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Xuldarinar
2015-11-02, 02:56 PM
Alternate Spell Source Feats



Arcane Faith
-Prerequisites: Divine Caster Level 1st.
-Benefit: Select a divine spellcasting class you possess levels in. For the purpose of casting spells in your chosen class, your spells are cast as arcane instead of divine.
-Special: You can only select this feat on the 1st level you take your chosen spellcasting class.

Arcane Psyche
-Prerequisites: Psychic Caster Level 1st.
-Benefit: Select a psychic spellcasting class you possess levels in. For the purpose of casting spells in your chosen class, your spells are cast as arcane instead of psychic.
-Special: You can only select this feat on the 1st level you take your chosen spellcasting class.

Occult Arcana
-Prerequisites: Arcane Caster Level 1st.
-Benefit: Select an arcane spellcasting class you possess levels in. For the purpose of casting spells in your chosen class, your spells are cast as psychic instead of arcane.
-Special: You can only select this feat on the 1st level you take your chosen spellcasting class.

Occult Priest
-Prerequisites: Divine Caster level 1st.
-Benefit: Select a divine spellcasting class you possess levels in. For the purpose of casting spells in your chosen class, your spells are cast as psychic instead of divine.
-Special: You can only select this feat on the 1st level you take your chosen spellcasting class.

Ethereal Gears
2015-11-02, 03:44 PM
I like the idea behind this, as I am all far adding modularity to the PF system, as long as it doesn't overly dilute flavor. I would love to be able to play some kind of "archivist" who casts off the wizard list but is a divine spellcaster with all that entails.

However, I don't think this sort of idea can be usefully realized via a single feat. I mean, I think swapping out arcane and psychic casting could work either way, as they both have important drawbacks. But aside from alignment restrictions, which in my view are way too nebulous a mechanical concept to balance things around, what's the downside of becoming a divine caster? I mean, a wizard taking this feat would suddenly be able to cast in heavy armor without any penalties, and a psychic or occultist would suddenly not need to worry about emotion and thought components. I just can't see this being anything but an obviously-take feat to switch to divine casting and cash in. At the very least, I think this should state that arcane casters still retain ASF if they change to divine, and psychic casters still have thought and emotion components. Their spells could still count as divine for all other effects.

Just my two cp.

Cheers,
- Gears

Xuldarinar
2015-11-02, 07:22 PM
You make a fair point. I could easily brake this into 3 (or more) feats. For divine, I have a few ideas to balance out:

Alignment restriction on spells known and cast, which I think is default.
Require patron deity, with perhaps alternative choice of taking on an oracle's curse, non-advancing generally.

Additionally, or alternatively, require all spells to be cast with a divine focus, which is something that can be taken away/lost/destroyed.


To the exclusion of being able to change to divine, I could leave it as one feat, make it into two feats (x to Arcane, x to Psychic), or make it into four feats (arcane to psychic, divine to arcane, divine to psychic, psychic to divine).

ylvathrall
2015-11-02, 11:32 PM
I would agree that being able to remove the ASF chance for armor is a little more than you should get from a feat. You might add a line saying that the character casts spells with the same components and such, but other creatures interact with them as though they were a different type (e.g., a bonus to saves against arcane spells not applying).

Also, why can you only take them on the first level of a class? That seems irritating, especially for multiclass characters. Suddenly I'm only allowed to take my new class on odd levels? That makes things harder, for no clear gain.

Xuldarinar
2015-11-03, 12:24 AM
Because you are changing a fundamental aspect of the class. Sure, it is a little limiting, but such feats typically can only be taken at 1st level, and there is a great deal of potential in these feats the way I see them.

Additionally, how would one justify or explain that their spells abruptly changed form? Lets say I were a psychic and my spells were always psychic in nature. Suddenly they became arcane in nature, meaning that I wouldn't have undercasting under my belt (as I understand it), I wouldn't be casting using thought or emotion, but I would be using somatic and verbal components and I have to watch for the fact armor now inhibits my spells. If I had any training that depended upon my ability with psychic spells (feats, PrCs, ect.) they would be discarded, but there would be new options.

The idea behind the feats isn't one who has learned to apply their abilities in a new way, but one who's training reflects one class, but they draw their strength from a non-traditional source. A wizard who's spells are stored as psychic energy rather than arcane, a druid who draws from arcane traditions rather than strictly their reverence of nature, these are the notions I wish to tap into with these. Your ideas are worth thought though, so I'll consider them.



Now, I could see an Ex-cleric take such a feat to turn their spells to arcane or psychic in nature to regain their casting. They follow a similar practice, but they are more emulating what they were with these magics rather than straight up atoning and returning to the use of divine. I may put in text for that, that an Ex member of a divine spellcasting class can qualify and take it to become a full/partial member again, but.. we'll see.

ylvathrall
2015-11-03, 12:53 AM
I could just as easily see it as requiring you to be fairly advanced in the class. You need to have a pretty good understanding of how magic works to make it work differently, after all. Different ways of approaching the concept, but I don't think one is necessarily better than the other.

Also, are you thinking that this actually alters the class? Because I was thinking that it only changed the way the spells were treated, which I think is very different. If you're actually making it so that the class is treated as being a different type of caster, that's an entirely different kettle of fish. My inclination is to say that there are issues of balance with that, especially with things like prestige class prerequisites. I don't have a specific one in mind that I could point to and say "this is a problem," but it definitely adds a lot more potential for overpowered interactions.

If you are going that route, I almost feel like it's more in the realm of class archetypes than a feat.

Ethereal Gears
2015-11-03, 07:11 AM
I agree with Xuldarinar's justification for this feat only being selectable at 1st level (or when regaining your class after "falling"). As I understand the feat, the implied fluff is that this turns a wizard into, essentially, a sort of lay cleric who is granted access to arcane magic by the gods instead of traditional divine magic. As such, it does fundamentally alter the nature of the casting class you choose for the feat.

That being said, and to reiterate my point from my first reply, I do agree with steinulfr that this seems rather a vast thing to express mechanically via a feat. This isn't meant to be a put-down, as I love this idea and I think it would be awesome to see it developed further. I just think it's needlessly constrained by being restricted to a feat, or even a feat chain. Creating a trio of "open archetypes", like Rogue Genius Games (formerly Super Genius Games) did with their archetype packages, I think would be ideal. These archetypes could be taken by members of any casting class, replacing different things depending on which class you took them with. It would require a lot more work, but I think it could be really cool. You wouldn't need to exchange anything other than spellcasting, but you could add in options. So for example a bard taking the divine archetype could simply become a divine caster (handling the ASF issue either by simply not removing it or sacrificing something to gain that buff), or they could choose to become a divine caster as well as replacing versatile performance, bardic knowledge, jack of all trades and lore master with channel energy, or something like that.

That's at least what I'd suggest. If you want to keep it to just a trio of feats, I think a non-progressing curse might work, although it still seems too powerful to me. I would definitely advocate requiring a divine focus, but again, that doesn't strike me as powerful enough a balancing factor. Basically, alignment restrictions (including on which spells you can cast) are nice, but none of the game's truly powerful spells have an alignment descriptor (although a few evil necromancy spells will be missed, no doubt). Similarly, having your divine focus stolen sucks, but how often does that happen in a campaign. It's a bit like stealing the wizard's spellbook. GMs will be loath to do it, because it's not very fun. Instead of applying a penalty, it's a move which robs a character of almost all their class features, which isn't really enjoyable for anyone.

Just my thoughts. I'm very much looking forward to how this develops!

Cheers,
- Gears

dpatino
2015-11-03, 03:36 PM
Alignment restriction on spells known and cast, which I think is default.
Require patron deity, with perhaps alternative choice of taking on an oracle's curse, non-advancing generally.

Alignment restrictions seem to exist on all divine casters except for the ranger and oracle.

Also, would stat requirements change? Like if I'm a Wizard that casts "divine" spells, would I use Wisdom instead of Intelligence?

Xuldarinar
2015-11-04, 01:54 AM
I will concede that this is a concept best generally left to archetypes, and that in some ways as a feat (or set of feats as it stands now) that there is potential for things to be stronger that they should be. But, I shaped them as feats and I do hope to balance them as much as possible keeping to the original idea. I could turn out a few general archetypes though, to the point, and that would certainly work.




Stat changes, that was something I considered and perhaps I could put into play. I've noticed Divine works off of Wis or Cha, Arcane works off of Int or Cha, yet Psychic has instances of all three. Off the top of my head, if I added an adjustment to casting stats, i'd likely make a conversion to Psychic utilize Charisma for Spell DCs, a conversion to Arcane utilize Intelligence for Spell DCs, and a conversion to Divine utilize Wisdom for Spell DCs. Maybe allow a choice, or make it variable from the magic you stated with, but.. we'll see if I implement such a detail.