chameleon floating feat

[sirpercival]

So I recently hit upon the idea of using the Chameleon floating feat to pick up Item Familiar. Every time you changed to and from item familiar you could reassign your skill bonus, and shifting to a different feat carries no penalty since when you lose the Item Familiar feat you also lose the "special" entry under the feat that determines your XP loss.

This led me to wondering what other feats you could swap around with the floating feat to get changing benefits on. One obvious one is Shape Soulmeld, because you could pick a different soulmeld every time; another is DMM if you have different metamagic feats you wanted to power. A third possibility is Leadership, to swap around cohorts (can you do that automatically? the Leadership entry on the SRD has no rules for dismissing and re-attracting cohorts...).

What other feats have people used?

[CactusAir]

Crafting feats. What shall I make today?

Hidden talent. Pick a 1st level PLA of your choice.

[sirpercival]

Meh, crafting you could do by binding Astaroth, and anyway there are only a few crafting feats that are really worth it.

Hidden talent is ok, but the bonuses you get from my examples are more significant.

[Kaje]

Pick up an Abyssal Heritor feat, then Shun the Dark Chaos to get a new feat you qualify for. You get to keep it.

[Gnaeus]

Extra Maneuver. Extra Spell

[deuxhero]

Open minded is floating skill points.

[Socratov]

for DFA's and Warlocks: extra invocation.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

With using the floating feat for Item Familiar, if at any time that feat isn't assigned to Item Familiar, you lose access to all the skill ranks you've invested into it, i.e. you no longer have those ranks in those skills.

You can just play a nonhuman race and Alter Self into a Human for the racial bonus feat and skill points, get max ranks in any given skill that suits the situation and even get Skill Focus or one of several feats to make that a class-skill if it would otherwise be cross-class.

[Wyntonian]

for DFA's and Warlocks: extra invocation.

The already-mentioned crafting feats also work for warlocks, and they can make anything, then take 10 with it. Or switch to Extra Invocation for whatever the hell sort of invocation they feel like. That's why my warlock is going to go into chameleon eventually.

[sirpercival]

With using the floating feat for Item Familiar, if at any time that feat isn't assigned to Item Familiar, you lose access to all the skill ranks you've invested into it, i.e. you no longer have those ranks in those skills.

You can just play a nonhuman race and Alter Self into a Human for the racial bonus feat and skill points, get max ranks in any given skill that suits the situation and even get Skill Focus or one of several feats to make that a class-skill if it would otherwise be cross-class.

If you literally don't have the feat, why would you suffer the drawbacks of having the feat? If you take the "obtain familiar" feat, and then you take a different feat, you don't lose XP for losing the familiar. If you take Cobalt Rage and invest 2 essentia in it 10 hours before you swap out for a different feat, you don't lose both essentia (you lose 1 because the feat gives you 1).

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you literally don't have the feat, why would you suffer the drawbacks of having the feat? If you take the "obtain familiar" feat, and then you take a different feat, you don't lose XP for losing the familiar. If you take Cobalt Rage and invest 2 essentia in it 10 hours before you swap out for a different feat, you don't lose both essentia (you lose 1 because the feat gives you 1).

If you invest skill ranks in an Item Familiar, then those skill ranks are contained in that item familiar and not in your character's head. If you lose the benefits of the Item Familiar, you lose access to those stored skill ranks. "If the character loses the item familiar.... these skill points and the bonuses related to them are lost." If he no longer has an item familiar, which even if he still has that item if it is no longer his item familiar, then he loses those invested skill points.

[Venger]

I have been playing a chameleon for the last two years (factotum 5/ chameleon 3) and it is my favourite class. here is a list of all the feats that I have on my free floating feat (it's like a patella!) list in alphabetical order for convenience


Blind-Fight
Combat Casting
Corpsecrafter
Corrupt Spell
Craft Wondrous Item
Divine Intercession
Exotic Weapon Proficiency
Explosive Spell
Extend Spell
Extra Turning
Fell Animate
Fell Drain
Great Fortitude
Improved Critical
Improved Initiative
Insightful Reflexes
Iron Will
Lightning Reflexes
Lolth’s Caress
Master of Poisons
Open Minded
Poison Spell
Profane Agony
Rapid Metabolism
Retributive Spell (+1)
Run
Sadistic Reward
Scribe Scroll
Silent Spell
Skill Focus
Stand Still
Still Spell
Versatile Spellcaster

[LordBlades]

I have been playing a chameleon for the last two years (factotum 5/ chameleon 3) and it is my favourite class. here is a list of all the feats that I have on my free floating feat (it's like a patella!) list in alphabetical order for convenience


Blind-Fight
Combat Casting
Corpsecrafter
Corrupt Spell
Craft Wondrous Item
Divine Intercession
Exotic Weapon Proficiency
Explosive Spell
Extend Spell
Extra Turning
Fell Animate
Fell Drain
Great Fortitude
Improved Critical
Improved Initiative
Insightful Reflexes
Iron Will
Lightning Reflexes
Lolth’s Caress
Master of Poisons
Open Minded
Poison Spell
Profane Agony
Rapid Metabolism
Retributive Spell (+1)
Run
Sadistic Reward
Scribe Scroll
Silent Spell
Skill Focus
Stand Still
Still Spell
Versatile Spellcaster

Just curious: why would you take Combat Casting vs. Skill Focus (concentration)?+3 all time makes much more sense IMO than +4 only when casting defensively.

[Hyfigh]

Just curious: why would you take Combat Casting vs. Skill Focus (concentration)?+3 all time makes much more sense IMO than +4 only when casting defensively.

Because it's, um, a floating feat that can be changed daily... Normally a sub-optimal choice, but certainly a reasonable one when you need it.

[Talionis]

I think you can use it to shape incarnum. Those don't go away till dismissed.

[Draz74]

I think you can use it to shape incarnum. Those don't go away till dismissed.
Well, even if your DM houserules away this potentially-abusive detail ...


Just curious: why would you take Combat Casting vs. Skill Focus (concentration)?+3 all time makes much more sense IMO than +4 only when casting defensively.

... why would you take either one of these when you could get a +4 bonus to all Concentration checks (and some other perks) by taking Shape Soulmeld (psion's eyes or vitality belt)?

[Hyfigh]

... why would you take either one of these when you could get a +4 bonus to all Concentration checks (and some other perks) by taking Shape Soulmeld (psion's eyes or vitality belt)?

Touche. :smallamused:

[Venger]

Just curious: why would you take Combat Casting vs. Skill Focus (concentration)?+3 all time makes much more sense IMO than +4 only when casting defensively.

that's a perfectly valid question.

my chameleon picks up the slack in melee rather a lot due to the rest of the party's rather poor damage output. Occasionally, he will need to cast a spell while threatened and make the concentration check.

my DM's pretty stingy with scrolls and as a result, I don't have any concentration duration spells by the luck of the draw. as a result, the only thing I've ever used concentration for in this game is avoiding AoOs by casting defensively.

so while in the abstract, you're quite right, in my specific game, I haven't used concentration for anything else, so the additional +1 to avoid AoOs is nice.

I forgot to put skill focus (x) on there, but I figure that it's kinda implied by a feat you can switch every day.

[Yuki Akuma]

If your DM is stingy with scrolls, use divine casting instead. You don't need a spellbook for that. You can prepare absolutely any divine spell.

[Venger]

Well, even if your DM houserules away this potentially-abusive detail ...



... why would you take either one of these when you could get a +4 bonus to all Concentration checks (and some other perks) by taking Shape Soulmeld (psion's eyes or vitality belt)?

because I do not know the incarnum rules.

not that I dispute their usefulness, I'm sure that this, what seems to be an extra spell variant (correct me if I'm wrong) is quite useful. just that, like utterances, vestiges, invocations, pacts, mysteries, totem magic, marital manoeuvres, and any other casting-that's-not-casting that I may have left out, I am not really as familiar with them as I am with arcane/divine spells and the feats surrounding them, which is why I use a chameleon instead of one of those classes.

could you tell me what those things do? I do always like learning more about this game



If your DM is stingy with scrolls, use divine casting instead. You don't need a spellbook for that. You can prepare absolutely any divine spell.

I do so.