Longer duration SLAs?

[Herbert West]

Is there a way to increase the duration of spell-like abilities, whether gained through race or prestige classes? 24 hours or longer would be great. Is the same possible for supernatural abilities?

[WeaselGuy]

Pretty sure Extend SLA is a feat you can take. It's not on the SRD like Empower (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsterFeats.htm#empowerSpellLikeAbility) and Quicken (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsterFeats.htm#quickenSpellLikeAbility) are, but I know Maximize is, so it would make sense for Extend, and maybe even Persist to be as well. Pretty sure Maximize is in Complete Arcane, if not then Complete Mage.

Outta curiosity, what SLAs are you trying to make last all day? Cause Warlock has quite a few 24hr SLA buffs...

[Herbert West]

I want to have a water elemental from Lord of Tides (Sandstorm 70) with me all day.

I had another question about that class, too, and I guess I probably don't need to make a whole new thread for that. It says "You can summon either an elder elemental once per day or a Large elemental three times per day, which can have the water or fire subtype." Does this mean that only the large ones can be either fire or water, or that the elder ones can, too?

[Curmudgeon]

Pretty sure Extend SLA is a feat you can take.
Pretty sure you're wrong, unless you're only talking Pathfinder. It's not in the Wizards of the Coast feat index (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/feats), nor the DragonDex feat index (http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/feats.html).

[WeaselGuy]

Pretty sure you're wrong, unless you're only talking Pathfinder. It's not in the Wizards of the Coast feat index (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/feats), nor the DragonDex feat index (http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/feats.html).

Yeah, both of those sites are blocked by my work. Like I said, I was only "pretty sure", and in this case, I was wrong. Sorry for giving false hope Herbert.

Also, if I were talking Pathfinder exclusive, I probably would have linked to www.d20pfsrd.com instead of the www.d20srd.org for Quicken and Empower.

[Eldaran]

There's no feat for them, but every SLA metamagic feat follows the same pattern (except maximize which is 1 cheaper than it should be). The pattern is you can affect an SLA of spell level equal to (CL/2)-A, where A is the spell level adjustment of the metamagic feat. So Extend SLA would let you affect a 1st level spell at CL 4, a 2nd level spell at CL 6 etc. Persistent would affect a 1st level spell at CL 14, 2nd level at CL 16 and so on.

[Psyren]

I want to have a water elemental from Lord of Tides (Sandstorm 70) with me all day.

I recommend you use Planar Ally or Leadership for this. The "summon elemental" class feature functions like summon monster, which lasts minutes rounds/level, which will make stretching it to even 1 hour very difficult much less 24.


I had another question about that class, too, and I guess I probably don't need to make a whole new thread for that. It says "You can summon either an elder elemental once per day or a Large elemental three times per day, which can have the water or fire subtype." Does this mean that only the large ones can be either fire or water, or that the elder ones can, too?

You can read that sentence either way (English is funny like that). I would say both flavors of elemental are available for both Large and Elder grades.

[Thurbane]

Don't the Sudden Metamagic feats work with SLAs? I know there's a Sudden extend, but I don't think there's a Sudden Persist.

[Curmudgeon]

Don't the Sudden Metamagic feats work with SLAs? I know there's a Sudden extend, but I don't think there's a Sudden Persist.
Doesn't look like they work with SLAs; spells only.
Benefit: Once per day, you can apply the effect of the Extend Spell feat to any spell you cast without increasing the level of the spell or specially preparing it ahead of time.

[Thurbane]

Doesn't look like they work with SLAs; spells only.

There's a special note in Complete Arcane (presumably intended for Warlocks):


Sudden Metamagic Feats: These metamagic feats don’t require modified spell slots, and so they work as well with spell-like abilities or invocations as they do with spells (though because spell-like abilities don’t have verbal or somatic components, Sudden Silent Spell doesn’t apply and Sudden Still Spell applies only to invocations).
Creatures with spell-like abilities at a high enough level will find sudden metamagic feats less useful than the dedicated feats Empower Spell-Like Ability and Quicken Spell-Like Ability (see page 303 of the Monster Manual), as well as the Maximize Spell-Like Ability feat introduced in this chapter.

[Psyren]

Even if you do Sudden Extend the minion, 2 rounds/lvl is not going to have it stick around for any meaningful length of time. So again I must recommend Planar Ally for this.

[Herbert West]

Pretty sure you're wrong, unless you're only talking Pathfinder. It's not in the Wizards of the Coast feat index (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/feats), nor the DragonDex feat index (http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/feats.html). Why are you being so sassy? This is just a question, not a reality tv show.


Yeah, both of those sites are blocked by my work. Like I said, I was only "pretty sure", and in this case, I was wrong. Sorry for giving false hope Herbert.

Also, if I were talking Pathfinder exclusive, I probably would have linked to www.d20pfsrd.com instead of the www.d20srd.org for Quicken and Empower. Thank you, WeaselGuy. I appreciate the attempt.


I recommend you use Planar Ally or Leadership for this. The "summon elemental" class feature functions like summon monster, which lasts minutes rounds/level, which will make stretching it to even 1 hour very difficult much less 24.

You can read that sentence either way (English is funny like that). I would say both flavors of elemental are available for both Large and Elder grades.
It looks like planar ally is a 6th level spell, so I would get that at the same level I would have gotten the class feature (11), and the large water elemental only has 8 HD so it would work. Is there a way to increase the HD for planar ally other than using the high-level spell? A huge water elemental has 16 HD, which is just 4 more than the spell says it can do.

Ugh, grammar. I guess I'll just assume that it's both water and fire for both like you said, then. If it ends up being only water for one, that's okay too anyway. It just means I can't have a fire one for when my character is angry.

Even if you do Sudden Extend the minion, 2 rounds/lvl is not going to have it stick around for any meaningful length of time. So again I must recommend Planar Ally for this.

Planar Ally also has a gp cost, so it doesn't work very well for having a pet water elemental around all the time. Maybe there's a way to get one that doesn't have a cost (or a lower cost)? What would be really cool is to have a baby water elemental at first level, and then have it get bigger as I level up. With the planar ally spells, it would go like this, though, right?:

level 7, lesser planar ally: up to medium water elemental
level 11, planar ally: up to large water elemental
level 15, greater planar ally: up to huge water elemental

I guess since those are all such high level, I don't even know if I'll get those if we stop at level six or seven anyway. Is there a way to have something like:

level 1, (something): small (maybe tiny?) water elemental
level 3, (something): small water elemental
level 5, (something): medium water elemental
level 7, (something): medium/large water elemental?

[Thurbane]

Not exactly what the OP was after, but doesn't one of the reserve feats let you summon an elemental pretty much at will all day?

[Herbert West]

Ah, thank you mister Thurbane! It looks like you're thinking of Summon Elemental from Complete Mage. The only downside is that I can't have my elemental at level one =(

The progression for this feat (for my own benefit to compare to the above ones):

level 7, Summon Elemental feat: small water elemental
level 11, Summon Elemental feat: medium water elemental
level 15, Summon Elemental feat: large water elemental

Unless there's a way to cast 4th or higher-leveled (c:summoning) spells at level one, I'll still have to wait until 7. It's free and all-day, though, so I might go with this.

Someone above mentioned leadership - could I get one as a cohort? If I did, would the CR or number of HD determine which one I can get?

[Bronk]

You could also turn your familiar into an elemental... You'd have to choose, but it would definitely be with you indefinitely.

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20011109a

[Jormengand]

Due to the fact that...

"Usually, a spell-like ability works just like the spell of that name... Spell-like abilities cannot be used to counterspell, nor can they be counterspelled. In all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell"

That would imply that Divine Metamagic: Persist would work, or something else which allows you to persist something without changing the spell level.

If you're a god, then Automatic Metamagic: Persist would also work. Just saying.

[Taveena]

There's a special note in Complete Arcane (presumably intended for Warlocks):

The note in question implies that any metamagic that doesn't change the spell level can be applied to SLAs. This is DM dependant, though, but it DOES mean with Divine Metamagic or other ways to reduce a spell's metamagic cost to 0, you could apply any metamagic feat to any SLA. So the trick is getting the cost of Persist to 0.

[Psyren]

The note in question implies that any metamagic that doesn't change the spell level can be applied to SLAs. This is DM dependant, though, but it DOES mean with Divine Metamagic or other ways to reduce a spell's metamagic cost to 0, you could apply any metamagic feat to any SLA. So the trick is getting the cost of Persist to 0.

Given that line is explicitly under the "Sudden Metamagic" subheader, you'd have a pretty steep hill to climb to convince a GM that they meant that to apply to regular metamagic, even with the reasoning they gave (which is just one factor among many.)

[Herbert West]

You could also turn your familiar into an elemental... You'd have to choose, but it would definitely be with you indefinitely.

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20011109a
This is a great idea! I probably can't get it at first level, but if I'm able to pay the xp cost, then it's only 5*30gp = 150 gp to get someone to cast it for me, or 375+xp cost (2.5k?) for a scroll. Halfway through level 1 I should be able to afford this, thank you!


Due to the fact that...

"Usually, a spell-like ability works just like the spell of that name... Spell-like abilities cannot be used to counterspell, nor can they be counterspelled. In all other ways, a spell-like ability functions just like a spell"

That would imply that Divine Metamagic: Persist would work, or something else which allows you to persist something without changing the spell level.

If you're a god, then Automatic Metamagic: Persist would also work. Just saying.
Isn't there a metamagic that gives me the spell back later, echoing spell or something? That probably costs more than +0 as well. What would happen if I Energy Substituted this SLA? Could I change my [water] elemental into a [fire] elemental? Because the descriptor of the spell determines what sorts of things you can summon with it, right? Or, I could use Innate Spell to get three more daily uses! With the higher-leveled one that says I can use it three times a day, could I then use it 9 times a day?

Given that line is explicitly under the "Sudden Metamagic" subheader, you'd have a pretty steep hill to climb to convince a GM that they meant that to apply to regular metamagic, even with the reasoning they gave (which is just one factor among many.)

Isn't there a big section with a bunch of rules on just SLAs that would say? Maybe in the Rules Compendium?