Innate Spell vs Archmage

[Story]

Isn't the Innate Spell feat pretty much strictly better than the Archmage SLA? You get 3 uses instead of 2 and you don't have to give up a 5th level slot. And Archmage requires you to burn feats getting in anyway, so it's not like that's the reason. The only advantage I can see of Archmage is that it's in the SRD.

[LTwerewolf]

The nice thing about the archmage version is you don't need material components, xp costs, etc.

[eggs]

It might be worth noting that the PGtF Innate Spell was nerfed pretty severely in 3.5. (A ton of prereqs, and only affects a level 0-1 spells)

[Viscerator]

this feat is updated(nerfed) in complete arcane. you need to sacrifice a spell slot 8 level higher than the spell you selected as innate spell.

[mattie_p]

Archmage still requires XP, though, LTwerewolf.


Spell-Like Ability
An archmage who selects this type of high arcana can use one of her arcane spell slots (other than a slot expended to learn this or any other type of high arcana) to permanently prepare one of her arcane spells as a spell-like ability that can be used twice per day. The archmage does not use any components when casting the spell, although a spell that costs XP to cast still does so and a spell with a costly material component instead costs her 10 times that amount in XP. This ability costs one 5th-level spell slot.

[LTwerewolf]

My mistake, but that still leaves for very inexpensive other spells.

[Acanous]

a spell with a costly material component instead costs her 10 times that amount in XP
That's always bugged me. What qualifies as "Costly"? Any more than 1 GP, as 1> is covered by Eschew? Paying 10 XP every time you use an SLA is a little annoying but not bad. The next step up is, I believe, 25 GP for components, which gets pricy for something you do twice daily. One you hit spells that cost 100 GP or so, it's totally not worth paying that much XP for it.

If you were to try castingsomething with a truly expensive material component, such as (For example) True Resurrection, you'd kill yourself by level drain in the process.

[DeltaEmil]

It's 50xp for every piece of gold that you have to pay. So no xp costs for fireball, shapechange (it uses a focus, and not material components), timestop, dominate monster, summon monster 1-9, and other stuff.

Teleportation circle as a spell-like ability from Archmage would cost you 10'000 xp (normal material component cost of 1000 gp).

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's always bugged me. What qualifies as "Costly"? Any more than 1 GP, as 1> is covered by Eschew? Paying 10 XP every time you use an SLA is a little annoying but not bad. The next step up is, I believe, 25 GP for components, which gets pricy for something you do twice daily. One you hit spells that cost 100 GP or so, it's totally not worth paying that much XP for it.

If you were to try castingsomething with a truly expensive material component, such as (For example) True Resurrection, you'd kill yourself by level drain in the process.

Though it's not specified anywhere, I tend to assume "expensive" means costs 1gp or more, in regards to material components.

I also believe that you've interpretted that correctly. Archmage was one of the earliest PrC's in the game. It suffers from a certain overestimation of the value of being able to cast spells more often than default. Consequently, 10xp for every gp sounds about right for that period.

I'm also pretty sure that if expending that much xp would lower your level, as in your true-res example, the spell-like would simply fail to activate. You're not allowed to expend enough xp to lower your level. Level drain only results from death and negative levels.

[Story]

this feat is updated(nerfed) in complete arcane. you need to sacrifice a spell slot 8 level higher than the spell you selected as innate spell.

Wow, really? That makes it literally* useless. I guess that ends the discussion then anyway.


* Ok if you try really hard, you might be able to create a build that can benefit from this. But I don't see it.

[Toliudar]

I've had a few characters take arch age, but not for the SLA ability. There are other goodies there as well.