[Complete Champion] Spontaneous Divination

[SadisticFishing]

The one-of-the-spells-must-be-from-your-school rule was in 3.0; it appears to be gone in 3.5.

It is indeed in the 3.5 PHB. In chapter 10, somewhere

 

[jasin]

One of the wizard alternative class features is spontaneous divination. This feature replaces one of the wizard bonus feats and lets them sacrifice a prepared spell to cast any divination spell of equal or lower level.

The feature doesn't specify the spell has to be in your spellbook, or even arcane or divine. It just says any spell of the divination school.

It seems a tad powerful and something every wizard would give up a bonus feat for.

What do you think?

That Complete Champion seems like a worthy successor to Complete Divine.

 

[jasin]

Why bother specializing?

Why indeed, even before this feat?

 

[Liquidsabre]

Oh the feat is certainly off. Does the feat have a prereq at all? I can understand the feat requiring the caster to be a Diviner specialist in order to select and the spell would have to be known by the caster.

Why indeed, even before this feat?

Oh the question should always be why NOT specialize my friend. Increasing the number of spells you can cast at your highest level by either half or double is worth it alone - going from 1-2 fireballs per day to 2-3 is nothing to scoff at when you're 5th level. In fact, the base number of spells for a Wizard being capped at 4 is brought up to 5 by specialization which makes the Wizard comparable to the number of spell cast per day 0by a Sorcerer at a base of 6 spells/day.

Since a Wizard must choose which few spells they have access to due to cost (as a wizard can't afford to put every spell into his spellbook afterall) any Wizard ends up focusing their spell choices on a select few based on style and utility. Losing two schools (if chosen carefully) usually has little effect on utility as there are so many utility spells across the schools and style is easy to select a chosen school for.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Since a Wizard must choose which few spells they have access to due to cost (as a wizard can't afford to put every spell into his spellbook afterall) any Wizard ends up focusing their spell choices on a select few based on style and utility. Losing two schools (if chosen carefully) usually has little effect on utility as there are so many utility spells across the schools and style is easy to select a chosen school for.

Yes, a good point to bring up is the focused specialist class mod in Complete Arcane. With that, you give up a lot of flexibility, but you get comprable spells to a sorcerer. Although if you go diviner, you only give up two schools, and that does not hurt much at all.

 

[RigaMortus2]

What if you were another kind of specialist, say an Enchanter. And you chose Divination as your prohibited school. Could you use this feat to actually cast a Divination spell???

 

[Marshall]

You cant have Div as a prohibited school...

 

[jasin]

Oh the question should always be why NOT specialize my friend. Increasing the number of spells you can cast at your highest level by either half or double is worth it alone - going from 1-2 fireballs per day to 2-3 is nothing to scoff at when you're 5th level. In fact, the base number of spells for a Wizard being capped at 4 is brought up to 5 by specialization which makes the Wizard comparable to the number of spell cast per day 0by a Sorcerer at a base of 6 spells/day.

It seems to me that any arcanist willing to sacrifice versatility for extra spell slots has a more attractive and obvious choice than a specialist wizard: namely, the sorcerer!

And specializing does sacrifice versatility, noticeably. There is no school that doesn't have at least a couple of excellent spells which any wizard should be sorry to miss.

 

[RigaMortus2]

You cant have Div as a prohibited school...

Well... Ok then...

 

[shilsen]

It seems to me that any arcanist willing to sacrifice versatility for extra spell slots has a more attractive and obvious choice than a specialist wizard: namely, the sorcerer!

And specializing does sacrifice versatility, noticeably. There is no school that doesn't have at least a couple of excellent spells which any wizard should be sorry to miss.

Specializng doesn't sacrifice that much versatility, IMO. Being able to cast that extra spell per level daily adds to versatility since you can prep a more varied set of spells, and offsets the lack of spells from one (if you're a Diviner) or two schools. Also, having the extra spell slot makes it much easier to do the single best thing a wizard can do to increase versatility that a sorcerer can't - leave a few spell slots open during spell preparation and fill them later during the day as needed.