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

[jasamcarl]

[RANT]And this is the whole explanation needed to allow or disallow this feat. All the hogwash about balancing or not is only to be applied to WotC non-campaign specific splatbooks. Although one could use the Scarred Lands books as splatbooks everything contained there in is meant and flavored for the Scarred Lands.

Already mentioned in this thread is Spellfire from the Forgotten Realms. If all the books of FR had been OGC would people have whined (which they do now even without it being OGC) about Spellfire.
Spellfire in a campaign world without things like the Red Mages, etc. would be hugely unbalancing. Even in FR where these organisations are present people complain that it's overpowered because they or their DM can't balance it's roleplaying aspect. Is this a problem of the feat? No, it's a problem of the user and the one allowing it.
Or as a better example let's consider the WotC spell planer ally. Everyone whines it's overpowered because it's balanced by it's roleplaying aspect. Same goes for Gate and similar spells. Spells one has to consider before giving their player's acces to or otherwise has to balance by making them do quests or similar 'roleplaying' tasks to make them think twice before calling their 3rd planatar or Solar for the day.

Sorcerous Pact is a feat meant to be balanced by it's roleplaying aspect. If you don't like that, don't use it. I for one would happily buy books containing suchs feats as long as they have normal feats too and the roleplaying ones are clearly flavored.

Everyone jumps in this discussion as if they were obligated to allow a player to use sorcerous pact, why? Nowhere is it stated that one has to use it. If people really want to discuss the usefullness of this feat let them first DM or play in a well DM'd scarred lands game where it's allowed.[/RANT]

Can someone remind me why Spellfire is overpowered again? Most of the claims to its lack of balance seemed kneejerk when it was last discussed. I don't know, perhaps someone used it enough in game that they found a killer strategy, but i certainly haven't seen it.

Gate probably is overpowered, but doesn't planer ally have a pretty explicit gp/day cost?

 

[Allanon]

...When Sword and Fist first came out, there was a lot of discussion on the imbalance of several feats in it. Why? Because they were broke...

...All the hogwash about balancing or not is only to be applied to WotC non-campaign specific splatbooks...

As I said in my post earlier, gamebalancing all the feats and spells in a book should be applied only to non-campaign specific splatbooks without flavor. I for one think it only applies to WotC since disallowing they're splatbooks always seems to get on the bad side of gamers. I agree that Sword and Fist and the like are bound by this. And upcoming books like the upcoming feats heavy book from WotC do too.
A book from S&S which is designed for the Scarred Lands setting doesn't have to conform to this. Why? Eventhough they say it can be used outside of the Scarred Lands doesn't mean everything can be used in a 1:1 basis. A DM and a player have to use their own good judgement in this.

 

[KarinsDad]

A book from S&S which is designed for the Scarred Lands setting doesn't have to conform to this. Why? Eventhough they say it can be used outside of the Scarred Lands doesn't mean everything can be used in a 1:1 basis. A DM and a player have to use their own good judgement in this.

Ok, fair enough.

I will caveat my statement that this feat is broken by saying that since this is a DND rules forum, it is broken with respect to the core DND rules, regardless of how much power a given DM wants to allow within his own campaign.

 

[Scion]

No doubt about it. You can get more defensive items than offensive items.

Let's be realistic. How many of these items actually exist in the core rules and how many actually make it into the hands of PCs (or NPCs for that matter) in most campaigns? Sure, a DM can introduce new items of these types to his game, but there are only a few in the actual DMG

Magic items are basically non-sequitor to the issue of the power level of Sorcerers Pact. If they are prevalent enough to become so in a campaign, then the campaign is already Monty Haul and you might as well introduce overly potent feats. What's another +4 DC when your PCs have +15 or more worth of save protection already?

We obviously play different games. In the dmg there are rules for creating new spells, rules for creating new items, and rules on how to use them. There are costs and there are penalties, but all in all the system already has built in everything needed to make what I said above. Those three items I listed were fairly nice, however they only cost a fraction of the character wealth at these levels, and I could have made it cost much less with greater benefit.

You have listed quite a few items there, what if the pc wanted to up his luckstone to +2? would you just say no? That is very harsh, and completely unnecissary. It is easy enough to extrapolate most items. Even failing that most dms should have the ability to at least make a good effort.

It is not mounty haul and I resent the insult. My characters are always right around the correct range in wealth, there are lots of powerful feats and abilities floating around so it is a high powered campaign, but that is just as legitimate as a lower powered campaign.

As for immunities they are all over. Protection from alignment, certain classes start off immune to various things, tons of spells grant immunities and you can get them in potions if need be, lots of lot level items make you immune to this or that. Even the simple hat of disguise or horn of fog can make you immune to certain things. It is all about how you think about the potential uses.

All in all it just sounds like you dont want to use this feat, fine then, dont. You have not come up with a way to change it to your likeing while keeping the flavor though I have asked you several times. Lets see you do that at least.

It seems to me already that the core rules favor making your save incredibly over failing it. I was not exagerating with my statements before about how often people save, that is just how the game naturally extrapolates itself. If it doesnt happen in your experience fine, but it has in mine, and I dont see how it could not in yours unless some very odd things were going on.

 

[KarinsDad]

We obviously play different games. In the dmg there are rules for creating new spells, rules for creating new items, and rules on how to use them. There are costs and there are penalties, but all in all the system already has built in everything needed to make what I said above. Those three items I listed were fairly nice, however they only cost a fraction of the character wealth at these levels, and I could have made it cost much less with greater benefit.

There is a major difference between the POTENTIAL for a given item to be created and for many opponents in a campaign having 3 or 4 such +5 items.

You stated that getting to +15 to saves is easy. No, it is not. If a given NPC opponent has +15 on saves from items, the moment he dies, PCs typically acquire those items. If most of the NPC opponents have +10 or more to saves from items, then your campaign is in trouble because the PCs will walk around acquiring the most powerful save items right and left.

Sure, the rules allow for the creation of such items, but if many of them show up in a campaign, the campaign will spire out of control, high powered campaign, low powered campaign, it does not matter.

+4 DC is fine if the opposition often has +10 or +15 to saves from items. But, I doubt very much that even in your game, that this is the case.

As for immunities they are all over. Protection from alignment, certain classes start off immune to various things, tons of spells grant immunities and you can get them in potions if need be, lots of lot level items make you immune to this or that. Even the simple hat of disguise or horn of fog can make you immune to certain things. It is all about how you think about the potential uses.

Well, you are good at arguing, but you are not so good at backing up your statements. Like I asked you before, which classes have immunities at low to mid levels?

Sure, Protection From Elements results in basically an immunity, for all of 10 minutes per level. So if you happen to KNOW that a sorcerer is about to attack you and you happen to KNOW that he likes throwing fire spells and your initiative beats his, then sure, you can defend against fire spells if you have the Protection From Elements spell ready. But, what does Protection From Elements Fire buy you when his second spell is acid or electricity?

Sure, Rogues can have Improved Evasion. Most sorcerers would be smart enough to not throw reflex save throw spells against lightly armored opponents who are not casting spells.

The immunities are irrelevant to whether +4 DC is balanced or not. They do not happen often enough and even when they do, the sorcerer can change tactics to react to them, just like a sorcerer who does not have the Sorcerers Pact feat. The difference is that when the sorcerer who does have the Sorcerers Pact feat finds the weakness of his opponent, he is much more capable of taking advantage of it. His opponents defenses will be like tissue paper (as opposed to like cardboard for the sorcerer without the feat).

All in all it just sounds like you dont want to use this feat, fine then, dont. You have not come up with a way to change it to your likeing while keeping the flavor though I have asked you several times. Lets see you do that at least.

Sure I did. A long time ago in this thread. I stated that +2 would be balanced instead of +4.

It seems to me already that the core rules favor making your save incredibly over failing it. I was not exagerating with my statements before about how often people save, that is just how the game naturally extrapolates itself. If it doesnt happen in your experience fine, but it has in mine, and I dont see how it could not in yours unless some very odd things were going on.

Core rules do not do this. I showed you the math. Strong saves go up at the same rate as DCs. Weak saves go up slower. Since the sorcerer can evaluate a situation and decide what spells to cast, he, not the defender, determines what type of save and how powerful the DC (especially if he has the Heighten Spell feat).

There is the possibility for items to offset this somewhat, but if you have them in the quantities where a +4 DC is no big deal, then yes, you are running a Monty Haul game. If you are just spouting off about what is possible (abet not probable), then you probably do not have many NPC opponents with +15 from items to all of their saves in your game.

 

[Kichwas]

Assuming a CHA of 26 at 20th level, that would be 56 spells at +1 (10 of which are nearly worthless 0 level spells), so 46 spells at +1 or +46. At +4, that would be 10 spells (1 of which is a nearly worthless 0 level spell), so 9 spells at +4 or +36.

Bonus spells for high stats are to spells per day not spells known. A 20th level sorcerer will know 43 spells.

The fact that the patron picks the spells, the patron can take the feat away, or the patron can get ticked at you?

As written the player picks the spells to any matched theme they can devise, and then engineers a matching patron. The book included a number of sample themes in its Scion feats. Some of which included spells like Wish, Circle of Death, Charm Person, Soul Bind, Horrid Wilting and so on.

Usually when you have this much discussion about a feat, it IS the problem of the balance of the feat and not the people using it.

When Sword and Fist first came out, there was a lot of discussion on the imbalance of several feats in it. Why? Because they were broke.

I agree. I had players with good intentions ripping game balance apart with some of the feats in that book. As a group, we would then just take the feat out of the given character, or apply the errata once it was available.

Game play can be ruined by good players when they are using bad tools. Especially if they do not yet realize how flawed those tools are. A good player might choose a bad feat, spell, class, item or whatever for a good reason -My character was trained as a gladiator to focus on tripping his opponants-, and then not see the problem until play shows it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Bonus spells for high stats are to spells per day not spells known. A 20th level sorcerer will know 43 spells.

Yup, my bad.

I started writing that with spells per day in mind and when switched over to spells known, forgot to subtract out the bonus ones that I had added in.

 

[KarinsDad]

As written the player picks the spells to any matched theme they can devise, and then engineers a matching patron. The book included a number of sample themes in its Scion feats. Some of which included spells like Wish, Circle of Death, Charm Person, Soul Bind, Horrid Wilting and so on.

"Sorcerers usually manifest spells that are thematically appropriate to the kind of power their patron grants or unlocks within them."

According to this, the patron grants the spells. This implies that he decides, not the sorcerer. Now, a given DM could have multiple spells per level for the sorcerer to choose from, but that would be a campaign decision of the DM, not of the player.

There isn't anything in the description that indicates that the player engineers the patron. In my game, patrons (e.g. deities) are engineered by the DM.

 

[Kichwas]

Do you tell people who play Clerics or Paladins what spells their god(s) granted them every day?

 

[reiella]

Do you tell people who play Clerics or Paladins what spells their god(s) granted them every day?

Clerics after a fashion, we actually do.

See Domain Spells and Domain Spell Slots... Which is how I consider this feat to be paired against for terms of selection.

And while nothing stops a player from proposing a new Domain, there's just as equally nothing stopping a DM from saying "No your god doesn't grant that spell".

If anything, the Patron spell-list is more something that would need to be worked out between the DM and Player (in my opinion).