Pestilential Touch to fuel Arcane Strike?

[Jowgen]

Been twiddling around with Nosomatic Chirurgeon on a Warlock build and noticed something.

The main selling point of NC (other than spreading Wendigo and Zombie plagues for fun) is this ability


Pestilential Touch (Su): A chirurgeon develops the supernatural ability to channel spell energy into debilitating harm. This ability allows you to spontaneously "lose" a single usage of any spell or spell-like ability to cast any inflict spell of the same spell level or lower. (An inflict spell is any spell with "inflict" in its name, such as inflict light wounds).

Unlike with a normal casting of an inflict spell, the damage dealt by this ability is not negative energy, and so cannot be used to heal undead.

It's spontaneous inflict casting as evil cleric, but we can lose SLA uses, which on invocation users are at will.

Question is, can these spontaneous Inflict spells in turn be lost to fuel Arcane Strike?

[Jack_Simth]

I don't think so. 3.5's Arcane Strike (Complete Warrior, p. 96) requires that you "sacrifice one of your spells for the day" - which you're not quite doing: You're trying to sacrifice a casting rather than a spell slot.

[Morcleon]

You can't but you also don't need to. Instead of trying to sacrifice the inflict, you can just sacrifice the spell slot that you'd be using for the inflict to fuel Arcane Strike.

[Jowgen]

I don't think so. 3.5's Arcane Strike (Complete Warrior, p. 96) requires that you "sacrifice one of your spells for the day" - which you're not quite doing: You're trying to sacrifice a casting rather than a spell slot.

I disagree with this based on neither the feat nor nor the NC ability ever mentioning a spell slot. Or a prepared spell, or any other reference to the source of the spell per day that is to be sacrificed.


You can't but you also don't need to. Instead of trying to sacrifice the inflict, you can just sacrifice the spell slot that you'd be using for the inflict to fuel Arcane Strike.

I appreciate the contribution, but I get the impression you did no quite catch the part about NC converting SLAs to spells.

[tyckspoon]

Personally, I'm pretty sure the answer is no, I don't think there is any point in what you're proposing where you actually have a spell that you can sacrifice to Arcane Strike. Before you try to use NC's ability, you don't have any spells - you have Spell-like Ability Invocations. When you use NC's ability, you cast the spell as part of the activation. Once you've finished doing that, you still don't have any spells. The only way this works is if you believe you can interrupt the cast of Pestilential Touch while it's still happening and feed the spell generated that way into Arcane Strike.. and even then you've already used your Standard action to use Pestilential Touch, which means you need to put a lot of resources into finding something useful to do with that bonus.

[mabriss lethe]

Hmm. The ability might work with a spell storing weapon, though.

[Jowgen]

Personally, I'm pretty sure the answer is no, I don't think there is any point in what you're proposing where you actually have a spell that you can sacrifice to Arcane Strike. Before you try to use NC's ability, you don't have any spells - you have Spell-like Ability Invocations. When you use NC's ability, you cast the spell as part of the activation. Once you've finished doing that, you still don't have any spells. The only way this works is if you believe you can interrupt the cast of Pestilential Touch while it's still happening and feed the spell generated that way into Arcane Strike.. and even then you've already used your Standard action to use Pestilential Touch, which means you need to put a lot of resources into finding something useful to do with that bonus.

Ah, so we're going into Curmudgeon-style action economy territory here. Very well then. :smallcool:

The use of Arcane Strike takes only a free action and does not limit when we can activate it. With it, at any point during our turn, during which we have a "spell for the day" to sacrifice (regardless of source), we can do so to gain the specified benefits applied for the remainder of the round.

I do not see how "marking off" the use of a Pestilential touch spell as a sacrifice would be different to "marking off as if it had been cast" then any other possibly sacrificed spell from a daily allocation or prepared spell slot.

[Troacctid]

I don't think the inflict spells count as arcane, FWIW.

[Jowgen]

I don't think the inflict spells count as arcane, FWIW.

Fair point, but while the Arcane Strike feat does have a prerequesite of casting 3rd level arcane spells and explicitly talks about channeling arcane energy into melee attacks, it at no point actually says that the "spell for the day" that needs to sacrificed has to be arcane in nature.

The arcane bit is necessarily for qualifying, but by the looks of it the feat straight up doesn't care what sort of spell you sacrifice.

[remetagross]

Fair point, but while the Arcane Strike feat does have a prerequesite of casting 3rd level arcane spells and explicitly talks about channeling arcane energy into melee attacks, it at no point actually says that the "spell for the day" that needs to sacrificed has to be arcane in nature.

The arcane bit is necessarily for qualifying, but by the looks of it the feat straight up doesn't care what sort of spell you sacrifice.

Interesting...qualifying for Arcane Strike will however become a hassle if you intended to build an invocation-based gish. If you were going for an arcane-based gish, a Warlock dip can do the trick, but the benefit gained from Arcane Strike in exchange for the opportunity cost of a Warlock dip might not be worth it...