Red Wizard Spell Power

[Kelleris]

A friend of mine asked me to check out his Evoker 9/Red Wizard 10 to make sure it was all legit, since he finally moved over to doing character sheets by hand as the gods and nature intended, instead of using the buggy E-Tools.

Now, his character sheet has a caster level of 24 for all spells, which seemed a tad high for me. I checked the Red Wizard's "Spell Power" class ability, and it reads as follows:

At 2nd level, a Red Wizard gains a bonus that increases his effective caster level for purposes of determining level-dependent spell variables and for caster level checks. The bonus starts at +1 and increases at higher levels... This ability stacks with other spell power benefits that affect spells from the Red Wizard's specialist school.

Now, does this apply to all of the Red Wizard's spells, or just his specialized school (in this case, evocation)? It looks like it works on all of them, but that seems a bit on the hugely powerful side, doesn't jibe well with the implications of the last line, and isn't how the original version of the PrC in the Faerun campaign setting worked. I checked the errata and it made no mention of the Red Wizard at all. Can anyone help clear this up for me?

 

[moritheil]

Now, does this apply to all of the Red Wizard's spells, or just his specialized school (in this case, evocation)? It looks like it works on all of them, but that seems a bit on the hugely powerful side, doesn't jibe well with the implications of the last line, and isn't how the original version of the PrC in the Faerun campaign setting worked. I checked the errata and it made no mention of the Red Wizard at all. Can anyone help clear this up for me?

RAW there is a valid argument that it would thus apply to all of them as it does not explicitly say it does not, but the intent of Red Wizard is to boost one school sky-high. If you want a RAW reason to limit it to one school, it's the implication here:

"This ability stacks with other spell power benefits that affect spells from the Red Wizard's specialist school."

 

[Kelleris]

RAW there is a valid argument that it would thus apply to all of them as it does not explicitly say it does not, but the intent of Red Wizard is to boost one school sky-high. If you want a RAW reason to limit it to one school, it's the implication here:

"This ability stacks with other spell power benefits that affect spells from the Red Wizard's specialist school."

Yeah, I wondered about that. I'm only a player in this campaign, though, so I was hoping maybe I'd missed something I could point to so I don't have to do any actual interpretation.

 

[javcs]

Er, actually ... from the quote that Moritheil took ... I see more support for it affecting everything.
"This ability stacks with other spell power benefits that affect spells from the Red Wizard's specialist school."
It implies that the class's other abilities affect only the specialist school, and this particular ability does something else, but stacks.

I believe that WotC tends to add something (the stacking value with two or more abilities) and say that benefits supercedes the other abilities when all abilities are possessed if they only apply to one or two things.

Although, if the 'other' is emphasized, the argument can swing more towards only affecting the specialist school.

 

[Felix]

Perhaps:

The Red Wizard spell power affects all of their spells. In the event that they get another spell power ability, their Red Wizard spell power will stack only with regard to their specialized school.

So if you have a Red Wizard that takes a level of archmage, and he chooses Spell Power, that spell power will stack for his specialized school, but won't stack for his other schools (only the highest Spell Power will take effect).