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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Methos of Aundair" data-source="post: 1662741" data-attributes="member: 21764">The Practiced Spellcaster feat in The Complete Divine (page 82) came up in a thread and when I read up on the feat I realized how unbalanced it was in my opinion. Out of curiosity I emailed my players and asked them and they all agreed. I was curious what the readers on this board thought. First off, this feat is useless towards any non-multiclassed spellcaster, so remember I am talking about multiclassed characters since this would be the only one capable of using it. Also, please read the feat description before posting, if you would like (and it’s legal) I can post the feat on this thread.     Using a character out of my personal campaign I’m running (Rog4/Wiz5/Arcane Trickster3) who just reached 12th level and chose Spell Penetration as his feat. Spell Penetration grants a caster a +2 on his checks to defeat an opponents SR. If at 12th he would have instead taken the Practiced Spellcaster feat it would have granted him a bonus of +4 caster level (not effecting spells cast per day or known, but effecting checks versus SR) which is basically as if he had received a doubled Spell Penetration feat at the cost of a single feat! That seems way too much. Feats shouldn’t exist that allow you to take one and receive the benefits of two others. And what is worse is the player could still choose to take Spell Penetration and the Greater version at a later level and they would all stack.     Also, for some reason I’ve noticed a lot of players who play fighters like to take one level of sorcerer so they can cast shield and mage armor. So let’s use a Ftr5/Sor1 (with minimum charisma required, so a Cha11) as an example. Without the Practiced Spellcaster feat this character can cast his mage armor up to 3 times a day at an hour apiece, or for a total of 3hours a day if he uses all his spells for mage armor. At 6th level this character takes the Practiced Spellcaster feat which allows him to cast his spells as if he were 4 levels higher (purposes of duration, range, effect only). So now he can still only cast mage armor 3/day but the duration of each casting is 5 hours apiece, or a total of 15 hours a day! A single feat just quintupled his duration. At this rate why would a multiclassed spellcaster ever need to take the extend spell feat.     Now that I have brought up the Extend Spell feat, in a way isn’t the Practiced Spellcaster feat basically affecting the Extend Spell feat the same way the Haste spell was towards Quicken Spell in 3rd edition? There are a lot of ways to use the Quicken spell feat but I heard a lot of “why take that feat when I can just cast haste?” This same approach can be taken in regards to the Extend Spell feat and Practiced Spellcaster for a multiclassed character. The Extend Spell feat allows you to cast a spell with its duration doubled if you memorize the spell at one level higher than its actual level. With the Practiced Spellcaster feat you automatically cast it at 4 levels higher for duration, range, damage, and all effects related to caster level, and still being able to cast it at its current level. In a way this takes away from several of the metamagic feats, not just the Extend Spell feat.     When I asked my players about what they thought of this feat this was one of the responses I got from them, and I quote:“Since the advent of 3.5 WotC has been trying to take away most of the disadvantages of multiclassing through feats (like this one), prestige classes (Mystic Theurge) and other rule changes.  I think it's completely ridiculous and over-powered.  Multiclassing is SUPPOSED to have disadvantages to offset the advantages of greater versatility.  This is especially important for spellcasting classes, where multiclassing in two or more gives you a MUCH wider range of spells and more spells per day (though of a lower level).  In my opinion it's driven by the company's (mostly correct) assumption that players seeking new and better advantages for their characters drive a large portion of the sales, so each new edition, book, etc. has something slightly MORE powerful or slightly MORE advantageous than everything that's come before to tempt people into buying. ”     I think he says it very well.</blockquote>

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