120 allows generating a spell that grants us...+16 Insight to Int, for example. We can then generate a spell that also gives us +20...Luck to Int. These have to be cast daily due to the stupid stipulation preventing permanencying non-Inherent bonuses. Anyways, this gives us some extra for our DCs, though not much. The bigger effect is that if a non-epic Wizard is targeted by our non-epic SoD effects, they will fail their saves. We'll also have lots of dailies.

Permanent Ward vs. all spells would be a bit too expensive to generate. However, you can Ward yourself vs. Orbs, Maw of Chaos, Anti-Magic Field, Disjunction, Greater Dispel Magic & other Dispel-magic and overall, things which might prove detrimental to your health. You can also generate a few Contingencies, all these permanent mind you, to better protect yourself. And yeah, eh, you can just become immortal with little effort with epic spellcasting.


Even then you can do a lot, though of course the true reason Epic Spellcasting is so busted is 'cause of what you can do with help.

Excellent! However, remember that you only have two epic spell slots at this level. Which two epic spells are you going to cast on the big day?

Let's see... the as-written Epic Spellcasting rules don't include how to add actual spellcasting to a newly-created creature for ritualists. However, it's not necessary:

(Emphasis added, specific text from Here), and the create critter option of the Conjour seed lets you add spell-like abilities.

So you use Conjor (where the rules for creating critters with spell-likes are found) along with Life (required), Fortify (required), and Compel (to make it loyal) to make a critter that has an Epic spell-like ability (what that ability is doesn't matter, as long as it can use it at least twice per day) that is utterly loyal to you. The creature only needs one hit dice.

21: Conjour (Base DC 21) is my base seed (no save, no SR); and I don't need to add anything to it not found in the base seed (besides the spell-like, which we'll get to)
25: Fortify (Base DC 17) is required by Conjour for giving the critter hit dice. I only need it to have one hit die (5 "temporary" HP), so I need 4 levels of temp HP augmentation for a DC of 25 from this aspect.
27: Life (base DC 27) gives the critter stats. I don't really need anything beyond the base, for this.
29: Compel (Base DC 19) needs to be in there. "Follow all the commands of your creator" is good, although I'll want the +10 for "unreasonable course of action" in there, for a 29.
60: I also need a spell-like ability, which can be anything. Maybe Life (DC 27) for what amounts to Ressurection, and Heal (Base DC 25, +6 for getting rid of ability drain, +2 for getting rid of negative levels, too).
So before adding Permanent, it's got a base DC of 162. After making it Permanent, it's 810 (which is a pity; Permanently summoning a Planetar would only be 210, but that's essentially disallowed here). Now we need to mitigate that to the point where it doesn't cost anything.

I use Lesser Planar Binding to get some allied ritualists.

Trumpet Archons are 12 HD Outsiders that cast as 12th level clerics. We can do better - Ghaeles are 10 HD outsiders that cast as 14th level clerics. That'll do. They've got a +10 Will save and a Charisma modifier of only +3, and SR 28. Which means if I've got a Will save DC on Conjouration spells of 30 or better, and can get a +22 or better modifier on my opposed Charisma check, I'm only looking at nat-20 and nat-1 clauses on getting these guys to do me a service. Moment of Prescience will give me a +caster level on an opposed ability check. If I've got an Orange Prism Ioun Stone, that's a a caster level of 22, for a +22 modifier on the bargaining (provided I've got a Charisma of 10). Sufficient. If he gets a 20, he's got a 23. If I get a 2, I've got a 24. I win. 90% success rate on the Calling. If I ignore any slots from a high ability modifier, a standard Wizard can do this four times per day with the full ritual. At a caster level of 22, I can keep them around for up to 22 days. The deal is that they help me as ritualists on my next 44 Epic spells. 88 attempts in that period, with a 90% success rate, averages 79.2 Called Ghaeles. Each casts as a Cleric-14, so that's 7th level spells, at 13 points of mitigation each. Oh, hey - that's 1027 points of mitigation right there from their 7th level spell slots. When it comes down to it, I really only need 62 of them (so a 70% success rate on the Planar Binding is enough for this; that'd be a save DC of 26 - as I can Heighten the Planar Binding spell to 9th, I only need a +7 Intelligence modifier to do that (+5, if I take Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Conjouration)). With all those spell slots, it's a DC 0 Epic spell, for no research time, no XP cost, and no GP cost.
This is a 22 day warm-up time.

So now I'm mass-manufactoring healing critters, at a rate of 2 per day. If they're left running around after? Well, I don't really care, they won't hurt much, and they're easy to dispose of if they do turn out to cause problems. Plus they're fanatically loyal to me, forever. But each one I create has a 10th level spell-like abilities that I can use to fuel Epic casting, at 19 mitigation each, for 38 per day (initially). As creating one costs 810 base spellcraft, after I've got 43 of them (22 days after I'm done with warm-up, day 44), I can double up all my numbers and twin the Epic spell, still be at 0 DC. After another 43 of them (11 days after that, day 55), I can triple up my base numbers to make 3 of them with each casting. After I've got another 43 of them (8 more days, day 63), I can quadruple up my base numbers to make 4 of them with each casting. Oh yeah, and at this point, about two month's into my prep-work, I've got something like 3,200 points of mitigation readily available. And this is exponential growth - I double my available mitigation every 22 days this way, quite easily (it's actually slightly faster than that, but I don't feel like working up the spreadsheet at the moment to get precise figures).

How high of a DC is the "I Win" spell? You've granted me arbitrarily high prep-time. With a 22 day doubling period on the 22 day warm-up period for an 810 DC, in 220 days from "start" I get mitigation of roughly 14,580. In 352 days (22 day warm-up plus 15 doubling cycles), I get mitigation of roughly 26,542,080 points.

I like your idea of using SLA's for mitigation. I'm not quite sure it works though - SLA's are cast like spells, but what the epic spellcasting asks for isn't spells, it's spell slots. As much as your minion might cast the spell, I don't think they could be argued to have the slot.

Also, Ghaele suffer a similar issue to the whole "chain-gating Solar" thing, in that you'll get some nasty company fairly quickly. Specifically, the Court of Stars and related deities are not going to look kindly on binding that many Ghaele. They may not all have 9th level Wizard spells, but the resources at their disposal are tremendous. I'm assuming for this that deities and various other interplanar powers generally keep an eye out for people binding/calling whole bunches of minions, because {a} they like having minions, and {b} they don't like mortals running around with DC eleventy-billion epic spells.