Calling all Munchkins: Epic Spell Challenge

[Gralamin]

I figure this makes more sense here.

The contest is simple, Get this spell down to a reasonable level, as well as improving it beyond the basics here.

Seed Used: Animate

Earth is 1,083,206,246,123,080,894,852 m3
This is translated to 1.0832062461230809e+21 or 1,083,206,246,123,080,900,000 Cubic Feet
1,083,206,246,123,080,900,000 shall be rounded up to 1.1e+21 for simplicity.

(1000-20)/10 = 98
(1,100,000,000,000,000,000,000-1000)/100 = 10,999,999,999,999,999,990
10,999,999,999,999,999,990 + 98 +25
10,999,999,999,999,999,990 + 123

11,000,000,000,000,000,113
This is your base spell craft DC. Make it into a reasonably learnable Spell

[SilveryCord]

-20 by paying 20,000 XP,
-200 by taking 100 days,
-1900 by having 100 people contribute an epic level spell slot,
If cast by a CL 100 caster, give yourself 200d6 backlash, for a total of -200.
...
That's basically it.
People complain about epic spells so much, but there isn't THAT much to work with. It's really easy to talk about theory, but practise.... well.

[LordOfNarf]

11,000,000,000,000,000,113
This is your base spell craft DC. Make it into a reasonably learnable Spell

Try making is a couple of chunks at a time, this is ridiculous.

[Gralamin]

The point of this thread is to make a point. Epic is not as broken as it could be. :P

[LordOfNarf]

Is the point of this spell to create a planet, or animate the planet?

[Gralamin]

Seed - Animate

What do you think?

[I_Got_This_Name]

Let's see. . .

Alright. First, you want to manipulate the base seed a bit more than that.

Base: 25

Change to area: 20-foot burst: +10

Radius of the earth is just under 4,000 miles.

A mile is 5280 feet.

The first mile, then, costs 5260 extra feet, or +526 DC. Each additional mile costs +528 DC.

We also need to extend the range to equal the diameter of the earth, or about 8k miles. Each mile is 17.6 times the 300' base range, so +140,800 DC for range.

The DC is now 2,252,833. We've cut it down several orders of magnitude already.

Now we tack on some positive factors. Let's get the DC to 2,254,999; that gives us 2,166 in DC to play with. We'll give the planet a thousand hit dice; that means we have to add 968, giving us 234 more DC to spend.

Now let's tack on the Fortify and Compel seeds. Compel we just need the base seed for (DC 19).

Fortify, we want to buff up this thing. Let's give it an int score (DC 27); we have 188 more DC to spend. Let's spend 116 of that on this thing's int, giving it an int score of 30. We have 72 more to spend; we'll use the Fortify seed twice more (DC 34; 38 left to spend). We'll divide that between it's Wisdom and Charisma scores; we can give it Wis 10, Cha 11, up from one. We can skip this part if we're going to have to follow the Inherent Bonus rules for animating an object with higher stats; we just get a mindless animated planet, as opposed to a genius.

Now we make it Permanent. DC 11,274,995.

Mitigating this is simple.

First, you bump the casting time up to 11 minutes, reducing the DC to 11,274,975. I'd suggest 100 days, but that might deter potential ritual casters.

Then you burn 20k EXP; this shaves 200 off the DC. You'll make it back quickly; don't worry about it. You have it down at a manageable 11,274,775 now.

Even 1d6 of backlash damage is a guaranteed fatality, with a permanent duration. Don't use it.

So, you just have Rituals to look at. You just need the population of a good-sized country to all gain the ability to cast spells. Alternately, you do this as an epic psionic power, where you're a telepath, and you just Mind Seed a whole bunch of people (or animals) into becoming ritual casters for you.

Alternately, call in creatures that can cast really well. Coatls, Solars, whatever.

[Gralamin]

Let's see. . .

Alright. First, you want to manipulate the base seed a bit more than that.

Base: 25

Change to area: 20-foot burst: +10

Radius of the earth is just under 4,000 miles.

A mile is 5280 feet.

The first mile, then, costs 5260 extra feet, or +526 DC. Each additional mile costs +528 DC.

We also need to extend the range to equal the diameter of the earth, or about 8k miles. Each mile is 17.6 times the 300' base range, so +140,800 DC for range.

The DC is now 2,252,833. We've cut it down several orders of magnitude already.

Now we tack on some positive factors. Let's get the DC to 2,254,999; that gives us 2,166 in DC to play with. We'll give the planet a thousand hit dice; that means we have to add 968, giving us 234 more DC to spend.

Now let's tack on the Fortify and Compel seeds. Compel we just need the base seed for (DC 19).

Fortify, we want to buff up this thing. Let's give it an int score (DC 27); we have 188 more DC to spend. Let's spend 116 of that on this thing's int, giving it an int score of 30. We have 72 more to spend; we'll use the Fortify seed twice more (DC 34; 38 left to spend). We'll divide that between it's Wisdom and Charisma scores; we can give it Wis 10, Cha 11, up from one. We can skip this part if we're going to have to follow the Inherent Bonus rules for animating an object with higher stats; we just get a mindless animated planet, as opposed to a genius.

Now we make it Permanent. DC 11,274,995.

Mitigating this is simple.

First, you bump the casting time up to 11 minutes, reducing the DC to 11,274,975. I'd suggest 100 days, but that might deter potential ritual casters.

Then you burn 20k EXP; this shaves 200 off the DC. You'll make it back quickly; don't worry about it. You have it down at a manageable 11,274,775 now.

Even 1d6 of backlash damage is a guaranteed fatality, with a permanent duration. Don't use it.

So, you just have Rituals to look at. You just need the population of a good-sized country to all gain the ability to cast spells. Alternately, you do this as an epic psionic power, where you're a telepath, and you just Mind Seed a whole bunch of people (or animals) into becoming ritual casters for you.

Alternately, call in creatures that can cast really well. Coatls, Solars, whatever.

gah? Does changing the area like that even work? It seems to me your just trying to animate the surface area of the planet, or am I reading things wrong?

[Jack_Simth]

11,000,000,000,000,000,113
This is your base spell craft DC. Make it into a reasonably learnable Spell
11,000,000,000,000,000,113
All right, I need 647,058,823,529,411,772 9th level spell slots to mitigate.

I have a Wizard. All spells have a final spellcraft DC 0 (unless the DM sets a minimum DC) and so have no research time or cost.

He doesn't start with that spell straightaway. Using the method I outlined in a thread on the rules forums, he arranges to have 64 Called Couatls under his command at all times (warm up time: 20 days, maintinable indefinately; we only need 40 of them, for a 12 day warmup time, if we're in a hurry). He then starts Permanently Summoning Solars (Base DC 14, +42 for CR 23, *5 Permanent, DC 280 before Mitigation - and with 64 Couatls, we can get a mitigation of -448, so DC 0, unless the DM sets some minimum), twice per day. Each Solar Summoned Permanently can give him 9th level spell slots for later castings (more than he has Epic slots each day), at a mitigation factor of -17 each. After nine days (18 Solars Permanently Summoned, -306 in mitigation factors), we can safely drop the Couatls. After another eight days (16 more Solars, 34 total; note that we're on day 37), we research a new Epic spell (again, DC 0) that Permanently Summons two Solars (DC 560, I think, but with 34 Solars, he has -578 from extra spell slots, so it's DC 0). Thereafter, he's getting 4 Solars a day (two castings, two Solars each time). After four days (day 41), he has 16 more solars, for a total of 50 (which provide a mitigation factor of -850). At this point, he researches another DC 0 Epic spell, which Permanently Summons three Solars (DC 840, I think, before mitigation - but we can mitigate up to DC 850 down to 0, just with spell slots, so....). Which he then switches over to. So he now gets 6 Solars a day. Three days later (day 44), he has 18 more Solars, for a total of 68 (which provide a mitigation factor of -1156). You can see where I'm going with this.

Putting some nifties into a spreadsheet, He's making the target mitigation DC on day 366, with 6.47756*10^17 Solars, providing a mitigation DC of 1.10118*10^19. At which point, he can mitigate the base DC down to 0.

At all points, he's reasonably well protected (army of Called or Summoned critters, still has some spell slots to use in personal defense, not that he's adventuring).

Note that researching the base spell would take 1.98*10^18 days, without mitigation factors. In a little over a year of dedicated work, he can arrange to do so, for no GP or XP cost.

Enough cheese?

[Gralamin]

^ You sir are a Genius of Cheese. You win an animated planet, Possibly two.

Edit: This Thread is now open to other epic spell challenges, Let any who think they can best The cheese of Jack try their best.

[Abd al-Azrad]

The point of this thread is to make a point. Epic is not as broken as it could be. :P
Your point is that an epic mortal caster has a degree of difficulty animating the Planet Earth? I'd almost call that attacking a straw man, but with Jack_Smith showing us that yes, after exactly one year and one day, you can animate a world, the point may become lost.

Speaking of which, are there actually 6.47756*10^17 Solars in the universe? Because that's a lot of Solars.

[Jack_Simth]

Exponential growth is like that.

Fun facts with that method:

He's doing this at CL 21. The Solars are CR 23. He's got a neigh-infinite army under his absolute command who's members are individually tougher than he is.

He'll still have the Solars. They are Permanent, after all. He can do whatever with them after. Kill a troublesome diety? No sweat. Just another DC 0 Epic spell (although pre-emptive strikes might be an issue). What are the saves and SR of a rank 20 diety? Should be within range of an Epic spell with a mere million in mitigation, even having to find the diety through a Mind Blank in the first place. With the same spell.

Of course, the assorted dieties might take offense at you stripping them of the armies they use to hold off the abyss........

[Gralamin]

Your point is that an epic mortal caster has a degree of difficulty animating the Planet Earth? I'd almost call that attacking a straw man, but with Jack_Smith showing us that yes, after exactly one year and one day, you can animate a world, the point may become lost.

Speaking of which, are there actually 6.47756*10^17 Solars in the universe? Because that's a lot of Solars.

This is the first thing that came to me, and I caused two people to give up, I see that as impressive.

[Beleriphon]

Speaking of which, are there actually 6.47756*10^17 Solars in the universe? Because that's a lot of Solars.

I don't know, how many solars can you fit into infinity?

[Yuki Akuma]

I don't know, how many solars can you fit into infinity?

Which infinity are you talking about? The "Great Wheel" infinity, the "Far Realm" infinity (which is larger), or the "Celestia" infinity (which is tiny)? ;)

[Caelestion]

Now that is just ridiculous. To inject just a teensy bit of verisimultude, even considering that there simply aren't six trillion Solars in all of the heavens, there is no possible way that any celestial power would let you summon that many angels permanently. There is a war going on, you know.

[Larrin]

even if that many exist, where will you stick them all? i mean how many pin heads can 6.47756*10^17 solars dance on?

[Lapak]

Interesting!
Each Solar requires a 10x10x10 foot space of its own. That's 10 to the third cubic feet.

We tack that onto how many Solars we've got...

(6.47756*10^17 * 10^3) gets us to
6.47756*10^20 cubic feet.

So the Solars you'd need to pull this off take up half the volume of the planet you're trying to animate!

You're going to need an off-planet staging platform for your spellcasting.

[belboz]

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree about the Solars...I'm unconvinced that the hosts of heaven really have anywhere near 10^17 generals. I mean, on a campaign world with the earth's population, that would be enough to have 15 million dedicated guardian Solars for every single person, with about 10^15 left for fighting cosmic battles, being heavenly middle managers, and whatever else it is that Solars do with their time.

Any way to do this without summoning more of a type of monster than might plausibly exist?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well... first I craft the Epic Spell: Dominate Pun Pun, which turns PunPun into my willing slave...

[Jack_Simth]

Any way to do this without summoning more of a type of monster than might plausibly exist?
Well, if you're an Elan Wizard 23+ / Elan Cleric 23+ with Ignore Material Compoinents, Epic Spellcasting, and a Rod of Excellent Magic, you can do the same thing (although it takes longer) by making Simulacrums of yourself, 1/day, free of charge, and then getting the spell slots from your (many) simulacrums (Cleric duplicates it with Miracle).

At 23rd, your Simulacrum of you has 11 or 12 class levels (depending on rounding) good for a 6th level spell slot. You need 1,000,000,000,000,000,011 of them before you can mitigate all the way down to 0 just with extra spells. This will, of course, take you 1,000,000,000,000,000,011 days, which is about 2,739,726,027,397,260.3 years, or you know, long enough for the planet to animate itself. Or turn to dust. Or destabilize due to individual electrons decaying. Or whatever. Which is why you picked an Elan - they very specifically have Maximium Age: n/a.


even if that many exist, where will you stick them all? i mean how many pin heads can 6.47756*10^17 solars dance on?
They can fly, they don't need to sleep, and they don't need to eat. Okay, breathing might be an issue...... but you should be able to rig another DC 0 Epic spell by the time it becomes important..... could delay you a couple of days, though.

[Caelestion]

So basically you're admitting that your "solution" is even more ridiculous than the original problem? 1 trillion 6th-level spells, I ask you...

[Jack_Simth]

So basically you're admitting that your "solution" is even more ridiculous than the original problem? 1 trillion 6th-level spells, I ask you...
Hey now! The title of the thread includes the line "Calling all Munchkins", and the OP basicallys asks for a method to mitigate a truly rediculous DC. Did you expect a non-rediculous answer? I freely admit that my solutions to the problem are absurd. But so's the original problem.

Oh, and I think your looking for Quintillion or Hextillion (depending on which side of the pond you're on). Not that at those levels a few orders of magnitude matters much.....

[Caelestion]

Well, the British billion used to be 12 zeroes and the British trillion 18 zeroes. However, it seems that the insidious American system is replacing our own!

[I_Got_This_Name]

Regarding my reduction: Basically, I created a spell that permanently animates an object filling an area of 4,000 miles, centered on the center of the earth. This animates the entire planet. It also gives it 1,000 hit dice, and, possibly, decent mental stats, too.

Of course, you need line of effect to the center. But when you're mitigating a DC down from the millions, digging a hole to the center of the earth is only a minor problem.

You can do the solars. That's one way.

Another is to be a Tainted Sorcerer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/taint.htm#taintedSorcerer), and carry a Rod of Excellent Magic; you can use it to pump out Simulacra of yourself, albeit at a lower level, at no cost.

A third is to be a telepath, and Mind Seed (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindSeed.htm)ing any one you can touch to serve as ritual casters for you. They want to animate the planet just as much as you do. Use a Thought Bottle and a Rod of Excellent Psionics to save on EXP costs for this.

[SilveryCord]

I'd imagine that this'd be much easier with truenames.

What's the CR of an Earth anyway? Sure, it's Collossal++, but it can do the same amount of damage as a Toad can. We'll move it up a few fractions just because of it's shear HP. How does 1/2 sound? Hmm... base of 10 + CR x 2 = 11.

(Note: Completely made up and arbitrary.)

[I_Got_This_Name]

Locations are always DC 20, IIRC.

[Halcyon_Dax]

I dont really want to get into the building of an epic spell, but I agree about the solar thing. But what if you could use a similar method without solars.

Say, built an epic spell that created a creature that was Fine, and could cast 9th level spells. You could concievable have the creature be able to fly, or just pile them up, and fit the ridiculous number of them in a much smaller area. The same technique would apply for creating them, then doubling the amount as with solars. Only there would be no issue with 'where are all these things coming from anyway' because you would be creating them.

[Caelestion]

Without using other patently ridiculous cheese to lower the DC on their creation spell, the DC to create such a creature would be huge!

[Yuki Akuma]

Without using other patently ridiculous cheese to lower the DC on their creation spell, the DC to create such a creature would be huge!

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

[Caelestion]

The Genesis spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/genesis.htm) only mentions affecting the environment and leaves out all discussion of planar traits. The Genesis psionic power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/genesis.htm) 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 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20353&highlight=ring+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.:smallfrown:

Could you possibly summon one extremly large earth elemental?:smallconfused:

[Yuki Akuma]

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

Or do both.

Also: I can't actually remember posting that. :smalleek: 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.