Arcane Preparation, Versatile Spellcaster, and turning wizard into a 1 level dip.

The following is pretty close to TO, and more of a case of "the rules don't say I can't", but I'd like feedback.

Take a level in a class that spontaneously casts spells. I like druids, because their class features are ridonculous. For a feat, pick up versatile spellcaster (note that you don't have to be a arcane caster to qualify). Then take a level in wizard. You can now cast wizard spells spontaneously by burning two lower level spell slots. But wait, it gets better. Pick up arcane preparation and another 19 levels of druid, or maybe mix in some Arcane Heirophant/Mystic Theurge. Now you can prepare wizard spells in your druid slots.

But wait spuddles, I hear you saying, what good do first level wizard spell do me at level 20? Note the mechanics by which wizards learn spells- you get two per wizard levels, and you can also add spells by making a spellcraft check. If a level 1 wizard finds a copy of Wish, he only needs to hit a DC 24 spellcraft check, and he knows wish. Which means as a spell known, you can put it next to one of those 9th level druid spells.

Neat trick, but does it work?

I would say yes, but also why not just go a path that gives you 17th level casting from both, so you get that many more spells per day?

Usually this trick uses Magical Training.

I like to do the same sort of thing with Duskblades and Dread Necros. Why bother going into Ur Priest when a Dread Necro level and Versatile Spellcaster gives you the best spells (Slay Living, Harm, Bestow Curse) and make it easier to get Arcane Strike? :smalltongue:

Arcane Prep + Magical Training sounds like a nice combo to get some more Duskblade spell, though. It would make Metamagic easier to deal with as well...

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Originally Posted by eggs

Usually this trick uses Magical Training.

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I am of the opinion that Magical Trainin doesn't work. It gives you a book and 3 cantrips that you prepare And cast as a wizard. How that gets stretched into learning new wizard spells, I don't know. Only wizards and archivists have a the spellcraft check to learn new spells, as far as I know.

Except a Wizard needs a spellbook to prepare and cast spells, do it not?

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Originally Posted by Snowbluff

Except a Wizard needs a spellbook to prepare and cast spells, do it not?

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By that argument, a cat is a mammal, a dog is a mammal, therefore a cat is a dog.

Learning Spells isn't Preparing Spells, the same way Casting Spes isn't Preparing Spells.

It even says you gain a Wizard's Spellbook. If I remember correctly, anyone can write spells in these things as it is, and it's your book, so you know the spells in it, as a wizard.

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Originally Posted by Snowbluff

It even says you gain a Wizard's Spellbook. If I remember correctly, anyone can write spells in these things as it is, and it's your book, so you know the spells in it, as a wizard.

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you gain the ability to cast specific cantrips, that doesn't give you any access to, or the ability to use, wizard/sorcerer spells simply because you have a spellbook that functions similar to a wizard's spellbook for your cantrips.

Player's Guide to Faerun p. 41:
"Magical Training: ... You have a spellbook..."

Rules Compendium p. 160:
"Spellcasters who use spellbooks can add new spells to theirspellbooks through several methods..."

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Originally Posted by eggs

Player's Guide to Faerun p. 41:
"Magical Training: ... You have a spellbook..."

Rules Compendium p. 160:
"Spellcasters who use spellbooks can add new spells to theirspellbooks through several methods..."

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And you're choosing to interpret that as "if someone puts it in my spellbook, I can cast it" which is silly, because you aren't a wizard, you have no access to wizard spells beyond the 2 or so cantrips you get from the feat.

Well. If you have a caster class that isn't a wizard, you could always use Versatile spellcaster to fuel it.

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Originally Posted by eggs

Player's Guide to Faerun p. 41:
"Magical Training: ... You have a spellbook..."

Rules Compendium p. 160:
"Spellcasters who use spellbooks can add new spells to theirspellbooks through several methods..."

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That's what I get for using the SRD.

Well played sir.

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Originally Posted by umbergod

And you're choosing to interpret that as "if someone puts it in my spellbook, I can cast it" which is silly, because you aren't a wizard, you have no access to wizard spells beyond the 2 or so cantrips you get from the feat.

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1. Magical Training gives a spellbook, spells from the wizard list and wizard spellcasting mechanic.
2. Rules Compendium permits any spellcaster using a spellbook to write further spells from the class they cast from to their list.
3. Wizard Known Spells are defined as spells in a spellbook
4. Versatile Spellcaster allows a character to spontaneously cast spells known.

So yes, I do choose to interpret it as spontaneous access to anything the character scribes in his spellbook. Because doing otherwise requires silly mental gymnastics.

Magical Training gives you a spellbook containing 0-level spells, and doesn't require you to make checks to prepare them as though someone else scribed them there. That means your character scribed those spells himself, and it would stand to reason that he could do so again.

This is further supported by every word of rules pertinent to the subject.

"A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook," a character who uses a spellbook is indeed considered to know every spell he's put into it.

A flimsy, "B-b-but, what if he can't?" just isn't going to knock it down.

Granted, some DMs may require the character to open his spellbook to the appropriate spell and read it from the book as he casts it via Versatile Spellcaster (unless he's selected it for Spell Mastery), but that's more a flavor/sense choice than RAW.

Sticking feathers in your ass does not make you a chicken; having a spellbook doesn't make you a wizard. The quoted bit from the SRD specifically says "wizard". The rules compendium, though, changes it to spellcaster. So yeah go nuts.

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Originally Posted by Spuddles

Sticking feathers in your ass does not make you a chicken

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Its a good start though.

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Originally Posted by eggs

1. Magical Training gives a spellbook, spells from the wizard list and wizard spellcasting mechanic.
2. Rules Compendium permits any spellcaster using a spellbook to write further spells from the class they cast from to their list.
3. Wizard Known Spells are defined as spells in a spellbook
4. Versatile Spellcaster allows a character to spontaneously cast spells known.

So yes, I do choose to interpret it as spontaneous access to anything the character scribes in his spellbook. Because doing otherwise requires silly mental gymnastics.

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By that logic, any spells an archivist scribes into a wizard's spellbook are suddenly spells known by the wizard.

Jeez people, we already know what the general rules for known spells are. A known spell is a spell that an arcane spellcaster has learned and can prepare. Sure there are specific exceptions for some cases, but those are just that, specific exceptions for only those cases and no other. You can't generalize these exceptions without going into houserule territory.

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Originally Posted by umbergod

By that logic, any spells an archivist scribes into a wizard's spellbook are suddenly spells known by the wizard.

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Thank you for demonstrating what a Red Herring is, I'll address it anyway.

Archivists get a prayerbook, which is very intentionally not a spellbook.

Furthermore, the Wizard would still have to make the Spellcraft DC to learn the spell himself before preparing it from a copy someone else scribed, per the rules on borrowed spellbooks. Note that a Wizard can only use the Spellcraft skill to learn spells from his own class spell list.

You're probably trying to imply that by scribing a spell into someone else's book, the original owner of that book is able to bypass the rules on borrowed spellbooks. The rules only enable a character to scribe spells into their own spellbook, not that of another character. Nowhere is it implied that a character can scribe a spell into just any spellbook, every sentence on this topic includes an explicit possessive with regard to whose spellbook it applies.

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Originally Posted by umbergod

By that logic, any spells an archivist scribes into a wizard's spellbook are suddenly spells known by the wizard.

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No, a spell an Archivist, with an Archivist's spell list, scribes into a spellbook would be an Archivist spell.

This is entirely consistent with the spell a character who casts like a Wizard from the Wizard spell list scribes into a spellbook being a Wizard spell.

(Not that this is relevant. Scribing the spell into a spellbook at all means knowing it. Spellcasters with spellbooks can scribe spells from their class lists into spellbooks. Magical training makes a character into a spellcaster with a spellbook.)

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Originally Posted by eggs

No, a spell an Archivist, with an Archivist's spell list, scribes into a spellbook would be an Archivist spell.

This is entirely consistent with the spell a character who casts like a Wizard from the Wizard spell list scribes into a spellbook being a Wizard spell.

(Not that this is relevant. Scribing the spell into a spellbook at all means knowing it. Spellcasters with spellbooks can scribe spells from their class lists into spellbooks. Magical training makes a character into a spellcaster with a spellbook.)

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No, really where are people getting this? If the rules on known spells have changed I would like to know about it.

The Spellbook = Spells known part? The glossary of the PHB, which defines "known spells" as spells in a spellbook.

The "spellbook users can scribe spells into their spellbook" part? The spellbook rules, which the Rules Compendium applied to all spellcasters who use spellbooks.

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Originally Posted by eggs

The Spellbook = Spells known part? The glossary of the PHB, which defines spells in a spellbook as spells known.

The scribing spells into a spellbook part? The spellbook rules, which the Rules Compendium applied to all spellcasters who use spellbooks.

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Spells known for a wizard. This applies to absolutely zero other cases.

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Originally Posted by olentu

Spells known for a wizard. This applies to absolutely zero other cases.

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I think we both know that's a frail distinction that's entirely a function of Wizard being the only spellbook user in the PHB.

I'll dig around for glossary articles written once other spellbook users existed to answer this, but for now, I'll just point out the Wu Jen's Spell Secret for precedent: a class feature that references the Wu Jen's spells known, which, according to the Wizard-exclusive interpretation, the Wu Jen doesn't have.

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Originally Posted by eggs

I think we both know the frailty of that distinction is entirely a function of Wizard being the only spellbook user in the PHB.

I'll dig around for glossary articles written once other spellbook users existed to answer this, but for now, I'll just point out the Wu Jen's Spell Secret for precedent: a class feature that references the Wu Jen's spells known, which, according to the Wizard-exclusive interpretation, the Wu Jen doesn't have.

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No, there is a general rule that gives known spells that is followed by specific exceptions for wizards, sorcerers, and bards. The general rule is "A spell that an arcane spellcaster has learned and can prepare." And even if we consider the situation that it is impossible for a Wu Jen to learn spells and prepare spells there are always feats or the like that give exception to this general rule allowing for the possibility of known spells regardless.

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Originally Posted by olentu

No, there is a general rule that gives known spells that is followed by specific exceptions for wizards, sorcerers, and bards. The general rule is "A spell that an arcane spellcaster has learned and can prepare." And even if we consider the situation that it is impossible for a Wu Jen to learn spells and prepare spells there are always feats or the like that give exception to this general rule allowing for the possibility of known spells regardless.

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by the bold and your own logic, your trick doesn't work anymore. The wizard can't prepare those higher level spells, therefore they don't count as spells known for him.

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Originally Posted by olentu

No, there is a general rule that gives known spells that is followed by specific exceptions for wizards, sorcerers, and bards. The general rule is "A spell that an arcane spellcaster has learned and can prepare."

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So just to spell out the major assumptions that constitute the reading:
1. The PHB was written to define a term, only to list every application of that term that the rulebook permits as an exception, rather than listing them for clarification.
2. A mechanic which in all revised material generalized the exact mechanics of the Wizard class should be assumed not to generalize the glossary clarification of the generalized mechanic.
3. A character who prepares and casts spells "as a wizard" would not extend the wizard's spells known mechanism to the character's spells known.

Anyway, I haven't found a glossary written later than the PHB and I'm not going to put any more time into it, so I won't say you're demonstrably wrong, but I don't imagine all three of those assumptions are going to be agreed upon by very many groups at all.

That's not to say I think the Versatile Spellcaster + Magical Training thing is going to pass at many tables; just the rules that support it.

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

by the bold and your own logic, your trick doesn't work anymore. The wizard can't prepare those higher level spells, therefore they don't count as spells known for him.

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You understand, of course, that in an exception based rule set (I believe that is the term) such as the D&D 3.5 rules there are exceptions built into the system that allow characters to bypass general rules. There is an exception for wizards on the very next line after that general rule. Now, if you want to make a case that the line about wizards is not an exception, feel free, but without discrediting that bit of text there is no problem.

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Originally Posted by eggs

So just to spell out the major assumptions that constitute the reading:
1. The PHB was written to define a term, only to list every application of that term that the rulebook permits as an exception, rather than listing them for clarification.
2. A mechanic which in all revised material generalized the exact mechanics of the Wizard class should be assumed not to generalize the glossary clarification of the generalized mechanic.
3. A character who prepares and casts spells "as a wizard" would not extend the wizard's spells known mechanism to the character's spells known.

Anyway, I haven't found a glossary written later than the PHB and I'm not going to put any more time into it, so I won't say you're demonstrably wrong, but I don't imagine all three of those assumptions are going to be agreed upon by very many groups at all.

That's not to say I think the Versatile Spellcaster + Magical Training thing is going to pass at many tables; just the rules that support it.

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Eh, I am not saying that this is necessarily an example of the most fantastic game design, I mean this is D&D 3.5. But the rules are the rules, and those are the rules.

Anyway, the point here is that yes, OP, this trick with Versatile Spellcaster absolutely does work. Not only does it work, but it also accelerates spellcasting by a level, since you can spontaneously cast wizard spells of level X when you have access to spell slots of level X-1. It may even work with classes other than wizard, too, though you'd have to check RAW to be sure. I've put together at least one TO build using this trick, and in practice it can be combined elegantly with most of the Tier 1-3 casting classes.

Magical Training may or may not work (I am of the opinion it does, for the record, for the reasons Biffoniacus states), but it's not really like it needs to. We all know that the game can be entirely broken in an arbitrary number of ways by any one of a variety of tricks, and this is one of the smaller ones.