New Feat: Speed Casting

[Stalker0]

Speed Casting [Metamagic]

You can cast spells faster than normal, at the price of accurate casting.

Benefit: You can change the time scale of a spell's casting time. 1 hour becomes 10 minutes which becomes 1 minute which becomes 1 full round. You incur 20% spell failure when casting the spell for every time scale you drop, and you cannot drop the time scale lower than a full round.


So for example, Guards and Wards has a 30 min casting time. With a 20% spell failure it would take 3 minutes, 40% 3 full rounds.

The benefit of this feat is it allows a wizard better access to certain spells whose casting time is prohibitive, such as major creation for example. The balance is the spell failure, as I rarely see any wizard in armor just because of the threat of it.

However, this allows a lot more spells to be usable in combat now, is the spell failure a good enough balance, or is it too high, too low?

 

[Anabstercorian]

Seems good enough for a first draft. I don't feel any need to alter it before playtesting gives any evidence of over- or under-poweredness.

And I LOVE the concept. Kudos.

 

[kreynolds]

Out of curiousity, why not allow a drop from 1 round to 1 standard action?
EDIT: Yes, very nice feat!

 

[Stalker0]

Out of curiousity, why not allow a drop from 1 round to 1 standard action?
EDIT: Yes, very nice feat!

Originally it was just as you say. However, with casting times like 30 minutes, 6 rounds, etc, it gets clunky to say 6 standard actions.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Looks like it should be a general feat, not a metamagic feat.

I like it. I also like the idea of balancing an improvement in the spell with a chance of spell failure. Kudos.

 

[TheUber]

Would you mind If I posted this feat on my site?
http://www.uberddragons.cjb.net

I play with a group that is extremely powergamish, and will abuse anything they can get their hands on. I think that this feat would be fine in a normal game, but if you have players who have stacks of books of spells taller than themselves, they will find a spell that can be abused with this feat. I personally am going to change this feat so that you may only decrease the time to cast a spell by one step for when I play with my powergamer group.

Great job though, an excellent idea for a feat!

 

[Stalker0]

Would you mind If I posted this feat on my site?
http://www.uberddragons.cjb.net

I play with a group that is extremely powergamish, and will abuse anything they can get their hands on. I think that this feat would be fine in a normal game, but if you have players who have stacks of books of spells taller than themselves, they will find a spell that can be abused with this feat. I personally am going to change this feat so that you may only decrease the time to cast a spell by one step for when I play with my powergamer group.

Great job though, an excellent idea for a feat!

Yes you may post it to your site.

I agree that I'm sure there is some spell out there that can abuse this. One thing you might consider is upping the spell failure even higher for more steps, the first step is a 20%, the second being 45 or 50%, etc. That way really powerful spells with very high casting times are going to be impossible to drop to only a round or so, and I'd say for most spells anyone willing to take a 50% or higher chance of losing a spell in the middle of combats that only last about 3 rounds should be able to get a bit more bang for their buck.

And as far as making it general vs metamagic, the feat changes the very nature of spells so that seemed to be in the metamagic department. While its a different way of doing metamagic, its still in the spirit, a more powerful spell but with a cost.