It's Like A Spellcaster, Except It's Not[Mage Feats, 3.5, PEACH]

Background-You always see magic users in stories that can only use one type of magic, or can use lots of types of magic, but doesn't do more than one or two things with them. Also, many of my players wanted to be able to do one or two things with magic, but didn't want to take all of the spellcasting levels needed to do so, as they would really have almost no use for the earlier spells and spell slots.That's where these came from.

Background

In the legends and stories of long ago, many hear of famous magicians who used one kind of magic, or used many kinds of magic, but could not do more than one or two things with each type. While many wizards and other spellcasters claim these heroes as members of their class and lament that there are no such magic-users today, they know better. These heroic magic-users did not belong to any spellcasting class, and many people of the same kind exist today, looked down upon by normal spellcasters because they do not possess the same repertoire or versitality as they do, and also because they usually do not devote themselves to magic as much as normal spellcasters do. These people are Mages.

Magic's Child[Mage]
Prerequisites: Does not have access to any spellcasting levels
Benefits: You begin your journey into the mastery of magic in a different way than most. You first gain the ability to cast any one 0-level spell a number of times per day equal to the number of Mage feats you have. This spell has a caster level equal to 1/2 your level + the number of Mage feats you have, and a DC equal to 10 + Cha modifier + the number of Mage feats you have. Secondly, you gain a small pool of Magic Points to power your magic with, equal to 2 points + 1 point per Mage feat you possess. These points are refreshed at the start of each day and at the start of every encounter. You may expend 1 Magic Point in order to cast the 0-level spell one more time per day.
Special: Should the Mage get access to levels in any spellcasting class, he or she may not take any more Mage feats, as learning further of such usage of magic while studying traditional use tends to lead to only confusion.

Magic Shield[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefit: You may expend Magic Points to grant protection to themselves or an ally in a nearby square. As a standard action, the Mage expends Magic Points for this at a rate of 1 Magic Point per +1 bonus to AC. This effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to the number of Mage feats you possess.

Arcane Barrier[Mage]
Prerequisite: Magic's Child, Magic Shield, 6th level
Benefit: You learn how to erect a barrier to block out foes. By expending 1 Magic Point as a standard action, the Mage may erect a wall that grants complete concealment, and is 5 ft wide by 10 feet tall and 6 inches thick. This lasts for 1 round/Mage feat you have.

Mage's Calling[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefit: You learn how to call objects to your side. You may expend magic points to call one non-magicla item weighing 2 pounds per Magic Point spent until your Magic Points are refreshed. This item may remain for up to one hour per Mage feat you have.

Summon The Unknown[Mage]
Prerequisite: Magic's Child, Mage's Calling
Benefit: You learn how to summon a range of creatures. However, these creatures tend to be created partially out of magic. By expending 1 or more Magic Points, the Mage may summon any creature of CR1 or lower. This creature has a number of binding points as though it were an Eidolon equal to 5 per Magic Point spent. The mage may spend binding points in order to increase the CR by 1 per 5 spent, with the creature having a minimum of 5 binding points.

Enhanced Summons[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Mage's Calling, Summon The Unknown, 6th level
Benefit: You learn how to enhance his summoned creatures. By spending binding points, the Mage may apply any template to the creature, at a rate of 5 binding points per +1 CR of the template.

Finder[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefit: You learn how to detect things. You may name 1 category of thing + 1 category of thing per two Mage feat you possess(ex. animals, plants, pastries, clothing). This effect has the same effect as Detect Magic, except it detects the thing named, and has a range of 20 feet + 10 feet per two Mage Points spent beyond the first. Once per day per Mage feat, you may specify something within the category and treat its aura as being one step stronger than it is (ex. Donkeys, Grass, pie, shoes).

Foresight[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Finder, 6th level
Benefit: You learn how to see events in the brief future or recent past. By expending Magic Points, you may find out what occurs up to 1 round/Magic Point in the future, granting a +1 to AC for those rounds, or see one event in the past that occured within 1 hour/Magic Point spent.

Charming[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefits: You haven't quite learned how to enchant people so that they do as you say, but you can influence one or two things here or there. By expending Magic Points, you can improve one creature's attitude. You must spend 2 Magic Points for the first step up, 3 for the second, and so on. This takes a standard action. Also as a standard action, by expending 1 Magic Point, you can cause a creature to involuntarily jerk, causing it to jerk and loose it's next action. These effects allow a Will save to negate.

Controller[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Charming, 6th level
Benefits: You learn how to charm people magically. You gain 2 Magic Points that can only be used on this feat. By advancing a target humanoid's attitude towards you beyond Friendly, you can have them act as though they were Charmed for 1 hour per Mage feat. By advancing their attitude another level beyond that, they act as though Dominated for the same duration as the Charm effect. Non-humanoids require an additional 2 points for each the Charm and the Dominate steps. This effect allows a Will save to negate.

Energy Blow[Mage]
Prerequisite: Magic's Child
Benefits: The Mage may choose one type of energy. By expending 1 Magic Point, the Mage may make a ranged attack at 30 ft that deals 1d8 damage of the energy type chosen. By expending more Magic Points, the Mage may add 1d8 to the attack per two Magic Points spent.

Mage's Aftermath[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Energy Blow, 6th level
Benefit: By expending an additional 2 Magic Points when using the Energy Blow feat, you may change the attack into a 30 foot cone.

Seeming[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefit: You learn how to create simple illusions for the senses. By expending 1 Magic Point, he may create a simple visual, olfactory, auditory, tactile, or taste illusion(ex. Image like Silent Image, make something smell bad, create a simple sound like something dropping, make something feel smooth, make something taste yummy). By expending 2 Magic Points, the Mage may make more complex illusions(ex.Disguising someone as though Disguise Self, Make something smell like another specific thing, make intelligible sounds of people talking, make something feel as though it had a complex texture, make something taste like a specific other thing). These illusions may last up to as long as 1 round per Mage feat you have.

Sensory Weave[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Seeming, 6th level
Benefits: You learn how to weave illusions of individual senses into one complex one. You may create multiple sensory effects in one illusion by spending the Magic Points necessary to create those effects, plus 1 additional Magic Point.

Bone Dance[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefit: By expending 1 Magic Point per CR, you may animate any corpse or skeleton within range as though it were under the effect of Animate Dead for a number of rounds equal to the number of Mage feats you possess.

Change Looks[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child
Benefits: You learn how to change your looks a bit. By expending Magic Points, you may gain the benefit of Minor Shapechange, as the Changeling racial feature, for a number of hours equal to the number of Magic Points spent.

Change Shape[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic's Child, Change Looks, 6th level
Benefit: You gain the ability to change into alternate forms, as per the Alternate Form supernatural ability. If the form is of the same type as you, it costs 1 Magic Point to change into. If of the Animal or Magical Beast types(excepting the Tarrasque), it costs 2 Magic Points. If of any other type than those, the form costs 3 Magic Points to change into. This effect lasts for a number of minutes equal to the number of Mage Feats you have. You gain a number of alternate forms equal to 1/2 the number of Mage feats you have, and none may have more HD than you do.

Energy Sheathe[Mage]
Prerequisites: Magic Shield, Energy Blow, 9th level
Benefit: By expending 2 Magic Points, you may erect a protective shield of energy. Any enemy striking you takes 2 points of damage of the same kind of energy you chose for Energy Blow. By expending additional points, the damage increases by 1 point per Magic Point spent. This effect lasts 1 round/level.


Well, that's all for now. Please PEACH.

No one wants to comment/PEACH?

Definitely interesting. I need some time to sit down and look at this, but the Bone Dance definitely caught my eye.

Is the Arcane Barrier solid or does it purely provide concealment?

If solid, how strong is it?

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Originally Posted by Benly

Is the Arcane Barrier solid or does it purely provide concealment?

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Solid.

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If solid, how strong is it?

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I'd say it has a Hardness of 2 or 3.

Any more comments/PEACHing?

A couple of questions:

1) What are the ranges for Magic Shield, Arcane Barrier, Mage's Calling, Summon the Unknown, Charming, and Bone Dance?

2) Do Charming and Controller allow a save to resist?

God feats overall, I think I'll use all of these n my next campaign.

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Originally Posted by JustineSane

A couple of questions:

1) What are the ranges for Magic Shield, Arcane Barrier, Mage's Calling, Summon the Unknown, Charming, and Bone Dance?

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They're pretty close range, so I'd probably say Personal for Magic Shield and Mage's Callilng, 10 ft + 5 ft/Mage feat for Summon the Unknown and Mage's Calling, and Within 5 feet for Charming and Arcane Barrier.

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2) Do Charming and Controller allow a save to resist?

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They should. Added.

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God feats overall, I think I'll use all of these n my next campaign.

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Thanks! Let me know how it goes.

Change Shape and Charming are STRONG. As written, I get all the Ex, Su, and Sp abilities of my alternate forms, and there is no size limitation.

Charming can, 1/encounter, completely Diplomancy 1 person. Just so you realize that you just gave something that it usually takes at least 6 levels to get out at level 3, 1 if you are playing a human or with flaws.

Mage's Calling needs to explain duration a little better.

Summon the Unknown and Advanced Summons have a little problem; namely, Advanced Summons should work off the CR bonus from a template, not the LA bonus.

Just what I've seen so far.

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Originally Posted by Amechra

Change Shape and Charming are STRONG. As written, I get all the Ex, Su, and Sp abilities of my alternate forms, and there is no size limitation.

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That's not how it works.
. Still, I can get the size limitation thing. I'll think of something.

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Charming can, 1/encounter, completely Diplomancy 1 person. Just so you realize that you just gave something that it usually takes at least 6 levels to get out at level 3, 1 if you are playing a human or with flaws.

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Not really seeing how. It costs 5 Magic Points to move up 2 steps. Which, in combat, might get you a neutral attitude. If you're lucky.

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Mage's Calling needs to explain duration a little better.

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How so?

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Summon the Unknown and Advanced Summons have a little problem; namely, Advanced Summons should work off the CR bonus from a template, not the LA bonus.

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Eh, maybe. Don't really see why, though.

Interesting feats, though the lack of phasing, incise ility and knock for the magical thief sort of disappoints me. Three mechanical issues I noticed:

Controller seems redundant since it doesn't really change the way charming works and fanatic already exists after friendly. There's also the fact that it'll probably take a ton of points to get that far.

I also don't like the way points advance. As things stand it locks you into the feet chain even if you only want 1 or 2 of the abilities. This is especially true of the charm, summon, and bonedance feats (carm because it costs so much and summon and bondance because they cost so much and key their duration off of your feats).

For bone dance, aren't the CRs of most monsters going to be atleast equal to your level? If they are this ability will be almost unusable at higher levels, and even if you can pull it off it won't be particularly helpful since the undead will naturally be much weaker than what ever you're fighting and you wont have many of them.

Change Shape needs to explicitly state that it keys of Alternate Form, otherwise it DOES give all the special abilities of the creature you shift into.

I misread Mage's Calling, and I also misread Charming (I read it as "if you spend 2 points, they go up by 1 step, and one step for every +1 point spent afterwards" not as the (probably intended) "+1 step: 2 points, +2 steps: 5 points, and so on.")

I'm saying base it off CR because, if you check pretty much any template, they have a LA and CR adjustment. However, there are a a great deal of templates that have LA -, which means you couldn't use THOSE templates, whereas every template (to my knowledge at least) has a numerical CR adjustment.

I concur on the fact that this seem to pin you into one feat chain. so I really think you need a VoP equivalent that denies you the ability to ever grab actual casting in exchange for gobs of these feats.

I have to say, though, I love your work. I always get a kick out of the Animator, and the Cantrippin' thread fills me with glee (yay for Magic Man!)

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Originally Posted by Amechra

Change Shape needs to explicitly state that it keys of Alternate Form, otherwise it DOES give all the special abilities of the creature you shift into.

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Stated.

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I'm saying base it off CR because, if you check pretty much any template, they have a LA and CR adjustment. However, there are a a great deal of templates that have LA -, which means you couldn't use THOSE templates, whereas every template (to my knowledge at least) has a numerical CR adjustment.

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It's been changed.

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I concur on the fact that this seem to pin you into one feat chain. so I really think you need a VoP equivalent that denies you the ability to ever grab actual casting in exchange for gobs of these feats.

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I think it could still work fine with actual spellcasting. It has in the past.

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I have to say, though, I love your work. I always get a kick out of the Animator, and the Cantrippin' thread fills me with glee (yay for Magic Man!)

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Thanks. It's always good to hear when someone likes my work.

I love it. You could create a base class for this.:sm0.allsmile:

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Originally Posted by Scholar23

I love it. You could create a base class for this.:sm0.allsmile:

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Just take Pantologist and take these as bonus feats.

Seems interestingly usable for a... what was it called... e6? campaign.

I was thinking the same thing. The same can be said for any of Pyromancer999's feat chains, though.

This is a GOOD thing. There aren't many people who make stuff this useful for e6.

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Originally Posted by Amechra

I was thinking the same thing. The same can be said for any of Pyromancer999's feat chains, though.

This is a GOOD thing. There aren't many people who make stuff this useful for e6.

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I suppose these are quite good for an E6 campaign, although that wasn't the original aim. Basically, with a lot of feats, you get one static bonus when you take the feat. But why not have a set of feats that scale with the number of them you take? This was originally just for Heritage feats, but I've tried to expand upon that.

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

I suppose these are quite good for an E6 campaign, although that wasn't the original aim. Basically, with a lot of feats, you get one static bonus when you take the feat. But why not have a set of feats that scale with the number of them you take? This was originally just for Heritage feats, but I've tried to expand upon that.

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Mainly because your scaling doesn't work at higher levels and because it forces you to take feats you may not want or use to make the ones you do relevant.

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Originally Posted by Epsilon Rose

Mainly because your scaling doesn't work at higher levels and because it forces you to take feats you may not want or use to make the ones you do relevant.

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With scaling feat chains, it's all about how much you want to get into whatever they're based around. Also, the scaling feat chains I've made are designed to be decent even if you only take a few as it is. Also remember that taking additional feats with scaling increases the values of the ones you already have.

Right, but if I recall correctly most of those are constant effect or otherwise still relevant if you only have one or two. Many of yours wont be. Some of them will be struggling for relevance at higher levels even if you only take these feats.
Just because they should get better as you take more doesn't mean you should absolutely be required to take them all to use them.

Some of these feats, like energy blow and finder, work like you'd want (i.e. they're functional but get better with more feats), others like bone dance require you to take them all and probably still wont matter (at level 20 without flaws you get a single undead that's 11 levels [7 in pf] bellow everything that's relevant and lacking most of it's abilities and that required literally all of your feats to create).

What are the CL of the 0-level spells cast by a Magic's Child? And how do you determine the DCs for said spells and abilities listed as giving saves?

Good job. This is a fun idea, one that would be a great addition to a game that completely eliminated magic classes.

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Originally Posted by Welknair

What are the CL of the 0-level spells cast by a Magic's Child?

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I'd presume equal to 1/2 HD + number of Mage feats.

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And how do you determine the DCs for said spells and abilities listed as giving saves?

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How about 10 + number of Mage feats?

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Originally Posted by wayfare

Good job. This is a fun idea, one that would be a great addition to a game that completely eliminated magic classes.

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Thanks. Actually, once I get the time, I plan to make a PrC for this set of feats, as well as a few other sets of feats I've made, when I have the time.

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Originally Posted by Pyromancer999

I'd presume equal to 1/2 HD + number of Mage feats.


How about 10 + number of Mage feats?

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Both sound reasonable, though usually spellcasting DCs have something to do with a mental stat.

CL and DC are kind of important to casting, don't you think?

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Originally Posted by Welknair

Both sound reasonable, though usually spellcasting DCs have something to do with a mental stat.

CL and DC are kind of important to casting, don't you think?

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I'll add on a Cha bonus, as that seems to be important to casting.

There are pretty good, but you should edit the original post to include the ranges of the abilities, also, the arcane barer one needs to be edited to include its hardness, what material type the barrier is, if none or magical you need to list the hardness and the hp/inch and a break dc would also be nice(if it can be broken by a strength at all... that should also be listed).

Also, most of the abilities are a bit underpowered, I think most of the add on abilities(like adding more than 1d8 damage to the energy strike ability) costs too much. you would have to have 3 feats to do 3d8 1/day ... at level 9(minimum). its a little week. Maybe make it be 1 point for each 1d8(this is just an example please extrapilate from this example the same centiment about all of the feats).

Um, I think you may need to clarify Mage's Calling. As written, it means I can summon any item at all, such as magic items or even artifacts, from anywhere at all even if I have never even heard of it, and I keep it permanently. I'm guessing that is not what is intended.

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Originally Posted by Thugorp

There are pretty good, but you should edit the original post to include the ranges of the abilities, also, the arcane barer one needs to be edited to include its hardness, what material type the barrier is, if none or magical you need to list the hardness and the hp/inch and a break dc would also be nice(if it can be broken by a strength at all... that should also be listed).

Also, most of the abilities are a bit underpowered, I think most of the add on abilities(like adding more than 1d8 damage to the energy strike ability) costs too much. you would have to have 3 feats to do 3d8 1/day ... at level 9(minimum). its a little week. Maybe make it be 1 point for each 1d8(this is just an example please extrapilate from this example the same centiment about all of the feats).

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Hmmm...suppose I could take some time to go over this and revise a bit.

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Originally Posted by Dragon Star

Um, I think you may need to clarify Mage's Calling. As written, it means I can summon any item at all, such as magic items or even artifacts, from anywhere at all even if I have never even heard of it, and I keep it permanently. I'm guessing that is not what is intended.

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Although I doubt you'd summon items you've never heard of, I get the gist of what you're saying. Corrected, thanks.