Calling all Munchkins: Epic Spell Challenge

[Caelestion]

The Genesis spell only mentions affecting the environment and leaves out all discussion of planar traits. The Genesis psionic power specifically notes that you can't alter the time trait.

[Yuki Akuma]

I'm sure you can develop an epic spell with a low DC to alter the time trait of your personal demiplane.

[Caelestion]

Well, I'm sure you can also design a spell to replace a god... oh! Karsus already did that.

[Pegasos989]

I don't know about epic spellcasting but I guess it would be impossible to umm... create epic spell that halves all your DCs or something? Or possible give autosuccess on spellcraft checks? I don't know.


BUT HEY! These are the reason why I hate people using houserule "Natural 1 and 20 work on skillchecks too."...

...

[Yuki Akuma]

I don't know about epic spellcasting but I guess it would be impossible to umm... create epic spell that halves all your DCs or something? Or possible give autosuccess on spellcraft checks? I don't know.


BUT HEY! These are the reason why I hate people using houserule "Natural 1 and 20 work on skillchecks too."...

...

You can craft spells that grant obscene bonuses to Spellcraft checks. Then you can craft ones with higher DCs, and so on and so forth, untill you have a million insight bonus to your spellcraft roll...

[Caelestion]

Key word there being "can". Everyone is quick to slam epic rules for being hopelessly broken and DM-required, but are mysteriously quiet on all the other non-epic DM-required brokeness.

[SilveryCord]

...Alternatively, you don't have to animate the ENTIRE earth, just enough of it so the un-animated parts are able to be moved around and shifted by the animated parts. You'd really only have to animate less than 1/3rd of the earth: the plates, and maybe half of ground-level. I'd imagine you could just have 5ft squares of animation and non-animation on the ground level in a checkerboard pattern, and you'd still have basically the same amount of animation as if you had animated the entire planet.

Or you could use Seed: Life, which might be easier.

[Fax Celestis]

In Re: Having Enough Room For All Those Solars.

...ever heard of mass reduce person? Certainly one could whip up an epic version that would not only make them Fine, but do it permanently.

[Gralamin]

In Re: Having Enough Room For All Those Solars.

...ever heard of mass reduce person? Certainly one could whip up an epic version that would not only make them Fine, but do it permanently.

Newest Challenge!

Mass Reduce the Universe!

[Jack_Simth]

Newest Challenge!

Mass Reduce the Universe!

Got a base DC? My method was just for mitigation. And it's expandable up to the limit of the number of Solars in existence. And it's exponential growth.

Edit:
I suppose the easiest would be to create a breeding critter with the ability to permanently shrink things, and make sure it can breed out of control....

[Fax Celestis]

I suppose the easiest would be to create a breeding critter with the ability to permanently shrink things, and make sure it can breed out of control....

Tribbles with shrink item and reduce person spell-like abilities.

[Tormsskull]

Ooooooo! D&D stuff that should never ever be put into gameplay.

Ok, my knowledge of epic stuff is very limited, I never use epic rules. But, the idea here seems to be you can create a spell to do whatever you want, apply restrictions to the spell which make the spell easier to create, and viola!

If I am understanding this correctly, then why not craft a spell that allows you to control atoms. Yes, a spell that allows you as a free action to move/alter/destroy atoms. Then you apply some restriction that isn't really much of a restriction so that you can use the ability as often as you want.

There, now you can rearrange the world around you to your liking.

[Yuki Akuma]

Ooooooo! D&D stuff that should never ever be put into gameplay.

Ok, my knowledge of epic stuff is very limited, I never use epic rules. But, the idea here seems to be you can create a spell to do whatever you want, apply restrictions to the spell which make the spell easier to create, and viola!

If I am understanding this correctly, then why not craft a spell that allows you to control atoms. Yes, a spell that allows you as a free action to move/alter/destroy atoms. Then you apply some restriction that isn't really much of a restriction so that you can use the ability as often as you want.

There, now you can rearrange the world around you to your liking.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and yet you still try to be funny by pointing out epic spells are broken by suggesting something that is impossible to do using the epic spell rules, as they actually do have restrictions on the things you can do.

Bravo. Maybe this thread isn't the one for you...

[Caelestion]

For that matter, as an aside to all, if you're going to try to be posh/intellectual, try to spell the foreign words correctly. A viola is a stringed instrument; voila is the French word.

[Abd al-Azrad]

Hmm... I've been thinking, is there a way to animate the Earth without going to all this trouble to find half the Earth's volume in spellcasters to pull it off? And I thought of something: perhaps if we could create a truebreeding creature (using given Epic spell rules) that animates portions of the Earth on a continual basis, and each section it animates becomes one of its species- thus, creating an exponential growth of animated creatures, likely some form of ooze, that the planet becomes.

Not exactly animating the Earth all at once, but achieving a similar result of a living planet- or, more specifically, a planet made of living organisms.

I'm going to try to do this using an Epic Spell to create a Living Spell (MM 3), imbedded with the same epic spell (not within rules of Living Spells, which only go up to 9th level, so allow for a bit of leeway in my explanations). Effectively, every time the Living Spell strikes a target or engulfs an object, that object becomes transformed into this very Living Spell.

First, because the creature doesn't currently exist, we have to create it ourselves, using Conjure: Origin of Species. We'll also have to research a spell for this Living Spell to contain that transforms creatures into other Living Spells- this will be its form of breeding.

Given that the Living Spell needs to transform existing matter, rather than creating it from scratch, we'll use the Transform seed to create Animate Replicating Rock. This can allow us to transform any creature or object into a new form with HD <= the caster's HD (in this case, the Living Spell's). So, that works. The Spellcraft DC for this spell will be base 21, HD adjusted (+2 per HD above 15, in this case, +12 total), including a +20 adjustment for granting the subject two supernatural abilities (the slam attack that casts this very spell, and a Hive Mind, because I want these things to all act as one creature), a +10 adjustment for transforming inanimate matter into a creature, and a +4 adjustment for the hardness of rock (I'm just going to allow veins of ore, or anything with hardness > 8, to survive the transformation- it leaves the living Earth with something to hold itself together by, like bones). No adjustment based on size changes, as we will only be animating Huge sections of earth at a given time (based on the Ooze's Gargantuan size). Total DC before mitigating factors: 65. I'm going to include an ad hoc +20 DC for giving creating a creature that can cast this spell again and bypassing certain minor difficulties in the Living Spell template (like not allowing me to have a creature-based spell effect), and we must change the target to an area to meet the Living Spell's description (+10 DC, area will be a 20' radius to encompass a Gargantuan chunk of ground), so total DC 97. Fortunately, and we abuse rules madly here, we can give this spell a huge XP cost that the Living Spell will never have to pay (because it casts the spell as a Supernatural ability) to mitigate- this actually makes me feel really bad, because paying 9,700 XP, we can reduce the Spellcraft DC to a flat zero, which I really was hoping would be harder to do. Well, there's the Epic spellcasting rules for you. Hilariously, you don't even ever have to cast this spell, just know it so you can imprint it into a Living Spell.

The Living Spell itself, named Replicating Rock has HD, and all its abilities, based on the spell it is imprinted with. As epic spells are effectively the equivalent of 10th-level spells, I'll just expand the calculations of Living Spells to include such a level: HD = Caster Level (Minimum 21, so average HP of 215), Gargantuan size (for its epic CL, I expanded the size increase table to go up beyond Cl 13+), Speed of 40' (effectively medium range, as the Transform seed has a range of 300'- less than any Long range), AC of 17 (10 + 10 Deflection +3 Dex -4 Size) DR 10/magic, SR 31 (10+CL), Str, Con, Cha of 20 (10+spell level), Wis and Dex of 17 (7+spell level), Attack: 1 Slam +18 melee (1d8+7 damage + Spell effect), a DC to resist transformation = 20 + Cha mod (Fort 25). CR 20. Note that it doesn't need to deal any damage to its target (rock) to create a new Replicating Rock, it just needs to hit, and with +18 to hit inanimate rock, that shouldn't be difficult.

Finally, the Origin of Species Conjuration spell. This part gets pretty complicated, and the costs get quite brutal (Armor, Conjure, Contact, Life, Fortify seeds, +84 for its 21 HD, +28 for 31 SR, +22 for its Deflection bonus to AC, +24 for establishing language-bypassing Contact with each creature it creates (thus generating a Hive Mind of sorts, with gaps), +0 for the Animate Replicating Rock spell it carries (love that XP mitigator!), and Permanent (x5 DC, owch). So, total Spellcraft DC of a nice, even 1300 (I'm actually surprised how even that came out). Much easier to mitigate down to a manageable level, and this spell will create a creature that does the work of animating the planet for you- one 20'-radius chunk at a time.

As we are all aware of how well exponential growth lead to a spread of a population, and that these creatures replicate every round, we can predict that this method will transform the planet into a gigantic floating pile of CR 20, hive-minded living creatures with incredible speed, and will likely take much less than a year to set up.

The summary of this post: You can rather easily create a creature that transforms the planet into a big pile of living, CR 20, rather powerful monsters, all of which are connected telepathically, and all of which hold the planet together using ore deposits as a form of skeletal structure. This is an easy way to destroy a world and animate it at once- but you can't make the entire world take a swing at someone with an incredibly colossal slam attack. Frankly, you don't even control this mass, but it's a great way to destroy a planet you don't like, likely killing every inhabitant at the same time.

[Jack_Simth]

You can skip the rules-bending for a Living Spell if you need, and just use Epic spell seeds entirely.
Let's see... self-replicating tribble.....

Need:
Life (making a living critter)
Fortify (to give it stats)
Conjour (to make it in the first place, and find the rules for giving it new abilities)

Life is DC 27, and is used as the base seed (so nothing goes away - it's Instant, after all). We don't need to add anything fancy here. Gives the critter 3d6 Int/Wis/Cha, which is enough for our purposes.
Conjoure is DC 21, but is listed as required to be made Permanent - but that's fine. Just need to remember this aspect after we're done with the rest. No need for any particular size, so no need to tack anything in. We're fine with them being made from normally nonliving matter - how do pebbles sound? Material doesn't much matter, though, so we'll go with the tribble theme and they'll be balls of fur.
We only need them to have 1 HD, so we need to Fortify them to 5 HP - so we're looking at a base 17 Fortify for 1 hp, +8 for an extra 4 HP to get it up to five.

So, before Permanency, we're looking at 27+21+25=73. Making that Permanent gives it a DC of 365.

But wait - we need to add that to the critter itself - so we mitigate it away to 0, such that the doubling of adding it onto the critter as an Ex ability doesn't cost any extra (thus, it's included in the critter's abilities). That's easy - as mentioned in other's posts, Ex abilities don't have Xp components, so if we tack on an XP cost to bring the ability to 0, it works. 365 would require 36,500 xp - which we can't do (cap of 20,000 xp), but we can run it up to the limit to get a -200, leaving 165 to worry about. Spell slots won't be available, and backlash kinda defeats the purpose, so we're left with time - 10 extra minues gives -20, and 145 to worry about. 73 extra days gives us the -146 we need to get it to 0. So with a "gestation period" of 73 days, each of these little balls of fluff can make a perfect copy of themselves. Oh, and having the statistics of constructs of their size, they don't need to eat, breath, or sleep. They just sit there and Concentrate on making more of themselves all day, every day. And they double every 73 days. Wonderful exponential growth, even though you won't see the world overrun in your lifetime (unless you're an Elan).

Mitigate the original however you like (it's only 365 - piece of cake) and drop a couple off in isolated areas, and given a bit of time, the world will be ovverrun with little balls of fluff, that are neither edible nor valuable.

Or little pebbles, or grains of sand, or whatever else you want them to be. Iron or gold technically works too, although they would be harvested and melted down...... hmm... that could be useful (if evil - they are intelligent, after all) flawlessly cut gems might be safe for a long time..... what's the reaction of the typical adventurerer running into a given number of small sapphires at the bottom of a dungeon somewhere?

[Abd al-Azrad]

^ I dunno, Jack. That's pretty good, but mine double every round. It's a bit harder to work, but my world ends at a factor of over a million times faster than yours.

[Jack_Simth]

Mine doesn't actually end the world; it just buries it. No extrapolating tables, nothing not technically within the bounds of the rules as listed; no ad-hock modifiers.

If you wanted to make it easier, you could, after having made the original critter, use a simple Transform to have it turn inanimate objects into itself. With a 1 HD critter, that has exactly one ability you're worried about, it's a rather simple Transform, and with the XP cost that need never be paid, you can get it Quickened, and get in two a round.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Hmm... can one create a self-replicating fine-sized creature with spell slots? Depending on how fast they replicate, you could concievibally create billions of them to donate spell slots to your spell of planet-animation.

Heck, you could set it up so that each creature has one level of Sorcerer, and give the base Charisma for the critters a 12. Then each critter can donate something like 3-4 1st level spell slots each to your epic spell requiring billions of spell slots donated.

Theoretically plausable, anyways... moreso than emptying the heavens at any rate.

I still like using the Control seed to craft the Epic spell: Dominate Pun-Pun, though

[Jack_Simth]

Don't know... do spell-like abilities count?

But let's suppose we wanted to make a self-replicating gold coin (technically a construct).

We start with the same base....

Need:
Life (making a living critter)
Fortify (to give it stats)
Conjour (to make it in the first place, and find the rules for giving it new abilities)

Life is DC 27, and is used as the base seed (so nothing goes away - it's Instant, after all). We don't need to add anything fancy here. Gives the critter 3d6 Int/Wis/Cha, which is enough for our purposes.
Conjoure is DC 21, but is listed as required to be made Permanent - but that's fine. Just need to remember this aspect after we're done with the rest. The size is rather small, and gold is within range of what Conjoure can do. We have our base construct (1 gold coin). Hmm... we'll need to make it bigger. Transform is limited to Dimininutive. Okay, so we've got an 8-inch gold bar. That should be within range of Diminutive. No real change in any of the above, other than moving away from coinage.
We only need them to have 1 HD, so we need to Fortify them to 5 HP - so we're looking at a base 17 Fortify for 1 hp, +8 for an extra 4 HP to get it up to five.

So, before Permanency, we're looking at 27+21+25=73. Making that Permanent gives it a DC of 365.

Now we need it to self-replicate. Let's look at Transform. CR is immaterial to Transform, so we can ignore it. HD is, but we're only looking at 1 HD, so we can ignore that, too. We have one ability we'll want to add to the transformed target, so that's a +10 modifier. We want to be able to turn nonmagical, inanimate objects into creatures, so that's a +10. We want to be able to change types, so that's another +5. We want it to be able to turn Incorporeals, so that's another +10. So the base Transform power we're giving the critter costs 21+10+10+5+10=DC 56. But that's for one target at 300 feet in one minute. We can do much better. We want it to be a Quickened Action (+28), Target to Area (+10), and make it a 20 foot radius spread (+2). So we're looking at DC 96. Double to make it an Ex ability (don't want it going away, after all....) to 192, and then multiply by five (because we had to make the base spell Permanent to get the critter in the first place) to 960. With the stuff for the base critter, that's a DC of 1325. Okay, we need only 88 ninth level spell slots to mitigate that down to 0. Using Solar cheese from before (or, if you don't like Solars, we can use 190 Couatls (Permanently Summoned the same way), or 88 Planetars (easier to Permanently Summon anyway), or even 190 Nymphs if you like - they cast as Druid-7s). In a month or two, we have our first gold bar. Which can turn every creature and nonmagical object in a 20 foot radius spread at a range of 300 feet into copies of itself (unless they succeed on about a DC 20 Fort save), as a Swift action. Umm.... how fast does that thing replicate? Oops. Make sure to craft a Permanent Epic Ward against the specific "spell" it has at-will BEFORE you make one..... for you and all your equipment....

[Penguinizer]

First we make a punpun, who has infinite spell casting levels I think. He should be able to do it.

[Inyssius Tor]

Um, you got ninja'd. Like, eight weeks ago.

Also, from the Mouth of the Footprint:

Thread Necromancy
Bringing a thread back from “the dead.” If a thread has fallen to page three and hasn’t been posted in for a month and a half, don’t post in it. Start a new topic if you want to discuss the subject.

[Penguinizer]

whoops, it was linked in another thread. Didnt notice that it had fallen.

[Inyssius Tor]

I almost fell for that exact same link; it is an awfully cool thread.

[Woot Spitum]

Just spend a few years in your one Material second = 1 year demiplane made by your Genesis spell.

Or become a lich. Which would be a great campaign hook...

[Missing Shoe]

Use a Ring of infinite wishes.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Why not create a spell that animates a creature that can cast spells, then wait and an animated planet from the future will pop back in time to help you animate the earth. Then the animated planet will start gaining wizard levels until it can time travel and has enough spells slots to help you animate itself.

Wait...

[turtleant120]

My head hurts.

Could you possibly summon one extremly large earth elemental?

[Yuki Akuma]

Or become a lich. Which would be a great campaign hook...

Or do both.

Also: I can't actually remember posting that. Holy Threadnomancy, Batman!

[Benejeseret]

First off, as a one with little epic-level gaming experience my thought is likely to be full of technical loopholes as I am not sure exactly what is "plausible' in a fantasy setting.

My thoughts, modify the Druid's spell Awaken. It can already be used on trees to give among other things
a) an Intelligence of 3d6;
b) a Wisdom of 3d6;
d) gains skill points & feats appropriate for
an ‘aberration’ of its HD;
e) gains the ability to speak 1 language + 1
per Intelligence modifier (all languages
must be known by the caster).
g) gains the ability to move;
h) gains senses

So, modify it to work on dirt/stone/earth. ((here is where my knowledge of making spells totally falls down - is this even possible?)). If to awaken a large/huge/or bigger tree is lvl 5, to be honest awakening some other non-sentient material should not be that much harder...maybe not even epic. Even 5' by 5' by 5' 'medium' target would work. For you realists out there, I would point out that a tree is really nothing more than earth with some dynamic chemistry and some water. Second case, computers can 'think' and could speak a verbal spell. So the silicone and other conductive metals in the earth could rearrange (since it is becoming moble) to form circuts that are powered by a photoelectric effect. All you need is for the 125 cubic foot patch of earth to have HD...or to make your spell get around that....maybe blend animate object with the awaken earth into one spell.

After a few times you will have some with high enough wisdom that you can train them as druids - even if this takes years. Once even one is a druid able to cast the modified awaken the cycle repeats...and for a timescale - your next generation caster can work in geological time so time is not at issue.

Exponential awakening later and you have an awakened planet full of 125 cubic foot sentient patches....nearly all of them druids. Then, they all cast Meld to Stone or some such and they all meld together. Once blended they/it could use its wildshape ability to become a giant turtle...in space...perhaps with 4 seperate sentient wildshaped elephants on its back.....

That concludes my thoughts.