Miscellania

[Ebiris]

Well, assuming we have mechanics for it, sure. That's why I prefer the epic magic route, since the rules are all right there to make any sort of mythal you want.

[Anastasia]

Quick question: Are mythals given any further rules besides Lost Empires of Faerun?

[Ebiris]

No. And I just spent like an hour working on my own Mythal using those rules and the Feanmerc ones, so you can have a look at what I came up with.

***

I decided to have a go at designing a Mythal spell using the epic magic guidelines to serve as an example.

The basic Mythal seed has a Spellcraft DC of 25, takes 10 minutes to cast, a range of 30 feet, covers a 100 feet radius, and a permanent duration. But it doesn't actually do anything, yet.

So what do we want our Mythal to do?

First of all, armies of the dead are a bad thing. So what's a good way of getting rid of them? We'd want something to stop undead from spawning within the Mythal, as well as something to stop them in their tracks if they try to come in from outside. Two good ways of doing that - Consecrate prevents any undead from being raised in its area of effect, and Life's Grace is a Spell Compendium spell that offers immunity to death spells, death effects, energy drain, any negative energy effects, undead special attacks that deal ability damage/drain, and magical disease (like mummy rot), as well as making the subject's armour count as ghost touch.

Those two spells alone make us pretty set vs undead, so lets see what they cost.

Consecrate is a 2nd level spell with a 2hr/level duration. So we take the spell level x the caster level and multiply by 100 to get the DC cost for that - comes to 600.

Life's Grace is a 5th level spell with a minute/level duration, so we do the same calculation as above but then multiply it again by 2 thanks to the shorter duration to get 9,000.

We'd also like people in our Mythal to be safe from mindrape, so a protection against evil spell seems like a no brainer. Its DC cost comes in at 200.

Since this will probably cover a city, we might want to prevent invisibility from being used to stymie robbers/spies. This would be easy to do with a prevalent Invisibility Purge spell, but it could hurt us if we ever have to wage a Stalingrad style city defence. It's a double-edged sword, so I'll err on the side of caution and avoid it - there are other methods we can use later on.

It's nice to offer our citizens some protection against scrying, so Detect Scrying can be added on for 2,800 to the DC.

So now we have our prevalent spells, giving very strong protections to everyone within from the undead as well as keeping their thoughts safe and allowing some safeguards to their privacy. The DC sits at 12,600.

In addition to putting in prevalent spells, it would be nice to block out people from using certain types of magic. These are called Arointed Spells. You can ban by descriptors and subschools, or even whole schools of magic. We don't really want to crack down too hard on magical progress, though, so lets just drop-kick the Evil descriptor and leave everything else alone. That costs 15,000, upping our total DC now to 27,600.

The last thing a Mythal can do, is make certain spells work as usable SLAs, called Vanguard Powers. You can either have these work for everyone within the Mythal, or key them to a specific group, which doubles the price. With a strong set of Keyed spells you could effectively turn every guardsman in your city into a powerful sorcerer. Or you could restrict it to inoffensive spells and let everyone play with them. Setting whether they're at will, 3/day, or 1/day also affects the cost. Here I think we can create two sets, one for everyone and one for our guards.

For everyone, we'll make Feather Fall and Cure Light Wounds at will and Neutralise Poison 1/day. There's no way to really use these offensively, so it doesn't matter if everyone in the city can cast them. The cost for Feather Fall and Cure Light Wounds are Spell Level x Caster Level x 100, which comes out at 100 each and for Neutralise Poison it's the x25 instead of x100 for being limited to once per day, so comes to 700.

Then for our ward initiates we want a more robust set of abilities, since they've shown their trustworthiness and will be called upon to defend our epic magical metropolis. Quench is fantastic for putting out fires, so we'll have that one at will. The DC for it comes to 3,000 (doubled for being a keyed power). Bless Weapon at will also helps our guards against any fiend attacks, and is a mere 200 to add on. Invisibility Purge was mentioned earlier and now gets its proper appearance, so our guards can use it to root out criminals - that's another 3,000. Silence lets them neatly shut down criminal spellcasters for 1,200. At Will Wall of Force is expensive at 9,000, but lets the guards repair walls in the event of sieges, block streets during riots, and pin down particularly powerful enemies until the real heroes arrive, so it's well worth the cost. Discern Lies helps out on the investigative side of their jobs and in settling disputes, so we'll pay 5,600 for that. Lastly Haste is a great buff for chasing down criminals and fighting pitched battles, so 3,000 for that.

So after adding in all our vanguard powers for a total of 25,900, our Mythal has a spellcraft DC of 53,500. We divide that by 1,000 to arrive at 53, then add on the original Mythal DC of 25 to set the DC to cast it as 78. But it still only covers 100 feet, which will not do. So here we turn to the Feanmerc system to add in our Epic Spell Factors. The only thing we really care about is increasing the area, which ups the DC by 4 for every 100% increase of the original value (so no exponential doubling). A mile is about 5,280 feet, so we'd have to add 204 to our DC to have a Mythal extending 1 mile in all directions, pushing our DC to 282. We need to bring that down to make it castable, so in come our mitigating factors.

First of all are the Mythal specific ones. There are four of these, the first is 'Caster Dies, no resurrection possible' which drops 50 off the DC. Lets move along. The next is Capstone, which effectively gives your Mythal a phylactery, the destruction of which brings down the Mythal, for -20 to the DC. That's a bit too risky for my taste. The next is Corruptible, which reduces the cost to 75% and means the Mythal starts to degrade after 100 years unless renewed - you can up time till it degrades by another 100 years for +2 to the DC after reducing the total, so lets set our Mythal to wear down after 1,000 years. First we drop our DC to 211, then add 18 to arrive at 229. We can also set our Mythal as Anchored, which means large changes to the physical, magical, or spiritual environment, like the destruction of the city it protects, or the presence of a hostile outsider with HD greater than our CL for at least 24 hours, can cause the Mythal to degrade. This nets another 75% reduction, putting us at 158.

Now come the standard Epic mitigating factors. The best one to start off with is an XP cost, which can really drive the cost down, but unfortunately we have no XP in this game, so we'll have to make do with the others. Lets start with Backlash damage, then. 20d6 of backlash damage, which magic can't heal, knocks 40 off our DC. Next we can up the casting time by an additional 10 minutes for a further 20 off the DC. We're at 98 now.

We can add in additional casters to make it a ritual. If we require the presence of 2 casters sacrificing 9th (-17 each) level slots, and 3 sacrificing 6th level slots (-11 each), our DC falls to 31. If we then use the Feanmerc guidelines saying spell level equals DC divided by 3 and then plus 7, our Mythal becomes a 10th level spell.


Simple Mythal
Level: 10th
Spellcraft DC: 31
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 20 minutes
Range: 30 feet
Area: 1 mile radius emanation
Duration: 1,000 years (see text)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This Mythal erects a magical ward covering a 1 mile radius with the following traits:

Prevalent Spells: Consecrate, Life's Grace, Protection from Evil, Detect Scrying
Arointed Spells: Any with the Evil descriptor
Vanguard Spells: Feather Fall, Cure Light Wounds, Neutralise Poison (1/day)

Furthermore, a ritual of attunement allows an individual access to a greater list of Vanguard Spells, detailed below.

Keyed Vanguard Spells: Quench, Bless Weapon, Invisibility Purge, Silence, Wall of Force, Discern Lies, Haste

After one thousand years, the Mythal must make Integrity Failure checks once per year. This is a Spellcraft check using the Caster's modifier at the time the Mythal was raised, against a DC of the original Mythal DC minus 20 (for an initial DC of 11). The DC increases by one for every ten years that pass, by one for every failed integrity check, and by two per anchor damaging event. When a check is failed, refer to table 2-11 in Lost Empires of Faerun. An Integrity Failure check must be made whenever an anchor damaging event occurs.

Casting this spell requires the assistance of five other participants, two of which must provide a 9th level spell slot, and three of which must provide a 6th level spell slot each. The primary caster suffers 20d6 damage on completion of the spell, which can only be healed naturally - it is considered lethal damage if the caster has regeneration, and fast healing only heals its designated value every hour rather than every round.

[Anastasia]

How would this be on costs to cast, RAW? I was under the impression that mythals are expensive as hell to create.

[Ebiris]

31 x 7,000 = 217,000gp using Feanmerc
31 x 9,000 = 279,000gp using SRD

[Anastasia]

While I am seriously considering axing spell creation costs, I would keep some cost to create a mythal for obvious reasons. That looks about right between the two. I'd rather have one base mythal spell instead of making new spells for each mythal, though.  Also, you just did the math and mentioned a material component, what would you suggest?

[Ebiris]

Well, 100XP equals -1 DC on the Feanmerc mitigating factors, so why not 1,000gp equals -1 DC for us?

[Anastasia]

Well, 100XP equals -1 DC on the Feanmerc mitigating factors, so why not 1,000gp equals -1 DC for us?

If you used that on the above, how would the numbers end up?

[Ebiris]

Well, it depends entirely on what I did with it. I mean, I could spend up to 200,000gp to reduce the DC by 200, and then use that to toss in a bunch of other powers on the Mythal. Or I could spend 127,000gp and get rid of the backlash/additional casters/increased casting time.

All it does is give more room to play with.

[Anastasia]

Okay. Work with it.

[Corwin]

Casting time concerns aside, which have mostly been dispelled if Permanency can be emulated to a single round as well, only one real issue remains for me. Maybe that one derives from my misunderstanding as well, but does it mean we'll both cast the theoretical Raise Mythal spell together? I'm not clear on whether that's allowed or what, but I figure none of us just wants to be there for the ride, whether the slot we contribute is lvl3 or lvl9.

On the more practical aspect, if we stick to a single design, I prefer permanent and not degrading stuff. IC, above all, a perfectionist can't possibly contend with anything less.  >_>
It's not that I believe nothing even more epic could destroy it, but to make something that will break in the far future would be a terrible notion for me. Further thoughts on specifics... well, it'd be pretty neat to have several tiers of groups keyed to the Mythal, each getting more powers from it. I don't think there's anything particularly preventing that one in the rules. Basically, more of that, more options and customization, since we'll be having a single spell to apply instead of a template to adjust. One thing, for example, would be dimensional travel which we really should prevent from being abused.
Also, Eb, any reason you didn't go for Death Ward over Consecrate/Life's Grace?

[Ebiris]

Well, Mythals default to permanent (but can be killed by epic dispelling spells, none 'it comes back after a few rounds' like Permanency gets), I just dropped it for my example to reduce the cost. Alicia would favour degrading ones anyway, since leaving epic magic stuff around forever when stuff might render it pointless in the future (the city being abandoned, for example) seems wasteful and potentially irresponsible. There's also nothing to stop having different types of keyed spells - attunement makes sense for guards, but you can put in other things like 'only works for people of alignment X' or 'only for elves', so you could easily have several tiers. There's tons of room for customisation.

Death Ward doesn't stop undead spawning, which Consecrate does, and Life's Grace stops everything Death Ward does and then even more, so it seemed like a good call.

And yeah, ultimately this means we'd have our own seperate Mythals if we went that way. We can share the burden of spell research and material components, we could even design them together OOC to make a standard, but ultimately only one person gets to do the casting. To be honest, it makes sense for Seira to be the only one to do it, since she can have as many epic spells known as she likes, whereas for Alicia its a bit of a waste to learn a spell she'll only cast a handful of times. But this is the sort of cool world changing stuff I really want in on.

[Anastasia]

Random side point: Would you guys like a cheat sheet topic for you guys and NPCs you control?

[Corwin]

I already use a cheat sheet, but I could post it, if you'd like. Doesn't matter to me either way. What I'd like is for you to keep Amaryl's sheet up to date.  >_>

[Anastasia]

Went with improved init for Antenora. This may be changed depending on Dire Charge but that's low on my list tonight and I don't want to leave it hanging.

Gave Amaryl the resort/improved crit/deadeye. We'll see how that one works out.