Free wish for a feat?

[comrade raoul]

Do you think this feat is balanced? Would anyone take it? (I know the name is really lame, but this is only half serious proposal, and half mechanical experiment.)

"MAKE A WISH" [GENERAL]
Prerequisite: Ability to cast wish.
Benefit: Once, and only once, you may cast wish without expending experience.

What about this version? Better, or worse?

"MAKE AN ANNUAL WISH" [GENERAL]
Prerequisite: Ability to cast wish.
Benefit: Once per year, you may cast wish without expending experience.

 

[paradox42]

In a vacuum, these feats are either balanced, or even weak. However, in light of the XPH and PHB2 rebuilding rules, I'd say feats should not be used for something like this. The reason is that feats, under the rules given in these books, are relatively easy to "switch out" for other feats.

Using psionics, all you need is a character who can take the power "Psychic Reformation" (4th level Psion/Wilder power). For the cost of 50 XP times the number of levels you're changing (and this cost actually splits between the two characters if the manifester is using it on a target other than itself), you can trade in all your skill points, feats taken, and powers acquired for advancing a level (if the class level taken was a manifesting class), for each level you're Reforming. The only restriction is that you have to abide by standard rules for selecting the new feats/skills/etc., so the ones you change to have to have been legal at the level you Reform back to. My players love this power and use it often, so I'm quite familiar with what it can do.

So let's see what this lets one do in light of your feats above: say the party Wizard advances to 18th level, and gets Wish as one of his spells, and takes "Make a Wish" for his 18th level feat. He then goes ahead and casts Wish for whatever purpose, avoiding the 5000 XP cost thanks to the feat. The feat slot is now effectively wasted, since its benefit has been used up- but wait! The party Telepath is close at hand to use Psychic Reformation. The Psion spends 25 XP, as does the Wizard, and suddenly that "Make a Wish" feat changes to something more useful- like Greater Spell Penetration to help against that dragon the party's about to face. Effectively, the character has just split the cost of 50 XP between himself and the Psion for a Wish, and no other cost- not even the "wasted" feat slot.

This gets even worse if you allow the character to "reset" the feat by taking it twice; what if, for example, the character switches to GSP, and then back to "Make a Wish?" or even switches from the "used up" Make a Wish to a "fresh" Make a Wish? Obviously DM common sense applies here, but rules-wise it's a potential mightmare- and I don't see a decent way to word the feat benefits to get around this problem. "Make an Annual Wish" is essentially the same as "Make a Wish" in light of the sort of tactic given above, except that it suffers from an additional loophole- even if you say the feat doesn't "reset" by being taken twice, all the character has to do is switch it back in using Psychic Reformation after the year is up to get the benefits back for another Wish.

The PHB2 feat retraining isn't quite as easy as the power mentioned above, but the same tactic could be used with it nevertheless. You're essentially trading whatever the cost of retraining the feat is, for the chance to avoid spending 5000 XP on a Wish.

 

[comrade raoul]

Thanks for the extended discussion, and, yes, absolutely -- it goes without saying that any feat that gives you a really big benefit once is too good if you can somehow trade it out for some other feat.

I should've been clearer -- I'm curious (for purely academic reasons) about whether this feat is the sort of thing that would be (a) balanced and (b) worthwhile in principle. Let's make the simplifying assumption that once you take "Make a Wish" or its cousin, you can't somehow retcon it out to get something for nothing.

 

[CRGreathouse]

How about you let the character switch out the feat (assuming they have the ability to do so, psychically or otherwise), but then they have to pay the XP cost?

For an alternate way of dealing with cheap/free wishes, I have made the feat Reality Shaper in my campaign.
From http://rpg.crg4.com/epicfeats.html:

Reality Shaper [Epic][Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Cha 23, Iron Will, Knowledge (arcana) 20 ranks, Knowledge (magic) 10 ranks, arcane caster level 21st, ability to cast limited wish or wish.
Benefit: The XP cost for casting wish is reduced by 4,500. The XP cost for casting limited wish is reduced by 300.

 

[paradox42]

How about you let the character switch out the feat (assuming they have the ability to do so, psychically or otherwise), but then they have to pay the XP cost?

For an alternate way of dealing with cheap/free wishes, I have made the feat Reality Shaper in my campaign.
From http://rpg.crg4.com/epicfeats.html:

Reality Shaper [Epic][Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Cha 23, Iron Will, Knowledge (arcana) 20 ranks, Knowledge (magic) 10 ranks, arcane caster level 21st, ability to cast limited wish or wish.
Benefit: The XP cost for casting wish is reduced by 4,500. The XP cost for casting limited wish is reduced by 300.

Interesting. I like this feat- I may yoink this, or develop a similar idea of my own (for example, I may make this two feats, or split the cost of Limited Wish off of Wish feat-wise). Really, given the existence of Miracle, and that Clerics don't often have to pay the XP cost for that (just duplicate spells of 8th level or lower, or spells you don't normally have access to of 7th or lower), the cost should be lowered for Wish and the psionic version (Reality Revision). Personal experience watching a Cleric fill all his 9th-level slots with Miracles (except for the Domain spell and one slot given over to Implosion) convinced me that something should be done there.

So I suppose, one feat negating the cost makes this idea too good, but several feats makes it worthwhile and even cool.

Thanks CRG!

 

[Krelios]

I have often considered a house rule that Wish simply doesn't require XP if it's duplicating an existing spell (unless the spell you're duplicating costs XP; you'd have to pay that as normal). I can't think of any downside to that rule other than that Wish would actually get cast.

 

[CRGreathouse]

So I suppose, one feat negating the cost makes this idea too good, but several feats makes it worthwhile and even cool.

Thanks CRG!

The feat was popular in my campaign. If you'd like, you could change it to a nonepic feat (drop caster level to 18th), but given its power I'd tend to leave it as written. I hope you get some use out of it.

Krelios: In my experience, players were willing to take a feat they didn't need (Iron Will) so they could take my feat Reality Shaper, and once they did they prepared all their 7th level spells as limited wish and at least 1-2 spells as wish every day (the former almost always cast to duplicate spells, the latter seldom cast). Given this, I'd say letting limited wish/wish duplicate spells for free would make them prep all their spells at the appropriate levels as those spells. I also tend to think that it's a mite powerful, but that would be for you to decide as DM.

 

[Lorehead]

I'm concerned that using wish and limited wish to duplicate spells without an XP cost might be unbalancing for sorcerers, and to a lesser degree specialist wizards. In theory, they're supposed to be less versatile. Since a large number of spells known (but often at a higher level than for arcane casters) is supposed to be an advantage of clerics, the fact that miracle lacks an XP cost does not convince me that wish should as well.

When I attempted to design a spell, duplicate spell, whose purpose was to do exactly that with no XP cost, I attempted to address this by adjusting the casting time. Specifically, my version allows a caster to prepare a lower-level spell he knows as a swift action, one on his spell list as a standard action, or one not on his class spell list out of combat.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I'm concerned that using wish and limited wish to duplicate spells without an XP cost might be unbalancing for sorcerers, and to a lesser degree specialist wizards. In theory, they're supposed to be less versatile. Since a large number of spells known (but often at a higher level than for arcane casters) is supposed to be an advantage of clerics, the fact that miracle lacks an XP cost does not convince me that wish should as well.

I tend to agree. My feat is an epic feat with hard prerequisites that removes the XP cost for limited wish and reduces it for wish. My theory is that by the level you get all of this, you're powerful enough that it isn't unbalancing. What do you think? Also, what do you think of comrade raoul's feat?

 

[Lorehead]

As for the original question: it's very unusual for a feat to grant a one-time benefit such as that. However, there are some non-core classes which grant a pool of bonus XP that the character can only use for certain purposes, so there's some precedent.

Since the loss of a feat hurts forever, but a 5,000 XP shortfall will disappear in time under the 3.5 XP system, I would call this feat underpowered (if the player cannot use rebuilding to get the benefit for free). Perhaps you could try something along these lines:

Unburdensome Wishes
Prerequisite: Able to cast wish or miracle.
Benefit: Whenever you gain a level, you gain 500 bonus experience points per (effective) character level, which you can only use to cast spells with an XP component, and for no other purpose. You do not gain levels any sooner than you would otherwise. These bonuses overlap and do not stack; therefore, whenever you gain a level, your new bonus replaces whatever unspent bonus XP you have.