Breaking into Epic Mages

[sealofnoob]

My DM is a close friend of mine.  We've known each other for nearly 20 years!  He has been the DM in 90% of our games, and the poor guy is getting shipped to Afghanistan next month.  We've been playing the same characters for about five years, and they are about level 19 now.  However, he wants to jump to the conclusion of this mighty campaign....at level 35.  He does't want Psions involved (which is what my character is) because *insert reason here* and has asked that I reroll an arcane caster for this event.  I will more than likely be paired with a 35 monk, a 35 character with 10 pcs that is virtually unhittable, and a 35 barbarian.  I need to be ready to crush anything before me because this guy is notorious for throwing encounters at us much higher than our actual CR.  (So I anticipate 45ish challenges.)   I don't want to go around gating in shit and pun-pun'ing his game up,  but I'm just plain inexperienced in hashing out a character above level 20.  I've done some research and have read through a great deal of Treantmonks guide (which is just awesome) but I still have a lot of unanswered questions.

Are 3.5 Epic Spells good?  Or am I better off branching into prestige classes?
Is it possible, by level 35, to have full 20wiz/20sorc casting by prc'ing??
What sort of items should I be looking for at level 35 as a wizard?
Is it even worthwhile casting spells that are effected by SR or have saving throws at this level?  I imagine it's impossible to get them off.

Please.  Any advice you can offer or links to other information you could provide would be incredibly helpful.  Thanks!

(Cheese level moderate to high but not pupun!)

[Maat Mons]

Are 3.5 Epic Spells good?  Or am I better off branching into prestige classes?

I haven't used them, but my understanding is that they're easily broken. 

Is it possible, by level 35, to have full 20wiz/20sorc casting by prc'ing?

Yes, the ultimate magus prestige class (Complete Mage) advances two arcane casting classes for seven of its levels and one arcane casting class for the other 3 levels.  It also lets you expend spell slots from one class to add metamagic feats to spells from the other class. 

Sorcerer 2 / wizard 3 / ultimate magus 10 / arcane casting 18 / anything 2 maxes out your spell progressions for sorcerer and wizard.  This would leave you with a caster level of 24 for both classes, but I'm fairly sure there are ways to add those together. 

[Unbeliever]

Epic Magic is easily broken.  Sufficiently so that your DM probably doesn't deserve that kind of punishment.  One house rule we adopted was to constrain people more or less to the ones already listed in the book.

I think Ultimate Magus isn't a bad idea.  Neither is, of course, Incantatrix -- taking control of other people's spell effects is fun.  It might be more helpful if you told us more about the kind of character you want to play.  You mentioned TreantMonk's guide, so are you thinking God Wizard?  Also, I'd be more than a little concerned with you utterly overshadowing the Monk and Barbarian. 

One trouble you're going to run into is that high epic monsters just have numbers that are absurd.  So, don't back off having a caster level of ... whatever you can get so that you can laugh at SR and so on.  For what it's worth, there aren't really many CR 45ish monsters printed by WotC, so he may have to be throwing templates (and a paragon whatever is going to have dumb saves, for instance), or content himself with lower CRs. 

Off the top of my head, and going with the God Wizard approach, I'd be tempted towards Incantatrix and Initiate of the 7Fold Veil.  I am not the biggest Iot7V fan in the world, but the defense at super high levels, especially as an immediate action, may be really helpful.  I'd also make sure to get some way to pump my CL up to the stratosphere -- probably Circle Magic. 

As to Sorc/Wiz, Ultimate Magus is a great suggestion, and maybe a worthy alternative to Incantatrix for some free metamagics.  That being said, though, I think there's no use to adding Sorc spellcasting to a super high level Wizard.  It's not like you're going to run out of spells or anything. 

Given that most of your party is melee, I'd probably go the super ultra buffing route, too.  It's a way of playing God, and one that's hard to interfere with.  You might need Spellguard of Silverymoon to get some of the great personal buffs onto your allies, and then turn the Barbarian and the Monk into engines of destruction.  Hell, I'd probably throw War Weaver on there, too.  It's not like you have to worry about losing a few caster levels!  And, the War Weaver's action economy is boss, although I guess Time Stop is always there to fall back on. 

Finally, I'd suggest picking up Master Staff if you can and then a crazy powerful Epic Staff for blasting.  Sometimes blasting is just fun, and it's very Epic Wizardy, and this is a cheap way to get a ton of it.

[sealofnoob]

I'm not really familiar with how to boost my caster level.  I'll take a few minutes to look up circle magic when I'm finished with this post.  I also just found out that the monk is instead going to be playing a spell to power erudite.  Somehow he convinced our DM to allow him to roll psion. 

As for what I want to do, I wouldn't mind something cool like going master of the unseen hand, possibly tapping into wujen concentration spells, maybe even blowing a wish or something to allow my familiar to hold concentration as well to give myself several full attack actions with a bunch of telekinetically controlled weapons with full fighter bab.

I also like the idea of abusing shapechange at this level.

My DM is *notorious* for templating things and just making up his own absurd templates and adding an insanely low CR modifier to it.  He has a penchant for putting us up against very large creatures with anti-magic anti-psionic aurus, or wizard and cleric npcs who disjunction us and throw a lot of save-or-die or no-save evil cleric magic at us.

[sealofnoob]

Also, its not the running out of spells I'm thinkign about with the ultimate magus, but the ability to fuel my spells with metamagic.  I'm going to end up using epic spells probably.  by level 35 I should, after all.  But I have no clue how they work.  Is there even a 3.5 epic system for it?

[b100d_arrowz]

Are 3.5 Epic Spells good?  Or am I better off branching into prestige classes?

Depends, are you the only one casting them? Or will you have (arbitrarily high number of solars, bound casters, leadership followers etc) lower the spellcraft DC? By that level you should easily have several thousand followers without any severe optimization, so thats several thousand off the DC even if they only contribute a first level spell. Make the spells permanent (or of arbitrarily long duration), you are invincible, surrounded by fields doing arbitrarily high damage at will, etc. I did this as an example for a friend who thought his half celestial/half fiend monk/splatbook prestige classes was invincible (couldnt do shit damage wise, but had an AC of several hundred, and ridiculously superbuffed saves). There are plenty of ways to supermax skill checks (item familiar, items that grant skill focus, epic skill focus, etc) to get you to be able to cast halfway decent epic spells, mayhaps not the game breakers  but solid enough.

Your best bet would be to first PrC out the ass in the regular 20 levels (so that you get the best saves, since above level 20 its a +1 epic bonus every other level), and then metamagic the living balls out of everything. Figure out your top 2 or 3 spells, and take arcane thesis, incantrix, etc, as well as perhaps the automatic application, and definitely the multiple quickened spells.

Get yourself permanently polymorphed into a Beholder and beholder mage, get some UR-Priest, etc. The options are pretty damn limitless.

[Unbeliever]

Epic Spells are 3.0, all epic rules pretty much are.  There's just a conversion document for it.

If it's a "crazy go nuts" situation then knock yourself out.  There's any number of Handbooks and dirty tricks lists to help you out.  E.g., sonorous hum, Wu Jen spells to make 5 of you, and whatever. 

You sound relatively un-miffed that the DM backed away from his no-Psion stance after telling you to create a new character, which is good. 

The last really high level game I played I didn't expect to last real long (it didn't), so I did something lazy and just played a Saintly Gibbering Orb with Epic Counterspell (it made sense given the backstory, which just goes to show you can justify anything).  And, it was kind of stupid good.

[sirpercival]

Epic magic is broken and many DMs don't use it.  A much less broken and still really cool version is here.

What's allowed?  Dragon mag material?  Homebrew?  Can you use Reserves of Strength?

If you'd like a primer on how to boost your CL through the roof using Ultimate Magus, take a look at Ransom.

[sealofnoob]

well, I know if I have a psion i can work it to manifest at twice my level with the epic overchannel.  Manifesting as a level 70 psion means saves that nothing could possibly make.  It's pretty far out there.  BUT.  The other guy is going to do it, so now I need to step up to the plate.  I'm actually considering dumping this entire mage and making the Initiate of Mystra cleric for some antimagic field pwnage.  More than likely though I'll stay on the mage.

I like where you are going bloodarrowz, but the DM isn't going to allow any followers or leadership I'm sure.  He's going to want it to be our PCs vs whatever monstrosity he has prepared for us.

Also, I can't seem to find the incantatrix that you all speak of.  I've found one, but it doesn't have those abilities.  It can banish outsiders...but I don't see much else.

[sealofnoob]

I'd like to stay within what is printed in WoTC books.  I can however, use a book called "FEATS" or "BOOK OF FEATS".  I think mongoose published it.  It has some pretty broken stuff in it.  A metamagic feat that lets you change the range modifier of a spell one range up.  So personal spells can be touch, (self buffs on allies), and touch to 30ft...
That's pretty damn good.

[sirpercival]

You can do much more ridiculous stuff as a wizard.  Especially as a shadowcraft mage... Ransom is (for example) immune to MDJ and Dispel Magic.

If Reserves of Strength is allowed, I can show you how to get arbitrarily high caster levels.  Even without those shenanigans, though, Ransom (at level 16) has a CL >80.

Note that CL does not affect saves.

[sealofnoob]

Whatever I do has to be pretty close to RAW and not RAI.  The DM is a stickler for fine print.  If it's not clearly stated, he will contend it at length. 

[sirpercival]

That will be to your advantage, actually.

Do you know what Reserves of Strength is?  If not, here.

[sealofnoob]

Ok.  I think what I'd like to do is to have a setup where I act (mostly) as a level 20 wizard (with insane items of course).   I'll cast 1st-9th level spells backed up with metamagic goodness.  However, I want to have a reserve of ridiculous epic level epic awesomeness in my back pocket in case the DM just throws something retarded at us.   

I'd like a simple way to boost my knowledge arcana as high as I can to meet those crazy difficulties (I assume I'll just use the 'seed' system for epic spells), and jack my caster level up (with the help of others) so that I can burn through SR and saves.f

[sealofnoob]

I'm failing to see how Reserves will help me a whole lot.  Granted it's 3 levels.  I just looked at this

There are two possible interpretations of this feat.  Take, for example, a 20th-level wizard attempting to cast fireball. 

(1) In likely RAI, the wizard could cast fireball with a maximum effective CL of 13 and do 13d6 damage.
(2) In the other, more optimization-friendly interpretation, the wizard would have a maximum effective CL of 23 and do 23d6 damage.

The RAW will say that a fireball caps at 10d6, so therefore, increasing your caster level will do nothing.  That's how our DM will interpret this.

EDIT:  Nevermind...I notcied it said you can break spell-level limits.  He will more than likely choose option 1

[Quillwraith]

You can exceed the normal level-fixed limits of a spell with this feat, so a 9th-level wizard could use Reserves of Strength to cast a fireball as a 12th-level wizard and deal 12d6 fire damage.

It's purpose is to break the cap. RAW, it's debatable whether it can break it by more than 3. RAI, it can't.

[sirpercival]

Well, if he sticks very closely to RAW it should let you do option 2.  But you should find out for sure, because if it's 2 then you have to take it.

[sealofnoob]

Knowing him, he will jew it to #1.   Now, I'm still having trouble finding the incatatrix that people are talking about.  Was this PrC printed anywhere?

[sirpercival]

Player's Guide to Faerun.

[sealofnoob]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20010803

This is what I've found.  I don't see anything about stealing spells.