Revised Barbarian Class

Revised Fighter Class

Epic Advice Column

Epic Demographics

Epic Encounter Levels

Superhero Relativity

Absolutes: Part 4

Absolutes: Part 3

Absolutes: Part 2

Absolutes: Part 1

Part Three: Anti-Magic

Anti-Magic is an annoying absolute in that its very inconsistent. It affects epic magic items but not necessarily epic spells. It also becomes wholly redundant at Immortal Levels, seemingly having no effect upon either deities or indeed artifacts. This leads to massive problems when juxtaposing deities and epic characters and my recent research shows that magic items generate one third of a player characters effective class level, and the dichotomy is worse for spellcasters naturally.

By employing anti-magic as a dampening effect rather than a black and white on/off switch we can avoid any unnecessary discrepancies.

Dampening Anti-Magic

The proposed change is pretty straightforward. Basically, instead of anti-magic totally nullifying magic, it should reduce it, kind of like reverse metamagic (in fact exactly like reverse metamagic). The sixth-level spell Anti-Magic Field should halve the effects of spells (including epic spells); spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities and magic items (including artifacts).

• Bonuses (halved, round down)
• Chance of Effect (halved, round down)
• Damage (halved, round down)
• DCs (-4)

eg. A 10d6 Fireball (DC 18/half) striking someone within an Anti-Magic Field would only deal 5d6 damage and the save would be DC 14.

eg. A Cloak of Major Displacement would only bestow a 25% miss chance (instead of 50%)

eg. A +5 Vorpal Sword would be treated as a +2 Vorpal Sword and the Vorpal Property would only have a 50% chance of severing the head on a natural '20'.

eg. A character wearing an Epic Belt of Strength +10 would only gain +5 strength from the item while within the area of the anti-magic effect.

Epic Anti-Magic

For every six additional levels added to the spell level, the effect of the anti-magic is increased, changing to 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6 etc. So for instance a 12th-level Anti-Magic Field spell would have the following properties:

• Bonuses (one third, round down)
• Chance of Effect (one third, round down)
• Damage (one third, round down)
• DCs (-8)

Mega-magic...?

If Anti-magic reduces the effects of magic, would it be possible to create a Mega-Magic Field within which magic would be amplified? If so invert all the penalties for Anti-Magic into Bonuses for Mega-Magic.

• Bonuses (doubled, round down)
• Chance of Effect (doubled, round down)
• Damage (doubled, round down)
• DCs (+4)