Radiant Servant Custom Feat

Divine Light [Divine]
Prerequisites: Ability to Turn Undead, Sun Domain
You invest holy power into your light spells.
Benefit:
When you cast a spell with the [Light] descriptor, you may expend a turn undead attempt as a free action to apply one of the following benefits to the spell:
* Multiply the duration of the spell by 5.
* Treat the spell as if it were heightened by 2.
* Treat your caster level as if it were 2 higher.

Special:
You may expend multiple turn undead attempts to get multiple benefits, but each one no more than once per spell.

Let me know what you think.

P.S. I just noticed "Searing Light" doesn't have the [Light] descriptor. Sweet.

-Nate

You are combing the effects of several feats into one: extend spell, heighten spell and something like spell focus. This saves the cleric some feats.
I dislike feats that imitate the effects of other feats.

With extra turning a cleric can get more turn undead attemps, so a cleric can use your feat more often.

Can you combine the effect of this feat with casted spell already modified by meta-magic?
A light spell cast by using the extend spell meta-magic feat and your feat is extended for 10x the duration?

To multiply the duration by 5 is too powerful. Even extend spell doubles only the duration.

Way, way overpowered imho.

Of course, different campaigns vary, but compared to core feats...

Also, RSoP is generally considered an overpowered prc to begin with. I don't think it needs any help, personally.

the Jester said:

Way, way overpowered imho.

Of course, different campaigns vary, but compared to core feats...

Also, RSoP is generally considered an overpowered prc to begin with. I don't think it needs any help, personally.

Click to expand...

The feat only applies to [Light] spells, so I don't think it's powerful. Of course, your last 2 sentences are quite tre, so the feat might not be great in that light....

Forget I said RSoP... assume I'm making this for any old cleric with the Sun domain

Yes, 5x duration is awesome... until you realize that it only applies to [Light] spells, which means Light, Daylight, and Faerie Fire (the rest are permanent or instantaneous). Whoopteedoo.

+2 Caster level makes the Sunbeam and Sunburst do a little more damage.... given that they are insanely underpowered for their level, I don't think that's a big deal at all.

+2 Spell level.... pretty much only matters against darkness spells (which are a plague upon mankind, I know) I don't think it's any help at all for Sunbeam or Sunburst.

And if you extend and use this ability, that's x6, not x10, normal multiplication rules still apply. And even x10 wouldn't be a big deal for light spells. It's not like you can use this on any old buff spell. It's just light.

-The Souljourner

Extend Spell is pretty weak in general, so I have no problems with x5 Extend for [Light] spells with a turning attempt.

The feat is just fine, RSoP aside. For a RSoP the feat should have no benefit whatever (just to weaken an overpowerful class ).

Ok, now that I've had some validation that my feat is ok (I, too, think extend is pretty weak).... I've been playing a Radiant Servant and I think it's fine. You have to take Sun Domain (which is not a great domain), you have to take Healing domain (which is absolute ass), and you have to waste all your base (are belong to us) skillpoints on knowledge: religion and heal. You get d6 hitpoints instead of d8.

All that for many small abilities. Many small abilities is almost always less useful than a few big ones. Let's take a look:

Double radius of light spells - cool, flavorful, minimal impact on most games.

Extra Greater Turnings - Handy, but in my experience, turned = destroyed anyway. And given how often turn just flat out fails, I don't think it's a big deal. Once you get past low levels, anything anywhere near your challenge rating is literally flat out impossible to turn.

+2 to Will Saves to all within 10' - Half the benefit of a paladin's aura, but to all saves. Decent. Probably one of the most powerful abilities they get... yet rarely gamebreaking. In general, PCs either have awesome will saves (clerics, druids) or negligible will saves (fighter types and rogues). The major beneficiaries of this are the classes that get good will saves without having wisdom as a primary stat - wizards, sorcerers, and bards.

Metamagic Healing Domain slots - wow... it *almost* makes Healing domain not crappy. Almost. You have to cast the spell from the domain slot (it would be ridiculous otherwise). That means that not only do you have to memorize a spell you could otherwise spontaneously cast, but you have to *not* memorize another spell which you might only be able to cast from a domain slot. Plus, it has no effect on the greatest healing spell a cleric has - Heal.

Bonus Domain - ok... that's sweet. But since you've already had to take Sun and Healing.. it's kinda just making up for that extreme suckiness.

Martial Weapons - While I still think this is an error, let's assume it's not for the time being. That's pretty cool. Not a huge benefit (unless you're using it to get into another prestige class), but cool. Most clerics I know of use sword and board, so the upgrade from mace to longsword isn't exactly gamebreaking... you could step up to a greatsword, and it is really handy for campaigns where you pretty much only get those magic items you find (Flaming Heavy Pick +2? Ok).... So.. good.

There really aren't any ooh-wow abilities for this class. Yes, there's almost no reason why a cleric of Pelor wouldn't just always take this over straight cleric. Unlike some people, I don't automatically think that means it's overpowered. There are many prestige classes that are no-brainers if you're following that path already. However, what this class *doesn't* do is make any other prestige classes useless. You might still want to take one of the many other cool cleric prestige classes. This class doesn't overpower them in any way. It's a very flavorful class without any gamebreaking abilities. Other PrCs do have gamebreaking or at least game altering abilities that you might want instead.

Anyway... that's my opinion, which I know is somewhat biased... but even before I was playing one I didn't think it was overpowered. I actually think it's a great example of what a PrC should be - flavorful, useful, and without kicking the PC in the nuts for taking the class.

-The Souljourner

The Souljourner said:

Forget I said RSoP... assume I'm making this for any old cleric with the Sun domain

Yes, 5x duration is awesome... until you realize that it only applies to [Light] spells, which means Light, Daylight, and Faerie Fire (the rest are permanent or instantaneous). Whoopteedoo.

+2 Caster level makes the Sunbeam and Sunburst do a little more damage.... given that they are insanely underpowered for their level, I don't think that's a big deal at all.

+2 Spell level.... pretty much only matters against darkness spells (which are a plague upon mankind, I know) I don't think it's any help at all for Sunbeam or Sunburst.

And if you extend and use this ability, that's x6, not x10, normal multiplication rules still apply. And even x10 wouldn't be a big deal for light spells. It's not like you can use this on any old buff spell. It's just light.

-The Souljourner

Click to expand...

You've convinced me; it's not overpowered. In fact, I wonder why anyone would bother taking this feat.

Cheiromancer said:

You've convinced me; it's not overpowered. In fact, I wonder why anyone would bother taking this feat.

Click to expand...

Heh... makes me wonder if I should make it better

-The Souljourner

The Souljourner said:

Divine Light [Divine]
P.S. I just noticed "Searing Light" doesn't have the [Light] descriptor. Sweet.

-Nate

Click to expand...

There is a whole thread on this topic.