Useless feats (re: Combat Casting)

[2WS-Steve]

What about creatures with reach?
What about the archers targeting the spellcaster should he start casting?
What about the acid arrow he's been hit with two rounds ago, that's still causing damage?

As people have mentioned many times before, its a matter of style. The last sorcerer in my game didn't bother with the 5 ft. step unless it could get her behind cover. Otherwise, it was more trouble than it was worth.

Has Combat Casting been errataed to add to Concentration checks when taking damage during the casting of a spell or are these house rules? My early version PHB says CC only grants the +4 bonus on Defensive Casting which wouldn't apply to case two or three above (and some of the other cases mentioned in previous posts).

 

[hong]

Has Combat Casting been errataed to add to Concentration checks when taking damage during the casting of a spell or are these house rules? My early version PHB says CC only grants the +4 bonus on Defensive Casting which wouldn't apply to case two or three above (and some of the other cases mentioned in previous posts).

Combat Casting only adds to your skill check when casting defensively. If it added when taking damage, it would be practically the same as Skill Focus, but with a bigger bonus.

I say it's a useful feat for _some_ casters, but not generally for PCs. At low levels, the bonus can be significant. However, low-level casters tend not to cast a lot of spells in melee. Wizards and sorcs don't have the hit points to risk being in melee range in the first place, and clerics don't have that many spells that are useful in combat. High level casters use defensive casting more, but at the same time, they're also much more likely to succeed at the check.

Someone who _might_ get a lot of use out of Combat Casting is a foozle spellcaster. Such a character is generally alone, and so is more likely to cast in melee than the average PC. They also usually don't have much of a career path to worry about, so can afford to spend some feat slots on useless feats.

 

[arwink]

Yeah, sorry about that. Momentary overnethusiastic brain spasm.

The point still stands about creatures with reach though. And the five-foot step is not the be all and end all its cracked up to be.

There are a lot of creatures in the MM that have reach, and even a bunch of hobgoblins are probably smart enough to have pikeman around. In a fight, there are a mutlitude of things that can go wrong, so hanging back behind the fighters and staying out of combat isn't always possible. Creatures with flight and wierd movement powers are likely to make a mockery of the tactic.

 

[Fenes 2]

Do not forget that you do not always have to use your highest level spells in combat. My sorceress often falls back on Magic Missile in combat. IMHO, combat casting is of limited use, since other conditions that require a concentration check are also common. Skill focus would be better, if errated to +3 without question.

And we do not use the "I step away 5 foot and cast" trick - it reeks, imho again, of tabletop minmaxing and unrealistic rule loopholes.

 

[Al]

5' step + cast is handy, but bear in mind that this is not always possible.

Most intelligent foes past the early levels can recognise casters (the ones that wave their hands around and make things happen) and know roughly how to deal with them. Even those that don't have reach weapons can take measures to make their life awkward. Typically, they will try to surround casters with melee opponents, forcing them to cast defensively. Any foe with a modicum of tactical knowledge will do this: casters are relatively easy to kill and have a greater potential for damage than fighters. Thus, they ought be removed first. At the very least, foes will try to push casters into a corner from where they cannot simply do the 5' + cast routine. Bull Rush is one of the most underestimated tactical manoeuvres in combat.

As mentioned previously, the real beneficiaries of Combat Casting are clerics. They need to get in and heal their comrades even though the foe that dropped them may be standing adjacent. Casting and holding the charge works only against primitive foes: realistic (or 'bastard DM') foes often attack unconscious characters if they know a cleric is running around with healing magic.

 

[green slime]

Feats are a rare and valuable resource for all players except fighters. And fighters aren't very interested in Combat Casting for some reason.

My players and I would rather purchase feats that our characters use on a regular basis, than something that may get used, and for which there are generally ways to avoid such situations. (being prepared with stoneskin, mage armour, invisibility or some such, and the tried and true 5-foot step).

Consider that everytime the 5 foot step is available, your Combat Casting feat is going to waste...And you instead could be using 1 extra spell (Spellcasting Prodigy), casting spells with a higher DC (Spell Focus), or be better equipped with Items created of your own choosing.

The thing is, as I see it, its value is too low for the gain.

OF course you can always give an example of when it would desirable to have a higher Concentraion check through the use of Combat Casting.

And for each example I can give you something else that you can do INSTEAD of resorting to making a Defensive Casting concentration check: For instance: Activate a wand. Which you could create through the Craft Wand feat. Activating a wand does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

I feel, however, that there are better feats available. Skill Focus (Concentration) (even at +2) being one of them.

I'd rather have a general +2 bonus to Concentration than +4 to a very specialised area of the skill, an area where I should be trying my utmost to avoid being in, in the first place.

 

[Fenes 2]

As an aside, I wonder how often the concentration checks come into play, especially those for monuted casting, or in a little rough weather or on a boat in rough waters. I think I often forget those checks during play (both as a player and as a DM). How do you handle those?

 

[arwink]

Well, I think in my games people roll checks even when they don't have too. It's just force of habit.

My immediate response to the concentration rules was pretty positive. It solved a lot of arguements that, in 2e, were pretty common among spellcasters. And the question of whether someone could cast a spell after a 1hp hit, on the deck of a storm-tossed ship, when somone's waving a chloraformed rag in their face and on the back of a galloping horse had all come up in my games through the nineties. Back then, it was more or less a judgement call. Now there are rules, and I make sure I used them.

There are rules I forget or simply don't use that often. I can count on one hand the number of times people in my games have turned undead in the past two years. It's this kind of thing that makes blanket statements about feats more or less pointless - stylistically some of them are always going to be more useful in 1 DM's games than another. All of my players clerics have prefered combat casting to extra turning. Most of the other spellcasters have thought it important enough to take. That's just the way it goes in my games.

As has been pointed out before in the thread - no feat is really useless, it's all just a matter of DM style.

 

[green slime]

Clerics in my game don't grab Extra Turning either. Unless they have low Charisma (8-10). Unless they are need it as a prerequisite.

And my players are turning all the time (2 clerics and 1 paladin of 7 characters).

But Combat Casting, noone will touch.

I'm not saying it is useless. But that there are better feats available, that provide more bang for your buck

 

[Pielorinho]

Edit: In fact a dwarven wizard with Con 20, maxed out Concentration, Combat Casting and Spell Focus (Concentration) can cast on the defensive automatically from level 1! Later on he only need to invest further ranks in Concentraition every other level, ranks that can be better spent elsewhere - In Tumbling for example.

Nitpick: dwarves only get one feat at first level.

As a DM, I find that CC is a very useful feat for my NPCs: the PCs tend to be flying (giving them absurd movement rates), and they love nothing more than to flank a spellcaster and start whaling away. When flanked, there's no 5' step option.

As a player, I've occasionally wished that I had the feat: occasionally, monsters will come at my druid from an unexpected direction and surround me, and I'll need to cast defensively.

Daniel