Help needed on possible rules abuse

[Melcar]

So I have this level 31 mage, who has a 3rd party class called Arcane Avatar- from Quintessential Wizard. This particular class has a class ability which says:


Call Spell: With great understanding comes tremendous power. With his extencive knowledge of the fabric of magic and his intuitive understanding of its ways, the avatar can dublicate the effect of any known spell. When preparing his spells for the day, the avatar may sacrifice two spell slots of any given level to prepare any spell of the same level from his spell lists. For example, an avatar wh did not have the spell lightning bolt in his books could choose to prepare that spell by using two of his 3rd-level spell slots for it. (Quintessential Wizard, pp. 21)

Now as I understand it, its possible to basically to cast any spell in the game. Granted it might need a successful knowledge check to attain knowledge of spell you don't have in your spell book, but it basically grants access to all spells in the game.

Now to the question...

Would it be possible to use this ability to cast Embrace the Dark Chaos followed by Shun the Dark Chaos... which I don't have access to, essentially gaining unlimited feats?

[ZamielVanWeber]

Embrace the Dark Chaos replaces a feat you have with an Abyssal Heritor feat. You net 0 feats. That being said, various tricks that hand you weak feats for free can be exposed to Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos and replaced with far more useful ones.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Embrace the dark chaos and shun the dark chaos are on the cleric and wizard spell lists. If you are a cleric or wizard, or cast from their lists somehow, you can prepare them with Call Spell. If you are not, you cannot, because the ability specifies "prepare any spell of the same level from his spell lists".

[Melcar]

Embrace the Dark Chaos replaces a feat you have with an Abyssal Heritor feat. You net 0 feats. That being said, various tricks that hand you weak feats for free can be exposed to Embrace/Shun the Dark Chaos and replaced with far more useful ones.

You are right... for some reason I read the spell as simply adding a feat. I don't know how I could have missed this.



Embrace the dark chaos and shun the dark chaos are on the cleric and wizard spell lists. If you are a cleric or wizard, or cast from their lists somehow, you can prepare them with Call Spell. If you are not, you cannot, because the ability specifies "prepare any spell of the same level from his spell lists".

Any chance you could elaborate on this?... I'm not sure I understand what your trying to say.

[darkbuu_1]

Any chance you could elaborate on this?... I'm not sure I understand what your trying to say.

Call Spell doesn't give you access to any spell, only to spells you could have chosen to take but didn't, you are still limited by the spell restrictions of your class.

So for example if you're a Wizard, you draw spells from Wiz/Sorc spell list so you can call any spell found on that list, however if you were a Wu Jen, you draw spells from the Wu Jen spell list so you would be restricted to spells found on that list when calling. And since Shun and Embrace are on different classes' spell lists you wouldn't be able to call both of them.

Though from the reading if you did have access to multiple spell lists somehow, you would be able to call a spell from any of them, maybe?

[Thaneus]

Call Spell doesn't give you access to any spell, only to spells you could have chosen to take but didn't, you are still limited by the spell restrictions of your class.

So for example if you're a Wizard, you draw spells from Wiz/Sorc spell list so you can call any spell found on that list, however if you were a Wu Jen, you draw spells from the Wu Jen spell list so you would be restricted to spells found on that list when calling. And since Shun and Embrace are on different classes' spell lists you wouldn't be able to call both of them.

Though from the reading if you did have access to multiple spell lists somehow, you would be able to call a spell from any of them, maybe?

It really reads like its not meant for wizards but for spontaneous classes with spell known restriction (Sorc, Bard) they can benefit from this class ability. For Wizards its more like... oh you dont have this in you spellbook? you must be poor!

[martixy]

It really reads like its not meant for wizards but for spontaneous classes with spell known restriction (Sorc, Bard) they can benefit from this class ability. For Wizards its more like... oh you dont have this in you spellbook? you must be poor!

It could also be a meta feature.

You know... for those games when the DM just won't let the wizard be wizardly.
PL: "I go into town and look for the magic shop. I wanna buy scroll X."
DM: "You find a magic shop, but they don't have that spell."
PL: "I teleport to town X..."
DM: "Nope! x1000"

[ExLibrisMortis]

It really reads like its not meant for wizards but for spontaneous classes with spell known restriction (Sorc, Bard) they can benefit from this class ability. For Wizards its more like... oh you dont have this in you spellbook? you must be poor!
You would think that, but the ability specifies it must be used when preparing spells, so it's kind of mediocre.

[Darrin]

There's a school of thought that you could use heroics to pick up a fighter bonus feat (or various polymorph shenanigans to pick up bonus feats), and then use the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle (DCFS) to swap that feat with another bonus feat. Presumably the feat goes away when the spell effect ends, but I've seen it argued that the DCFS feat would be permanent. This essentially allows you to "buy" a feat for 500 XP. Combine this strategy with a Thought Bottle (20000 GP, Complete Arcane), and you'd essentially have access to an infinite number of feats.

However, no sane DM would allow you to swap temporary feats for permanent feats.

[JNAProductions]

Can't you trade every individual weapon proficiency, though?

[Darrin]

Can't you trade every individual weapon proficiency, though?

No. Simple/Martial Weapon Proficiency has text that says "so-and-so are proficient with X weapons. They need not select this feat." The text never explicitly state that these classes gain these as bonus feats.

The text is different on Armor/Shield Proficiency, where it says "so-and-so automatically have X as a bonus feat." Likewise, the elven racial description explicitly states that they gain MWP as a bonus feat.

There are some TO builds out there that get 500+ feats, but at that level, you're not playing D&D so much as you're playing Calvinball.

[phlidwsn]

Any chance you could elaborate on this?... I'm not sure I understand what your trying to say.

Use, say, the Otyugh Hole location from Complete Scoundrel to gain Iron will for 3k gold, DCFS the feat to something else, repeat.

Or if that's not enough TO cheese for you, use DCFS to shuffle away Alertness from your familiar, step out of arms reach of it, step back in, and gain a new Alertness to DCFS away again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Do note that using these in an actual game will likely result in consequences of the airborn DMG variety.