Speed Casting

[Scion]

This diverts the thread, but if you're looking for a mechanic to cast buff spells when needed, why not a contingency spell (does one already exist?)?

In short, why not a spell (or a feat?) that allows you to cast a spell and leave it dormant, to be triggered later by you via a free action (verbal trigger)?

I'm not currently, might sometime, this thread is about a mage actually being able to use more than one spell in a round potentially in a somewhat balanced way. The quicken spell feat is way way overbalanced, nearly useless.

 

[AeroDm]

All in all this guy still doesnt look overpowered, he merely looks very focused on a certain goal. There isnt any problem with that Level 20 characters are supposed to be powerful by definition anyway. If you took this character 6 levels earlier he would be a great deal weaker.

Doesn't look overpowered? Even without time stop you are amazingly powerful. Any character taking Eldritch Knight will be immensly more powerful than you thought possible when making this feat because either you didn't know or didn't recall that EK existed (assuming you thought your original statement about gaining caster level meant not gaining BAB was true).

Even without the min/maxed tweak, the game designers thought that casting ONE spell/round was balanced. You are allowing people to cast up to 4 spells/round at progressively lower levels. However, they suffer NO penalty to their first spell. This is amazingly broken and countless spell combos could result in breaking this even further.

How about this- The same ftr2/mage8/ek10 who uses his 4 spells/round to cast Quickened: Enervation (free action), Energy Drain (9th), Enervation, Enervation, Enervation. The target gains 2d4+4 negative levels, no save.

 

[Scion]

Doesn't look overpowered? Even without time stop you are amazingly powerful. Any character taking Eldritch Knight will be immensly more powerful than you thought possible when making this feat because either you didn't know or didn't recall that EK existed (assuming you thought your original statement about gaining caster level meant not gaining BAB was true).

Even without the min/maxed tweak, the game designers thought that casting ONE spell/round was balanced. You are allowing people to cast up to 4 spells/round at progressively lower levels. However, they suffer NO penalty to their first spell. This is amazingly broken and countless spell combos could result in breaking this even further.

How about this- The same ftr2/mage8/ek10 who uses his 4 spells/round to cast Quickened: Enervation (free action), Energy Drain (9th), Enervation, Enervation, Enervation. The target gains 2d4+4 negative levels, no save.

cool, 4 spells, several feats, one round, 20th level and at max you have given one target 12 negative levels if they are even succeptible and at that level it takes one round to get rid of them all with one spell. (or even sr, which would negate most of those right there)

Again, where is the problem? You have completely maxed it out (with a prestige class that doesnt exist in 3.0), used several feats and it is cool, but you have not shown overpowered. At level 20 lots of very incredible and big things happen, and with 760,000 gp on equipment people should be able to take just about anything. (mantle of spell resistance, spell turning, negative energy protection, etc etc)

Where is the overpowered part??

 

[Scion]

figured I would make this another post to make it easier to see.

If you look at the feat the first spell is already at -2 caster level. So with your 4 spells in one round you are looking at: -2, -4, -6, -8. Just about any SR out there will stop the -8 spell, especially at that level!

 

[AeroDm]

My bad, I forgot that the first was indeed at -2.

I think another way to look at it would be to consider the cleric. I think it is fair to say that the cleric is not underpowered, and in fact could be overpowered. With a BAB that gets to +15/10/5 without any PrCs or min/maxing, you could cast up to three spells/round. Even at lower levels you are looking at multiple spells/round.

A lot of the cleric's power comes from his ability to boost himself through buff spells. There are not susceptable to SR and don't really have any affect from Caster Level. Thus diminishing the caster level will not really weaken the spells. However, forcing the cleric to spend 6 rounds spelling up before becoming Uber-Cleric is an excellent limitor. By allowing them to cast up to 3/round, they now take 2 rounds to spell up.

I don't really enjoy the cleric and try to avoid threads about cleric twinks, so I can't really offer any marvelous min/maxes to support this. Regardless, I fail to see how it can really be disputed. A feat to cast more spells/round at a rather light hindrance is _extremely_ powerful.

You seem to refute any example that I offer as to why it is overpowered, so I'd like to turn the tables. Why is it balanced? What problem is it fixing? Why should it exist?

 

[Scion]

You seem to refute any example that I offer as to why it is overpowered, so I'd like to turn the tables. Why is it balanced? What problem is it fixing? Why should it exist?

Sorry if it seems like I'm just dropping whatever you say, I am thinking about each point you make. Really

Most of the clerics spells are either defensive or reactive in nature. Also, if you look through threads here the average combat length seems to be around 5 rounds or so. 3.5 got rid of most of the decent buffs it seems, relegating most to short durations.

Now, unintentionally this feat could fix that. If you were to allow it only for spells with a personal or touch range you might still not allow it, but that does relegate it to a very few number of powers. It would allow someone to get the buffs up, but they would be so easy to dispel I'm not sure that most would be worth it at that point. Although I'm not sure if that would matter in your campaigns, it seems some use dispel, and others do not.

For high level battles (which is the only place this would matter) most mages are relegated to only a few spells that are really effective. I will admit that I dont have most suppliments, but as long as the dm keeps out the powers that are obviously overpowered then I would like to see a greater range of spells used.

With only one per round I have over and over again seen the spellcasters in the groups I've been in relegated to doing almost nothing most battles. Generally past the first battle they are out of spells that will do much. After the second battle in the same day pretty much nil, they are down to useing charged items.

A bit more min/maxing on their part may indeed fix this, but the game is about having fun as well so when they start thinking about retiring their characters just so that they can do something more than a few rounds a day. I've been trying to do a lot of things to help this.

One of the things is to up the number of spells. I doubled them actually, but only up to half of spells cast of each level for the day can be directly opposing enemies. There are other restrictions but that is the general overview.

So with this I am hopeing I suppose to make them use spells more creatively, more usefully, and more fun. Such as being able to cast two wall spells and a grease spell in the same round. Normally nearly impossible, but in this context they would be able to set up something interesting.

I realize it may not be fine in every campaign, but I would like people here to tell me just how this power can be broken and I will attempt to fix it.

Showing that at level 20 the character who is maxed out to use it still doesnt push my 'uh oh!' button after looking it over and thinking about what it could do I think its ok.

Just about every creature at level 20 will either be immune or incredibly resistant to just about everything (to some degree). The big one is that SR. Chances of attack spells being used 4 times in a round to any great effect seems to be just about nil. Too many things could stop or restrict it.

If the characters just met a new monster and want to test it out it could take 6 turns or more just to try each spell. Now on the first round they could send off a volley of three different low level spells and see which does what. Hopefully this will reduce any thoughts of useing outside knowledge while giving more meaning to how anyone found out what monsters weaknesses may even be.

That was really long winded I hope you understand more, comments are always welcome! If I come across as being a bit abrupt I do apologize It isnt always easy for me to explain what I am thinking properly, but I do always try to be nice. Usually I also like to get to the point.

Thanks for your help!

 

[AeroDm]

Hey no problem, I found this to be the least offensive arguement I've ever gotten in on these boards. I also think I am starting to better understand where you are coming from in terms of this feat. This also explains why our disparity exists- IMC magic is usually rare and thus very powerful. SR is rare, high will saves are rare, magic buffs are rare. Thus, imc, this would be amazingly powerful. But if in your camps people are running out of spells enough that you have doubled the slots without problem, then this would probably fit well in your game.

I'd still recomend dropping the caster level more than 2 as the additional spells are in essence replacing the move equivalent action left over from normally casting. Anything is better than the move that often goes wasted, so even a much lower spell is still worthwhile.

IMC I'd even consider using this feat where their caster level equals their BAB, but that probably wouldn't work for your campaigns... hope some of it helps, it was a good debate.

 

[Creamsteak]

Why wouldn't a caster take this feat if it was available to them and they met the prerequisites?

 

[RangerWickett]

I suggest that you could allow this:

If you have access to 5th level spells, once per round as a free action you may cast an additional spell that is no higher than your maximum spell level -5. The caster level for this spell is reduced by 8.

 

[Scion]

Why wouldn't a caster take this feat if it was available to them and they met the prerequisites?

Why would anyone take any feat?

Why wouldnt a fighter who uses only one weapon not take weapon focus? Why wouldnt he take weapon specialization sometime after he could get it? Why wouldnt someone focusing on a specific skill to the bane of all else take all feats possible to up that skill? why wouldnt someone who wanted to double their spell durations take extend spell? why wouldnt a caster who wanted to get past spell resistance take spell penetration?

you are asking the wrong question. people do that on the board here very often when they are trying to make a point but that doesnt mean it doesnt have a fatal flaw.

Above people have tried to make characters that could break this feat into something that would be incredibly overpowering but I think they havent quite made it. That is of course my opinion, and I put it up on here to see how people could break it.

First level that a wizard could take this is level 12 and lets say they want to cast two cones of cold in one round. This is possible with this feat.

The first would be cast at level 10 and the second at level 8. Effectively doing half again as much damage as only one being cast but costing two spells to do it. So far this seems fine, the only thing that would be bothered in any real way are creatures at least a couple below your challenge rating, and creatures with SR would have a much improved chance of ignoring it. In my estimation not overpowered at all, it uses up a pretty large portion of their attack spells per day and in a much less abusive way than haste.

I've gone over these arguments before though. I may change the feat slightly at some point, but for now it only seems to fix the problems I would like to fix without creating much of a new one.

I already have other plans to make metamagics more useful as well. Hence the comparison to quicken spell, which is incredibly incredibly weak as is. If I keep this feat as is then perhaps I will leave metamagics alone. I dont know. Will decide later.

More or less I see this feat as being much weaker than the extra partial action from haste, but useable in more circumstances.

In comparison to haste in 3.0 which would you all think would be better to keep? The feat or the spell?