[Idea Sharing] Super High Magic World! :D

[Jimp]

I've been thinking a lot about different magic levels for settings and was wondering about a place with super high magic. I know about Ebbereon and Spelljammer, they have plenty of high magic ideas in them, but lets try and push the barrier. Given that your average neighbourhood mage is, say, tenth level and that the world is appropriately dangerous enough to make your average spellcaster tenth level, just how much can we/must we do to the world with magic?
First of all, if the setting is dangerous enough to have an average adventurer tenth level then cities and towns will have to be appropriately defended. Floating cities perhaps? Walls with defensive symbols or spells on them?
Also, since magic is readily available it will be used to provide some luxuries and services. Obvious things like using Continual Light (name may be wrong) to light the streets or using Create Water or Purify Water to supply water or water crops. Then again, why even bother with crops? People could rely on the Create Food and Water spells or have them enchanted into machines that make food, Star Trek style.
So, lets come up with ideas for a super high magic world!

[veilrap]

Well I'd imagine that manual labour would be rare as Labor Golems would be pretty common place.

Also I suspect the standards of living would be higher than you'd normally expect in a Fantasy setting as with magic so plentiful living a decent life seems like it would be pretty easy.

[Emperor Tippy]

*sigh*

This comes up every month or two. And the answer is that if you go with the 3.5 RAW and create a setting that makes any semblance of sense in terms of said RAW then the world will be high magic.

If you want to be able to have regular D&D adventures in said world then you have to follow, at least generally, a single set up. Points of light in the dark. 4e finally got around to realizing the fact (a few decades late but thats neither here nor there).

What points of light in the dark means is as follows.

Cities are linked by Teleportation Circles. Trade routes do not exist. Shipping lines do not exist. You have very heavily secured cities that don't have to have any geographical relationship to any other cities or even their own settlements. Knowledge is shared between cities instantly. What does this mean? Cities have massive populations and have massive amounts of wealth in them.

Now outside the cities you have wilderness. Vast amounts of trackless wilderness where criminals and people not welcome in the cities live, or their descendants. This is where you have villages and the like. Magic is rare. Wizards are nigh unheard of and most divine casters are Druids not Clerics. People band together for survival. Eventually those individual bands will end up with the ability to create a Teleportation Circle and enough people to create their own city, or they are wiped out by monsters or other bands (much more likely).

The average guard in a City is a high level Warforged with fast response teams made up of wizards and Shade Steel Golems. The average guard in the wilderness is a barbarian or fighter.


That is the only setting the rules support that still allows regular D&D. Most adventuring happens outside the cities, at least until the players reach level 12+. At which point they have real challenges to face. If you attack a shop keeper then he uses his Telepathic Bond to the Guard Dispatch Officer to have them teleport in 5 Advanced Shade Steel Golems and a high level wizard. And when you are caught and convicted the city just Mind Rapes you and makes you a law abiding citizen.

[bosssmiley]

Super High Magic World?

The D&D world as written is already ridiculously unstable, with characters rising from goblin kickers (1st level) to warlords (10th level) in a month of hard adventuring (4 encounters/day, 13 encounters/lvl). Anything that would increase the chaos and power disparities in the game world even further (like, oh say, yet more magic) would essentially turn the game into the chaotic perpetual ferment of the Plane of Limbo.

Super high magic worlds in D&D don't look like Star Trek; they look like Alphatia or Netheril (the commons are lowly servitors who live and die at the whims of an untouchable magical power elite). That's if you're lucky.

[Valairn]

Of course in a High Magic World, you can always assume the balancing factor of a deity of some sort. Deities which are goodly and involved in the world can change the very structure of it by their mere presence and people who worship them.

When discussing a Super High Magic World, you have to ask, how are the gods involved in its daily affairs?

[Nemoricus]

Tenth level? Dark dreams, now that's a scary high level if you think about. Plane shift is a fifth level spell in 3.5. Clerics get it at ninth level. You could easily travel to another plane in this setting and be back for breakfast the next day. Deities would be involved if for no other reason than to stop an endless stampede of people wanting their aid.

As far as everything else, this setting would just be one wild ride.

[Adumbration]

Tippy, that actually sounds like a good idea for a setting. Did you make it up, or does it exist? (Seriously, it sounds exciting. Much better than the usual bland campaign worlds.)

[Emperor Tippy]

Tippy, that actually sounds like a good idea for a setting. Did you make it up, or does it exist? (Seriously, it sounds exciting. Much better than the usual bland campaign worlds.)

I made it up. If you go and search for my old posts you can find a few threads where me and some other talked about magic and settings.

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

[Eldariel]

Also, criminals would be extremely low in numbers due to the ease of controlling people entering the city, and due to the ready access of mindreading magic. The few that exist are of course so tough that they're nigh' impossible to catch and extremely dangerous.

On the other hand, people abusing the system from inside would be commonplace and indeed probably encompass majority of the relevant people in the world, making life inside the cities all the more dangerous.

[Project_Mayhem]

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

Ah but surely all the relevant gods would have stupidly high wizard levels - in a world with level 20 wizards, you'd have to be pretty powerful to be worth worshiping - in fact the gods would probably be the more powerful wizards.

[Roderick_BR]

Heh, now I feel like making some rules for a high magic world. Heck, I could incorporate it to my homebrew system. The only real problem is that magic in 3.x is too reliable, and most magic itens have no maintenance cost, or even need for.
For example: Teleportation circles. Have them require expensive material to activate, making it something only richer companies can afford, and only adventurers would risk.
Instead of several armies of high level wizards and golens teleportating suddenly, have groups with elite soldiers lead by very small groups of wizards as shock troops sent for the most dire cases.

[Illiterate Scribe]

I made it up. If you go and search for my old posts you can find a few threads where me and some other talked about magic and settings.

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

Notes
The deity can duplicate any spell of 9th level or lower as a standard action. The duplicated spell has no material or XP component, and the DC of its saving throw (if one is allowed) is 20 + the deity’s rank + the deity’s Charisma modifier.

The deity also can duplicate a spell with any metamagic feat (so long as the metamagic feat is available to characters of 20th level or lower). This use of the ability requires the deity to rest for 1 round for each level that the feat would normally add to the spell. It still takes a standard action to use this ability, so there is no point in using the ability to duplicate a quickened spell.

The deity can render a magical or supernatural effect permanent. The rest requirement varies with the effect: 10 minutes per level of the effect.

Hi.lolspace

[mostlyharmful]

Hi.lolspace

Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.


To the OP, the thing to bear in mind about high magic environments isn't high level (5+) casters, they're realitively rare in any WOTC type setting and any setting I set up.

In order to get to that level you need to focus your life into developing this understanding of magic, think abstract professors in modern academia. Now factor in that there is nothing that you can offer them that they can't provide for themselves at a moments thought and no threat that governments or vested interests can present to them that's credible. Add in that their base qualification is either a very VERY high Int or complete devotion to something other than themselves and you get a very small population that can't be pushed around, thinks in the long term and intelligently, and naturally co-operates with each other.

Now this is all rather irrelivent since the things that will completely change the way a world works are the 0 and 1 st level castings, the stuff you need a 10 or 11 to cast and a single level in adept to cast. or magewright if you're interested in Eberron type thought (yes, given the threads gist). Have a look at what Orisons and 1st level divine stuff opens up, instant industrial revolution in a way we've yet to manage in the real world since it has no negatives (infact it has big positives given you're strengthening a Good, socially approved god that has vested interests in making sure you prosper since you clearly worship GodX). No famine and endless fresh drinking water are the two biggest "Holy Crap on a Gold Plated STICK!!!!!"

Oh, and virtually no plague (although that might be tricky depending on how divine magic interacts with the immune systemm (Death to all catgirls!!!)

And that's without touching on foolproof methods of information aquisition (think about that from a scientific point of view for a few seconds..... )

EDIT: proof reading for clarity is your friend

[puppyavenger]

And that's without touching on foolproof methods of information aquisition (think about that from a scientific point of view for a few seconds..... )

scientist.Pelor, what are subatomic particles? and is string theory correct?
Pelor. Umm.. well..., heh look, a cookie!

[mostlyharmful]

scientist.Pelor, what are subatomic particles? and is string theory correct?
Pelor. Umm.. well..., heh look, a cookie!

And that's what happens when you ask the big dumb beefcake nurse, now try asking a god of knowledge, or just using magic that doesn't ask a specific extraplaner but rather comes up with answers all by itself (how that one works?????)

[Illiterate Scribe]

Hi yourself. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

Ah, but, without the shadow seed (which is, shock horror, non-core, and setting specific ;p), you can't get it all. Some of the most powerful effects - timestop, quintessence, gate, temporal regression, and so on - are on the 1-9 lists.

since you can mitigate the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting. the only limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

That, and operating in a timestop. Deities - if they're optimising their abilities - live in a constant timestop, since they have it as an at will ability.

[Roderick_BR]

Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

Meaning that a deity can still do all that and more. I don't see why a deity need to worry epic mortals (that are not 40+, thus rivaling with the lesser gods).

[Collin152]

As for the God's, they don't intervene out of fear for their lives. Epic Magic beats Salient Divine Abilities hands down.

But Epic Magic + Salient Divine Abilities...
As if an Epic Mage could be a threat to a god of magic, though.
Remember how their portfolio sense lets them know weeks in advance when things mess with their portfolio?
This god gets to know about every spell cast, depending on how many people it affects, several weeks in advance.

[Jack_Simth]

Meh. Unfortunately you can bold whatever you like in the epic casting section of the ELH (sans the DM approval part which invalidates the entire arguement), the ability to build galaxies, slap greater deities in the face for a laugh and make yourself an overpower of an entirely new multiverse at level 21 isn't something to sneeze at.

since you can reduce the spellcraft DC to 0 with enough mitigation, and helpers can provide unlimited mitigation and you can bind or create helpers with epic casting then anything can be done with epic casting the only real limitation (and that only applies for the first few castings) is the PCs own ability to cast epic spells per day.

You're forgetting: The D&D Dieties pretty much all qualify for Epic Spellcasting. There's no particular reason why they don't have Epic spells themselves. They're actually better at it, what with most of them having an arbitrary number of spellcasting minions already, and having the ability to create spellcasting minions pretty much at whim.

As to the OP:
Assuming that the spellcasters at the top are reasonably intelligent and reasonably wise (they should be), a high magic society will look like whatever the spellcasters at the top want it to look like.

If we limit ourselves to Core spells and tactics (including custom traps, but not custom items, for now), and put a "common use" cap at things you can reasonably do with a few 10th level characters (figure a Wizard-10 and a Cleric-10 working together), there's very little an individual needs that can't be done by spell.

Create Food and Water is a Cleric-3 spell. A periodic trigger automatic reset "trap" of Create Food and Water means that, for a market price of 15k, you can feed a fairly arbitrarily large number of creatures until some stupid Rogue disables it (or it gets smashed). Tasteless, but that's why you have the Wizard include a Prestidigitation "trap" to give it some flavor (Heroes' Feast is, unfortunately, out of range). Create Water, in and of itself, is just a cantrip.

Wall of Stone is Cleric-5, Wizard-5 - and handles most of your housing needs. You need the actual caster at each build site, but that's okay - they don't exactly wear out quickly. Tack on Stone Shape (Cleric-3, Sor/Wiz-4) or Fabricate (Sor/Wiz-5) and you can even build in doors and windows if you like. Illusory Wall (Sor/Wiz-4) makes the place look nice.

An Endure Elements Automatic reset "trap" has a market price of 1,000 gp, and removes most of the need for clothing and shelter for a very large number of people.

Continual Flame gets you all the light you need, and is Cleric-3, Sor/Wiz-2. You can bypass the expensive component if you're doing a lot of them by using Lesser Planar Binding on a Lantern Archon.

Capping at character level 10 for building society, travel isn't perfect - you'll still need armed caravan guards and the like for moving lots of goods around. It isn't until you get Teleportation Circles and Permanency (requires 9th level spells and a caster level of 17) that travel is really reliable enough for the merchant that's going to do it a few hundred times before they retire (even with a teleport master that is "very familiar" with the target location, you still have a 3% of arriving off-target or in a similar area).

So you can get food, water, shelter, and light, all by magic. There's very little reason to go anywhere, but if you do, you either risk being stranded away from society (no need to farm, so other than the walls, the rest of the world is wild) or you risk the wilds (and need guards).


There's some catches, though.
1) People don't like to be bored. You need to keep most peopleworking in one way or another, or you'll eventually have a riot or revolt of some nature on your hands. And at 10th, you can't just hand-wave it away with magic (although you can at 17th, depending on permitted sources).
This aspect is why the society looks like whatever those who control the magic gismos that make it all work want it to look like. If you can't do this yourself, and if I charge a small fee for use of the Endure Elements trap and the Create Food and Water trap, you have to get a job eventually. Most the money will end up in my hands (or the hands of someone very much like me; once I've set things up, I have no real maintenance costs) which means you're either working for me (or someone very much like me), working for someone who works for me (or someone very much like me), working for someone who works for someone who works for me (or someone very much like me) (and so on), or getting along by some manner of theft. This is the means by which I (or someone very much like me) controls society - you're doing what I tell you to so that I give you the money you need to buy food and shelter from me. If I like marching troops around, most people will be soldiers (or support for soldiers). If I like art, most people will be various types of artists (or support for artists). If I like pretty gems, most people will be various types of miners (or support for miners). If I like a religious feel to things, most people will be chanting prayers (or support those doing so). If I like to watch heads fall off shoulders, most people will be involved in kidnapping and execution (or getting kidnapped and executed). Whatever. What the place looks like once you've got a small handful of people that have nearly-perfect control over the essentials depends on what those people who control the basics want. Anyone who doesn't like it votes with their feet, and moves out of my domain.

2) Why bother? I'm a great and powerful wizard/cleric, so I spend all my time and vital energies... pandering to a very large crowd of peons? Why? Seriously, I can just cast Wall of Iron and use the trade-goods to get them to do what I want anyway. Why bother bringing them up out of the squaler? It's a lot of work for what I get.

[mostlyharmful]

You're forgetting: The D&D Dieties pretty much all qualify for Epic Spellcasting. There's no particular reason why they don't have Epic spells themselves. They're actually better at it, what with most of them having an arbitrary number of spellcasting minions already, and having the ability to create spellcasting minions pretty much at whim

In which case the gods and a level 21 character are on the same level and the prize goes to whoever is the most ruthless and inventive. With an openended system of casting just starting out ahead in the minion stakes isn't that big an advantage since you can make, call, bind, whatever an arbitrary amount very, very quickly, add in planes with time traits and an epic casting fortress filled with a near infinate number of powerful minions and even angry gods can be managable for a prepared enough epic caster, that is if they don't just make themselves an overdeity or build a new universe.

[Collin152]

In which case the gods and a level 21 character are on the same level and the prize goes to whoever is the most ruthless and inventive. With an openended system of casting just starting out ahead in the minion stakes isn't that big an advantage since you can make, call, bind, whatever an arbitrary amount very, very quickly, add in planes with time traits and an epic casting fortress filled with a near infinate number of powerful minions and even angry gods can be managable for a prepared enough epic caster, that is if they don't just make themselves an overdeity or build a new universe.

Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.

[Jack_Simth]

Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.

Plus they start earlier. The dieties in D&D are (in the vast majority of cases), going to be a lot older than any character you'll make. By a lot.

[Randel]

Ideas for a high magic setting:

Spells like Rope Trick are put into permanent magic items creating extra dimensional space for housing or storage. Low income tenants get a closet with a rope ladder that leads into a single room to sleep in.

Central Create Food and Drink "traps" manufacture lots of flavorless but nutritious foodstuffs. Prestidigitation traps flavor it in a number of ways. One free for everyone device could have a path of Tensers Floating Disks moving along in a conveyor belt fashion with dishes and cups of food on them (sort of like a Sushi-go-round). People just get a plate and walk over to a flavor station to flavor their gruel or breadlike food.

Magic items that heal wounds and cure disease/poisons are available. Mundane medicine skills could take a hit if these are too easily accessible. People might be less worried about wounds or injury if they are they can afford magic to cure them. Soldiers who are backed up with magic healing or resurrection magic could be truly vicious in battle if they don't fear for their safety and their training consists of fight-to-the-death battles with each other and they can all learn from their battles.

Existance of illusion or transmutation magic that can disguise people makes identity theft a problem. Could also allow cosmetic changes (prestidigitation spells changing ones hair color for an hour... even allowing anime hair of weird colors).

Perverts are commonplace. (Belts of Femininity/Masculinity, healing and regeneration magic, illusion spells, polymorph... and all sorts of other stuff).

Some monsters used instead of magic items to perform tasks. Like Brown Molds used for refrigeration, Green Slime or Ochre Jelly for dissolving organic waste, Shocker Lizards used to generate electricity...

Locked in cities are full of magic and pollute the wilderness outside. Water from Decanters of Endless water could leak into the environment and slowly cause climate change or flooding. Create Food and Drink machines could result in lots of sewage. The manufacturing of magic items and spells may leave arcane pollution and it may be that having lots of city-dwellers creates 'psionic pollution' that causes demons to flourish or something.

Since high-magic settings could have magic provide the ability to sustane huge populations in an area, there are more people. These people then worship gods and provide more worshipers than in a setting with less people. If you add mass-media through crystal balls, moving paintings, speaking stones like radios and other things then you could get people believing in all sorts of stuff. Celebrities could ascend to godhood by having a million psychotic fans. Fictional characters could become real though the combined will of the masses. If a cosmic horror comes to destroy the planet, someone might send out an announcement to all the people of the civilized world to concentrate on the enemy and through combined willpower of billions to WISH the monster out of existence or to power up those who can fight it.

If extra planar or interplanetary travel is possible than conjuring up air and water to live in the new world could make completely alien worlds habitable. Sealed in bubble cities in the plane of fire could house people while streams of water from decanters or gates from the plane of water cool the fires. Once humanity/elves/halfling/dwarves start numbering in the trillions and exponentially gating to other planes then things could get really intense.

If an infinatly expanding number of the sentient races run into some other supposedly infinite population like devils/demons/modrons/angels then there could be some nasty battles. Devils can be nasty tough, but humans reproduce rapidly... goblins and orcs moreso. An alliance with the goblins and orcs with humans could give the goblinoid races infinite food from the create food and drink machines and let them produce massive armies quickly. Training-from-hell camps make those troops tough enough to swarm more powerful monsters effectively (even if actual magic items are soly reserved for those with PC class levels.)

In battles against outsider races, security measures like scrying and True Sight spells are needed to detect intruders/scrying/mind control.



Some sample societies include:

The forgotten city: In a city in the desert, big central buildings house the Create Food and Drink machines that provide the most of the food and water. The inhabitants have forgotten how to make or maintain such devices. The machines themselves have limits to the number of meals they can make a day which are made known with corresponding glowing rods. The Rods are like permanant sunrods which glow green, they are then touched to the Food machines and a meal is created, the rod changes to red until the following morning and cannot be used to make a meal until then. The Rods are used as a very valuable currency since just one ensures the user can eat forever. Unfortunatly, the population grew larger than the number of rods so they must hunt in the barren desert, learn to grow food, or deal with the excess population. Rumor of a Yellow rod that may constantly make the Food machines work are told in legend. The inhabitants must also deal with the monsters and forgotten undead and constructs of the past civilization.

The city in the fire: A colony in the plane of fire. Most of the city is underground where its slightly cooler and a large tower projects an endure elements dome that makes the city habitable in the midst of the flames. A big stone wall protects from occasional lava flows and fiery outsiders curious about this strange loction. The gate connecting to the material plane doesn't work always due to shifts in the planes, so there are regular intervals where they receive supplies from home and import 'fire gems' or whatever they harvest from the plane. Water is valuable and endless decanters try to distribute it through the city but the planes nature cause the magic items to shut down at times and the water inevitably evaporates. Experiments on local flora and fauna have resulted in a special ritual that can transform a human so that they may survive in the fiery environment outside. Will the colonists be able to survive with the water they get from home or though magic... or will they slowly transform themselves in order to live in this new world.

The City in Hell: Humans and the sentiant races have discovered the plane of ultimte evil... wether it is the home of devils and demons or even the plane to which all souls go after death. They have found it and dug out a home and built a city to live in. Every man, woman, and child knows how to fight and defend themselves from the horrors outside. The city is less a place to live than a base of operations to wage a war... a war against an idea made flesh. Be it the ultimate extermination of the fiends or an attempt at freeing every soul lost to the land of the dead, the sentiant races are ready to seriously beat the snot out of the fabric of the universe. High-powered military weapons, insurmountable defences, and the combined intelligence of countless soldiers, warlords, warmages and crazy mad scientists are rearing to do some fighting and hopefully avoid falling for the trickery/insanity/mind melting power that permeates this planes monsters and very air... and hopefully avoid backstabbing eachother in the process.

The Utopia:

An attempt at making everyone happy. Housing in Rope Trick rooms, Gruel from free Food and Drink machines and healing from fountains of health are all available to the common folk. Money is used to purchase better fare so that artisans and skilled laborers can get better housing (like ones in real space) and fine food (stuff that is actually grown). Crimminals who commit murder are found through scrying spells and turned to stone statues (since they may be found innocent or rehabilitated later and just mindraping people isn't very nice). Education and access to information is available to all. Many grow up skilled but there are always those who are below average or worse. Rickshaws and manual labor is used often instead of magic to make use of the 'unskilled folk'. Everything is beautiful and freedom is universal.

Or so it seems...

Outside the walls of the city are the polluted lands where the cities waste goes, the monsters outside are kept at bay though 'adventurers' and guards. Perversion and infighting in the upper classes cause trouble for those below them and numerous conflicting philosophies make this utopia difficult to maintain. When those people outside the city hear of the riches within, expect goblins/orcs/and barbarian hoards to lay siege and attack the city either through sword, deception or attacking from within.

[Tempest Fennac]

That sounds well thought out, Randel. What would healing magic have to do with perverts, though?

[Dhavaer]

That sounds well thought out, Randel. What would healing magic have to do with perverts, though?

Don't google 'guro'.

[mostlyharmful]

Again Gods = precognitive.
If it comes down to Wizard vs Gods, Gods win because they know you'll try and what before you know it yourself.

They are precognative but within limits. Epic casting should be able to work up a mages sanctum that blocks deific senses, wait around a couple months and your Lab is a big blind spot for any snooping deity. This doesn't even need to be focussed against any one particular God, it's just standard procedure for a paranoid batman wizard that racks up big stonking enemies with access to Divination magic.

The point that the gods were around first (at least in some settings) is far harder to get around, but then once any caster gets hold of Epic casting one of the most important things for them to do is squash everyone that seems likely to manage the same, so really its much the same idea that Epic Casting beats anything else so whoever gets it first wins.

[monty]

They are precognative but within limits. Epic casting should be able to work up a mages sanctum that blocks deific senses, wait around a couple months and your Lab is a big blind spot for any snooping deity. This doesn't even need to be focussed against any one particular God, it's just standard procedure for a paranoid batman wizard that racks up big stonking enemies with access to Divination magic.

The point that the gods were around first (at least in some settings) is far harder to get around, but then once any caster gets hold of Epic casting one of the most important things for them to do is squash everyone that seems likely to manage the same, so really its much the same idea that Epic Casting beats anything else so whoever gets it first wins.

So epic magic automatically makes you evil, because you'll want to do whatever it takes to stop anybody else from getting it?

Also, epic magic + divine abilities > epic magic. And most gods have 20 outsider HD in addition to their class levels, which, assuming they've maxed the appropriate skill, gives them two more epic spells per day than a 21st level caster. Still better.

[Blanks]

The world depends a lot on the amount silliness in the campaign:

Not silly:
con. light street lighting and divination magic courts

Silly:
Greased streets for fast transportion, decanter of endless water powered boats and weird summons everywhere :)

[elliott20]

I always see magic settings in two scales: power and proliferation. and these are largely dependant upon the settings flavor. Power determines how powerful magic is, and proliferation determines how widespread and common you'll see it.

So, depending upon how you define those terms, you'll get drastically different settings.

One thing is for sure though, that if you were to do a high enough powered game with high enough proliferation, you'll stop seeing people doing things the mundane way and probably a good half of the D&D classes will never be seen again.

[mostlyharmful]

So epic magic automatically makes you evil, because you'll want to do whatever it takes to stop anybody else from getting it?

Also, epic magic + divine abilities > epic magic. And most gods have 20 outsider HD in addition to their class levels, which, assuming they've maxed the appropriate skill, gives them two more epic spells per day than a 21st level caster. Still better.

It doesn't make you evil, just cosmically powerful in very very short order. It's natural to horde power when the levels you're talking about are high enough that any conflict between those with it will lead to universal meltdown, think MAD on a multiversal scale. Limiting stuff that can reorder reality to whatever the user wants isn't evil, anymore than nuclear nonproliferation is. Also when you have access to full Epic casting "whatever it takes" can just be a big suggestion effect to stop research into this kind of casting coupled with a warning system for when someone is likely to achieve it anyway.

and While yes Epic casting + salient divine is > than just plain Epic casting the real advantage is that you can pump up your minion numbers faster to crank out the really big stuff (and that the Gods were likely to have been around first). The big advantage it gives you is lead time, I'd say that a Wiz 21 with Epic Casting and a few weeks prep could take on any god you care to name, provided they could block the Deity senses. After a few days it doesn't matter how many epic slots you have yourself since you can make totally loyal minions with as many as you need.