PDA

View Full Version : Question: Born of the three thunders: choice made during preparation or casting?



Beschoren
2010-06-07, 04:52 PM
Hello!

quick question:

The born of the three thuders (BTT) feat must be applied during the spell preparation or it can be added jsut at the time of casting?

My particular issue is on spirit shamans. Spirit shamans can't add metamagic spontaneously, like sorcerers do. they must retrive their daily spells already with metamagic or without it. Yet they just don't have known spells slots enought to keep both versions of a single spell....

It would be ok if the BTT entry was not so ambiguous - "When you cast a spell with either the electricity descriptor or the sonic descriptor that deals hit point damage, you can declare that spell to be a spell of the three thunders..."

so I can declare a BTT prepared spell NOT to be unleashed as a BTT spell, thus avoiding the daze effect? Or I don't even have to prepare it as a BTT spell?

thanks

tiercel
2010-06-07, 08:36 PM
The Born of the Three Thunders feat has the [Metamagic] tag, therefore it looks like to me to works the same way as any other metamagic for Spirit Shamans... when you commune with your spirit guide to get your spells, if you retrieve call lightning, it's either gonna have to be call lightning Born of the Three Thunders or unmodified call lightning. (When you get more spells retrieved, you might consider retrieving both, if it's that important to you.)

Where it gets *stickier* is how Born of the Three Thunders actually affects call lightning -- you *could* read the feat to say that you get dazed when you cast the spell, but that's less of a big deal since it has a duration of 1 min/level, while that the spell generates a stun/knocked prone chance every time you let a bolt loose. Getting dazed once -- possibly before combat even starts -- for a *bunch* of stun chances later actually seems like a decent deal. (Potentially similar, though in-combat, for electric-Energy-Substituted flaming sphere.)

Beschoren
2010-06-07, 09:06 PM
Getting dazed once -- possibly before combat even starts -- for a *bunch* of stun chances later actually seems like a decent deal. (Potentially similar, though in-combat, for electric-Energy-Substituted flaming sphere.)

I don't even have all that mallice at heart, but i do consider that, as well as a eletric flaming blade :smallbiggrin: 'cause, you know, it's so damm cool.

Gametime
2010-06-07, 09:32 PM
Where it gets *stickier* is how Born of the Three Thunders actually affects call lightning -- you *could* read the feat to say that you get dazed when you cast the spell, but that's less of a big deal since it has a duration of 1 min/level, while that the spell generates a stun/knocked prone chance every time you let a bolt loose. Getting dazed once -- possibly before combat even starts -- for a *bunch* of stun chances later actually seems like a decent deal. (Potentially similar, though in-combat, for electric-Energy-Substituted flaming sphere.)

The daze isn't that big of a deal to begin with unless you've got immediate actions, anyway. Unless I misremember how durations work, one round of being dazed that starts on your turn will end right before your next turn.

As long as you can use your other actions for the turn before casting the Born of the Three Thunders spell, and you don't have any immediate actions you're likely to want to use, there's really no downside.