Unfairly powerful monsters?

[Florian]

The crab is faster and probably better at climbing than most PCs not prepared for either. Going up a cliff will not save you.

*Sigh*

Don´t get hung up on the crab. It´s designed to work within the limits of the system and it´s more a reminder that these boundary rules don´t work if you stretch every point to the limit.
Do yourself the favor and grab a copy of Pathfinder Unchained and a Bestiary and look up the performance per level tables. That is informative, even for 3,5E players.

[Zanos]

I'm sorry for the events in your life that led you to be this way?

Heh.

-Everything Else-

Alright, you've created a pretty false dichotomy here. You've propped up on one side of it "Real Parties" at "Actual Tables" who are level 25 wizards with 89 hit points casting delayed blast fireball, and on the other side you've got someone who cast mind blank...and also is chain gating solars to abuse epic magic? Those things aren't the entirety of games. Here's my sheet. You might notice my wizard prepares spells from almost every school of magic, casts heart of water for freedom of movement, casts detect scrying to...detect scrying, and preps spells like solid fog, disintegrate, scorching ray, and dominate person

Yes I agree with you that I don't think that 900 DPR paladins are good depictions of an average game(actually maybe in PFS...), but I don't think 89 HP epic wizards are either. And to be honest I'm not sure how an 89 HP wizard would survive at level 20, let alone 25. Even WotC monsters are more than optimized enough to shred that. I'd have to guess you actually are stacking other protections, since your character hasn't been obliterated by a stray fireball.

[Malacandra]

Well, you do kinda have to know if the Will-O-Wisp's in the area of Glitterdust. And Magic Missile is a SR: Yes spell...

Which canonically does work on WoWs and has done ever since 1st Ed AD&D if not before. They don't normally start out invisible but have the option of turning their glow off if things aren't going well, so landing a Glitterdust early doors, before they've found out that 2-16 electrical doesn't even tickle and you can spam 300-odd points of Magic Missile.

[Florian]

In theory and in practice, it remains equally true that the build with which I was presented was categorically incapable of fighting a pit fiend. Hells, I even got someone to try to play the build against a pit fiend just to check that it wouldn't work (it didn't). And I definitely don't base my view on pure theorycraft, which is exactly why I've been challenging statements like "Everyone has protection from everything active on their person at all times" and "People actually do broken stuff with epic magic in real games" and "Fighters are good in practical optimisation".

(Incidentally, I should set a balor against a real 20th-level party and see how horribly it murders them. Should be a fun trial...)

Can you do me the favor and actually post the build or at least a stub?

Edit: As you evaded the point the last time we got there, my guess is you can´t and you´re just a simple lier, perpetuating your "truths" without any meany to back it up.
Dollar for a dime that this will stay unanswered.

[Jormengand]

Heh.


Alright, you've created a pretty false dichotomy here. You've propped up on one side of it "Real Parties" at "Actual Tables" who are level 25 wizards with 89 hit points casting delayed blast fireball, and on the other side you've got someone who cast mind blank...and also is chain gating solars to abuse epic magic? Those things aren't the entirety of games. Here's my sheet. You might notice my wizard prepares spells from almost every school of magic, casts heart of water for freedom of movement, casts detect scrying to...detect scrying, and preps spells like solid fog, disintegrate, scorching ray, and dominate person

Yes I agree with you that I don't think that 900 DPR paladins are good depictions of an average game(actually maybe in PFS...), but I don't think 89 HP epic wizards are either. And to be honest I'm not sure how an 89 HP wizard would survive at level 20, let alone 25. Even WotC monsters are more than optimized enough to shred that. I'd have to guess you actually are stacking other protections, since your character hasn't been obliterated by a stray fireball.

Of course there are parties which are better optimised (the wizard's primary "Protection" was saves for days and a relatively sweet AC, incidentally; her hit points were low because that's how low wizard hit points are with 12 CON at that level without adding things which buff them). Hell, I'm playing an elven generalist spontaneous divination domain wizard in a real game right now, because I'm a forumite, and she still doesn't even know freedom of movement, let alone has ever cast it. She's not high-level, let alone epic, but let's see what she's immune to... dear god, it's sleep effects, starvation and suffocation! (Oh, and the touch attacks of ghouls). She has 37 hit points because, no, no guess, I'll tell you, it's because that's how many hit points a wizard with 12 CON has at level 9!

Now, she's not afraid to polymorph herself and her tiger into 12-headed cryohydras because of course she has that many caster level boosts, and she has divinations coming out of her ears... but she plain doesn't have the "Standard defences" of a wizard! Christ almighty, she knows fireball! She knows burning hands! Shocking grasp! She has three spells which actually do direct damage prepared as well (Caltrops, Furnace Within and Arcane Maul, as it happens). Oh dear lords of optimisation, I have SINNED!

Except that no-one I've actually met really plays games where the only damaging spells anyone uses are Power Word Pain (because Wizards made a mistake that makes it very low level) and Chill Touch (becuase Wizards made a mistake which makes it about CL times as powerful as it should be), where enchantment is a funny joke, illusion is a funnier joke, and divination is a joke when it's targeted at a creature and ultimately powerful when it's not. I have never played, seen or smelt a real character who actually carries fifteen buffs around with them at all times (most people I've played with have probably never h.eard of the Heart of X spells, let alone cast one), and even on the forum I've not seen many people play massively optimised characters.

Hey, let's look at the other characters in that game. Let's look at the goddamn thrallherd, he must be optimised right? Immunities? Nothing. Hit points? 43, because that's how many he gets from his 12 constitution, again. One of his powers is Energy Bolt.

Sorcerer. Immunities. He actually has Heart of Earth and Water but not the other two. Apart from that, he has immunity to... electrical attacks that deal 10 or less damage? He has 46 hit points, because he has 14 Con instead of 12. The multiclass ToB mess has 46 hit points and his only immunity is to, and I'm not making this up, difficult terrain. The straight-up warblade fares slightly better with his 18 CON giving him 104 hit points, and is immune to... nonmagical darkness? No, he's got nothing in the way of immunities.

This is a game on these forums. Standard optimisation will always be less than on these forums. And I'm not seeing FoM as a standard thing that people have once they have access to it. I'm not seeing any immunities, really. And if someone rolled well, they could kill all but one of these characters. With what, you ask?

A. Stray. Fireball.

Can you do me the favor and actually post the build or at least a stub?

Edit: As you evaded the point the last time we got there, my guess is you can´t and you´re just a simple lier, perpetuating your "truths" without any meany to back it up.
Dollar for a dime that this will stay unanswered.

You mean the build we spent several pages of another thread arguing about already?

No. I already discussed to death why the build doesn't work. I wrote at least a thousand words explaining it to you. You can guess all you like, but I've already explained the exact particulars of why fighters don't work the way you think they do.

[Svata]

Um. At that level why don't you have something. Anything. Anything at all that boosts your CON score? Just so a stiff breeze doesn't kill you? Amulet of Health +6 is 36k gold. That's a pittance. That's just more than half of a percent of your WBL.

[Zaydos]

The key to a good encounter is making both options viable to the average party, I presume? Drowned are crappy because the puzzle solution is a quirky one that comes later than the minimum CR and the brute force option is nigh impossible?

The counter to a drowned is a 3rd level spell (the aura specifically is 'treated for the purposes of breathing as being beneath the water'). So comes online at level 5. It's not that the counter is higher level, it's that it's niche, and if it's not cast before the fight it still might be too late (~40% chance to take out the cleric round 1) and that they're hit points and fast healing makes them a tank without their aura.

They're supposed to be like basilisks, but where basilisk there's not really an answer to their petrifying gaze till level 11 (they're CR 5) and yet they work fine, the drowned has stats like making a basilisk CR 3 and giving it Ability Focus (Gaze) (a CR 3 basilisk is a tpk, especially with a CR 15 gaze). With drowned the brute force option is nigh impossible, and either they're boring (you have water breathing cast because you're adventuring in a place where you need it, which is to be fair the same places they're liable to show up) or you're dead (because you don't have it because why would you need it).

[Cosi]

Devestation Vermin aren't that tough CR-wise... though it'd suck if unleashed on a non-epic world.

I agree, my point was that there's a huge swing between the high end of ELH stuff and things like then Devastation Vermin that are just "something that already stopped being a threat twenty levels ago, but bigger and louder". Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Uh, no. When you fail the Con check for the aura - not Fort save - you start drowning and are essentially disabled, if not effectively dead. As for lethal Con damage, you just die. Which is why most causes of Con damage only deal small amounts. So you have to take lots of Con damaging effects to die from that.

Drowned:

Round One: Make Save
Round Two: Make Save
Round Three: Fail Save, drowning, can't act anymore.

CON Damage Aura:

Round One: Take 2d6 CON damage.
Round Two: Take 2d6 CON damage.
Round Three: Take 2d6 CON damage, total CON damage exceeds score, can't act anymore.

In both cases, you get a few rounds of action, then you stop being able to act. The only defenses against either are immunity, staying out of range, and having a really big CON score.

[ColorBlindNinja]

SNIP

Varying optimization levels do make judging the strength of monsters somewhat difficult.

I will also add that epic spellcasting is broken both ways.

If you abuse mitigation to its limits, you can do virtually anything. Otherwise, it's nigh useless.

[Florian]

You mean the build we spent several pages of another thread arguing about already?

No. I already discussed to death why the build doesn't work. I wrote at least a thousand words explaining it to you. You can guess all you like, but I've already explained the exact particulars of why fighters don't work the way you think they do.

Either you dream or I´m drunk. Being in the beer-business the later is a common day to day occurrence for me, so I rule that out. We argued about a Mythic Barbarian for which I didn't provide full stats, as it was equipped and outfitted according to a very specific campaign and I don´t see the point in sharing and comparing under that circumstances. You did not provide anything, neither a build nor a way to go from there.

I can provide that on the stipulation that you do your research on the rules, but can you?

[The Viscount]

(Incidentally, I should set a balor against a real 20th-level party and see how horribly it murders them. Should be a fun trial...)

Here is an example of a party of 16th and 17th level characters fighting a Balor. The party cleric is only healing, and the party breakdown seems like something I would consider regular table play. They give a fairly detailed explanation of the fight, and granted it does begin with them prepping based on some Knowledge checks, but they make it through handily.

One thing I've always found really funny about Balors is that they can use their summon to get 4d10 Dretches. They're so weak but so numerous you basically just waste a turn blasting them with some awkward area spell. I like to imagine that this exact scenario is why things like circle of death exist, because I cannot find another reason.

[Beheld]

You know... this evaluation of that darn crab seems to be assuming a neutral terrain. If the party can climb a coastal cliffside out of the crab's reach and if everyone brought sufficient ranged sidearms (shortbow, crossbow, or just a warlock), the crab doesn't have spiderclimb or even a climb race bonus. Getting out of its reach should work just fine.

As long as the DM isn't TRYING to kill party members, you should be able to get out of range and plink it to death (I know AC is a headache, but Eldritch Blast could make this trivial). If you end up in a fight with this thing at low level and your DM isn't willing to give you some kind of terrain advantage to exploit, that's kind of harsh.

Or is there something I'm missing here?

CR assumes neutral terrain. Facourable woukd leave it EL2 or so. And it's quite fast and has good reach so getting away with Climb is nontrivial. It can pick you up from 20ft.

Also it has so much HP that it can just walk away if you do escape. But it getting juat one turn and charging is generaly character death. Water cover too.

The crab is faster and probably better at climbing than most PCs not prepared for either. Going up a cliff will not save you.

I repeat my point that an actual book source exists for the crab, and has amongst other things, 20ft speed instead of 40ft speed.

Assuming that every caster will have a ton of immunities and epic spells that actually do anything useful as a "Baseline" is really odd. Like, I've set up what I think is a relatively normal wizard for an epic game and for a start I didn't even give her ES because more shots of ISC are more useful unless you're doing phenomenally abusive things with ES (in general, more metamagic on your DBFs is way better than hellballs or whatever it is you're doing). Her immunities are to... sleep effects, starvation and suffocation, and she has eighty-nine hit points at 25th level (so yes, she can absolutely kill herself twice over with her 12th-level spells). This is the kind of character I would normally expect to see from someone who hasn't spent years of their life buried in optimisation theory.

Like, Epic Spellcasting is borked on paper because you only need a DC of like 300 or something to destroy the observable universe! That's great and all, but she can hit DC... 58. She can't even cast hellball, much good may it do her if she actually could!

You can learn with a DC 0 check that is free and cast with a DC 0 check spells that give you +18 to every stat, +like 50 to AC, Immunity to some effects, permanently. And that's before you get into the spells that you actually want to cast that day.

I'm really not buying this "Epic Spellcasting is garbage" line.

[ColorBlindNinja]

You can learn with a DC 0 check that is free and cast with a DC 0 check spells that give you +18 to every stat, +like 50 to AC, Immunity to some effects, permanently. And that's before you get into the spells that you actually want to cast that day.

I'm really not buying this "Epic Spellcasting is garbage" line.

Theoretically, you can make an epic spell that can blow up a galaxy. The problem is that most DMs won't let you abuse mitigation enough to make epic spells useful. A gentlemen's agreement is all but essential to prevent severe abuse, without making the spells useless.

[Eldariel]

Of course there are parties which are better optimised (the wizard's primary "Protection" was saves for days and a relatively sweet AC, incidentally; her hit points were low because that's how low wizard hit points are with 12 CON at that level without adding things which buff them). Hell, I'm playing an elven generalist spontaneous divination domain wizard in a real game right now, because I'm a forumite, and she still doesn't even know freedom of movement, let alone has ever cast it. She's not high-level, let alone epic, but let's see what she's immune to... dear god, it's sleep effects, starvation and suffocation! (Oh, and the touch attacks of ghouls). She has 37 hit points because, no, no guess, I'll tell you, it's because that's how many hit points a wizard with 12 CON has at level 9!

Now, she's not afraid to polymorph herself and her tiger into 12-headed cryohydras because of course she has that many caster level boosts, and she has divinations coming out of her ears... but she plain doesn't have the "Standard defences" of a wizard! Christ almighty, she knows fireball! She knows burning hands! Shocking grasp! She has three spells which actually do direct damage prepared as well (Caltrops, Furnace Within and Arcane Maul, as it happens). Oh dear lords of optimisation, I have SINNED!

Except that no-one I've actually met really plays games where the only damaging spells anyone uses are Power Word Pain (because Wizards made a mistake that makes it very low level) and Chill Touch (becuase Wizards made a mistake which makes it about CL times as powerful as it should be), where enchantment is a funny joke, illusion is a funnier joke, and divination is a joke when it's targeted at a creature and ultimately powerful when it's not. I have never played, seen or smelt a real character who actually carries fifteen buffs around with them at all times (most people I've played with have probably never h.eard of the Heart of X spells, let alone cast one), and even on the forum I've not seen many people play massively optimised characters.

Hey, let's look at the other characters in that game. Let's look at the goddamn thrallherd, he must be optimised right? Immunities? Nothing. Hit points? 43, because that's how many he gets from his 12 constitution, again. One of his powers is Energy Bolt.

Sorcerer. Immunities. He actually has Heart of Earth and Water but not the other two. Apart from that, he has immunity to... electrical attacks that deal 10 or less damage? He has 46 hit points, because he has 14 Con instead of 12. The multiclass ToB mess has 46 hit points and his only immunity is to, and I'm not making this up, difficult terrain. The straight-up warblade fares slightly better with his 18 CON giving him 104 hit points, and is immune to... nonmagical darkness? No, he's got nothing in the way of immunities.

This is a game on these forums. Standard optimisation will always be less than on these forums. And I'm not seeing FoM as a standard thing that people have once they have access to it. I'm not seeing any immunities, really. And if someone rolled well, they could kill all but one of these characters. With what, you ask?

A. Stray. Fireball.

Yeah, there are tons upon tons of inexperienced players in the world. I wouldn't expect for them to play nor fare according to CR on epic though. There's just too much content to master in even pre-epic magic: high levels are not kind to beginners. Players who do not even know their available options are hardly good measuring sticks. Indeed, beginners care too much about number boosting, too little about actually relevant stuff like blanket immunities. The system is chockful of trap options and it shows: you need a modicum of system mastery for basics.

That said, Mind Blank is a singular case where I don't see any excuse for anyone who has read through the PHB to not cast it. It's 24 hour duration massive list of immunities. And Illusion is actually really good even in high optimization: Simulacrums, Shadow spells, etc. Only Enchantment suffers. Evocation is fine but largely redundant.

[Cosi]

You can learn with a DC 0 check that is free and cast with a DC 0 check spells that give you +18 to every stat, +like 50 to AC, Immunity to some effects, permanently. And that's before you get into the spells that you actually want to cast that day.

I'm really not buying this "Epic Spellcasting is garbage" line.

Well see, Real Players at Real Tables don't mitigate casting costs because Good DMs won't let them. So if you do anything abusive with Epic Spellcasting it's because you're a Filthy Powergamer.

[Inevitability]

Here is an example of a party of 16th and 17th level characters fighting a Balor. The party cleric is only healing, and the party breakdown seems like something I would consider regular table play. They give a fairly detailed explanation of the fight, and granted it does begin with them prepping based on some Knowledge checks, but they make it through handily.

That is not a regular party. The wizard casts no spells except for Quickened True Strike and Moment of Prescience and seems to think making two bow attacks per round (dealing about 1d8+2d6+1, or 17, damage each, as far as I can see) is more valuable than even the simplest buff or debuff.

[Zaydos]

Also revivify requires an intact corpse (decapitated is not intact). That said it was also a EL 20+ encounter fought by Lv 16-17 characters who suffered one death.

[The_Jette]

Also revivify requires an intact corpse (decapitated is not intact). That said it was also a EL 20+ encounter fought by Lv 16-17 characters who suffered one death.

Place head against body. Cast "Make Whole." Revivify. Yay! The dwarf is alive again!

[MesiDoomstalker]

The ELH is weird. Some stuff is crazy overpowered, but then you get the Devastation Vermin, which are mindless melee brutes that automatically lose to flying archers, but are nominally CR 39 or higher.



Yeah, but you can't act when you've taken lethal CON damage either. The hypothetical CON-damage aura isn't exactly like the Drowned's aura (where you save a couple of times and nothing happens, then you fail and die), it's just a pile of CON damage every round. Both have the same effect -- incapacitating you in a few rounds -- and the same set of defenses -- pretty much only "high CON" and "stay out of range" -- but I don't think anyone thinks CON damage is outside the CR system.

I agree, my point was that there's a huge swing between the high end of ELH stuff and things like then Devastation Vermin that are just "something that already stopped being a threat twenty levels ago, but bigger and louder". Sorry if that wasn't clear.



Drowned:

Round One: Make Save
Round Two: Make Save
Round Three: Fail Save, drowning, can't act anymore.

CON Damage Aura:

Round One: Take 2d6 CON damage.
Round Two: Take 2d6 CON damage.
Round Three: Take 2d6 CON damage, total CON damage exceeds score, can't act anymore.

In both cases, you get a few rounds of action, then you stop being able to act. The only defenses against either are immunity, staying out of range, and having a really big CON score.

Nearly every character has 40% chance of failing the first save. This is level and build agnostic until high levels. This hypothetical Con Damage Aura can be mitigated by casting spells that restore Con Damage and the first check can be passed more easily by a greater number of characters as it is a Fort save. Additionally, depending on the fluff certain does provide immunity similar to Waterbreathimy vs. The Drowned but are spells people prep more regularly like Death Ward or Delay Poison.

Additionally, I don't know of any Con damge effect that deals 2d6 Con damage. Certainly not im an actionless AoE applied every round.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Nearly every character has 40% chance of failing the first save. This is level and build agnostic until high levels. This hypothetical Con Damage Aura can be mitigated by casting spells that restore Con Damage and the first check can be passed more easily by a greater number of characters as it is a Fort save. Additionally, depending on the fluff certain does provide immunity similar to Waterbreathimy vs. The Drowned but are spells people prep more regularly like Death Ward or Delay Poison.

Additionally, I don't know of any Con damge effect that deals 2d6 Con damage. Certainly not im an actionless AoE applied every round.

Sheltered Vitality is a 4th level spell and protects against ability damage.

[Zaydos]

Nearly every character has 40% chance of failing the first save. This is level and build agnostic until high levels. This hypothetical Con Damage Aura can be mitigated by casting spells that restore Con Damage and the first check can be passed more easily by a greater number of characters as it is a Fort save. Additionally, depending on the fluff certain does provide immunity similar to Waterbreathimy vs. The Drowned but are spells people prep more regularly like Death Ward or Delay Poison.

Additionally, I don't know of any Con damge effect that deals 2d6 Con damage. Certainly not im an actionless AoE applied every round.

Endurance Feat would like to point out it's not build agnostic (a Lv 8 Master of Many Forms is liable to have a +9 on the check, Warlock with Touched by the Styx least invocation has water breathing, Watery Adaption DFA, any aquatic race, casting Water Breathing when in a place you're liable to drown). And for a more reasonable comparison than the Con aura, Basilisk. CR 5. Counter for its effect Lv 11. It's a DC 13 Fort save or die each round unless you blind yourself. And closing your eyes/averting your gaze just makes it have to use a standard action to affect you (because gosh in high impact situations we're actually really bad about keeping eyes shut). Now the chance of failure is less build agnostic and lower (~20% on a Fighter/Melee, up to 45% on a caster), but that's not 'Drowned is outside of CR' that's 'Drowned is under CRed'. Drowned is closer to making Basilisk CR 3 and giving it Ability Focus (Gaze) which... is actually a bit more deadly.

I mean if I was to redesign Drowned I give it better offenses... and maybe worse defenses or maybe just up its CR. As it is it's a very tanky CR 7 with a no action AoE death effect... as a CR 8. Yes it's easy to negate if you're prepared (1 3rd level spell that protects a full 4 person party for 30 minutes/CL), but if you're not prepared it's CR 11. And that's too large of a swing.

Place head against body. Cast "Make Whole." Revivify. Yay! The dwarf is alive again!

Oh yeah, in general as a DM I'd allow them just to hold the head against the body and have it work, but just had to point out that they weren't going by RAW (3.5 had an unhealthy obsession with RAW in the game design tbh).

[VisitingDaGulag]

The main problem with puzzle encounters in general is that you're not allowed to read the monster's stats, even if you pass the knowledge check. A player who doesn't know what a balor is, for example, won't have a clue ... the way to fight it

Correct. Puzzle monsters are bad and overrused. I believe I saw a % breakdown on them as always belonging to the "overwhelming" usage category, even when their CR wasn't "overwhelming."

DMs love them because they want to see if the players figure it out. Unfortunately you can't make people figure it out without ruining the the "surprise." So either players don't figure it out and die and they are sad, or the DM blurts out metagame information and the DM is sad. It's a lose-lose, assuming the players haven't optimized to run away from / beat any encounter around their level.

[rel]

The Tendriculus always seemed pretty obnoxious.

- It hits hard for its CR.

- It has improved grab, good reach and it can ambush.

- It gets swallow whole and it paralyses you when it eats you so you can't cut your way out.

- it gets the ipressive plant immunities and regeneration.

Honestly, the big beat sticks like giants and war trolls tend to give my party the most trouble.

Although my last character in a big campaign was able to effectively no sell most esoteric effects so I am probably biased by recent experience.

[Eldariel]

The Tendriculus always seemed pretty obnoxious.

- It hits hard for its CR.

- It has improved grab, good reach and it can ambush.

- It gets swallow whole and it paralyses you when it eats you so you can't cut your way out.

- it gets the ipressive plant immunities and regeneration.

Honestly, the big beat sticks like giants and war trolls tend to give my party the most trouble.

Although my last character in a big campaign was able to effectively no sell most esoteric effects so I am probably biased by recent experience.

Big bruisers are generally tough to melee, but they tend to have clear weaknesses. Various Will/Ref save-or-X effects such as Grease, Glitterdust, Pyrotechnics, Slow or Web and disablong touch attacks such as Ray of Exhaustion tend to make them walks in the parkway. Thus all you need is a caster preparing sensible spells to hit them in their weakness. Tough for martial parties though.

[danielxcutter]

Big bruisers are generally tough to melee, but they tend to have clear weaknesses. Various Will/Ref save-or-X effects such as Grease, Glitterdust, Pyrotechnics, Slow or Web and disablong touch attacks such as Ray of Exhaustion tend to make them walks in the parkway. Thus all you need is a caster preparing sensible spells to hit them in their weakness. Tough for martial parties though.

Not every party has a caster capable of them, such as the one I'm in; Human Fighter/Psion, Whisper Gnome Cloistered Cleric, Catfolk Warlock, Pixie Swordsage. Clerics aren't that good at BFC.

[tyckspoon]

Theoretically, you can make an epic spell that can blow up a galaxy. The problem is that most DMs won't let you abuse mitigation enough to make epic spells useful. A gentlemen's agreement is all but essential to prevent severe abuse, without making the spells useless.

Fortify and Armor are actually like the only seeds that do work reasonably well played straight, because they're just relatively efficient ways to get the stupid piles of numbers you need to compete with Epic monsters. The only real necessary assumption I make is that you will borrow, beg, or steal to acquire a Rod of Excellent Magic as soon as you can, because 2,000 free XP worth of mitigation a day is fantastic for this stuff. It's probably not affordable right at 21 because Epic item costs are silly, but it shouldn't take more than a few levels further in.

So, this is what I would expect an Epic Animal's Stat buff to look like:
Base Seed: Fortify, Spellcraft DC 17 for +1 bonus.
- Mitigation:
10 Minute cast time (+9 minutes increase) -18
2,000 XP cost (free 1/day from Rod) -20

Ok, that's a -21 Spellcraft DC. It's also a pretty useless spell right now, but we've got plenty of room to work.
First off, we don't want to have to cast this thing every day; we want to be able to use the Rod's free XP on other spells to. So let's increase duration.
Duration increased by 100% x6: +12, for a duration of 140 Hours, or just a little shy of 6 standard Earth-length days.

This is a buff, so it might be nice to be able to cast it on the rest of your party/durable minions/whatever; maybe it's a Con buff that everybody would appreciate.
Change Touch range to Area, Radius 20 ft: +10 Touch to Target, +4 Target to Area, +2 Area 20 ft radius. + 16 total.

It's at Spellcraft DC 7 for a long-duration buff you can cast on however many things you can jam into 20 feet surrounding you. Of course, right now it only gives a +1 Enhancement bonus, which is pretty sad. So how high can we take that? A level 21 Wizard can expect to hit a minimum of 46 Spellcraft DC - 24 ranks, +12 Intelligence bonus (derived as 18 base + 6 item + 5 Inherent + 5 levelup bonuses) and Take 10 on the actual check. That leaves 39 points of capacity to bump up the actual power of the spell. Fortify gets +1 bonus/2 DC, so 38/2 gets us +19 more.

There ya go. Minimal mitigation, no special Spellcraft optimization, and you can give your entire party plus assorted hangers-on +20 to a stat for nearly 6 days. The Armor seed looks similar, but slightly higher numbers because the base bonus and duration are longer on it. (It also costs 405,0000 GP to develop at a DC of 45x9,000, which is probably the biggest stumbling block in actually using Epic Magic as soon as you qualify for it - spells that aren't sufficiently cheesily mitigated are really expensive for just-barely-Epic characters. On the other hand, it's a ridiculous steal compared to the book prices of actual Epic stat items - a +10 Enhancement item costs very slightly less than the combined cost of the Rod of Excellent Magic and developing this spell.)

[ryu]

Not every party has a caster capable of them, such as the one I'm in; Human Fighter/Psion, Whisper Gnome Cloistered Cleric, Catfolk Warlock, Pixie Swordsage. Clerics aren't that good at BFC.

I mean they can be, if you build them for that.

[danielxcutter]

I mean they can be, if you build them for that.

Hmm... not that you're wrong, but I'd like to know how. There isn't a really good handbook for Clerics, you see...

[Florian]

Hmm... not that you're wrong, but I'd like to know how. There isn't a really good handbook for Clerics, you see...

That´ll depend on what edition you use.

[danielxcutter]

That´ll depend on what edition you use.

Oh, 3.5.

Though I suppose my standards are a bit high...