SNA casting time

[jdizzlean]

realizing that I'm now a lvl 6 druid, and can't change what i've taken to this point, but what are the options available to reduce the casting time of SNA from a full round down to as low as possible?

my feats at this point are flyby attack, ashbound summoning, and natural spell.

[RoboEmperor]

Chronocharm of the Uncaring Mage

Golden Desert Honey

Creative use of Glyph Seal (somehow get your opponent to trigger it)

Homebrewed Lesser Metamagic Rod of Rapid Spell

[jdizzlean]

Chronocharm of the Uncaring Mage

Golden Desert Honey

Creative use of Glyph Seal (somehow get your opponent to trigger it)

Homebrewed Lesser Metamagic Rod of Rapid Spell

chrono is ok, but it's a 1/day, which is cheap at only 500g, but i'm looking for things you can do all the time.

homebrew is not allowed in our game

honey is ok, but at 300g/use that's pretty pricey, plus it's eberron, which is banned in my game

glyph might work, but a dc 30 check to find the damn thing afterwards might not, but that'd only work for up to SN2, so not very helpful.

[RoboEmperor]

glyph might work, but a dc 30 check to find the damn thing afterwards might not, but that'd only work for up to SN2, so not very helpful.

Greater Glyph Seal is for spell level 5 or higher. The errata never corrected this so it's intentional, which means you're on you're own for spell levels 3 and 4.

Also if you set the glyph seal you don't need to do the search check. "You can always remove any glyph seal you keyed and activated to redeploy it elsewhere."

The glyph seal doesn't move after activation. Glyph of Warding was clear that the glyph is unaffected by any spell uses. As long as you're the one who keyed it and activated it you can retrieve it even after it activated its spell.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Metamagic rod for rapid spell is pretty straight-forward. Might at least ask. Lesser is 3k, 11k for the regular, and 24.5k for the greater. That's the same prices as the other rods for +1 spell level metamagic.

[CozJa]

honey is ok, but at 300g/use that's pretty pricey, plus it's eberron, which is banned in my game


Golden Desert Honey is from Complete Mage, which is not an Eberron book

[RoboEmperor]

Honestly you only need 1 standard action SNA per encounter. You can just grab the rapid spell metamagic and deal with the +1.

Metamagic School Focus lets you reduce the metamagic cost of your spells by 1 three times a day, meaning three free rapid spells a day.

[jdizzlean]

rapid spell as a feat is what i'm leaning towards at 9, i have a ring of the beast already, so the synergy would still be there for still getting the highest SNA i can at the cost of the original highest spell slot i would have.

taking the school focus would then just get me 3x/day of saving those higher slots for something else. not sure that's worth a feat.


thanks

[Darrin]

Golden Desert Honey is from Complete Mage, which is not an Eberron book

You can cut down the cost to 100 GP by using a Chaos Flask (Planar Handbook p. 76). It takes a DC 13 Wisdom check as a free action to create half a pound of golden desert honey.

[RoboEmperor]

rapid spell as a feat is what i'm leaning towards at 9, i have a ring of the beast already, so the synergy would still be there for still getting the highest SNA i can at the cost of the original highest spell slot i would have.

taking the school focus would then just get me 3x/day of saving those higher slots for something else. not sure that's worth a feat.


thanks

Highest level slots = Rapid SNA boosted to normal level via Ring of the Beast.
Three of your 2nd highest level slots = Rapid SNA boosted to your highest SNA possible and its cost reduced with Metamagic School Focus.

So the question is, do you want to spend a feat that lets you cast a rapid Summon Nature's Ally IX three times more a day than you normally could?

If yes take it if no don't take it.


You can cut down the cost to 100 GP by using a Chaos Flask (Planar Handbook p. 76). It takes a DC 13 Wisdom check as a free action to create half a pound of golden desert honey.

Could you explain yourself? I'm looking at it and at nowhere does it say it does that. Golden Desert Honey is neither wooden nor cloth-like. Nor does the item talk about pounds.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The Shifter Druid substitution levels let you summon as a standard action at level 12+. And a lot of other stuff.
Probably one of the few (if not the only) trades for your animal companions that's worth it.

[Darrin]

Could you explain yourself? I'm looking at it and at nowhere does it say it does that. Golden Desert Honey is neither wooden nor cloth-like. Nor does the item talk about pounds.

The text says "nearly any single nonmagical object". You are not limited to wooden or cloth-like materials. Golden desert honey is a nonmagical object. It's actually dried tree sap rather than honey, so it counts as vegetable matter, if that's important.

The chaos flask itself weighs 0.5 lbs, so I'm assuming the weight of the flask is negligible, the limbo-stuff weighs approximately 0.5 lbs, and that the transubstantiation involved still roughly follows conservation of mass.

[ayvango]

Greater Glyph Seal is for spell level 5 or higher.
It is obviously a misprint, we houserule that item to be 5 or lower.

[RoboEmperor]

It is obviously a misprint, we houserule that item to be 5 or lower.

You say that but...

I mean I agree, the MiC has a lot of misprints, like Amulet of Vermin summoning a HUGE monstrous scorpion, but if even the errata failed to correct greater glyph seal, then there's no choice but to accept it as intentional.

You could argue that for a spell storing item it is horrendously underpriced, but then I view the regular Glyph Seal as horrendously underpriced too so...

[PrismCat21]

No choice but to accept it as intentional?!? Really? You literally just said that the MiC has a lot of misprints. How is a misprint intentional?

We have no choice but to accept it as RAW, that's it.
RAW = Rules As Written
RAI = Rules As Intended
They often do not match up.

[RoboEmperor]

No choice but to accept it as intentional?!? Really? You literally just said that the MiC has a lot of misprints. How is a misprint intentional?

We have no choice but to accept it as RAW, that's it.
RAW = Rules As Written
RAI = Rules As Intended
They often do not match up.

Yeah so it all boils down to whether or not you believe WotC is so incompetent they missed this error during their 2nd? 5th? 100th? review of the book.

If yes then yeah you'd think RAI is level 5 or lower.
If no then you'd think RAI is level 5 or higher.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah so it all boils down to whether or not you believe WotC is so incompetent they missed this error during their 2nd? 5th? 100th? review of the book.

If yes then yeah you'd think RAI is level 5 or lower.
If no then you'd think RAI is level 5 or higher.

I don't think that's such a crazy idea. I also think you're greatly over-valuing the quality of WotC's reviewing process. Especially for something that is a really minor detail that could very easily have been overlooked.

The thing you need to realize is that one of the differences between a corporation and ordinary people is that a corporation understands that a book is worth more with a few little errors than it would be worth if they bothered to make it perfect, because they'll avoid wasting good money fixing inconsequential errors and it will sell just as many copies either way. That's even more true in a hobby like D&D, where it's already a given that the readers are likely to come up with their own rules and modify the existing materials to suit their own needs, and the game pretty much requires someone to be a full-time rules arbitrator to even be played at all.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yeah so it all boils down to whether or not you believe WotC is so incompetent they missed this error during their 2nd? 5th? 100th? review of the book.

If yes then yeah you'd think RAI is level 5 or lower.
If no then you'd think RAI is level 5 or higher.

Given the number of errors I've seen out of WotC, "yes" is really, really easy to believe.

I'm also not entirely convinced that they aren't a generic adaptation of LoM's aboleth glyphs but that's neither here not there.

[RoboEmperor]

I don't think that's such a crazy idea. I also think you're greatly over-valuing the quality of WotC's reviewing process. Especially for something that is a really minor detail that could very easily have been overlooked.

The thing you need to realize is that one of the differences between a corporation and ordinary people is that a corporation understands that a book is worth more with a few little errors than it would be worth if they bothered to make it perfect, because they'll avoid wasting good money fixing inconsequential errors and it will sell just as many copies either way. That's even more true in a hobby like D&D, where it's already a given that the readers are likely to come up with their own rules and modify the existing materials to suit their own needs, and the game pretty much requires someone to be a full-time rules arbitrator to even be played at all.


Given the number of errors I've seen out of WotC, "yes" is really, really easy to believe.

I'm also not entirely convinced that they aren't a generic adaptation of LoM's aboleth glyphs but that's neither here not there.

I too believe it is in fact a misprint, but it's fun forcing people to say outright that wotc is incompetent. XD. Forgive me for slightly trolling.