Tainted Scholar is the PRC worth it.

[Athear]

looking at the HH PRC Tainted scholar and it looks like a good PRC I just want to know if any of you have used it and if its worth it?

[Troacctid]

It's very powerful, if that's what you mean.

[Coretron03]

If built correctly its a game breakingly powerful (infinite spells per day/infinite high DCs) though it depends what you want to do with it.

[Malroth]

If it's an Evil solo campaign, or an Evil campaign that you know is going to go into PVP later on then go for it. If there is going to be any pretense of balance and civility around a mixed table then go for something else as Tainted Scholar is possibly the most broken prestigue class printed outside Ilithid Savant and Beholder mage.

[Eldariel]

The two big things about Tainted Scholar:
- You get to use your Depravity as your casting stat. Easy to pump to a ridiculous degree. Like at 33 Wis you can survive 125 points of Depravity. It's pretty easy to see how ridiculous a daily spell allotment this can allow. Of course, there's the question of creatures with the Undead type or the Evil subtype being immune to the negative effects as well. And the fact that you can switch types relatively easily.
- You get to apply metamagic basically for free with Blood Metamagic.

In a short, the class can be completely bonkers if built with that in mind. It can also be very interesting, but it's a bit too strong as written - though of course, insanity by taint is always a risk.

[Zanos]

The tainted spellcasing is the most valuable component, but requires some analysis. Bonus spells are based on 10+depravity, and DCs are 10+SL+1/2 corruption. Let's assume you're built for tainted scholar, so I'll lowball con/wis at 14 each. So you can accumulate 55 depravity/corruption before you go insane/die. We'll want to keep it a little lower than that so you have some leeway to cast spells without breaking yourself. Call it 40.

So for our bonus spells, our ability score is effectively 50. That's not even on the chart, but I think that's 5/5/5/5/4/4/4/3 for bonus spells. Awesome. Your save dcs are 10+SL+20. So 30+Spell Level. That's the same as a wizard with 50 intelligence also.

Here's where they screwed up. The save DC to avoid increasing your taint when you cast is 10+spell level. It should have scaled with corruption/depravity, but it doesn't. Getting your will save as a primary caster to the point where that save is trivial is simple. There are a couple of spells that you should carry around in wand/scrolls if they aren't on your list to remove these points when you inevitably roll a 1 on the save.

That's a low end example. On the high end, a character that went a full con build could max out the threshold chart with a constitution score of 36, allowing their corruption to go up to 125, making the save DCs against their spells 72+spell level. Even giving yourself a 25 point buffer so you don't die if you flub the save gives dcs of 60+spell level.

IIRC, certain interpretations of the rules make undead and outsiders immune to the effects of taint, so you could have no cap on your DCs. But even being used as "intended" tainted scholar is busted.

The blood metamagic stuff is strong, but not all that great since it doesn't let you bypass your normal spell level cap.