Academy of the Chromatic Order--Higher Level Advanced Studies

Bront said:

In combat, there are many 3rd level spells that are a bit more useful than 4th level spells.

But I can understand that being a bit of a limit.

The Metamagic thing is to keep sanity and limit excessive versitility (If you need a Maximized Empowered Magic Missile, you'll have to memorize it)

Click to expand...

I thought of that too after I posted, but I'm sure you realise that the 3rd/4th level discontinuity where many 4th-level spells aren't so great is a fluke, right? I'd certainly never sacrifice a 9th, 8th, or 7th level slot at the beginning of the day for an unspecified spell of one lower (in the heat of the moment, I might on a few days want to do so if it was a swap-out, but on most days, it wouldn't be worth it).

For the Metamagic thing, I doubt anyone would want to cast for two full rounds to get the Maximised Empowered Magic Missile, but I'm happy to add that clause to it. I'll go do that right now

I like these feats & their connection to an existing LEW organization. This is the sort of addition LEW needs. I'll have to think about them more, though, before commenting further.

I think Academy Prodigy might be overpowered, at least by comparison with other means of accomplishing similar things. The two that spring to mind are:

(1) the transmuter Spell Versatility variant, which allows a transmuter to pick one single spell and treat it as a transmutation spell at each of 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th levels, at the cost of not gaining wizard bonus feats

and

(2) a series of 3 feats in Lost Empires of Faerun. The first can be taken at 1st level and adds one spell from a prohibited school. The second feat requires the first feat and 5th level, and allows the use of items from prohibited schools. The third feat requires the second feat and 10th level and finally gives full access to everything from one prohibited school.

Academy Master is Alacritous Cogitation plus. The CharOpt people thought AC was the bee's knees, but I'm not sure how much of that was their wilful misinterpretation of the casting time clause to allow casting 24 hour casting time spells in 1 round, which errata has fixed. It's still situationally very powerful.

Beyond any specific criticisms, I have a vague philosophical objection to the idea that in a world with a diameter of 25,000 miles, the only wizards who can ever accomplish these things are those from this one Academy.

Is there any intent to allow characters to retcon some of their previous choices to allow access to these feats? My wizard would have been interested in Academy Prodigy, had it been available at character creation, and would have specialized accordingly. As it is, he chose to be a generalist rather than be barred from two schools.

Trouvere said:

I think Academy Prodigy might be overpowered, at least by comparison with other means of accomplishing similar things. The two that spring to mind are:

(1) the transmuter Spell Versatility variant, which allows a transmuter to pick one single spell and treat it as a transmutation spell at each of 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th levels, at the cost of not gaining wizard bonus feats

and

(2) a series of 3 feats in Lost Empires of Faerun. The first can be taken at 1st level and adds one spell from a prohibited school. The second feat requires the first feat and 5th level, and allows the use of items from prohibited schools. The third feat requires the second feat and 10th level and finally gives full access to everything from one prohibited school.

Academy Master is Alacritous Cogitation plus. The CharOpt people thought AC was the bee's knees, but I'm not sure how much of that was their wilful misinterpretation of the casting time clause to allow casting 24 hour casting time spells in 1 round, which errata has fixed. It's still situationally very powerful.

Beyond any specific criticisms, I have a vague philosophical objection to the idea that in a world with a diameter of 25,000 miles, the only wizards who can ever accomplish these things are those from this one Academy.

Click to expand...

The -1 caster level is a rather substantial penalty. I could see maybe making it -2. That's a big penalty--it means you're going to be a full spell level behind on that school, plus your caster-level related things will be worse.

Academy Master is not Alacritous Cogitation+ because it has pre-built into it the fact that ot won't reduce casting time, and also Alacritous Cogitation increases the cast time to full-round action (barely an increase, you just can't move), while Academy Master increases it to an entire full-round (major increase, lots of trade-off).

And it's not just all the Wizards from the Academy--it's even more specific than that: These are a rare few from the Academy. The idea is to do exactly as Manzanita noted--reward tying your character's fate to an existing organisation in the world, rather than what we used to have where each player came up with something totally distant and scattered, and we had a haphazard patchwork (frex, witness the fact that every Elan in our world except the first two have a totally different backstory for how becoming an Elan works). In a meta-context, I'd like to note that the 'Special' means, to me, that someone (probably me) gets to vet each character in a separate thread to make sure that they have all the Academy fluff straight. This goes further to make sure we actually get something cohesive (rather than just what we had before in slapdashery but they all just say 'Oh yeah, and I'm from the Academy').

covaithe said:

Is there any intent to allow characters to retcon some of their previous choices to allow access to these feats? My wizard would have been interested in Academy Prodigy, had it been available at character creation, and would have specialized accordingly. As it is, he chose to be a generalist rather than be barred from two schools.

Click to expand...

Academy Magus: Generalist may be the most powerful of all the Academy Magus abilities (and the Generalist Magus Staff is pretty great too). By the time this passes, you may be close to earning that, and your patience will be rewarded. The other thing to consider is that if you specialise and take all the Academy feats, that eats 100% of all a human's feats through level 9 (except the Wizard bonus feat at level 5), and a non-human cannot do it. That said, it is true that Generalists at the Academy are rare, as it requires a great sense of focus not to get caught in one of the exciting specialised areas of research of your own House (what House was Tommy?)

Rystil Arden said:

Academy Magus: Generalist may be the most powerful of all the Academy Magus abilities (and the Generalist Magus Staff is pretty great too).

Click to expand...

The penalty for specializing is that you give up access to two schools of spells. The penalty for generalizing is that you give up spell slots. Academy Magus cuts the penalty for generalizing somewhat, with some rather extensive prerequisites. Academy Prodigy at least halves the penalty for specializing; one could argue that it almost negates the penalty, since it's much, much easier to find one school to give up than two. And it can easily be taken at level 1.

And, what do these Magus Staff things actually do? "A special arcane nexus" doesn't say much, at least not to me.

Rystil Arden said:

That said, it is true that Generalists at the Academy are rare, as it requires a great sense of focus not to get caught in one of the exciting specialised areas of research of your own House (what House was Tommy?)

Click to expand...

Or lack of focus, I suppose. It's not written down anywhere (since I hadn't read much background on the Academy when I wrote Tommy's background), but Tommy would almost certainly have been in Mordrue.

covaithe said:

The penalty for specializing is that you give up access to two schools of spells. The penalty for generalizing is that you give up spell slots. Academy Magus cuts the penalty for generalizing somewhat, with some rather extensive prerequisites. Academy Prodigy at least halves the penalty for specializing; one could argue that it almost negates the penalty, since it's much, much easier to find one school to give up than two. And it can easily be taken at level 1.

And, what do these Magus Staff things actually do? "A special arcane nexus" doesn't say much, at least not to me.


Or lack of focus, I suppose. It's not written down anywhere (since I hadn't read much background on the Academy when I wrote Tommy's background), but Tommy would almost certainly have been in Mordrue.

Click to expand...

I meant to require caster level 2nd for Academy Prodigy (since having the spells at Caster Level 0 is meaningless)--good find; let me put that in there! Also, note that the Int requirement is nontrivial. I have found that most LEW Wizards will take the 16 Int to assign a few points elsewhere. This delays the Prodigy feat until level 6 (and at level 7, most Wizards qualify for Magus).

Also, I shall have to note that Diviners already had only one barred school. If you were Mordrue, you could have taken Academy Graduate and Mordrue's Lore at level 1 and been a Diviner/Abjurer with 1 barred school and no caster level penalties (saving yourself the feat of Academy Prodigy, actually). So if you were going to be in Mordrue, this new feat should not change your decision, as you would be foolish to take it.

Mmmm, Magus Elise. Too bad she never saw herself as much of a Diviner.

Prereq.
17 int.

Click to expand...

:\ *Shuffles off, comes back.* I knew I spent those extra 3 points for something. Maybe her time with Lasair has rubbed off on her and she might just open up to enchantment. Given the chance.

Is there any intent to allow characters to retcon some of their previous choices to allow access to these feats?

Click to expand...

Though it looks like you won't have to worry about it, they have allowed retcons in the past fairly easily. My wizard was allowed to retcon her first feat when Acadamy Grad was approved.

LogicsFate said:

Mmmm, Magus Elise. Too bad she never saw herself as much of a Diviner.



:\ *Shuffles off, comes back.* I knew I spent those extra 3 points for something. Maybe her time with Lasair has rubbed off on her and she might just open up to enchantment. Given the chance.



Though it looks like you won't have to worry about it, they have allowed retcons in the past fairly easily. My wizard was allowed to retcon her first feat when Acadamy Grad was approved.

Click to expand...

As an Abjurer, she picked the house of the four that was concerned with accumulating lore, often to help guide the present and protect the present from repeating the mistakes of the past (Mordrue). Mordrue himself was lore-focused foremost, so the abilities tend to be lore-focused (similarly, Omega's abilities are magic-item focused, etc).

But yeah, true enough about retcons.