Collegiate wizard good or bad?

[Crichton]

FWIW, my interpretation is that it's meant to replace as well. But regardless of whether the intent of these feats was to stack or replace, they are worded extremely poorly. They should either say explicitly in the body of the feat that they replace the normal free spells gained, or they should specify clearly that what they give is on top of/in addition to the normal free spells gained.

EDIT: The existence of the Normal line in the feat muddies things further, especially when AFAICT having that line doesn't even really mean anything for any feat. "Normal: If you don't have this feat, you don't gain the benefit of this feat" well thanks for the update captain obvious.

Agree totally with what you say here. I too think the intention is for it to replace, but given the poor wording (of both feats, nonetheless) I think the text is closer to indicating that it's in addition, rather than replacing. And honestly, the biggest part of the reason I think it's intended to replace is because of some kind of sense that 6/level is overpowered, so shouldn't be allowed, not from anything in the text of the feats themselves. That's a pretty precarious place for me to try to argue in favor of the 'replace' interpretation.

[AvatarVecna]

Agree totally with what you say here. I too think the intention is for it to replace, but given the poor wording (of both feats, nonetheless) I think the text is closer to indicating that it's in addition, rather than replacing. And honestly, the biggest part of the reason I think it's intended to replace is because of some kind of sense that 6/level is overpowered, so shouldn't be allowed, not from anything in the text of the feats themselves. That's a pretty precarious place for me to try to argue in favor of the 'replace' interpretation.

To sum up my grognard father's opinion on the feat: "Balanced? I dunno, what scale am i supposed to use for that in this edition?"

Cuz like...let's say we go with an interpretation where not only is the "add four" supposed to stack but the "start with 6+Int" is supposed to stack with normal 3+Int at starting (which nobody is arguing it does, AFAICT). Is that OP compared to other feat options for wizards? Is that OP compared to other caster classes? A cleric gets to prepare from their entire spell list, and a large part of what makes the core three so powerful is that they've just got hundreds of possible spells they could pull out of their ass. A basic Sorcerer 20 has (essentially) 34 spells known that aren't cantrips, while a basic Wizard 20 will have probably 45? From that perspective, where Wizard has several more options but has to prepare specific ones, while the sorcerer has fewer options but can cast spontaneously, where wizard can put more spells in spellbook but sorcerer gets more slots by default one could claim the two classes are relatively even. But add on top that sorcerer casting is delayed one class level for highest-level spells, and point out just how easy it is to get more spells in your spellbook, and now instead of 34 spontaneous known vs 45 prepared known, you're looking at 35 spontaneous vs a potential 2000 spells in that spellbook. That's clearly in the wizard's favor.

...but how does that compare to cleric? Sure, wizard can theoretically throw piles of money at gaining the privilege to prepare from a list of ~2000 spells, but cleric starts with the ability to prepare from 1000 spells automatically (plus a handful from domains!). And the cleric list, while certainly smaller than the wizard list, still has some very impressive versatility contained within. Maybe 95% of those spells aren't worth preparing more than maybe once in your entire life, but for a cleric there's no cost to having the option to prepare them, while for a wizard...is it really worth it spending 900 gp just for permission to prepare Meteor Swarm, on the off-chance you need a blasting spell with that kind of area and damage? It's just such a bad blasting spell, you'll never prepare it when you could prepare Wish or Shapechange or Gate or Time Stop...but what if that once in a lifetime situation came up and you wanted to, but you didn't have it in your book, and you've got 900 gp you could've spent on it? Maybe "Meteor Swarm" is an example with ways around it, but at the end of the day, you can't just use Wish to duplicate spells you don't have, it's too expensive...and getting every spell on your list in your spellbook is this massive cash sink that's guaranteed to never truly be worth it. In that sense, even if Collegiate Wizard essentially triples your free spells, is the ability to access 6% of your list instead of 2% really that broken, when another class starts out accessing the equivalent of 50% of your list by default? Certainly the sorcerer will think so, when for the same feat investment they can learn a whopping one spell known.

[Psychoalpha]

let's say we go with an interpretation where not only is the "add four" supposed to stack but the "start with 6+Int" is supposed to stack with normal 3+Int at starting (which nobody is arguing it does, AFAICT)

I mean, why not? It's just as ridiculous as reading that the 4 stacks with the base 2 to get you 6. ;D

I think the fact that nobody's seriously suggested that is a pretty good indicator that people understand what the feat actually does. :p

The very idea that anybody thinks an argument that amounts to "Well it hardly matters in the grand scope of how powerful wizards are." is a fine justification for interpreting a feat that doubles your amount of spells per level in a way that triples your amount of spells per level, makes me despair for what other GMs must have to deal with. If a player even tried to make that argument at my table, or any of the tables I play at, they'd get laughed out of the room. And don't get me wrong, we're fine with all sorts of barely interpretive nonsense at one point or another. But there's not even a wording problem here unless you're reeeaaally squinting and reeeallly drunk.

[AvatarVecna]

I mean, why not? It's just as ridiculous as reading that the 4 stacks with the base 2 to get you 6. ;D

I think the fact that nobody's seriously suggested that is a pretty good indicator that people understand what the feat actually does. :p

The very idea that anybody thinks an argument that amounts to "Well it hardly matters in the grand scope of how powerful wizards are." is a fine justification for interpreting a feat that doubles your amount of spells per level in a way that triples your amount of spells per level, makes me despair for what other GMs must have to deal with. If a player even tried to make that argument at my table, or any of the tables I play at, they'd get laughed out of the room. And don't get me wrong, we're fine with all sorts of barely interpretive nonsense at one point or another. But there's not even a wording problem here unless you're reeeaaally squinting and reeeallly drunk.

I think the silly thing I suggested is a bigger reach than the interpretation they're suggesting. The feat reads that you "start with 6+Int", and it's difficult for one "starts with" to be construed as adding to an existing "starts with". But the next part, the part that says "add four spells without additional research" could be fairly read as "add four spells without additional research in place of the two you add by default" or "add four spells without additional research on top of the two you add by default". I don't think adding them together is the stretch you're making it out to be, but at the same time the fact that neither of those underlined sections I added exists in the default feat makes it difficult to say for sure either way.

From there, we could sometimes go "okay, the wording of the feat is unclear as to which interpretation is fitting with designer intent, but what if we compared it to existing mechanics to see if it's too much for comparative effort", which was the point of my post: a fighter can't use feats to gain any amount of awesome cosmic power, a sorcerer can use feats to gain far less additional awesome cosmic power than Collegiate Wizard grants a wizard, Collegiate Wizard and Greyhawk Method (however they work) are more or less even with each other, and meanwhile a cleric starts out with better spell access (at no feat expenditure) than a wizard who takes this feat ten times. If we're trying to determine how balanced one interpretation of this feat is vs the other interpretation, none of these scales really help determine that at all, which is more my point. Now if we had a third feat that worked kinda like Collegiate Wizard/Greyhawk Method, except it gave...idk, 20 extra spells in your spellbook per level, because we have two feats that give 2/4, and one feat that gives 20, we can probably take a wild ****ing guess at which of those feats isn't fitting designer intention, by majority rules if nothing else.

[Crichton]

I mean, why not? It's just as ridiculous as reading that the 4 stacks with the base 2 to get you 6. ;D

But there's not even a wording problem here unless you're reeeaaally squinting and reeeallly drunk.

But the next part, the part that says "add four spells without additional research" could be fairly read as "add four spells without additional research in place of the two you add by default" or "add four spells without additional research on top of the two you add by default". I don't think adding them together is the stretch you're making it out to be, but at the same time the fact that neither of those underlined sections I added exists in the default feat makes it difficult to say for sure either way.

That's just the thing, though. The wording isn't nearly as unclear as Psychoalpha is portraying, and in fact, if you just dissect the language of the feat, it fairly strongly points to adding 4 more spells instead of replacing the 2 with the 4:



Without Collegiate Wizard: you get 2 spells/level

Taking Collegiate Wizard: "Each time you gain a wizard level, you may add four spells to your spellbook"


Nothing in that language, nor the rest of the language of the feat, actually indicates that there's any idea of replacing the 2 with the 4. It simply says 'add 4.'





I think we've all kind of agreed that that is fairly silly, and probably it should be more clear to indicate that it is in fact replacing the 2, but from the language that's actually in the feat? Linguistically it's a way bigger stretch to make those words mean 'replace' than it is to make them mean 'add'

I think we're the ones squinting and drunk over here, trying to find ways for the words to mean what we want, and what we're fairly sure is designer intent, given how it stacks up against what other feats gain you and such.

[Bartmanhomer]

The feat is very broken. I use the same feat with my Neutral Good Female Lesser Drow Wizard (Transmuter) and I got a boatload of spells in level 2.