A generalist wizard feat

[Asmor]

There really aren't enough feats made specifically for generalist wizards.

Generalist Focus
Your commitment to magical diversity enhances all your spells, though you'll never know the true potency of a specialist.
Prerequisites: Generalist wizard, any two Spell Focus feats, cannot have any Greater Spell Focus feats, Spellcraft 8 ranks
Benefit: All spells you cast (including Universal ones) have their save DCs increased by +1. This does not stack with the Spell Focus feat, but does stack with other things which grant increased save DCs. In addition, you are treated as having the Spell Focus feat for every school of magic for qualifying for prestige classes, feats and other things with prerequisites. However, you may never take or gain any Greater Spell Focus feats. If you would get a Greater Spell Focus feat from a class or another source, instead you do not.
Special: A wizard may take this feat as a bonus feat if he meets all the prerequisites.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Too powerful, unless you scaled the bonus back to +1.
Generalist wizards are generally more powerful than specialist already too.

 

[wolff96]

I'm with Aust Diamondew on this one -- it's over the top.

Leaving aside whether Generalists or Specialists have the edge...

You've created a feat with two easy pre-reqs -- the Spellcraft ranks don't even count here, since almost every wizard will meet that one anyway -- that gives the equivalent of FOURTEEN feats. (Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus for every school, not counting the two required to get this feat.)

If that isn't over the top, I don't know what might qualify.

 

[Asmor]

Ah! How embarassing!

For some reason, despite the fact that I didn't even play 3.0 very much, I always forget that spell focus was changed to a +1 in 3.5. As you can tell, I haven't played a spellcaster in a long while.

It was my intention for this feat to give the equivelent of regular spell focus, not greater spell focus, in every school.

 

[Li Shenron]

In 3.5 the power would be quite ok. It's essentially spending 3 feats (2 x Spell Focus + this one) to get the benefit of 2 + half the benefit of 6 (Spell Focus in the other schools), which IMO doesn't anyway equal to 5... A quite powerful feat but not truly imbalancing, especially since it makes further SF feats not worth.

However I would remove all references to GSF. I think it's not a good idea at all to have a feat that has a requisite of "not having" something (makes little sense to me) and that forbids you to take certain other feats later.

I'll also remove all secondary benefits.

I'd just rewrite the feat like this:

Generalist Focus
Your commitment to magical diversity enhances all your spells, though you'll never know the true potency of a specialist.
Prerequisites: Generalist wizard, any two Spell Focus feats, cannot have any Greater Spell Focus feats, Spellcraft 8 ranks
Benefit: All spells you cast (including Universal ones) have their save DCs increased by +1. This does not stack with the Spell Focus feat, but does stack with other things which grant increased save DCs. In addition, you are treated as having the Spell Focus feat for every school of magic for qualifying for prestige classes, feats and other things with prerequisites. However, you may never take or gain any Greater Spell Focus feats. If you would get a Greater Spell Focus feat from a class or another source, instead you do not.
Special: A wizard may take this feat as a bonus feat if he meets all the prerequisites.

The Spellcraft requirement is not useless: it sets a minimum level before a PC can take the feat, which is good since it's pretty powerful.

If you are instead playing 3.5, this feat would be proportionally more powerful and I think it would be hard to accept.

 

[avigor]

Perhaps a generalist caster level instead of a spellcraft? Otherwise, a specialist or sorceror who takes one level as a generalist could theoretically buy this, unless it only counts for wizard generalist spells, in which case it just wouldn't help him much. Also, maybe you should up it, say caster level 10.

Then you could create a second feat that requires this and epic generalist that grants greater specialization on top of this feat.

 

[Asmor]

I don't really see any particular problem with a sorcerer multiclassing to grab this. Even if you don't use multiclassing penalties (I don't), you're devoting a class level and a feat to something that honestly might not even be that great, considering a sorcerer's limited spell selection.

Plus, sorcerers already advance their spellcasting ability slowly (getting nth level spells at level 2n, as opposed to 2n-1). So losing a caster level is pretty nasty.

 

[Nifft]

"Generalist Focus"... the very idea seems self-contradictory!

Perhaps Sudden Spell Focus would be better? 3/day, add +1 to the DC of any spell you cast? Can take it multiple times for extra daily uses, benefit does not stack with Spell Focus.

Cheers, -- N

 

[wolff96]

I don't really see any particular problem with a sorcerer multiclassing to grab this. Even if you don't use multiclassing penalties (I don't), you're devoting a class level and a feat to something that honestly might not even be that great, considering a sorcerer's limited spell selection.

Plus, sorcerers already advance their spellcasting ability slowly (getting nth level spells at level 2n, as opposed to 2n-1). So losing a caster level is pretty nasty.

...Unless they're going for the Ultimate Magus PrC from Complete Mage. The one that *requires* that they have both sorcerer and wizard casting levels. This feat is tailor-made for a character heading for that class.

Perhaps Sudden Spell Focus would be better? 3/day, add +1 to the DC of any spell you cast? Can take it multiple times for extra daily uses, benefit does not stack with Spell Focus.

It's slightly better balanced, though it adds just as much in that form to a specialist as it does to a generalist.

Also, if it's only 3/day and *doesn't* stack with Spell Focus, I'd expect the DC bump to be higher than just a +1. Sudden Maximize has just about the same requirements for a 3/day ability... and I'd argue that a maximized spell is worth a lot more -- most of the time -- than just a +1 DC bump. (Save or Die Spells are the corner case. A bump in DC, of any size, is big in that case.)

 

[Deset Gled]

I agree with other folks the the pre-reqs you have given are a bad idea. As a general rule, never reward negatives. And the double Spell Focus requirement doesn't promote true generalists, just those who aren't technically specialists. Also, the feat is very powerful at low levels, but is probably not too bad at higher level.

I recommend removing all reference to GSF from the feat text, and changing the pre-req to "Skill Focus: Spellcraft, Must have the ability to cast at least one 7th level spell from each school of magic." Of course, you could change the 7th level part to something higher or lower if desired. The Skill Focus requirement is simply because I feel the feat is too powerful without at least one other low-powered feat as a pre-req, and don't like the idea of requiring Spell Focus for a generalist feat.