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I never understood why the Epic Spells are considered broken. What kind of combo did?
in my experience the rules of Epic Spells are misunderstood, a powerful Epic Spell implies a huge DC and therefore highly expensive GP and XP and a lot of time, and Mitigating factors are not as easy to apply, few pay XP, if it takes days you need a Demiplane with a different time and be immortal and your spell can be dispelled, and a ritual where you keep all these people safe from GM
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I never understood why the Epic Spells are considered broken. What kind of combo did?
in my experience the rules of Epic Spells are misunderstood, a powerful Epic Spell implies a huge DC and therefore highly expensive GP and XP and a lot of time, and Mitigating factors are not as easy to apply, few pay XP, if it takes days you need a Demiplane with a different time and be immortal and your spell can be dispelled, and a ritual where you keep all these people safe from GM
My level 40 druid had wisdom and intelligence over 300, ac in the thousands and dr 100. And i was researching some more spells that would make him into an even bigger monster.
And all that could be cast by dropping all my stats down to 1 and then the cleric would restore them with his epic restoration.
Hell yes they were broken.
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I never understood why the Epic Spells are considered broken. What kind of combo did?
in my experience the rules of Epic Spells are misunderstood, a powerful Epic Spell implies a huge DC and therefore highly expensive GP and XP and a lot of time, and Mitigating factors are not as easy to apply, few pay XP, if it takes days you need a Demiplane with a different time and be immortal and your spell can be dispelled, and a ritual where you keep all these people safe from GM
Hmm, well I had a spell with a DC in the 30s(not too tough) that animated every Small or smaller unattended object within 300 feet of my character.
Then every loose grain of sand in the area, now under my control, would enter my opponent's space (provoking, but I had over a million of them) and proceed to aid another my attacks and AC. 100 fine creatures per 5 foot space = 100 aid anothers per 5 foot square of the enemy. Even if only half succeed to hit AC10, that was still +100 per space to my AC or hit rolls.
Sure, it had some vulnerabilities such as AoE damage, but a 300 foot radius circle is a lot of little buddies.
That sort of stuff is why the Epic spellcasting system was broken. Heck, if you were creative with the mitigating factors, you could get the spellcraft DC down to 1 and the spell would be dirt cheap to boot.
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"There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other."
That there is why I'd like the mythic rules to be a slow accumulation, rather than hitting 21 and having autowin feats suddenly pop up.
But on another note, the 'metamagic 9th progression' doesn't really work. Why? Rods. In an epic game it won't be long until the wizard can afford one or two greater quicken rods, some greater maximizes, and greater empowers, at which point he's got his bases covered.
There need to be new spells of 10th level and above so that you don't need Heighten Spell to actually cast something useful, and so that out of combat magic doesn't just devolve to spamming wish.
Wealth shouldn't balloon, then taper off, just so that 16th level fighters don't have belts of +8 Strength.
Character options should allow for increases in power (I.e. feats for a net +6 spell penetration, or +3 on attack rolls with a weapon) but also for increases in versatility. The ability to treat a favored weapon as if it were throwing, returning, and could ricochet like the hammer in the APG would make a neat trick for a fighter.
Design and plan out all your numbers to keep scaling from going out of control. A fry with the same base attack as a demon would need a tiny Con score to keep in line with the hp guidelines, and thus Fortitude attacks become autowin. If you try to fix it with a crazy strength score, people will wonder why it doesn't just utilize its 1000-ton lifting weight to break off a chunk of a mountain and crush the player characters.
To reiterate, make sure stuff scales. For example, a CR 20 fey would need a 34 Con to meet the hp goal. That means its Fort save (its poor save) is +24, two higher than the recommended value for its *good* save. And if one of its nineteen feats is iron will, it can't have a Wisdom score higher than 11 if it wants to stay within the guidelines. Just something to keep in mind.
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Another thing: since OGL 20+ content was crappy and unsupported, you can drop the goal of backward compatibility completely.
I never understood why the Epic Spells are considered broken. What kind of combo did?
in my experience the rules of Epic Spells are misunderstood, a powerful Epic Spell implies a huge DC and therefore highly expensive GP and XP and a lot of time, and Mitigating factors are not as easy to apply, few pay XP, if it takes days you need a Demiplane with a different time and be immortal and your spell can be dispelled, and a ritual where you keep all these people safe from GM
Hmm, well I had a spell with a DC in the 30s(not too tough) that animated every Small or smaller unattended object within 300 feet of my character.
Then every loose grain of sand in the area, now under my control, would enter my opponent's space (provoking, but I had over a million of them) and proceed to aid another my attacks and AC. 100 fine creatures per 5 foot space = 100 aid anothers per 5 foot square of the enemy. Even if only half succeed to hit AC10, that was still +100 per space to my AC or hit rolls.
Sure, it had some vulnerabilities such as AoE damage, but a 300 foot radius circle is a lot of little buddies.
That sort of stuff is why the Epic spellcasting system was broken. Heck, if you were creative with the mitigating factors, you could get the spellcraft DC down to 1 and the spell would be dirt cheap to boot.
That spell means your DM was just not paying attention. How does a grain of sand give you a bonus on attack rolls? That's DM abuse, not rules abuse.
That spell means your DM was just not paying attention. How does a grain of sand give you a bonus on attack rolls? That's DM abuse, not rules abuse.Aid Another, DC 10.
I know the rule. I was asking a commonsense question. Even a magically animated grain of sand wouldn't be able to hinder an enemy. The swarm could, but it's one creature, so no +100 aid another bonus
My level 40 druid had wisdom and intelligence over 300, ac in the thousands and dr 100. And i was researching some more spells that would make him into an even bigger monster.
And all that could be cast by dropping all my stats down to 1 and then the cleric would restore them with his epic restoration.
Hell yes they were broken.
you drop your stats to 1? Where do you read this Mitigating Factor? And why any NPC never made a dipel to you? NPCs also have epic spells
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Another thing: since OGL 20+ content was crappy and unsupported, you can drop the goal of backward compatibility completely.
This. A thousand times this. Paizo, if someone is reading this thread. Drop the backwards compatibility for epic play. There is no need to do anything that ELH did except some feats.
@edduardco: Al those spells had casting time of instant and gave permanent bonuses. Epic spells can be abused to no end. That is why they were broken. Isanely powerful characters are cool, but not characters who can cleave galaxies...i leave that to manga.
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I know the rule. I was asking a commonsense question. Even a magically animated grain of sand wouldn't be able to hinder an enemy. The swarm could, but it's one creature, so no +100 aid another bonus
I warned the GM about it when I designed the spell, telling him exactly how I intended to use it. I don't beleive in "suprising" my GMs in that way, it's just immature in a hobby where the idea is for everyone to have fun. I have no idea why he allowed it. Minor nitpick: 3.0 did not have swarms. Each pebble, etc. was a Fine animated object. There was no rules supported way to model them as a swarm type creature.
More on Epic Spellcasting brokenness: Dispel was hardly an option as <9th dispelling capped at +20 which made it impossible to dispel anything above level 30 or so. If I recall the epic dispel seed, you had to set the dispel bonus when you designed the spell, so it wouldn't scale and you'd have to create a new one every couple of levels, ugh.
We had designed a spell that we never had time to create that added +100 enhancement bonuses to all six ability scores of the entire party for 1 year. Everyone had Epic Leadership so we had several hundred low level adepts who could all donate level one spell slots to take down the DC to cast.
I was just watching Gurren Lagann the other day...
Ah but they were in a pocket universe "where though was given form". It was all meta. They could have fought as two slugs on hot pavement. :P
I'd need to recreate the spell but the one from the game I played in insta-summoned a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon which could act on that turn. It was off set mainly by nearly killing the caster but that was okay because healing isn't that hard to come by and the Dragon would more then likely curb stomp whatever was the problem in less then 6 seconds.
Costs are based on final DC out of the ELH. So using Rods of Excellent Magic (good investment after 13 epic castings) is basically a free -20 off the DC. Get two (one for each hand) or start custom making them stacked on each other in the same rod.... Ya, there are totally ways to get around the downsides when you play to the long term.
It's nice to see how many people here have some really nice solid ideas as far as epic/mythic should go. In my group, we alternate who is GMing. Myself and two of my friends. All three of us have had a game apiece that have gotten to the 20th level cap. One of my friends ended his game. I put mine on the backburner and with that particular game pull out the retired character sheets for cameo games. And the last friend is also delaying his game while he and I work on making 20th level+ playable.
As has been said before, the standardizing of the progressions on attacks and saves are a good thing. In fact, even though I'm not a big fan of 4E, their core mechanic of 10 +1/2 level for attacks, ac, and defenses was brilliant and gave a nice anchor to tie everything to. One thing we've been toying with is the idea of an epic bonus to AC (that just gets tacked onto the base 10) that is equivalent to 1/2 your level past 20 (of course, keeping the attack and save progressions at the 1/2 level). However, we've decided to limit the total different kinds of bonuses that can be applied to any one thing in general at any one time. While having a cookie-cutter style character IS boring, having wildly diverging target DCs, ACs, and attacks for any certain level is even worse.
So we came up with the base bonus +prime ability modifier (for saves, attacks, or AC) +class bonus +feat bonuses and 3 other bonuses. For attacks this will obviously be from your weapon, and then possibly from a buff or two. For AC, armor, shield, natural, deflection and luck come to mind. For saves you'd have your resistance bonus, morale bonus, and maybe a luck bonus. Yeah, there are other types out there, but, as I said, we've found that by limiting the number of bonuses you can use at once, it really lets the GM know where the players will be ballparking (which in turn lets the players feel like they're equally competitive, which can be a problem in some groups).
Epic spells from the ELH went right out the window. Personally, we just capped it at 12th level spells (nostalgia), and 10th level spells came at 21st level, 11th at 30th, and 12th at 35th. These are true spells and not just metamagic. While said slots could be used for that, we wanted to have that newer set for the OMGWTFROFLMAO uberman spell whatever player wants to design (while sitting down with the GM and hashing it out for approval).
Honestly, none of our games have used EXP since low levels and level-ups are given out as warranted. But the math is still there for whoever is interested. Haven't really seen a need for higher bonus items. Epic people can overcome epic damage reduction with magical weapons in our games (or magical with a non-magical weapon). We've really been considering Upper Krust's four artifacts system for equipment. Basically, it's just four signature items that grow with the character. It's pretty neat.
I know this post is long, sorry. Hopefully it can help contribute to the amassing ideas! :)
@edduardco: Al those spells had casting time of instant and gave permanent bonuses. Epic spells can be abused to no end. That is why they were broken. Isanely powerful characters are cool, but not characters who can cleave galaxies...i leave that to manga.
Gurren Lagann is great
But if had casting time of instant you can't give more than +5 bonus and can't be stacked, or am I wrong?
Can you please post the develop of that spells?
Well in my experience sooner or later Epic characters go after Ascension, unfortunately Deities and Demigods leaves much to be desired, to me must be a single book together with ELH
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@edduardco: Al those spells had casting time of instant and gave permanent bonuses. Epic spells can be abused to no end. That is why they were broken. Isanely powerful characters are cool, but not characters who can cleave galaxies...i leave that to manga.Gurren Lagann is great
But if had casting time of instant you can't give more than +5 bonus and can't be stacked, or am I wrong?
Can you please post the develop of that spells?
Well in my experience sooner or later Epic characters go after Ascension, unfortunately Deities and Demigods leaves much to be desired, to me must be a single book together with ELH
It was some six years ago...i couldn't find that even if i kept it.
And no, it's an epic spell. You can give a bonus as much as you want.
In another thread James Jacobs mentioned that our feedback would be vary valuable for them, when and if they turn to making a post 20 book.
So let's give our feedback. Write about anything you feel relevant to the point.
About things that worked in ELH, things that didn't work, why they worked and why they didn't.
Specific stuff, general stuff.
About the feel of epic levels, if it was good why was it good, if it felt wrong, why did it feel wrong.
What should be avoided and what should be definetly put in a book like this.
Let's help those guys and gals make a good rulebook for the game we all love and cherish.
Also, people not interested in 20+ play, if you have nothing constructive to say, please do not post in this topic.
My own experience with epic play was several campaigns that ended quickly and several epic tournaments.
My first big peeve: Epic spells. They were broken. The spellmaking was kinda cool in theory, but by reducing all stats of my druid to 3, his hp to 1 and making him disabled (all of which the cleric easily removed with a spell of his own, i could have a permanent +120 bonus to wisdom, or could cast a spell that did 200d6 points of damage. As cool as it sounds, there is no need for such ludicruous numbers.
If there are to be epic spells, they should be seriously redone and thought over.
My next peeve/point will be feats, but for that i have to delve into the ELH (it's been a while) and then give my feedback.
So ladies and gents, let's kick this thing off...
I want to start off by saying I had a huge post written and screwed up and lost it. I will try to get it all back, but damn, that sucks.
I have been thinking about this for a good few days, since Hama posted it, and I have come up with some good info, I think. The first thing I did was to analyze my experience of the 2 systems that I used for high-level and very high-level play in the past, those being BECMI and 3E. I made a list of the pros and cons for each system, then marked the things I think Paizo should move forward with, the things they should redesign, and the things they should avoid like the plague.
BECMI: As a player, the pros of BECMI were many, but the biggest thing I think it did for the experience as a whole was to show character evolution at the major level breaks, with a shift in character expectations, goals and paradigms. For GMs, BECMI gave a good deal of advice, like how to screw your players out of using the wish spell.
The only con I could really think of with BECMI was that Immortality was the ultimate goal, and we know from the various forums on high-level play, that not everyone wants to be gods.
The main problem with comparing and contrasting BECMI with PF is that the game has changed so much. In BECMI, all those new options at each big break were THE ONLY new options. In PF, there are already a bunch, so what do we do next?
WSPD (What should Paizo do?): The things I think can work for Paizo's Mythic level game from BECMI are rules for strongholds, kingdom building, mass combat, and rulership (The Book of River Kingdoms, derived from Kingmaker, already gives them a jump on this), and the sense of character evolution and responsibility.
They should reread and then rewrite the GM portions of each of those boxes, and sift through the good bits of advice that still apply which they haven't already published.
They should take a good, hard look at immortality as an option for players. Maybe they COULD make it work, even if people don't want it. Or if they don't want to provide rules for it, maybe some advice for those who do want to go there.
Also, an Advanced Game Mastery guide for those transitory "Companion" levels prior to the release of the Mythic "Master" levels would lay some good groundwork.
3E (ELH and its derivative, Immortal's Handbook): The good part of ELH was that it was different (it turned out to maybe not be different enough) and felt that way, for a while. It gave us a sense of EPIC! scale (x infinity for Immortal's Handbook), and it should us that there were things we hadn't thought of yet. It also showed what a basically linear progression would look like (exponential progression in the case of Immortal's Handbook).
The cons were, IMO, it changed things without being different enough to matter, and that it encouraged no real character evolution.
WSPD?: Paizo could move some of the feats, the notion of Epic PrCs (maybe archetypes, for the most part, since I'm thoroughly pleased with those) and the guidelines for Epic GMing into their Mythic Rules.
They should, IMO, NOT carry on the old Epic spellcasting rules, and seriously change Epic items and wealth (maybe putting a stop at 20th level wealth-by-level except for holdings, favors, and immaterial wealth).
Also, a Mythic Bestiary with advanced templates, some pregen monstrous villains with class levels and templates already built in, as well as some new stuff, with expanded size categories (LOVED this from Immortal's Handbook!) and stats for (or suggestions for generating) Demon Princes and Arch Devils and Daemon Lords, etc.
Other considerations: "The 10 Commandments of Epic" were mentioned in a previous post on a previous thread.
Here is the link: http://eternitypublishing.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/article-the-ten-commandm ents-of-epic/
I thought these were really good pointers.
So for the Advanced Game Mastery guide (pre-Mythic) I would like to see:
Rulership, Mass Combat, and Kingdom Building rules.
Advice for simplifying, tracking, and controlling combat, as well as manipulating high-level magic.
Running intelligent adversaries.
How to MASTER event-based adventures.
How to prepare your game for Mythic play.
How to keep the game changing, and in perspective, so that saving the world again doesn't get hum-drum.
For Mythic:
Character options (archetypes, PrCs, feats, spells, immortality?).
A Mythic character sheet.
Power curves (flattened, linear, and exponential) and how to play the game of each.
The tenets of Mythic (scale, relativity, character evolution, paths, destinies, and responsibility).
Mythic GM tools (software would be AWESOME!)
Mythic rewards.
A Mythic bestiary.
Phew! That was a bunch.
I'd like to see the various numbers that already exist capped. No higher level spells (except for adding meta-magic), no increase in BAB (except perhaps iterative attacks), etc. There's already enough number crunching by the time you get to level 20, I think slowing it down, or even stopping, at level 21 and adding something new should seriously be considered.
This will also have an added value of making monsters of CR 20 (or so) stay relevant to DM's longer, meaning less work on making up new monsters and less reliance epic source material. Will the CR 21 Red Dragon be less threatening at level 30? Sure, but he won't be irrelevant because his save DC's and BAB are too low.
I'd rather see options for "breaking" the rules. Like full BAB characters able to substitute a move equivalent action for an iterative attack, or a standard action for two, perhaps as feats.
I honestly don't think casters need a lot of "love". 9th level spells are already pretty epic and giving them more ways to apply meta-magic is the right route. Also, meta-magic that more dramatically alters spells would be cool and make them relatively low cost. In the similar vein of the full BAB characters, the ability to use their class special abilities (like the cleric domain powers) in conjunction with a spell during a round could be cool. Characters at that high of level have so many abilities, sometimes the older ones will start to see less use. An example would be a specialist wizard could use one of his abilities whenever he casts a spell of that school.
Epic spell seeds needs to go. 10th level and higher slots for use with metamagic feats only is fine.
What I would like to see are rules for rituals: These would need a lot of rare and costly materials and or multiple spellcasters and take a loooong time to cast. Some may take a few hours others can only be completed in a year or longer. The rituals should be premade and do things like grant immortality, awaken ancient evils, block out the sun and summon meteors to Golarion.
The martial types needs some epic maneuvers where they get to do stuff like seen in the final fantasy games and mythic tales. Epic feats could build upon old feats and should be the ultimate rewards for completing a feat chain. For example there might be a feat that builds upon quicken spell which allows the caster to cast a spell like an immediate action. The spell could be eight levels higher meaning that non-epic casters would only be able to cast cantrips and 1st level spells with this feat.
Classes should continue getting class abilities dependent upon levels, but hit points, base attack, saving throws and ability score increases should be capped at level 20. Instead players could take feats to increase these abilities. Alternatively players could get a fixed amount of hit points per level like they did back in the 1st edition and 2nd edition days.
At this level monsters should be truly epic foes capable of challenging an entire party of high level pc's. See the final fantasy games and God of war for examples. Monsters hundreds of feet tall which can't be beat by just hacking away at it, but requires tasks like climbing up to reach vulnerable spots and has several forms etc. What has always bugged me is monster economy of actions vs. player economy of actions. Epic monsters should be able to perform several standard actions each round to challenge an entire party.
Finally I'd like to see something akin to epic destinies for Pathfinder. When a character reaches level 21 he embarks onto a quest to reach his epic destiny. Each epic destiny has several prerequisites, and once chosen the pc can't change his choice. The epic destiny might have ten levels. Once reached the pc is at the peak of what a mortal can be and after that will become an immortal on the part to be a God or other being of cosmic relevance.
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10th level and higher slots for use with metamagic feats only is fine.
I've seen this sentiment several times and I disagree. I think there is a place for magic more powerful than 9th level spells, but I agree that epic spell seeds are a poor way of approaching it. I can easily think up dramatic magical effects that should be within the reach of top end mortals, and would be tough to construct using metamagic:
Cleric has a spell that casts true resurrection on himself upon his death.
Druid can cast a spell that causes a forest to grow through an existing settlement, re-naturing it overnight.
Necromancer casts a spell on an ancient battelfield that causes every person who ever died there to rise as undead under her control.
And so forth.
Many of these would be awesome as rituals or other noncombat activities. Long casting times and rare material components are an idea for epic/mythic magic that I can get behind.
Epic spells should exist. Spells that create flying castles, change the land, burn an entire army or create a mithall. Why not? there should be also some sort of flexibility, but not as much as the old seed system. For non-spellcasters there should be powers and options that allow them to face such spellcasters mantaining ballance. If you're going epic, you'll want battles and changes in the world of epic proportions.
My personal opinion: don't do anything like 4th ed. Those epic destinies and the "end of the line" thing is too artificial. The ending of the game should be a choice of the DM not a mechanical necessity.
The thing is I see drastically more powerful spells as creating an arms race. Wizards can already create demi-planes and with enough castings can even make new planets. Wizards can already destroy entire armies (imagine what a widened cone of cold would do to a normal army).
If you create too many powerful abilities, IMO, why are you still playing the same game? Why not use a completely new rule set that is actually intended for these kinds of battles? I love epic/mythic settings, stories and characters, but I think if you want some semblance of continuity for the characters, you need to keep them within the framework of what you already have.
Major campaign changing effects, like leveling mountains, birthing a new race, etc, should be left undefined. Give a non-rules framework for players and GMs to tell stories surrounding these kinds of spells, but never define them. I would actually put this in the realm of magic item creation. Like a flying castle should be given a rough cost, or a process to achieve it. There are already spells to make castles and other spells to make things fly.
BTW, for a game designed for characters who can do whatever you imagine, I recommend keeping an eye out for Mythender by Ryan Macklin. He hasn't finished writing the game yet, but I've gotten to playtest/demo it and it's awesome. It's a game about characters who kill gods, utilizing the same powers the gods use, but at the same time trying to retain their mortality, lest they become the things they try to kill.
i thought i would repost this idea
every two casters levels increase the dc of saving throws by 1
no epic spells
metamagic 9th and etc would fill the higher spell slots
I don't think I know what my idea was any more.
Little bits of paper with a thin strip of a relatively weak adhesive to allow posting of notes in arbitrary locations and the subsequent clean and easy removal. Pretty good idea!
Epic spells should exist. Spells that create flying castles, change the land, burn an entire army or create a mithall. Why not? there should be also some sort of flexibility, but not as much as the old seed system. For non-spellcasters there should be powers and options that allow them to face such spellcasters mantaining ballance. If you're going epic, you'll want battles and changes in the world of epic proportions.
My personal opinion: don't do anything like 4th ed. Those epic destinies and the "end of the line" thing is too artificial. The ending of the game should be a choice of the DM not a mechanical necessity.
I agree with the first paragraph here. Go ahead and make a higher level spell, not just metamagic 1-9, but don't use seeds, at least not as written in 3.0.
I made a remark about paths and destinies in a post above, but I did not mean to imply using the same system as 4E, which I've not played. I DO think that character evolution is a crucial part of Mythic, but agree that the end-game is just one of the options to be broached by Mythic rules.
It should be broken down by 'power curves' I think: tapered power curve guidelines for those who want to play and end-game featuring very powerful mortals, linear power curve pointers for the 'eternal champions' type of game, and exponential power curves for the straight up 'god-slayers'.
Well for me the ELH is a great book, I like the Epic spell and I'm not sure about it's brokenness, the feats and skills are pretty good and the chapter 3 Running Epic Game is very helpful
What I did not like was the continuity of the classes and the lack of support