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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Spell Mastery (revised feat)



rferries
2018-11-06, 07:52 PM
Spell Mastery
Your magic easily springs to mind.

Prerequisite
Prepared caster (cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, or wizard) level 1st.

Benefits
You may spontaneously cast any 0th-level spell in your spellbook (if you are a wizard) or any spell on your class spell list (if you are a divine spellcaster, including spells from your domains if you are a cleric) by expending a spell slot of equal or greater level.

Special
You may select this feat more than once. Each time you do, the level of spells you may spontaneously cast increases by one (to a maximum of 9th-level spells).

A wizard may select Spell Mastery as one of her bonus wizard feats.

rferries
2018-11-06, 07:57 PM
With this revision, an 18th-level human wizard can burn all his feats to cast all his spells spontaneously - more spells known but still fewer spells per day than a sorcerer.

nonsi
2018-11-12, 07:36 AM
With this revision, an 18th-level human wizard can burn all his feats to cast all his spells spontaneously - more spells known but still fewer spells per day than a sorcerer.

An 18th-level human wizard will have 11 feats at the very least.
12 if DM approves swapping familiar for a feat. A reasonable request in my book.
13 w/ flaws
14 if both
15 max at level 20

5 feats is a lot to work with when you have spontaneous access to all your spells and the list is big and versatile.
you still have 4 feats to put on metamagic if you're counting on Automatic Metamagic.

And if you agree to a compromise and neglect your two highest SLs, that's even more metamagic feats for some more power abuse.

IDK. My Spidy Senses scream Tier ZERO.

noob
2018-11-12, 07:51 AM
Also since a cleric can do that it means a cleric can get all cleric spells up to level 8 as spontaneous spells(with a bonus feat race) and it is quite scary on its own.

rferries
2018-11-15, 06:14 AM
An 18th-level human wizard will have 11 feats at the very least.
12 if DM approves swapping familiar for a feat. A reasonable request in my book.
13 w/ flaws
14 if both
15 max at level 20

5 feats is a lot to work with when you have spontaneous access to all your spells and the list is big and versatile.
you still have 4 feats to put on metamagic if you're counting on Automatic Metamagic.

And if you agree to a compromise and neglect your two highest SLs, that's even more metamagic feats for some more power abuse.

IDK. My Spidy Senses scream Tier ZERO.

The standard 20th-level human wizard has 12 feats, and would have to sacrifice 10 of them to get 9th-level spontaneous casting. This seems like a fair enough trade-off (compare a sorcerer that loads up on Extra Spell or a Psion that takes Expanded Knowledge - in many cases there's little difference from the revised Spell Mastery, as so many spells are useless chaff).

You have a point about ways to get extra feats but as those are all optional rules it's simply a matter of the GM saying "you can have Spell Mastery OR extra feats, not both".


Also since a cleric can do that it means a cleric can get all cleric spells up to level 8 as spontaneous spells(with a bonus feat race) and it is quite scary on its own.

By my count a 20th-level human cleric would only get spontaneous 7th-level spells (by using up all 8 of their feats)... as above, you'd probably be better off playing a Favoured Soul.

noob
2018-11-15, 03:37 PM
The standard 20th-level human wizard has 12 feats, and would have to sacrifice 10 of them to get 9th-level spontaneous casting. This seems like a fair enough trade-off (compare a sorcerer that loads up on Extra Spell or a Psion that takes Expanded Knowledge - in many cases there's little difference from the revised Spell Mastery, as so many spells are useless chaff).

You have a point about ways to get extra feats but as those are all optional rules it's simply a matter of the GM saying "you can have Spell Mastery OR extra feats, not both".



By my count a 20th-level human cleric would only get spontaneous 7th-level spells (by using up all 8 of their feats)... as above, you'd probably be better off playing a Favoured Soul.

Favored souls cast spontaneous spells among a few spells known.
The cleric with that feat a lot of times could possibly cast any cleric spell of level lower than 7.
More with bonus feats from domains and abuse of the fact that if you get a feat from a domain that you already had then you can pick any feat.(so you can basically pick one extra feat per domain if you use retraining afterwards to retrain the feat you picked before gaining the domain in order for the domain feat to be a duplicate)
with the mentioned trick you can get up to level 9 cleric spells as spontaneous spells.

nonsi
2018-11-15, 04:16 PM
You have a point about ways to get extra feats but as those are all optional rules it's simply a matter of the GM saying "you can have Spell Mastery OR extra feats, not both".


The tradeoff is obvious, but if you allow Spell Mastery, then melees and skillmonkeys just get shafted (in the sense of reduced build options) w/o gaining anything in return.

rferries
2018-11-15, 06:33 PM
Favored souls cast spontaneous spells among a few spells known.
The cleric with that feat a lot of times could possibly cast any cleric spell of level lower than 7.
More with bonus feats from domains and abuse of the fact that if you get a feat from a domain that you already had then you can pick any feat.(so you can basically pick one extra feat per domain if you use retraining afterwards to retrain the feat you picked before gaining the domain in order for the domain feat to be a duplicate)
with the mentioned trick you can get up to level 9 cleric spells as spontaneous spells.

Haha, if your DM lets you gt away with that then they only have themselves to blame :D


The tradeoff is obvious, but if you allow Spell Mastery, then melees and skillmonkeys just get shafted (in the sense of reduced build options) w/o gaining anything in return.

Allow martials the bonus feat options then, but not spellcasters. It's ultimately a function of spellcasters having more options in general (whether you stick to core or not).

nonsi
2018-11-16, 12:34 AM
Allow martials the bonus feat options then, but not spellcasters. It's ultimately a function of spellcasters having more options in general (whether you stick to core or not).


Ah, but then there's multiclassing. Where would you draw the line?
Plus, flaws are a means of tradeoff - either you allow the rule categorically or ban it. You can't say "this character can exploit that game option and the other can't". That's discrimination.


What you could do to maintain balance is to restrict Spell Mastery to 1/2 that class' highest SL (rounded down).
E.g. If a 10th level wizard could gain mastery only as high as 2nd SL, then there's no real problem.
Also, this will eliminate the Wizard's obvious advantage over other classes.

rferries
2018-11-16, 04:11 AM
Ah, but then there's multiclassing. Where would you draw the line?
Plus, flaws are a means of tradeoff - either you allow the rule categorically or ban it. You can't say "this character can exploit that game option and the other can't". That's discrimination.

A multiclass character would already be somewhat balanced WRT this feat, in that they would sacrifice spell levels by dipping in non-caster classes.

It's not discriminating if the GM says something along the lines of "to prevent munckinism I'm limiting the amount of non-core stuff you can use. You can pick one of the following: a homebrew feat OR a variant class OR a prestige class etc, etc from this pre-approved selection". It's academic anyways as martials will never be equivalent to spellcasters - it's just inherent to 3.5.


What you could do to maintain balance is to restrict Spell Mastery to 1/2 that class' highest SL (rounded down).
E.g. If a 10th level wizard could gain mastery only as high as 2nd SL, then there's no real problem.
Also, this will eliminate the Wizard's obvious advantage over other classes.

Sure! The GM can even set a hard limit on how many times you can take the feat e.g. for max spontaneous caster of 3rd level (or lower/higher) spells.