Game breaking? - Spontaneous-ish Wizard casting

[Malapterus]

So I thought of something, probably a Feat. It's visually appealing and logical, and gives some much un-needed flexibility to the Wizard class.

Casting from Book -
The Wizard may cast a spell without preparation by reading it from their spellbook. They must have their spellbook in hand and be able to see it. They may have the book in their off-hand and use their primary hand for somatic components, but even if the spell does not have somatic components it generally requires two hands to turn the pages and find the spell they seek.

Locating and reading the spell is a full-round action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. On their next turn, they may cast the spell as though they had prepared it, sacrificing a prepared spell of appropriate level. The spell they wish to cast must be in the book they are reading and they cannot cast it with a Metamagic feat, unless they have specifically scribed a Metamagic version of it into the book. NOTE: The Wizard does not have to cast Read Magic for the purpose of casting spells in this way.

The spontaneous casting is offset by some drawbacks;
-The valuable spellbook is out in the open, making it an active target to be attacked directly or snatched away.
-With both hands occupied, the Wizard cannot have their staff or wand or weapon or whatever at the ready.
-Takes twice as long, of course
-Metamagic is heavily nerfed

------

I'm really lost on this one, guys! I can't tell if it's useless or overpowered.

[ericgrau]

Iffy in combat, but way too good between combat. Basically lets you cast anything in between combat to overcome almost any challenge. If it used an unprepared slot rather than a prepared slot then it would be ok in between combat. Then it just saves you 14.8 minutes. Which is a little power boost but far from game breaking. In combat it's iffy either way: Often a bad idea but sometimes helpful. Generally taking 2 rounds to cast something makes it useless, but there are special cases when it could be useful. When having just the right spell is just that good. Like see invisibility for example. Still not game breaking or even that strong in such a situation, just kinda interesting and nice.

[Crake]

There's an entire class for this: It's called mage of the arcane order.

As for casting spells spontaneously via a feat, there's already a feat for that: Uncanny forethought.

Both of these require you have an open spell slot though, they do not allow you to sacrifice an already prepared spell slot. Being able to spontaneous convert a prepared spell into any other spell is far more powerful, a buff wizards hardly need.

I did have a DM that allowed me to cast spells from my spellbook, however, they were like scrolls, and burned up after doing so, so it was more of a last ditch effort sort of thing.

[tyckspoon]

In combat, it's probably average to weak - taking two rounds to cast the perfect spell is not as good as casting a good enough spell now with the chance to follow up with a different spell if/when the combat situation changes, especially because most Wizards will have a fairly general-purpose selection for combat spells. (It probably should provoke Attacks of Opportunity, too, just within the game's rules logic for actions that provoke.)

Out of combat, it's absurd - you can select all those general-purpose combat spells and *also* have on-demand access to all those weird little specialty problem-solver spells. You know the kind, the ones that do something so specific that they're generally not worth memorizing, but are the perfect answer within their narrow domain. Or even the more general ones - this feat would allow you to cast things like Teleport or divinations spontaneously, or as close to as it matters when you're not working in combat time.

Overall, probably stronger than it should be.

[Ramza00]

Lets compare this to raw options that do something similar in 3.5 and Pathfinder.



Paraphrase of this feat.
Uncanny Forethought
( Exemplars of Evil, p. 26)

Requires: Spell Mastery (PH) , INT 17,

Benefit
Leave open a number of spell slots up to the maximun of your Intelligence modifier.

Two choices:

Choice 1: As a standard action, you can use one of these slots to cast a spell that you selected for the Spell Mastery feat. The level of the slot used must be equal to or greater than the level of the spell you intend to cast.

Choice 2: Alternatively, as a full-round action, you can use a reserved slot to cast any spell that you know in your spell-books. The spell is resolved as normal, but for the purpose of the spell, your caster level is reduced by two. The level of the slot used must be equal to or greater than the level of the spell you intend to cast.

Thus a level 6 wizard generalist with Int of 18-19 will have these spells slots.
4=3+1 1st level,
4=3+1 2nd level,
3=2+1 3rd level

And you can reserve up to 4 spell slots to cast spontaneously. (If you have an Int of 17, you can reserve 3 spell slots, and if you have an int of 20 you can reserve 5 spell slots and you have 5 1st level spells due to the extra bonus spell.)

Feats are easily filled by taking Uncanny Forethought at HD Level 6, and Spell Mastery as the Wizard Bonus Feat at level 5 but it can easily be done much earlier.

-------

A Mage of the Arcane Order at level 6 which requires 1 PRC level and these two feats Cooperative Spell and any one other metamagic feat. Gains the ability to use the spell pool 1 a day, and it grows +1 on each even levels of the prestige class. In addition the maximun levels of spells you can do is 3rd levells at ecl 6, 6th level spells at ecl 9, and 9th level spells at ecl 12. You gain some other benefits of Mage of the Arcane Order prestige class at the expense of taking another prestige class.

Spellcasting takes a longer time to use a spellpool for it is a full round action+the casting time of the spell.

-------

Arcane Bond in pathfinder. Instead of getting a familiar the arcane bond option allows you to spontaneously cast one of your spells for free once per day if you are wearing said arcane bond item (things like a staff, a ring, and so on.)

[Buufreak]

So, casting any spell from your book as a full round action? How is this different from uncanny forethought?

[Glimbur]

The risk is a little smaller when you realize you can have more than one spellbook.

[The Vagabond]

You know, to further this concept, what about this odd little rewrite of that idea I made:

Improvised Spell
Prerequisite: Spell Mastery or Scribe Scroll
By drawing and leafing through your spellbook, you can cast spells at a heartbeats notice.
While the spellbook you used to prepare spells for the day is open and in your hand (Drawing your spellbook is a move action), by increasing the casting time of a spell by 4 steps (swift to 1 round, Move to 1 minute, Standard to 10 minute, full round to 1 hour), you can cast an unprepared spell by expending a spell prepared in a slot equal to the improvised spells level. Unless you know the spell through Spell Mastery, improvising the spell this way burns and chars the page. While this does not destroy the spell, it does not count as being in your spellbook (And as such cannot be prepared or used for Improvised Spell) until it is repaired, a process that takes 10 minutes per spell level and costs (10 x Minimum Caster Level x Spell Level) gp.
The time it takes to improvise a spell is reduced when placed under dire stress. During active combat or similarly threatening encounters (Such as trying to survive a ship, trying not to get shot, or outrunning death), the time it takes to improvise a spell is increased only by 2 steps (Swift to Standard, Move to Full Round Action, Standard to 1 Round, full round to 1 minute, 1 round to 10 minutes, 1 minutes to 1 hour).
When casting defensively against a creature with at least half your hit dice, the time increase is reduced to 1 step. (Swift to Move, Move to standard, Standard to Full Round, Full Round to 1 Round, 1 round to 1 minute). This increases the concentration check by the spell level of the improvised spell.

[Malapterus]

Uncanny Forethought sounds overpowered to me. I guess either way it is limited to a number equal to your Int mod, but that can be a lot for an optimized character. Any combination of Sorcerer flexibility and Wizard arsenal seems like something that can throw a game off-course really fast. The -2 caster level is something, but it's not hard to get +2 CL to your favorite spells.

I think I'll skip the feat and if need be give the wizard a maxed-out Spell-Storing Quarterstaff. It can hold twice as many spells as other items for only twice the price, and I could mix in a lot of flavor as to which spells they store in which end.

Hell, a lot of Staves are also quarterstaffs, it could be a magic staff in the middle and a spell-storing quarterstaff on each end.

With that said I've always felt the quarterstaff should be an exception to the enhanced double weapon rule as it is just a stick; any enhancement applies to the whole thing at the expense of not having the option to do the ends, but perhaps I will ignore that for this.

What's the highest Spell Storing capacity you can get on a weapon?

[Goaty14]

I don't think that the spellbook being out in the open is that big of a deal for the same reason item familiars are designed badly: You either have it (and have massive benefits), or you don't (and have the usefulness of a commoner-with-PC-wealth). Likewise, either the DM is dealing with an OP trade that'd somebody would be silly not to make, or is an absolute jerk because he'd play the monsters intelligently enough to make the wizard useless.


The risk is a little smaller when you realize you can have more than one spellbook.

Except you'd have the shell out the money to buy another spellbook. A wizard worth his salt has stuff done so he doesn't lose his spellbook (treantmonk reccomends a Geas spell imbued into it somehow, with the command being "return to owner")

[Mato]

Q: Is is game breaking to give a wizard spontaneous-ish casting?
A: Yes, as one of the most powerful classes in the game it does not need extra benefits.
Counter answer: WotC did it in several ways. Like echoing spell + Rary's Arcane Conversion to instantly reprepare everything in six seconds multiple times per day.
Counter counter answer: Just because WotC did it doesn't mean it's balanced and every suggestion so far has been based around higher level options that take some form of investment and have limitations. This is not the same thing as granting a better benefit for free at the beginning of the game.

[Mordaedil]

Unearthed Arcana has like a full section on doing this kind of stuff. I recall a sidebar explaining how they made the wizards a lot more powerful at the endgame by letting them do this in 2nd edition before 3rd edition released.

There's also entire rules for switching the system to spellpoints, which makes wizards extremely flexible and spontaneous while still being spellbook users.

[Malphegor]

I'd increase the time it takes to find a spell proprortionate to the level of the spell (maybe use the rules Sha'ir use for sending off a gen to get them spells for time?), but otherwise it'd be pretty fun to play that way on either end.

On the DM side, cool, whilst the players are facing minions, the BBEG can find the PERFECT spell in their expanded spellbook to take down the heroes, rather than panicking and firing off quick blasts of defeatible magics

Meanwhile the PCs have the martial classes occupying time whilst the wizards prepare their carebear stare final hour ability.

There's something to be said for that. Wizards would be doing less in combat as a result.

You're basically just reinventing the sha'ir but as a regular wizard doing this though, except you're limited to your learnt spells rather than whatever a gen can get.

[Edenbeast]

So I thought of something, probably a Feat. It's visually appealing and logical, and gives some much un-needed flexibility to the Wizard class.

Casting from Book -
The Wizard may cast a spell without preparation by reading it from their spellbook. They must have their spellbook in hand and be able to see it. They may have the book in their off-hand and use their primary hand for somatic components, but even if the spell does not have somatic components it generally requires two hands to turn the pages and find the spell they seek.

Locating and reading the spell is a full-round action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. On their next turn, they may cast the spell as though they had prepared it, sacrificing a prepared spell of appropriate level. The spell they wish to cast must be in the book they are reading and they cannot cast it with a Metamagic feat, unless they have specifically scribed a Metamagic version of it into the book. NOTE: The Wizard does not have to cast Read Magic for the purpose of casting spells in this way.

The spontaneous casting is offset by some drawbacks;
-The valuable spellbook is out in the open, making it an active target to be attacked directly or snatched away.
-With both hands occupied, the Wizard cannot have their staff or wand or weapon or whatever at the ready.
-Takes twice as long, of course
-Metamagic is heavily nerfed

------

I'm really lost on this one, guys! I can't tell if it's useless or overpowered.

There's already a feat that does something similar. Have a look at Alacritous Cogitation from the Complete Mage, p. 37:


You can leave a prepared spell slot open to spontaneously cast a spell.
Prerequisite: Must prepare arcane spells.
Benefit: If you leave an arcane spell slot open when preparing spells, you can use that open slot to cast any arcane spell you know of the same level or lower. Casting the spell requires a full-round action.
You can use this feat only once per day, regardless of the number of slots you leave open.
Special: A wizard can select this feat as a wizard bonus feat.

The errata added “...cast any arcane spell you know of the same level or lower and of casting time no longer than 1 round.”

[death390]

another work around is Versatile Spellcaster, mind you that you have to spend resources to get some kind of spontaneous spellcasting to access it in the first place. even when you have it you spend 2 spell level-1 slots for the cost of what your trying to cast.

spontaneous divination
High conjurer: spont convert spell slot to x level summon monster
High Abjurer: spont dispelling
wizard overhall variant Anagakok: spont endure elements
Feats:
Spont. casting: (costs action points)
uncanny forethought

ect ect.

most of these have multiple requirements that delay the use and gain of versatile spellcaster (most are lvl5 access) but High Conjurer specialist is available at lvl1. though Spont. Divination is a common enough lvl 5 ability and you could use lvl 6 feat to get versatile spellcaster.