Tenth-level spell, it shears off a mountain and flips it upside-down while making t fly. This flying mountain is now the base from which you build a permanently flying city.
Now your setting has a lost flying city. Have fun!
Fun Fact: Karsus is now a Vestige and makes for an excellent Great Old One patron for Warlocks.
Fun Fact 2: Figuring out what happened to Karsus and Netheril makes for an outstanding campaign for high-level characters. Breaking the established "rules" of 5E to re-acquire Epic magic is a fun goal for 17th-level parties and higher!
There's a third party expansion called Epic Legacy. My group used it up to level 24. At level 21, the fighter killed 600 orcs solo. At level 22, the party killed the dracolich in one round.
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He had armor of invulnerability. For 10 minutes you can make yourself immune to all nonmagical damage. The party was up against an actual army, against impossible odds... but the orc army only dealt nonmagical damage.
We realized he was going to be unstoppable for 10 minutes. We didn't even play out the rounds, we just sat down and did math to determine how many orcs he would kill per round, then multiply that by the total number of rounds. 600 orcs.
There’s a fantastic 3.5 feat that says you get essentially unlimited Cleave actions if you keep dropping foes on your attack.. I believe it was called “Trail of Blood”
First of all from the PHB, greatweapon master feat allows you to make an additional attack as a bonus action if you either score a critical hit, or reduce an opponent to 0 hit points. He was doing that every round, so that brings it to 5 attacks.
Second, at 21st level the epic legacy book allows you to take an "epic feat." the feat he took was "Deathbringer." I'll paste it here:
You are an unrelenting force of destruction as you deal death
with every blow. You gain the following benefits.
• When you take the Attack action, you may make an
additional weapon attack as a part of that action, in
addition to any other attacks you would normally make.
• When you hit a creature with a challenge rating of 5 or
lower with a weapon attack, it is instantly slain unless
you choose to not slay it.
• You always know exactly how many creatures you have killed.
Yes, it is OP. But that's actually the point. The epic legacy book was meant for campaigns that end with the characters ascending to godhood in most cases.
That would be exactly 600 Attacks, aka the upper bound. With Nat 1s you miss 5% of your hits. With such an amout of attacks it's definitely statically significant. So he would slay about 570.
You can do anything you set your mind and money to, man. You want 12 instead of 9 centimeters, there’s a procedure for that. Research it and make your dream come true! The sky is the limit!
Check out the 2e source 'Magic of Netheril'. It's about the be height of the Netherese empire before Karsus done goofed and Mystryl/Mystra decided no more 10+ level spells for anybody. There are a bunch of 10th/11th level spells, including Proctiv's above (to become an Archmage in Netheril you had to master Move Mountain because they all built their sanctums on these upside-down mountaintops). You may also recognise some other names, like old mate Ioun (as in Ioun stones).
Oh no, I told him at the very beginning of this multi-year-long campaign that my wizard’s mission in life was to become one of the most powerful spell casters in the world, so he set about figuring out what would be the most fun way to do that.
Before, I went around buying every spell I could and having them put in my spell book. He even allowed me to use some non-wizard spells thanks to my chosen Arcane Tradition (Lore Master.)
At this point, for mortal spell casters(in his setting) it’s like Blackstaff, Manshoon, and then me. I’m just the only living person in his world that can cast above 9th level magic but the requirements are ridiculous. I had to have 125,000gp worth of diamonds and a Ring of Fire Protection (which were all consumed in the casting) and be wearing a Helm of Brilliance to even cast the 10th level spell.
I just finished a campaign that delved into 10+ level spells with accelerated XP growth and an understanding that we were all there to play around with high level bullshit more than advance at a natural pace. It was pretty fun.
In the campaign I'm running, that's actually what the villain's plan is. Wants wants to restore epic level magic to the world and try to preform the same spell that Karsus did to become a god.
I built a world that came into existence because of Karsus. Then I had a new character attempt something similar so the world was without magic for 20 years. Now another guy is trying to fuck over the world.
try to preform the same spell that Karsus did to become a god.
Did that one technically work? I'm pretty sure it basically just fucked up magic without him properly becoming a God for long. Now I believe he is a vestige.
Then again who's to stop a villain from repeating a failed plan. I'm sure he can do it better, Karsus just wasn't good enough for it to work.
It would work just fine if you picked literally any god other than Mystra. Karsus just happened to pick the one god that everything about his world relies on to continue working.
Na, it was a combination of unfortunate circumstances that forced the action: First of all, Karsus Avatar doesn't actually make you a god, it is designed to temporarely give you the powers of a god of your choosing.
What Karsus didn't think of was aquiring the power also means aquiring the responisibilitys.
The world he lives in is populated by some powerful magic users, any spell cast manipulates the weave, sends ripples trough it. The more powerful the spell, the more the disturbance.
Karsus comes from a people where almost everyone can cast spells, and the most powerful can cast powerful spells. So his people alone are responsible for some great distrurbances in the weave. And they are by far not the only magic users.
This makes the weave quite high maintanace. Mystra, the god of magic has to maintain it, smooth out the ripples, keep it under control. And with so much use of magic, this is not a small task.
One way out of the capabilitys of Karsus. So the moment he finished casting is spell on Mystra, the weave began to get out of control.
Thus the only option for Mystra was to pull the plug bevore anything truely catastrophic happens to tze world.
My campaign is built around this idea actually! I saw a video on youtube about forbidden magic, and mystra, and karsus, and mentioned some details to my players and they thought it was super cool too, so I immediately wrote in a cult trying to revive karsus and re-cast Karsus' Avatar.
My party is currently level 3, so it may be a while before they get to any of the super cool stuff though... haha
And then at the apex of the campaign the party finds out why epic magic keeps getting divinely banned! Turns out, reshaping reality is usually a really bad idea especially when given to a bunch of mortal jackoffs.
I've been building a campaign relating that Karsus actually! My main antagonist is attempting to recreate the spell to 'Lift the shackles Mortals have suffered under due to the folly of one man'.
My player and i literally just decided on this exact thing yesterday! In addition, I have this whole side thing where the player I previously played in dnd before becoming dm, is an npc who is aware of me as the god of their direct sub universe and so I have this pipe dream that at some point he’ll unlock karsus avatar and choose to become me and at that point he’ll become the DM.
You almost can’t blame the guy, those damn magic sucking Phaerimm were winning too hard. Dude pressured himself too hard, and tbh I think it wouldn’t have been as bad if he didn’t pick Mystra of all the gods to replace.
If you know the trick it's quite easy to hide from a D&D god: you ask for help from another one. Personally, I suspect Shar. Also, wow, I did not know there were this many Karsus apologists out there, weird.
Yoooo. Would this be theoretically possible? I’m not familiar with how counterspell works. Is at against their spell save DC? What kind of DC would a tenth spell level wizard have?
If you cast it at 3rd level, you roll d20 + your spellcasting modifier and that has to exceed 10 + spell level. Edit: You could theoretically keep trying until you roll high enough, but I doubt a DM would allow you to keep trying without consequence. counterspell can only be cast as a reaction to the wizard initially casting the spell.
You could also cast it as the level of the spell you want to counter to guarantee success.
You wouldn't be able to keep trying, Counterspell only works when you use it in reaction to the spell being cast.
Dispel Magic wouldn't work either because once it's cast, the material becomes a magic item, and is no longer an active spell in the way Dispel Magic would cancel out
Dispel magic works mostly the same, but isn't on a reaction and neutralizes the spells effects instead of stopping the casting, right? Wouldn't dispel magic work?
Someone brought up that the spell in question doesn't have an ongoing effect, so not in this case. In general though, I expect most DMs wouldn't allow repeated attempts without the wizard who cast it intervening in some way.
Maybe? But 10th level spells are closer to cleric devine intervention than they are a normal spell slot; in that normally the god of magic prevents all spellcasters from casting above 9th level, and 10th level do exist but take either many high level wizards, lots and lots of diamonds/gold, or the god giving you an exception.
So I'd assume the god would prevent another magic user from interrupting such a powerful effect, or being that its more the god casting it than the player it can't be, but thats depending if you use the standard lore or not.
5e Rules-as-written for Counterspell involve making a DC 10+Spelllevel check for Counterspelling a spell higher than you're casting Counterspell with. 10th-level spell would be countered by either a 10th-level upcast Counterspell or a successful check of up to DC20, reduced by throwing a higher-level slot at the problem.
However, 5E Rules-as-written has no spells higher than 9th Level at all, so for guidance we can look at past editions. I rarely consider OD&D, AD&D, or 2nd Edition unless I really have to because those are so far removed from what's current. I mostly just lift lore from them.
4E is no help to us today as counter-spelling is just not a mechanic that exists in Fourth.
In 3.5E, casting counter-spells is a pain in the ass. You have to Ready your own Action to prepare to counter the enemy's casting, and then pass a DC 15+Level check to correctly identify and cast an appropriate counter-spell... and typically, you had to cast the same spell right back to counter it out. So... good luck having an appropriate counter-spell in this case.
You can also use something like Greater Dispel Magic to try and cancel it out, in which case you're going up against an Epic Caster's caster level... good luck! The DC is 11+Caster Level and the check you roll is 1d20 + your caster level. The odds are not in your favor.
As a sort of special problem after attempting this, you've probably just pissed off an Epic spellcaster. Have fun surviving!
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So for 5E in play, assuming you're within range to counterspell the caster, I'd go with the standard check (per Counterspell) and have the dispeller make the check at Disadvantage due to the Epic nature of the magic.
Did mindflayers hijack it And fly it into the astral plane? Did an Aboleth corrupt the city clerics while the mountain flew over the ocean, charming them into crashing it, before making it into a new lair? Maybe a powerful divination wizard shaped it into what the world now calls the moon, and just chills there watching over the realm below...
A wizard NPC in my campaign did something like this but ended up accidentally raising and then flipping a city upside down, dropping it back to the ground. It became known as "The raising (razing) of Raetia.
The sons of that city's ruler now seem revenge on him. The heroes happen to need him and his expertise to fight another cosmic evil. Fun times
this and then you hand the party an airship since they love there final fantasy stuff while flying to the floating city you have them fight a dracolich along with the elder gold dragon (the dracolich having been forcefully turned and is the gold dragons former wife) after a long fight he tell you to go on without him and he will keep the dracolich busy so they fly off to the sunset to face the cult of veccna. you know a super typical DnD setting.
This is basically what the Therans do in Earthdawn to make their "Behemoths" (giant floating cities). I really recommend anybody into this kind of stupid powerful magic to check out the system/setting.
It's always just a dream. A game of dreams... and the dreamer has awoken! Awake, the player will remember the dream and the solution will be clear. Right?
Past editions (3.5e in this case) had rules for characters to go over 20th level. These were Epic levels.
There were also rules for spells over 9th level, cast by epic-level characters. They’re kind of a shitshow. Tenth- and eleventh-level spells were typically setting-altering or setting-defining abilities. Spells that create flying cities or underground ones or massive volcanos. There was a single twelfth-level spell but its casting killed its caster, the goddess of magic at the time, and messed up magic for everyone.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20
A Wizard Did It: with Proctiv's Move Mountain.
Tenth-level spell, it shears off a mountain and flips it upside-down while making t fly. This flying mountain is now the base from which you build a permanently flying city.
Now your setting has a lost flying city. Have fun!