WW's Sorcerous Pact feat -the new Spellcasting Prodigy, or not?

[Kichwas]

This feat appears in the Player's Guide to Wizards, Bards, and Sorcerers and is OGC.

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Sorcerous Pact [Special]

• Prerequisites: Sorcerer 1st level.
• Benefit: One spell per spell level castable by the sorcerer is cast at a +4 to the spell save DC. The sorcerer has sworn an oath to fufill some kind of service to the patron(s). Generally, the sorcerer will be called upon to uphold their oath once per sorcerer level.
  
  Sorcerers usually manifest spells that are thematically appropriate to the kind of power their patron grants or unlocks within them. (The reader is directed to the Scion Feats [in the same book] for ideas of spells that might be appropriate for a sorcerer with this feat.) The spell that is augmented in power, by this feat, is always a spell that somehow reflects the nature of the patron.
• Special: This feat must be taken as a 1st level sorcerer. Failure to uphold the service or oath sworn to the patron results in a loss of the benefits of this feat. Sorcerers who break their pacts also risk the ire of their former patron.

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Thoughts?

Now that Spellcasting Prodigy has been cut (no longer gives a bonus to spell DCs), and Spell Focus has been cut to +1... here's a feat that gives a +4 to a group of spells. 10 total for a maxed out sorcerer (0 through 9 level spells). Given that many spells don't even have saves, one could make very efficient use of this feat.

It balancer, the pact, is something which is highly subjective to play and how 'distracted' the DM desires to get in reshaping plots to have it be a nussiance.

 

[The Souljourner]

Holy son of a... what an immensely broken feat. Rule #1 for abilities is never balance them with roleplaying penalties. And damn, this one would take ridiculous amounts of penalties.

And this is exactly why so many people just don't allow third party books.

-The Souljourner

 

[Crothian]

This is a great feat. Sure the DM has to enforce his part, but there is nothing wrong with that. Too many DMs seem not to be willing to do that and so we get this illusion that things like this cannot be balanced.

 

[Kichwas]

And this is exactly why so many people just don't allow third party books.

WotC is usually worse.

Witness the subject line I used, that's a WotC feat in there.

No one has yet to come even close to the Spellfire feat.

The above descision would be foolhardy.

Is this feat unbalanced? That's a seperate debate from the comment about third party books. The assessment that the feat adds in a lot of DM work is correct.

What if we ignore the pact? Would it be balanced then by virtue of how few spells it applies to? In that case we have to assume it will apply to the minority of the Sorcerer's spells that need saving throws...

True or false?

A topped out Sorcerer knows 43 spells, 10 of which will get this benefit. Roughly 1/4 of those known. Of the reamining 33, we have to wonder how many will need saving throws, and how this might compare with a sorcerer who had say... Spell Focus [Enchantment] (as one possible example among many).

A sorcerer with such a spell focus might possibly get all but 8 or so of their spells covered with a +1. That assuming that they use books like Relics and Rituals which is highly likely for anyone who also owns the book this feat came from. Otherwise they would have problems with an additional 4 spells. And here I'm assuming all Enchantment spells use a saving throw - which I haven't checked.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

My first thought was that I'd love to play a classic artillery platform sorceror with that feat.

Fireball, Lightning Bolt...all the way up to Meteor Swarm. Ouch.

 

[Thanee]

That feat seems to be a lot more powerful than Spellcasting Prodigy.

I don't think I would allow such a feat in my campaigns, altho Spellcasting Prodigy is at the borderline of the acceptable.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Darklone]

Dito. No such feat in any of my games.

 

[JoeBlank]

Looks to me like the feat would be balanced if it granted a +1 or +2 to DC, rather than a +4. Basically, it would be like Spell Focus, where the school is governed by "spells that are thematically appropriate to the kind of power their patron grants or unlocks within them."

Of course, being able to pick which spells are affected by the feat is a big advantage, but being limited to one per level is a disadvantage. One advantage over Spell Focus is that the feat would only apply to spells with saves, rather than being "wasted" on some spells with no save.

 

[The Souljourner]

What's WW?

 

[Crothian]

White Wolf I'd imagine