Epic spells in FR

[Akisa]

So I was reading some magic in and I read a part where Mystra has barred the use of level 10 and above spells. However I always thought epic spells counted as level 10 spells. Does Mystra become upset once someone begins casting level 10/Epic spells? Is it possible to learn level 10 spells as Epic Spells like Proctiv's move mountain?

Can you learn spells that are higher level then 10 like Karsus's avatar (although this time not picking Mystra as the target of the spell).

[Jeraa]

Mystra's ban only applies to 10th+level spells. Epic spells are not 10th level spells (though they are treated as such for some purposes, they are not 10th level spells). Mystra's ban and epic magic are dealt with in Lost Empires of Faerun, page 43.

There still are 10th+ level spell slots (from an epic feat), just no spells to fill them with.

Some spells, like Proctiv's Move Mountain are epic spells. (Proctiv's Move Mountain is detailed in Player's Guide to Faerun.) Elven High Magic and mythals are epic spells.

[Snowbluff]

The Mystra Ban thing is stupid fluff. Mad at 10+ spells, but still allows epics? Scrap the fluff, the best reason for it to justify its existence is to tell people why we shouldn't have 10+ spells. Which doesn't need explaining in the first place, as epic effectively fills the spots mechanically, as you can only get 10+ level slots at epic levels.

Give Mystra a dose of the RAMS. Everything concerning this deity's existence is fairly game breaking or there to be annoying.

[Acanous]

Or just be a Gnome Illusionist/Master Specialist/Shadowcraft Mage/Shadowcrafter, worship Shar, take a couple Shar-related feats (Shadow Weave Magic) and flip Mystra the bird as you cast your 10th level spells.

[Alleran]

The Mystra Ban thing is stupid fluff. Mad at 10+ spells, but still allows epics?

It's because epic spells require many individuals operating in concert (or one individual making a personal sacrifice, usually represented in-game as XP or backlash damage), and taps partly into raw magic for the power boost. There is a direct cost to the magic in order for the spellcaster to successfully make use of it. You want the power to shake the heavens, then you pay the price for it.

10th level spells (and 11th, and 12th) draw all their power directly from the Weave, with no corresponding downside to the energy you're throwing around. It's a large enough drain that Mystryl had to work stupidly hard at keeping everything balanced out and operating, and she was working at it constantly by the end of her life. It was the problem with Netheril - their spells were immensely draining on the Weave, which caused several issues for everybody else in Realmspace.

It's simpler for Mystra to just ban them outright than deal with the headaches caused by running around and fixing whatever the silly mortals have screwed up this Tuesday afternoon. Which is why she altered the way magic worked.

[Steward]

Give her the RAMS??

[Jeraa]

I believe its "Rules as Makes Sense."

[bloodtide]

10th level spells in FR were just spells. The same as 8th or 9th level spells. So you could just cast them the same way you could any other spell, you could write them on a scroll and put them in magic items. A 10th level spell was just 'one step up' more powerful then a 9th level spell.

10th level spells are not considered Epic Spells. Epic spells are different. And epic spell takes a bit of time and effort to cast and is not a 'normal spell'.

Now the confusion comes from: once Mysrta banned 10th level spells, many spellcasters remade their spells as epic spells so they could still use them.

Compare Proctiv's move mountain:

PMM the Epic Spell takes 2,520,000 gold and 51 days and 100,800 xp just to develop. And then it takes a day to cast at the cost of 5,000 xp.

PMM the 10th level spell had a casting time of two hours and you needed a mythallar as a focus and a magical device that allows flying and a crystal ball as spell components.

[Zilzmaer]

My favorite epic spell in FR is Aumvor's Fragmented Phylactery from CoR. If you were a lich and had a couple years between adventurers coming to kill you, you could make every single grain of sand in your desert of preference into a phylactery. And you'd get to keep coming back until they were all destroyed.

[Snowbluff]

It's because epic spells require many individuals operating in concert (or one individual making a personal sacrifice, usually represented in-game as XP or backlash damage), and taps partly into raw magic for the power boost. There is a direct cost to the magic in order for the spellcaster to successfully make use of it. You want the power to shake the heavens, then you pay the price for it.

10th level spells (and 11th, and 12th) draw all their power directly from the Weave, with no corresponding downside to the energy you're throwing around. It's a large enough drain that Mystryl had to work stupidly hard at keeping everything balanced out and operating, and she was working at it constantly by the end of her life. It was the problem with Netheril - their spells were immensely draining on the Weave, which caused several issues for everybody else in Realmspace.

It's simpler for Mystra to just ban them outright than deal with the headaches caused by running around and fixing whatever the silly mortals have screwed up this Tuesday afternoon. Which is why she altered the way magic worked.

Wait... don't spells normally require sacrifice? Last time I checked, I'm causing small amounts of nuclear fission or something with all of that gold I've been throwing into spells everyday. Do 10+ spells not have material components or XP costs? That does seem pretty frakked up!

[Alleran]

Do 10+ spells not have material components or XP costs? That does seem pretty frakked up!

Their cost is extremely small in comparison with what they can do. In fact, you could say it's grossly out of proportion. I did a quick comparison of it once, and noticed that 10th level spells range from a Spellcraft DC equivalent of about 57 (Volcano, except the Netherese variant is significantly better than the 9th level druid or epic one, with a miles/level range and plausibly memorised and cast by a single spellcaster) to above 300 (such as Tolodine's Killing Wind, for which the penalty was two character levels in the Netherese 10th level variant).

Those are 10th level spells. The 11th level spells did things like alter the weather patterns of the globe. And one of them, Proctiv's Breach Crystal Sphere, was so powerful that it could seal off an entire crystal sphere from any spelljamming. Not just a planet, or a region of space, but an entire sphere. I didn't even bother trying to work out the sort of DC you'd need on that. And, of course, Karsus' Avatar was a 12th level spell.

[Cieyrin]

It should be noted the whole Mystra Ban was before the 3rd Ed conception of epic magic, so there was just talk of slots exceeding 9th in earlier editions between the first Mystra's life and the second Mystra post-Karsus going '**** you, mortal wizards, no more spells exceeding 9th for you! The Weave is taxed enough!' Rather than change how the fluff of the world to match the rules, you can see the edition change by major magical events on Faerun, basically pre-Time of Troubles being 2nd and earlier, between the Time of Troubles and the Spellplague being 3rd Ed and post-Spellplague as 4th Ed. So, really there wasn't any rediscovery of epic magic till after the Time of Troubles, which may have added to the instabilities that led to the Spellplague.

TL;DR: Epic spells caused 4th Ed.

[Lapak]

And one of them, Proctiv's Breach Crystal Sphere, was so powerful that it could seal off an entire crystal sphere from any spelljamming. Not just a planet, or a region of space, but an entire sphere. I didn't even bother trying to work out the sort of DC you'd need on that.

Well, let's see. Realmspace from the sun to the sphere is 3.2 billion miles, so you'll need a sphere area of effect of 6.4 billion miles in diameter (assuming you can cast from the center of the sun.)

That's a... 33,792,000,000,000 foot diameter sphere.

And Realmspace isn't the biggest sphere out there, so we'd better make it bigger. (In Earth's sphere, for example, you'd need a 24 billion mile diameter to cover the sphere from Sol.)

And you're probably NOT casting from the dead center of the sphere, so probably a little bigger yet.

I have a feeling we're already ramping the DC up pretty high.