Practised Spellcaster

[Biggus]

What would be the consequences of allowing it to be taken multiple times and stacked for the same spellcasting class be?

Gishes and theurges are generally considered non-optimal, so giving them a boost doesn't seem like a major problem. The only thing I can think of is dragons, if they could take it several times they'd become much more dangerous opponents because their buffs wouldn't be highly vulerable to dispelling as they are now, and also the Blasphemy line of spells would become overpowered. Is there anything else?

How about allowing it to be taken just one more time, call it Greater Practised Spellcaster or something. Would that unbalance anything?

[RandomPeasant]

It'd be fine. Honestly, you could just make it so CL always equals character level and that'd be a net positive change. The dragon thing is a bit of a concern, but it's not super relevant as dragons can already do that by taking Abjurant Champion if they want to.

[Gruftzwerg]

I think as long as it ain't abused to enter PRC or stuff it should be fine I guess. And even then it is questionable how much the balance is affected (maybe abusable for theurge builds).

[Darg]

Choose a spellcasting class that you possess. Your spells cast from that class are more powerful.

Dragons don't have a sorcerer class unless they have levels in it.

Think about it this way, would it be broken if rangers and paladins had full caster levels? Caster level only applies to the spells effects and it only boosts you to your CL maximum.You don't get spells per day, spells known, or cast higher level spells. Nothing inherently makes it broken without exploiting some very specific loopholes that generally require a subpar character anyways and doesn't actually make them more powerful in a versatility scale.

[Dante & Vergil]

Dragons don't have a sorcerer class unless they have levels in it.

Think about it this way, would it be broken if rangers and paladins had full caster levels? Caster level only applies to the spells effects and it only boosts you to your CL maximum.You don't get spells per day, spells known, or cast higher level spells. Nothing inherently makes it broken without exploiting some very specific loopholes that generally require a subpar character anyways and doesn't actually make them more powerful in a versatility scale.

With this in mind, most spells also have a caster level cap on them, which limits its usefulness even more.

[Biggus]

The dragon thing is a bit of a concern, but it's not super relevant as dragons can already do that by taking Abjurant Champion if they want to.


Dragons don't have a sorcerer class unless they have levels in it.


This is interesting. RandomPeasant like me assumes that dragons count as having sorcerer levels for the purposes of taking feats and prestige classes (Abjurant Champion also refers to your arcane class in the relevant section), Darg argues (quite reasonably) that by RAW they don't.


A dragon knows and casts arcane spells as a sorcerer of the level indicated in its variety description

How far does that "as a sorcerer" extend? You can take actual sorcerer levels which stack with your innate casting, so they do count as actual class levels for some purposes, but they clearly don't for others (dragons don't get a familiar for example).

I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on this.

[RandomPeasant]

The dragon obviously has Sorcerer casting for whatever purpose you want, because real Sorcerer casting stacks with the Sorcerer casting it gets from being a dragon. Even if you want to argue that it somehow goes from 0 levels of Sorcerer casting to 6 or 10 or however many levels of Sorcerer casting when it takes a class level, that doesn't really matter because the dragon can just take the Sorcerer level and then a bunch of Abjurant Champion levels and then do whatever CL-based nonsense it wants within the existing rules.

[Jervis]

What would be the consequences of allowing it to be taken multiple times and stacked for the same spellcasting class be?

Gishes and theurges are generally considered non-optimal, so giving them a boost doesn't seem like a major problem. The only thing I can think of is dragons, if they could take it several times they'd become much more dangerous opponents because their buffs wouldn't be highly vulerable to dispelling as they are now, and also the Blasphemy line of spells would become overpowered. Is there anything else?

How about allowing it to be taken just one more time, call it Greater Practised Spellcaster or something. Would that unbalance anything?

I’ll be perfectly honest I thought that’s how it always worked. Just another example of Psionics being better but less supported mechanically I guess.

[Yogibear41]

There is a feat called experienced caster in one of the 3rd party Arcanis books(I believe magic of Arcanis) that is basically a scaling version of practiced spellcaster that is based on your level and ranks in spellcraft, it starts off worse, but theoretically can scale indefinitely as long as you continue to take levels in the class you want to boost. Might be something to look into.

The Arcanis books in general have lots of nifty stuff in them such as variant faith specific paladins, cleric rules etc, as well as new spells/feats/races/prestige classes.

[ThanatosZero]

High Caster Level is a fine thing, but what would fit in as well, is a feat which increases a caster's spells per day and known.
For those interrested.

Advanced Spellcaster
Through persistent training your spellcasting ability advances for a prize.

Prerequisite: Practiced Spellcaster in the chosen class

Benefit: Your spells per day and spells known for the chosen spellcasting class increases by +1 and you lose 2 HP permanently.
This can't increase your spells per day and spells known beyond your HD. However, even if you can't benefit from the full bonus immediately, if you later gain noncaster-level HD you may be able to apply the rest of the bonus. For example, a human 1st-level fighter/4th-level wizard who selects this feat would increase his wizard's spells per day from a 4th level to a 5th level wizard. A character with two or more spellcasting classes (such as a bard/sorcerer or a ranger/druid) with practiced spellcaster in both must choose which class gains the feat's effect.

Special: You may select this feat up to 4 times for a single casting class each. For instance, a 3rd-level paladin/6th-level cleric who had selected this feat trice for cleric would cast cleric spells as an 9th-level cleric.

[Darg]

High Caster Level is a fine thing, but what would fit in as well, is a feat which increases a caster's spells per day and known.
For those interrested.

Advanced Spellcaster
Through persistent training your spellcasting ability advances for a prize.

Prerequisite: Practiced Spellcaster in the chosen class

Benefit: Your spells per day and spells known for the chosen spellcasting class increases by +1 and you lose 2 HP permanently.
This can't increase your spells per day and spells known beyond your HD. However, even if you can't benefit from the full bonus immediately, if you later gain noncaster-level HD you may be able to apply the rest of the bonus. For example, a human 1st-level fighter/4th-level wizard who selects this feat would increase his wizard's spells per day from a 4th level to a 5th level wizard. A character with two or more spellcasting classes (such as a bard/sorcerer or a ranger/druid) with practiced spellcaster in both must choose which class gains the feat's effect.

Special: You may select this feat up to 4 times for a single casting class each. For instance, a 3rd-level paladin/6th-level cleric who had selected this feat trice for cleric would cast cleric spells as an 9th-level cleric.

That uses the practiced spellcaster language. The same language that lets people believe they can use it to take one level of wildmage to get a free +1d6 to caster level. Just in case you didn't know about the cheese upheld by the FAQ (why the FAQ shouldn't be taken as official errata) even though the feat increases only your class caster level and the benefit only changes with a change in HD; while the wild magic ability specifically only reduces spell caster level.

[ThanatosZero]

That uses the practiced spellcaster language. The same language that lets people believe they can use it to take one level of wildmage to get a free +1d6 to caster level. Just in case you didn't know about the cheese upheld by the FAQ (why the FAQ shouldn't be taken as official errata) even though the feat increases only your class caster level and the benefit only changes with a change in HD; while the wild magic ability specifically only reduces spell caster level.

My homebrew feat only increases the spellcasting progression. In effect it completes the Practiced Spellcaster feat to allow a full +4 to a existing spellcasting class, for the prize of 5 feats and 8 HP.
It also encourages to take levels in PrC, which lose levels of spellcasting progession.

Here a example:

Fighter 1/Wizard 4/Havok Mage 5/Knight Phantom 10

Normally you lose 4 levels of spellcasting progression (Fighter x1, Havok Mage x2 and Knight Phantom x1), but with the feat you keep a full spellcasting progression by sacrificing 5 of your 7 or 8 feats, which could be otherwise be metamagic, spellcaster or item creation feats.