Basically 9th level spells = I win d&d?

[sorcererlover]

I was getting back into this game but then... I came across a few threads.

So basically...
9th level spells = shapechange = free wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If zodars don't exist then
9th level spells = gate = free wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If gate is banned then
8th level spells + malconvoker = 20hd greater planar binding = 20hd efreeti
20hd efreeti + simulacrum = 10hd efreeti simulacrum = free wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If malconvoker is banned or planar binding is severely houseruled then
9th level spells + dweomerkeeper = free wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If dweomerkeeper is banned then
9th level spells = astral projection + thought bottle = infinite xp = infinite wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If astral projection is banned then
9th level spells = Wish for a scroll of simulacrum of a 20hd efreeti (pay approximately 9,000xp) = free wishes = infinite scrolls of all spells = ice assassins of max hd epic creatures = I win?

If all creatures with wish are house ruled without wishes or are straight out banned
9th level spells = Wish for an ice assassin scroll of a max hd epic creature (pay 15,000ish xp?) = I win?

If ice assassin is banned then
9th level spells = Wish for a simulacrum scroll of a max hd epic creature within your xp cost range = I win?

So now if you ban astral projection, shapechange, wish, ice assassin, gate, and simulacrum entirely
9th level spells = time stop + celerity + daze proof gear = infinite action loops that end with you greater teleporting away if you ran out of spells before winning = I win?

And the list goes on and on and on and on...

I was actually happy with my orb of fire sorcerer, especially because it had a nice epic progression. Epic feats allow me to increase the damage by 10d6 forever with an epic metamagic feat, and then reduce that metamagic feat back to +1. But then I realized all epic fights would be greater celerity + greater arcane fusion = true strike ultra-metamagicked-orb-of-fire one shot epic creature = I win, and this is just as OP as the methods mentioned above.

Then i read about how epic monsters are supposed to be killed, and they required gate, or orb, or a crazy amount of craft contingent gear, etc...

So basically if I play this game again, I should only expect spell levels 1-8, no epic?

[Ortesk]

Anyone can break the game, even the local fighter.

It comes down to if you want to break the game. Remember, only you can stop thrown DM guides

[AvatarVecna]

Yes, there's ways in this system to gain literally infinite no-cost power.

Yes, there's ways to do that using nothing but Core.

Yes, there's ways to do that with Core-only even if you can't personally cast spells.

Yes, this works...theoretically.

In reality, what you can do in a game is limited to what the DM allows, and to the ever-vague "don't be a ****" rule that isn't written down anywhere but is nevertheless present.

[Ortesk]

In reality, what you can do in a game is limited to what the DM allows, and to the ever-vague "don't be a ****" rule that isn't written down anywhere but is nevertheless present.

Do you mind if I put this in my sig? it made me laugh

[Pluto!]

If you legitimately care about playing in a balanced system, this isn't the edition for you.

[Cosi]

So basically if I play this game again, I should only expect spell levels 1-8, no epic?

Yes, there are broken ninth level spells. wish (specifically, XP-free wish for items), gate, and shapechange are all totally broken. But as you should have noted, there are also broken spells at other levels. Like greater planar binding or simulacrum. And there are 9th level spells that are total turds (like meteor swarm). I don't think that, overall, 9th level spells are particularly more out of whack with their intended balance point than, say, 5th level spells.

But yes, epic is totally broken.

[MisterKaws]

Actually, there is a build made to abuse Orb of Fire to it's maximum already: the Mailman.

[Bobby Baratheon]

The game is breakable well before ninth level spells. The catch, however is that breaking the game (shockingly) isn't all that fun in actual play. Once the game is broken, there's little point in continuing to play it. If one of the party members is Pun-Pun, why bother adventuring? I think that there's a sort of unwritten rule in D&D that in actual play, you don't try to break the game because that ruins it for the other players. And if you want to all break the game, go play exalted or something or just knock yourselves out with the Pun Pun Rangers Squad. IMHO, it's just not all that fun in actual play to be way ahead of everyone else in the party, and it's definitely not fun to be way behind someone else.

[ericgrau]

Just ban infinite wish loops and all other obvious shennanigans instead.

Plus I'm not sure if a lot of it actually works; more like the rules are hazy. You may only have to ban thought bottle, ice assassins and the like. Not much in core except efreeti. But they're a mess long before 9th level spells. Heck they're a mess before the campaign begins because you have to wonder why there aren't economies built around hunting, capturing and wish milking them long before you call one in.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Just ban infinite wish loops and all other obvious shennanigans instead.

Plus I'm not sure if a lot of it actually works; more like the rules are hazy. You may only have to ban thought bottle, ice assassins and the like. Not much in core except efreeti. But they're a mess long before 9th level spells. Heck they're a mess before the campaign begins because you have to wonder why there aren't economies built around hunting, capturing and wish milking them long before you call one in.

Heh. That could be an interesting campaign in its own right. The PCs start off as a team of efreet hunters and have to hunt down efreet on the Plane of Fire (and elsewhere). Like Predator, except you're the Predator and you can either squeeze the efreet for wishes yourself or sell it for a fortune.

[Coidzor]

So basically if I play this game again, I should only expect spell levels 1-8, no epic?

Most people don't play into Epic, no. If people do play into Epic, they'll probably tell you, but you can also ask and find out readily enough.

[Zanos]

In my experience, high level games require either ignorance of the system or a tight group of people who all know what they want from the game to function. There's a variety of ways to trivialize the encounter system, many of which don't even involve magic. Hell, you can trivialize it at low levels if you want to be a jerk.

[Cosi]

Just ban infinite wish loops and all other obvious shennanigans instead.

Someone should really write up a list of "obvious shenanigans" and how best to go about banning them. "Just ban the broken stuff" is an obvious piece of advice, but not a particularly helpful one.

Heck they're a mess before the campaign begins because you have to wonder why there aren't economies built around hunting, capturing and wish milking them long before you call one in.

I mean, you can just allow that to happen. The broken part of wish isn't that it can make magic items. It's that it can make arbitrarily powerful magic items. If wish was capped at, say, 15K GP (as it was in 3.0), it would simply mean that magic items lower than that price were much less scarce. And while that changes the game, it might actually be for the better. Casters can already afford the magic items they need (+Casting Stat, +Saves), but more MAD characters would be quite thankful if they could get the three or four +4 Stat items they need for a few hundred GP each.

[ericgrau]

Someone should really write up a list of "obvious shenanigans" and how best to go about banning them. "Just ban the broken stuff" is an obvious piece of advice, but not a particularly helpful one.

It is pretty obvious, and usually none of these are a problem in actual play without ever giving the DM any warning about them. Yet for some reason people keep making threads about them.

I've been in a group that's done epic a few times without wish loops and the like. It doesn't seem difficult. Actually they had some trouble from multispell & time stop because people's turns were taking too long. And in the epic game I played in at level 30 I did too much damage by accident. About 500 a turn I think. That's as bad as it got. But yeah I've never been in a group that has had any trouble avoiding any of the really stinky cheese.

The problem with making a written list of obvious shenanigans is that (a) You have 50 splatbooks to dig through, good luck and (b) While the top of the list is super obvious, as you get closer and closer to the cutoff point it becomes less obvious where to draw that line. Still not a problem because these borderline bans aren't horrible whether you ban them or not, but everybody is going to want a different list.

[martixy]

Someone should really write up a list of "obvious shenanigans" and how best to go about banning them. "Just ban the broken stuff" is an obvious piece of advice, but not a particularly helpful one.

I gave it an attempt that didn't go very far.
(Feel free to contribute.)

[ayvango]

It is pretty obvious, and usually none of these are a problem in actual play without ever giving the DM any warning about them. Yet for some reason people keep making threads about them.

The reason is simple to make game world and setting believable you should pretend that there is no DM in the world. If there is a way towards infinite wealth then some NPC would eventually would walk the path. Even if I'm starts playing as 1st level Fighter, I would be curious why had some wizard not broke the world already. If you try to describe a world that I would believe is real, you should take obvious loopholes into account. Otherwise I would treat NPC not as a real people, but puppets in DM hands. Burn, crash, turn into zombies - does not matter, they all are puppets after all.

[Cosi]

The problem with making a written list of obvious shenanigans is that (a) You have 50 splatbooks to dig through, good luck and (b) While the top of the list is super obvious, as you get closer and closer to the cutoff point it becomes less obvious where to draw that line. Still not a problem because these borderline bans aren't horrible whether you ban them or not, but everybody is going to want a different list.

And there-in lies the problem with "ban broken stuff". While everyone can agree that some things are broken, no-one can agree where the line is. So saying "ban broken stuff" isn't really helpful.

I gave it an attempt that didn't go very far.
(Feel free to contribute.)

I believe I did actually contribute there. I think the methodology there was an issue. While shivering touch and gate are both broken, they're pretty clearly different kinds of broken. I would try a list something like this:

A Rank: Full Campaign Stop. The game cannot continue without dramatically realigning itself around the ability. Examples: gate, spawn-creating undead, wish for items.
B Rank: Game-changer. Different tactics are required, but the game as a whole can continue. Examples: teleport, raise dead, planar travel.
C Rank: Trump Card. Trivializes specific encounters or kinds of encounters. Examples: ray of stupidity v. animals, shivering tough v. dragons, command undead v. zombies.

And then you would explain exactly what the issues were with each ability, and how various solutions interacted with the game. That list is clearly incomplete, and you could add new categories for things like "rules nightmare" (WTF does polymorph do?) and "setting breaker" (why don't people use fabricate for everything?), but I tried to focus on things that are at least potentially balance issues.

[AvatarVecna]

Do you mind if I put this in my sig? it made me laugh

By all means, feel free.

[digiman619]

Well, if you're worried that high-level magic = I win, you can always use an alternate magic system, a la Spheres of Power.

[Zanos]

Well, if you're worried that high-level magic = I win, you can always use an alternate magic system, a la Spheres of Power.

You can use as many alternate systems as you want, but the tremendous volume of options that exist in 3.5 means that someone's going to be able to break the game if they have the knowledge and desire to.

[TroubleBrewing]

So basically if I play this game again, I should only expect spell levels 1-8, no epic?

I ran an epic game a few years back. It was actually okay. The rules become comically incapable of preventing high-level shenanigans, but I took that as a cue to encourage that sort of behavior.

If you want to play a particular style of game, check the recruitment threads. There's a weird amount of epic games these days.

As to the question posed by the title: There's a way of slaying the Tarrasque with a second level spell. "Basically 9th level spells = I win d&d"

[Godskook]

A Rank: Full Campaign Stop. The game cannot continue without dramatically realigning itself around the ability. Examples: gate, spawn-creating undead, wish for items.
B Rank: Game-changer. Different tactics are required, but the game as a whole can continue. Examples: teleport, raise dead, planar travel.
C Rank: Trump Card. Trivializes specific encounters or kinds of encounters. Examples: ray of stupidity v. animals, shivering tough v. dragons, command undead v. zombies.

Shivering Touch is a game-changer considering how many fundamentally common groups live with a Dex that'd hit 0 from an average-max roll(maximize adds to the threat range here) and can be a Full Campaign Stop if your game revolves to heavily around Dragons(it'd destroy the Red Hand of Doom module, for instance).

[Aquillion]

Just ban infinite wish loops and all other obvious shennanigans instead.

Plus I'm not sure if a lot of it actually works; more like the rules are hazy. You may only have to ban thought bottle, ice assassins and the like. Not much in core except efreeti. But they're a mess long before 9th level spells. Heck they're a mess before the campaign begins because you have to wonder why there aren't economies built around hunting, capturing and wish milking them long before you call one in.

Shapechange is fairly overpowered even if you're not really using any shenanigans, just shapechanging into whatever is best at the moment.

Ditto for the stat-dropping spells people mentioned above. Shivering Touch doesn't require any particularly fancy tricks to break the game (although it can be even nastier if you optimize it); even just used straightforwardly, it will trivially drop enemies that are supposed to be dangerous by completely bypassing their HP and most of their defenses.

This is why "don't be a jerk" needs to be the most important first step. (And you also have to talk to your players about the level of optimization or power you're shooting for, because it's not really like there's one clear category of "totally broken stuff" and then everything else is fine -- there's a spectrum. A straight wizard with mostly wasted feats who uses nothing but core spells and avoids any total game-breaks like infinite loops or anything obviously not Rules As Intended is still, if they use their spells intelligently enough, going to utterly dominate the game to the point where a party of fighter, paladin, monk, etc might find themselves with almost nothing to do.)

[Ruethgar]

You say just level 1-8, but Pun Pun, Omnisipher, and Mirror Mephits for NI divine rank all fall into that range as well. So pretty much the "don't be a ****" rule mentioned above is what keeps the game functional.

I personally greatly prefer E6 to the 20 level system. It allows you to pretty much make the character concept you want without having to keep up with some of the more potent aspects that really shine in later levels.