Uncanny Forethought: Rebalancing a Broken Feat.

[Miss Disaster]

Uncanny Forethought (from Exemplars of Evil):

http://dndtools.eu/feats/exemplars-of-evil--64/uncanny-forethought--3009/

As many of you know, UF is a terrific feat for Wizards. In fact, it's almost a mandatory feat for the high majority of high-optimization 3.5 Wizard builds. The feats creator(s) seemed to have built the feat for the intent of being primarily used by DM's NPCs and major villains (not PCs) due to its placement in the rather focused Exemplar of Evils book. Plus, EoE was one of the last published 3.5 sourcebooks. It did not receive any published errata and it has been argued that it may not have received as much QC (as compared to prior sourcebooks) due to the lead-up of allocated QC resources going towards the upcoming release of 4E.

The UF feat's primary brokenness problem is that it almost completely invalidates the entire Sorceror class' main schtick - that being the wonderful versatility of spontaneous spellcasting for a primary arcane spellcaster.

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Now, what I'd like to do is to tweak the feat so that it still has "spontaneous spellcasting" value for Wizards, yet doesn't overshadow the Sorceror's spontaneous spellcasting glory.

Now, if you notice, the feat's description text comes in 2 paragraphs. The first paragraph of benefits actually seems fairly well-balanced as a higher-tier feat for a Wizard who takes the feat-tax pre-requisite of Spell Mastery (an arguably sub-standard feat in and of itself).

The 2nd paragraph of benefits is where we see the Sorceror getting kicked to the curb. The drawbacks (-2 CL and Full Round Action casting) of accessing any spellbook-residing spell are incredibly easy to either negate or ignore. In fact, one of the "drawbacks" is actually a benefit. Imagine using an open UF slot to cast Break Enchantment (Casting Time: 1 Minute) or Major Creation (Casting Time: 10 Minutes) in 1 Full Round. That's not a penalty - that's converting spells not-intended for in-combat-use as *combat spells*!

That all said, how would the game mechanic balance of this feat work out if we just eliminated the 2nd paragraph and used just the 1st paragraph's benefits to give the Wizard some spontaneous spellcasting capability? Granted, Tier 1 Wizards don't need this feat at all to be crazy-go-nuts awesome. But for those folks (like my group) that don't like to be ban broken material ... but instead modify and rebalance existing problematic game mechnics ... we'd like to find a good use for this feat due to the popularity of Wizards within our gaming group.

Thanks for your time and consideration. All feedback, insights and suggestions are welcome!

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Any arcane spellcaster can take Ancestral Relic for a custom Runestaff and put whatever spells they want on it, and spontaneously cast those spells even if they're a prepared caster. This trivializes a Sorcerer's limited number of spells known, and gives a Wizard spontaneous access to a ton of situational/utility spells. You can even swap out spells for different ones of equal level, and the time it takes to modify it is multiplied by zero so it's not even a free action, it's no action at all. Light some Incense of Consecration, switch your Runestaff to the perfect spells you need right now, and extinguish the incense to preserve its remaining duration for another time.

Any character who can spontaneously cast spells (Wizard included due to Spontaneous Divination) can get Versatile Spellcaster and Magical Training for a spellbook (if they don't already have one). Per the Rules Compendium anyone who casts spells from a spellbook can learn more spells and add them to it just as a wizard does. Versatile Spellcaster allows you to spend two spell slots of the same level (that could be used to spontaneously cast something) to cast any spell you know of one level higher, which would include any spells you've put in that spellbook. This gives classes like Beguiler, Warmage, and Dread Necromancer spontaneous access to the entire Wizard spell list. It also allows divine casters who can spontaneously convert prepared spells into another spell to do the same thing, but theirs are still cast as divine spells regardless of what list it was from, because they use their divine slots to cast them.

The biggest problem with Uncanny Forethought is its ability to reduce a spell's casting time to a full-round action. You can use it to cast Identify for example, and you're spending the full-round action per the feat's activation in place of the spell's normal one hour casting time. At level 21+ you can develop epic spells with a casting time of 100+ days for a Spellcraft DC of zero (and a research time and cost of zero) and use Uncanny Forethought's full-round action activation time in place of the spell's casting time. That's really the only thing that needs to be fixed, as its ability to give a character their intelligence modifier in spontaneous spell slots does not trivialize the Sorcerer's shtick any more than tricks available to other classes trivialize the Wizard's.

[FidgetySquirrel]

As far as reducing casting time goes, thank goodness for RAI, eh?

[Grod_The_Giant]

That all said, how would the game mechanic balance of this feat work out if we just eliminated the 2nd paragraph and used just the 1st paragraph's benefits to give the Wizard some spontaneous spellcasting capability? Granted, Tier 1 Wizards don't need this feat at all to be crazy-go-nuts awesome. But for those folks (like my group) that don't like to be ban broken material ... but instead modify and rebalance existing problematic game mechnics ... we'd like to find a good use for this feat due to the popularity of Wizards within our gaming group.

Thanks for your time and consideration. All feedback, insights and suggestions are welcome!
It goes from being brokenly powerful to merely great, I'd think.

[Miss Disaster]

The biggest problem with Uncanny Forethought is its ability to reduce a spell's casting time to a full-round action. You can use it to cast Identify for example, and you're spending the full-round action per the feat's activation in place of the spell's normal one hour casting time. At level 21+ you can develop epic spells with a casting time of 100+ days for a Spellcraft DC of zero (and a research time and cost of zero) and use Uncanny Forethought's full-round action activation time in place of the spell's casting time. That's really the only thing that needs to be fixed, as its ability to give a character their intelligence modifier in spontaneous spell slots does not trivialize the Sorcerer's shtick any more than tricks available to other classes trivialize the Wizard's.In my OP, I forgot to mention this regarding the 1st Paragraph detail (although I did mention the casting time issue in the 2nd Paragraph diatribe).

Good point though. The UF feat should state the specific parameters of how the spontaneous casting works (do the slot spells cast like a sorc/bard? are metamagic feats allowed on the slot spells? how do Swift/Intermediate spells and long-casting time spells get affected?). I prefer to see UF slot spells adopt the unique rules of Sorceror/Bard spellcasting mechanic (just as the Spontaneous Divination ACF should do the same).

The first time I played a Wizard using UF I immediately gravitated towards getting Spell Mastery on spells like Ghoul Glyph and Fabricate in order to fully maximize the UF's feat casting time reduction. Having done that, I can't imagine wanting to play the feat like that again due to its severe imbalance.