Armoured casting feat...

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Considering a feat for a game I'm about to run.

Feat: Armoured Casting
Prequisite: None.
Benefit: You do not risk Arcane Spell failure from any armour or shield. However, any spell which would normally incur spell failure chance instead applies the ACP (armour check penalty) as a penalty to caster level. If you are not proficient in the armour, the armour check penalty is doubled for this purpose.


Example:
Bob is a 6th level sorceror, has this feat and is wearing a chain shirt (-2 ACP). He has light armour proficiency.

He casts True Strike at caster level 6, as it has no somatic component.
He casts Magic Missile at caster level 4.
If he did not have light armour proficiency, then his Magic Missile would be at caster level 2.


Considering a 2nd feat to go with it.
Feat: Improved Armoured Casting
Prequisite: Armoured Casting.
Benefit: Soley for the purposes of casting spells in armour, you can either reduce the ACP by 2 points (to a minimum of zero) or halve the ACP (rounding down). You can freely choose which reduction you apply, depending on what armour you are wearing at the time.


Any thoughts on either of these?

 

[irdeggman]

Too powerful and makes Battle Caster feat (from Complete Arcane) pretty much worthless.

It only allows you to ignore ASF for one level of armor higher than normal (not all armors).

I can see a feat that allows ignoring ASF for light armors (but doesn't grant proficiency) and then using Battle Caster for heavier armors.

I don't have access to my Complete Mage to see if there is a feat for sheilds or a different feat that will accomplish this already.

 

[Quartz]

Far too good a feat. It's an auto-pick. Besides, if mages want to cast in armour, all they need to do is use the Still Spell feat.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Far too good. I'm not sure if you are aware but the BoED and PHBII have the Twilight special armor ability. Here it is, in case you don't have either. Mods, If this is inappropriate please feel free to delete:

Twilight Armor Special Ability
Armor with this special ability becomes transclucent when donned and posesses a faint sunset sunset-colored sheen. Twilight armor reduces the chance of arcane spell failure by 10%.

Faint abjuration; CL 5th; Craft Magic Arms & Armor; Price +1 bonus.

 

[el-remmen]

I use this:

Armor Focus [fighter, general]
You are trained in the expert donning and using of a particular type of armor.
Prerequisite: Armor Proficiency of the appropriate type for the chosen armor type.
Benefit: You may choose one particular kind of armor to focus in. You are particularly skilled at putting it on and using it to its best advantage. You gain a +1 competence bonus to your armor class, the skill check penalty is lowered by one, and your chance of arcane failure is lowered by 5%.
Special: If you hastily don your armor you do not gain this bonus. You may gain this feat multiple times, but its effects do not stack; each time you choose a different kind of armor. A fighter may select armor focus as one of his fighter bonus feats.

 

[Andre]

Far too good a feat. It's an auto-pick. Besides, if mages want to cast in armour, all they need to do is use the Still Spell feat.

Hardly an auto-pick, IMO. The feat does not automatically grant proficiency with armor, so the caster will have to use one or more additional feats, or potentially take a rather severe penalty to caster levels.

Let's take a look at a best case scenario:

MW mithril chain shirt
Armor bonus +4
ACP -0
Cost 1,100 gp

So for one feat and 1,100 gp, the sorcerer can forgo his daily mage armor spell. For more gold, he can enchant the armor to gain an extra point or two of AC. And without the feat, the sorcerer could still wear this armor, just with a 10% spell failure.

Let's look at an extreme example:

+5 mithril plate armor
Armor bonus +13
ACP -3
Cost 35,500 gp

This gives the sorcerer a really nice armor bonus, but at the cost of reduced movement (the armor is counted as medium, meaning 20' Speed) and a -6 to the caster level of all spells with somatic components. To avoid the caster level penalty, the sorcerer would have to use another three feats (armor proficiency light, medium, heavy). Four feats for the opportunity to avoid what is normally a 25% spell failure chance.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see this as unbalanced - outside the normal expectations of D&D perhaps, but not unbalanced.

 

[starwed]

So for one feat and 1,100 gp, the sorcerer can forgo his daily mage armor spell. For more gold, he can enchant the armor to gain an extra point or two of AC.

If you ever wanted more than +4 armor bonus, you'd need to look elsewhere than mage armor. With this feat, you can easily get a +9 armor bonus at high levels for about 26k. Normally, that would cost you 64k, so with this one feat you've saved almost 40k gold.

 

[Quartz]

Hardly an auto-pick, IMO.

Of course it's an auto-pick. Simply take a level of fighter or cleric to get the armour feats. Can you imagine a Mystic Theurge with this feat?

 

[Andre]

Of course it's an auto-pick. Simply take a level of fighter or cleric to get the armour feats. Can you imagine a Mystic Theurge with this feat?

Which further slows down the spell progression of the caster, as well as impacting caster levels. I can see this feat being useful - what I don't see is that it's worth the sacrifices involved for *every* arcane caster.

If you ever wanted more than +4 armor bonus, you'd need to look elsewhere than mage armor. With this feat, you can easily get a +9 armor bonus at high levels for about 26k. Normally, that would cost you 64k, so with this one feat you've saved almost 40k gold.

Agreed, it's a nice bonus. But...is armor class as important to a caster as to a character who consistently gets into melee? Armor class is nice, even important at times, but is a few extra points worth expending valuable feats, the possibility of losing caster levels from spells, even losing class levels in your spellcasting class (as Quartz suggested) just to get it? Don't forget that by the time the caster can afford a +4 mithril chain shirt (and can find one), armor bonuses tend to be less important than saving throw bonuses and miss chances.

Which raises the question, when can a character reasonably expect to be able to acquire a mithril chain shirt? Take away the mithril and using armor is a real problem with this feat. In a campaign where mithril armor is common, this feat might be too good. In one where it is rare or non-existent, is this feat still too good? YMMV.

 

[irdeggman]

Agreed, it's a nice bonus. But...is armor class as important to a caster as to a character who consistently gets into melee? Armor class is nice, even important at times, but is a few extra points worth expending valuable feats, the possibility of losing caster levels from spells, even losing class levels in your spellcasting class (as Quartz suggested) just to get it? Don't forget that by the time the caster can afford a +4 mithril chain shirt (and can find one), armor bonuses tend to be less important than saving throw bonuses and miss chances.

If its not as important than why bother with the feat?

It is obviously important enough for someone to think they needed a feat to do it, and battle caster allows an arcane caster to increase the no ASF benefit to heavier armors.