Eidetic Spellcaster is a horrid ACF...

[St Fan]

I’ve seen Eidetic Spellcaster often touted as great for freeing a wizard from those bothersome spellbooks... and I’m frankly puzzled about why.

Unless you’re planning to play a wizard with a Vow of Poverty, it is frankly an absolutely terrible alternative class feature.

First of all, it is exchanged not for two, but THREE other class features. (Yes, three: Summon Familiar, Scribe Scroll AND spellbook, which it replaces.) Scribe Scroll I could get, this spellcaster is less oriented toward scribbing magic... but why take away the familiar for an otherwise subpar ability?

Sure, you don’t have to bother with spellbooks anymore... which most wizards do a perfectly good job protecting anyway. (If you really fear thieving, you can always have some spells tattooed on your body). But you are also giving up many of the advantage of having a spellbook.

First of all, how do you think wizards quickly exchange new spells between themselves? Yes, by letting another consult their respective spellbooks, in a good faith exchange. An Eidetic Spellcaster can learn new spells from a spellbook, but can’t offer his own in exchange, seriously limiting any spell bartering. You’d have to write a scroll first... which you don’t have the bonus feat for, and is costly.

Furthermore, giving up a spellbook also means giving up ALL the various ways to reduce cost of inscribing spells in them. Arcane Shorthand, Book of Geometry, Blessed Book, Quill of Rapid Scrivening, etc. Also lost is the opportunity to sell old spellbooks once you’ve started to copy the spells for cheap in a new one using those methods. The Eidetic Spellcaster is stuck with paying 100 gp/level for all spells learned beyond those gained at a new level, which in the long run probably means less spells.

And yes, that’s a lot of money paying for the needed “incense”, don’t you think? Not that I have the slightest trouble with calling it “incense”, mind you. Even the shady guy selling you those psychotropic substances increasing memory and arcane retention is certainly calling them “incense” too. Though one can wonder how good for your lungs is breathing all this “incense” in the long term.

And cherry on top, an Eidetic Spellcaster is barred from taking Ultimate Magus as a prestige class.

(It’s also extremely unclear how Eidetic Spellcaster interacts with Spell Mastery and other feats depending of it.)

Personnaly, as a GM I only see using this ACF by giving it for free to any wizard from a tribal/illiterate background such as Anagakok or Filidh, thus replacing the spellbook that doesn’t fit with their thematics.

[Ramza00]

DMs should just allowed the Athas version of the Blessed Book called Mnemonic Crystal

https://athas.miraheze.org/wiki/Universal_Items#Mnemonic_Crystal

For 50 pages it costs 625 gp and each additional 8 pages is 10 gp (aka 12.5 gp cost, so an 80 page mnemonic crystal is 1000 gp, a 120 page one is 1500 gp, a 160 page one is 2000 gp, and a 200 page one is 2500 gp.)

Since the weight is only 1 lb it works great with a glove of storing, handy haversack, Najjar's Cloak of Weaponry, possum pouch, etc, etc.

There are frustrating forms of book keep the dm should keep if everyone is “having fun”, but class design should not punish classes with annoyances to encourage or discourage play.

[SirNibbles]

DMs should just allowed the Athas version of the Blessed Book called Mnemonic Crystal

https://athas.miraheze.org/wiki/Universal_Items#Mnemonic_Crystal

For 50 pages it costs 625 gp and each additional 8 pages is 10 gp (aka 12.5 gp cost, so an 80 page mnemonic crystal is 1000 gp, a 120 page one is 1500 gp, a 160 page one is 2000 gp, and a 200 page one is 2500 gp.)

Since the weight is only 1 lb it works great with a glove of storing, handy haversack, Najjar's Cloak of Weaponry, possum pouch, etc, etc.

There are frustrating forms of book keep the dm should keep if everyone is “having fun”, but class design should not punish classes with annoyances to encourage or discourage play.

Honestly it seems like spellbooks (for the most part) are just another Grod's Law attempt to make spells/spellcasters not overpowered. Nobody in the entire party is having more fun because a character has to read a book for an hour in order to use overpowered abilities.

___

Also fully agree with OP on pretty much all points. The only real value of a spellbook should be to exchange spells with others. I can't think of a fantasy environment outside of D&D where that wasn't the case.

[Ramza00]

Honestly it seems like spellbooks (for the most part) are just another Grod's Law attempt to make spells/spellcasters not overpowered. Nobody in the entire party is having more fun because a character has to read a book for an hour in order to use overpowered abilities.

Agreed.

But also I would deconstruct that further. DnD is a game system with 50+ years of tradition, and that tradition happened in many places and with many authors so it has an origin and does not have a “singular origin” at the same time. It is 1967 and 1974 but also stuff prior to 1967 with works of fiction and stories that inspire the original creators, and these creators changed their minds with new feedback, new desires, and new excessive joys.

And one can agree with those excessive joys such as you want a book nerd to study a book every 24 hours, or you can transgress the past and say your wizard talks to a magic sword instead, or he talks to eldritch patrons via a magical mirror. The lines between classes are artificial distinctions much like the Zhuangzai story of the butterfly dream where he dreams he is a butterfly, or perhaps the butterfly dreams they are a man, and the necessary distinction between these is an instance of transformation plus language.

————

So yeah I would go the spheres of power route with casting traditions where the rules of your magic allows the DM to allow storytelling opportunities, likewise we hope the DM is a fun character and not a (censored) person out to get the players in a way that is not fun and poisons the joy of the table. If the player can lose their spell book, then a cleric should have nights their gods do not answer their prayers and so on.

[Zanos]

Whether or not Eidetic is good depends greatly on your DM and your campaign; it's a very nice feature to have in campaign settings where magic is illegal or attracts unwanted attention, for example, or if your DM just frequently goes after a wizards spellbook or separates you from your gear. In my experience wizards will often be asked to hand over their spellbooks when the party is asked to disarm to speak with important people, and it's not like Bluff is a wizard class skill. Also keep in mind that Eidetic doesn't actually remove your spellbook feature, so you can still use them if you like, whether to take advantage of magic items that depend on them if your DM won't allow a compatible alternative, to copy spells for others, or to have a decoy spellbook. Also you get to laugh at "lesser" wizards who have birds that **** on everything instead of a steel trap mind that just memorizes everything. Combine with autohypnosis to never have to take notes again.

In games where that stuff isn't a concern though, yes, the feature is underwhelming. It removes two features which either give or can be converted into combat advantages, and it's benefits are often not applicable.

[Maat Mons]

Some people just don’t like spellbooks… or familiars. And remember, a slightly suboptimal Wizard is still better than most other things.

[RandomPeasant]

Eidetic Spellcaster primarily exists to make Wizards simpler to play by removing elements that add complexity (handling a familiar, tracking a spellbook, being encouraged to scribe and accumulate limited-use scrolls). It is certainly less powerful than playing a full-complexity Wizard, and arguably unnecessarily so, but that kind of option is always going to be less powerful by nature of what it is trying to achieve, and in the overwhelming majority of campaigns you will be able to play a Wizard to whatever power level is necessary even if you lose some of your theoretical power ceiling.


Honestly it seems like spellbooks (for the most part) are just another Grod's Law attempt to make spells/spellcasters not overpowered. Nobody in the entire party is having more fun because a character has to read a book for an hour in order to use overpowered abilities.

Spellbooks are very flavorful, and while "ha ha I stole ur book" is basically never fun, the fact that the Wizard does not simply know every Wizard spell automatically is a meaningful power constraint in a lot of games. If your DM is not forcing you to spend a bunch of table time detailing your spellbook defenses, it's really just a flavor thing, and looked at that way it's fine.

[St Fan]

You have a very good point in saying that the value of such an ACF can be very dependent of the campaign. If having a spellbook is more disadvantageous than average because of a ban on wizards (or paper, whatever...), then Eidetic spellcaster is more of interest.

There are other options, however, like the Spell Mastery feat (and note that a 2nd-level+ Chameleon can select Spell Mastery every day with the bonus feat, up to the full spell selection) or tattooing spells.

And if the aim is to have a character with less complexity than a standard wizard, you can always plays a sorcerer or beguiler or other spontaneous casters.

I wouldn't ban it outright, but as a GM I'd certainly homebrew that you can still summon a familiar (but also that you cannot still scribe on a spellbook, you pick a side).

Besides, although that's probably just me, half the fun of a spellbook is to design all kind of magical traps around it to give a nasty surprise to anybody trying to swoop it. Spells such as sepia's snake sigil or secret page exist for a reason.

[redking]

Depending on the campaign, it's worth it or not. I'd expect a lot of eidetic wizards in the Dark Sun setting, and it's probably worth it. Having to trade using scrolls isn't that terrible of an imposition. It could even be safer than giving someone access to your entire spellbook.

[icefractal]

For the "average" campaign - not worth it unless you didn't want a familiar anyway, yeah, as spellbook hate is uncommon. However, spell-trading is also uncommon. I've yet to be in a game where the GM:
1) Had friendly/neutral Wizard NPCs show up with any frequency. And ...
2) Did fair trading of spells, rather than "NPCs demand a bunch of gold, don't care what spells you have to show them" or "NPCs demand knowledge of like five spells for every one they give you".

So while the trading-lack is theoretically a big loss, it's a loss that won't matter for most PCs.

And for the games where it is good, it's very good - although as Dragon material it's less likely to be auto-allowed, and the GMs who give Wizard PCs a hard time are often the ones least likely to allow it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

At the very least, the Obtain Familiar feat is superior to a regular familiar, if only because PrCs are a thing, and most of them don't advance your familiar at all. Around these boards it's common to trade the familiar for an ACF and take Obtain Familiar anyway, so if you plan on doing something like that and Eidetic Spellcaster is the one you want, go for it.

Also, it's pretty easy to get bonus feats (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?400840-List-of-Feat-Granting-Items-Locations-Grafts) that you can swap out via the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, so replacing both familiar and Scribe Scroll in exchange for money isn't too difficult.

[Chronos]

At the very least, the Obtain Familiar feat is superior to a regular familiar, if only because PrCs are a thing, and most of them don't advance your familiar at all.
To the contrary, most prestige classes advance your familiar more than wizard does. You won't get the higher-level familiar abilities, but those are only a small part of a familiar's advancement. More important is that the familiar has hit points, (effective) hit dice, and skills that scale with yours, and wizards have the worst skills and HP of any class.

That said, with the Obtain Familiar feat, your familiar gets those things and the higher-level familiar abilities, so it is still better, just not by as much as you said.

[Zanos]

For the "average" campaign - not worth it unless you didn't want a familiar anyway, yeah, as spellbook hate is uncommon. However, spell-trading is also uncommon. I've yet to be in a game where the GM:
1) Had friendly/neutral Wizard NPCs show up with any frequency. And ...
2) Did fair trading of spells, rather than "NPCs demand a bunch of gold, don't care what spells you have to show them" or "NPCs demand knowledge of like five spells for every one they give you".

So while the trading-lack is theoretically a big loss, it's a loss that won't matter for most PCs.

And for the games where it is good, it's very good - although as Dragon material it's less likely to be auto-allowed, and the GMs who give Wizard PCs a hard time are often the ones least likely to allow it.
I think this is just difference in experience then, as I've fairly rarely had problems with liberal spell access; most printed settings have official organizations of Wizards who canonically trade spells, and as one gets to higher levels it's possible to bootstrap access to spells with the free spells you get as you level. You can always buy scrolls also, which are actually cheaper for first level spells than the cost of paying a wizard to scribe from his book.


At the very least, the Obtain Familiar feat is superior to a regular familiar, if only because PrCs are a thing, and most of them don't advance your familiar at all. Around these boards it's common to trade the familiar for an ACF and take Obtain Familiar anyway, so if you plan on doing something like that and Eidetic Spellcaster is the one you want, go for it.

Also, it's pretty easy to get bonus feats (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?400840-List-of-Feat-Granting-Items-Locations-Grafts) that you can swap out via the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, so replacing both familiar and Scribe Scroll in exchange for money isn't too difficult.
The actual loss here is the opportunity cost of not getting a different feat with your flaw, since you can only take two flaws. Advancing your familiar is mediocre, as the only noteworthy features are replicated by cheap magic items(speak with master), or aren't of use to the vast majority of wizards(deliver touch spell).

If you're using the infinite feat shuffle then I think most build advice is off the table because you can just do whatever you want.

[St Fan]

Again, plenty very good points. You can always make a build work if you really want to, you just have to invest in the right feats and skills to compensate any shortcomings.

And spell-trading is indeed not always the most efficient way of gaining new spells, precisely because Wizards tend to be overprotective of their spellbooks. I have a character build that is pretty much specialized in gaining new spells, and I envision her not much paying NPCs for consulting their spellbooks; if they're not interested in trading, she'll probably politely accept their choice... before bonking them over the head repeatedly and then "borrowing" the spellbook to learn the spells in it. And targeting mostly outlaw/renegade wizards, maybe as some kind of community service for serial spellbook-st... borrowing.

Although besides other wizards, I don't see many unsavory type being interested in stolen spellbooks. I mean, even if you're in the business of fencing stolen goods, would you dare trying to sell something that is likely to have a powerful spellcaster after it? Wizards have ways to track their spellbooks, you know, like locate object or dragoneye rune. Even a powerful thieves guild is likely to treat spellbooks fencing like poison.

Unless the wizard the spellbook belonged to is dead, of course... wait, no, that's not a good idea either.



I would just like to point out that my ghost shall be both angry and vengeful, and will retain all my spellcasting powers.

[Malphegor]

tbh instead of that I braid meaningful knots in my characters beards to signify spells. There’s precedent in the form of an alternate scroll made out of rope knots, and as long as it takes the same amount of data and is costed the same and takes the same effort to ‘scribe’, then having a beautiful beard full of tangles that represent arcane glyphs and odd arrangements of beards is as good as pages and just as flammable with the amount of beard oil in there.

Plus you prepare your spells for the day by stroking it pensively

[Crake]

Eidetic spellbook is bis for chameleons, who can reroll their floating bonus feat every morning to add a new spell into their mind every day, until eventually they know literally every single spell.

Who needs to share spells then?

[Ramza00]

Again, plenty very good points. You can always make a build work if you really want to, you just have to invest in the right feats and skills to compensate any shortcomings.

And spell-trading is indeed not always the most efficient way of gaining new spells, precisely because Wizards tend to be overprotective of their spellbooks. I have a character build that is pretty much specialized in gaining new spells, and I envision her not much paying NPCs for consulting their spellbooks; if they're not interested in trading, she'll probably politely accept their choice... before bonking them over the head repeatedly and then "borrowing" the spellbook to learn the spells in it. And targeting mostly outlaw/renegade wizards, maybe as some kind of community service for serial spellbook-st... borrowing.

Although besides other wizards, I don't see many unsavory type being interested in stolen spellbooks. I mean, even if you're in the business of fencing stolen goods, would you dare trying to sell something that is likely to have a powerful spellcaster after it? Wizards have ways to track their spellbooks, you know, like locate object or dragoneye rune. Even a powerful thieves guild is likely to treat spellbooks fencing like poison.

Unless the wizard the spellbook belonged to is dead, of course... wait, no, that's not a good idea either.

Spellbooks are a commodity that is such generative in what it allows that societies would form of wizard guilds where they co-opt among each other instead of being insular. Remember "power" is held by the group and the community but "action and agency" is held by individuals. Economies are a natural developing thing for we are more powerful together and weaker when people think zero-sum. We gladly find ways to form agency in a cooperative fashion, surrendering a little bit of freedom in order to tap into something larger something more powerful via sharing and mutual trade.

Thus individuals will have multiple spell books, spell books they keep secret and secure plus public spell books which they share. Yes this is overlapping / wasteful cost but the bounty of sharing would easily pay for it and allow greater spell access.

Think of it like as networking and how there are multiple "backup" nodes in a large network such as the internet, or a library in general. And the library will not be located in a single building location even if its located in a single city. People store their books in multiple buildings which are not all the same location. This was the case of library cities like Alexandria but also all throughout the 1500s to today.

[redking]

Eidetic spellbook is bis for chameleons, who can reroll their floating bonus feat every morning to add a new spell into their mind every day, until eventually they know literally every single spell.

Who needs to share spells then?

An eidetic wizard with levels in chameleon probably cannot use it's eidetic abilities for the chameleon spellbook. Ask your DM territory, for sure. There are two objections -

1. Eidetic spellcaster applies to the wizard class. It is silent on whether it can apply to other classes. The chameleon can use arcane spells off other arcane spell lists other than wizard also. Even if it was accepted that eidetic spellcaster works for the wizard spells, it's possible that it may not work for spells from other lists, such as bard. It's an open question.

2. The chameleon spellbooks are used in the same way as a wizard, but fluffed differently.

That said, I'd probably allow it. But a hardass DM might say no, especially if this combo was sprung on him with no notice.

Anyway, eidetic spellcaster can be situationally good. As another person pointed out, quite often PCs are not given the opportunity to share spellbooks, even when it is canonical in the setting. Losing scribe scroll is painful, but there are probably other ways to pick that up. Obtain familiar is objectively better than the class feature (and what the class feature should have been in the first place).

EDIT: As a DM I'd allow the chameleon to use eidetic spellcaster for memorising spell, but I'd take a dim view of floating feat being used for extra spell. I'd allow the floating feat to be used for extra spell, but the spell would disappear from memory after the floating feat is used for something else. Any player attempting it risks a dodge check from a ranged attack from a thrown DMG.

[ciopo]

An eidetic wizard with levels in chameleon probably cannot use it's eidetic abilities for the chameleon spellbook. Ask your DM territory, for sure. There are two objections -

1. Eidetic spellcaster applies to the wizard class. It is silent on whether it can apply to other classes. The chameleon can use arcane spells off other arcane spell lists other than wizard also. Even if it was accepted that eidetic spellcaster works for the wizard spells, it's possible that it may not work for spells from other lists, such as bard. It's an open question.

2. The chameleon spellbooks are used in the same way as a wizard, but fluffed differently.

That said, I'd probably allow it. But a hardass DM might say no, especially if this combo was sprung on him with no notice.

Anyway, eidetic spellcaster can be situationally good. As another person pointed out, quite often PCs are not given the opportunity to share spellbooks, even when it is canonical in the setting. Losing scribe scroll is painful, but there are probably other ways to pick that up. Obtain familiar is objectively better than the class feature (and what the class feature should have been in the first place).

the trick is wizard 18/chamaleon 2, use the floating feat for "extra spell". that extra spell is now a known spell for your character, i.e. it's added to all your classes spell list ( proof: a wizard8/noncaster 12 can take extra spell during any of the noncaster levels). eidetic wizard "scribe" that spell in his memory by whatever means necessary, the dya after change extra spell for a different extra spell, etcetera

[redking]

the trick is wizard 18/chamaleon 2, use the floating feat for "extra spell". that extra spell is now a known spell for your character, i.e. it's added to all your classes spell list ( proof: a wizard8/noncaster 12 can take extra spell during any of the noncaster levels). eidetic wizard "scribe" that spell in his memory by whatever means necessary, the dya after change extra spell for a different extra spell, etcetera

It looks like I edited my post the same time that you wrote your post. Yeah. Extra spell via floating feat would definitely not fly if I was DM.

[Chronos]

One thing with sharing spells with a large organization, they're not going to be interested in you trading them a spell they already have, and a large organization probably already has most of the spells. Of course, that does mean that they're likely to be all the more interested in any they don't already have, so they might trade on considerably better terms than 1:1 for them, but it still depends on you first getting a spell that they don't already have (possibly by researching some custom spells of your own). They're also more likely to have a straight-up price list where you can pay a set amount of gold for spell access, at least for the more common spells, or ones they don't consider particularly dangerous.

[bekeleven]

Eidetic Spellcaster is not an ACF I'd take in an "all tier 1s, fighting tier 1s" type of game.

However, I would take it in an "you IRL are a wizard" game. Because I wouldn't want my powers to be tied to a possession. Spellbooks are so damn inconvenient. I've lost to many possessions in my life to want that kind of stress and hassle.

So basically, while spellbooks are flavorful and eidetic spellcaster has some mechanical strength, the ACF overall trades mechanical power for flavor. I've made that trade before and I'll make it again. Easy-bake wizards are some of my favorites.

[Maat Mons]

Funny thing is, anyone leveling up is naturally going to take their free spells known from among the best options. So if you want one of those, you could get it from basically any Wizard. On the other hand, if you want a terrible spell, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who has it in their spellbook. The law of supply and demand says the abundance of Wizards with good spells to trade decreases the value of those spells, and the dearth of Wizards with bad spells to trade increases the value of those spells. So as long as plenty of Wizards feel they “gotta catch em all,” picking bad spells known gives you more bargaining power in spell swaps.

Personally, I’d bargain with my future spells known. Let spellbook completionists know that you’re willing to take requests for which spells you learn on your next level-up. If there’s a spell they just haven’t been able to find, you’ll learn it, and share it with them. They just have to share some agreed-upon spells with you in exchange. If some powerful Wizard is desperate for that one last super-obscure spell that will complete their library, you can probably get a really good deal.

[St Fan]

the trick is wizard 18/chamaleon 2, use the floating feat for "extra spell". that extra spell is now a known spell for your character, i.e. it's added to all your classes spell list ( proof: a wizard8/noncaster 12 can take extra spell during any of the noncaster levels). eidetic wizard "scribe" that spell in his memory by whatever means necessary, the dya after change extra spell for a different extra spell, etcetera

Okay, a few very important points:

Extra Spell cannot be used to add a new spell that's not already in your spell list. There is a very clear Sage Advice about this already.

Even if it could, then it would only be part of your class list last as long as the floating feat is set on this specific spell. Having a spell not on your spell list written in your spell book is perfectly possible, but that doesn't make it part of your spell list. If you want to prepare said spell, you'd need to do so as a Chameleon spell, takes again Extra Spell as the floating feat for this very spell this day, or whatever other trick (like preparing the spell with anyspell or lesser anyspell obtained through Arcane Disciple).

Personally, I only allow Extra Spell as the floating feat to add a spell for free if picked at the time the character is gaining a level in the spellcasting class, alongside the two new spells by level for Wizard (up to five with Collegiate Wizard and Elven Generalist).

In all other circumstances, Extra Spell as the floating feat only allows to add a new spell if you're in a well-furnished library where you can do the appropriate arcane researches, which will take you the whole day, AND it costs exactly as much as scribbing any new spell in your spellbook.

You can never use Extra Spell this way while adventuring away from civilization or busy doing something else. The floating feat cannot makes new information just pop up in your mind, that's not how it work.

[ciopo]

Okay, a few very important points:

Extra Spell cannot be used to add a new spell that's not already in your spell list. There is a very clear Sage Advice about this already.

Even if it could, then it would only be part of your class list last as long as the floating feat is set on this specific spell. Having a spell not on your spell list written in your spell book is perfectly possible, but that doesn't make it part of your spell list. If you want to prepare said spell, you'd need to do so as a Chameleon spell, takes again Extra Spell as the floating feat for this very spell this day, or whatever other trick (like preparing the spell with anyspell or lesser anyspell obtained through Arcane Disciple).

Personally, I only allow Extra Spell as the floating feat to add a spell for free if picked at the time the character is gaining a level in the spellcasting class, alongside the two new spells by level for Wizard (up to five with Collegiate Wizard and Elven Generalist).

In all other circumstances, Extra Spell as the floating feat only allows to add a new spell if you're in a well-furnished library where you can do the appropriate arcane researches, which will take you the whole day, AND it costs exactly as much as scribbing any new spell in your spellbook.

You can never use Extra Spell this way while adventuring away from civilization or busy doing something else. The floating feat cannot makes new information just pop up in your mind, that's not how it work.

I'm well aware of the sage advice that specifically disregarded the description of the feat itself, which just so happen to say, quite literally "For classes such as wizard that have more options for learning spells, Extra Spell is generally used to learn a specific spell that the character lacks access to and would be unable to research.", I'm going to meme it as council business and move on as that's not the crux here.

The floating feat is pulling information out of nowhere, what else could it be? how is picking up/dropping a feat on a daily basis anything else but forgetting or remembering some whatever tidbits? it's a mechanical choice that's disconnected from in character justification, or if the justification matter just about any rationalization about "how it works" if it works for any feat it works for any other feat. I mean I don't see any justification for allowing it to pick, say, power attack, or a skill focus, or whatever, not also working for extra spell?

That extra spell is, specifically, somewhat disfunctional with spellbook caster is a different beast, but the rationalization therein. Like, "my character is forgetful and all those extra spells have always have been in his spellbook, he just forgot that he secret-paged them and only recently remembered that that blank page between page 20# and 23# actually contains fireball"

A chamaleon (that in itself doesn't actually qualify for the extra spell feat, anyway) would need to scribe the "extra spell" from a spellbook to another spellbook to retain that spell from a day to another day, unless you go to "absurd" whereas feat that give something that can exist as a separate entity from the feat persist after the removal of the feat.

By which I mean, a fighter 5/chamaleon 10 does not qualify for extra spell. a wizard 5/chamaleon 10 qualify for extra spell, but can only pick spells of up to 2nd level of wizard. floating feat extra spell would add one (wizard, under the limitation of "only in class spell can be picked" you want to operate under) spell to that spellbook.. and that spell would disappear from that spellbook when the feat is lost, as normal for anything else that's transient, so that wizard/chamaleon with eidetic needs to write down (and therefore spend gold) that extra spell it randomly popped up on his mind if he wants to retain it when he changes out the feat.

I'm not claiming that the floating feat used on extra spell makes those extra spell permanent addition at not cost, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I meant that extra spell can be used to access a spell so you can scribe it down (at a cost) evne if you aren't at the library, as oyu put it. Because that's what the feat do.

I mean, when your first level wizard level ups in a random cave with his buddies after his first harrowing fight with some random goblin... how do you rationalize those two extra spells he gets on level up, when said level up is not in some comfy library? whatever rationalization you use for that, it'd work just the same for picking extra spell with a feat, floating or not, library or not.


I do specifically agree that if you use the floating feat to pick a spell that is not natively to any of the character spell list, then said character cna only use that spell while he has that feat, and scribing it wouldn't help at all at using that spell without the feat

[Crake]

Okay, seems like I came back to a bit of a confused mess regarding my note on using eidetic caster as a chameleon, so lets clear up some points.

- Can an eidetic spellbook be used by a chameleon: Of course. The spellbook is just a mechanism to store spells. Just as a chameleon can use a captured spellbook from a random wizard, so too can they use their wizard levels' eidetic spellbook, or a tattoo spellbook, or a staff spellbook. The spellbook is just the means of which the character can store the spells.

- Does getting the extra spell feat give you a free spell: Mechanically the eidetic spellbook works just the same as a normal spellbook, only it's saved in the character's mind. In a regular spellbook, if you get the extra spell feat, the spell becomes etched into the spellbook, and if it is changed later, the spell doesn't magically erase itself. Same principle applies to the eidetic spellbook, the spell becomes etched in the chameleon's memory, and when the feat is swapped out, the spell remains.

- Can you use chameleon to add non-wizard spells to your eidetic spellbook: Again, the spellbook is just a mechanism to store spells. Just as the chameleon could scribe nonwizard spells in a physical spellbook, they too can do the same for their eidetic spellbook. Extra spell simply says you can scribe a spell from your spell list, 1 level lower than the maximum spell level you can cast. Naturally, this becomes very limiting if you want to add non-wizard spells to your eidetic spellbook, as, if you only take 2 levels of chameleon, you will only be able to add 1st level non-wizard spells to your spellbook. However, just because they are in your eidetic spellbook, does not mean you can cast them from your wizard levels. I repeat, the eidetic spellbook is just a mechanism for storing the spells you know, just like any other spellbook. If a wizard stumbled upon a normal chameleon's spellbook, he would be able to use it to copy and cast wizard spells as normal, but would not have access to the non-wizard spells the chameleon scribed into it. Same situation applies.

- If a wizard 18/chameleon 2 is still limited to wizard only spells, then how does that allow them to learn every spell: Simple, you have the wrong build. The correct build is eidetic wizard 1/whatever 4/chameleon 10 (factotum+able learner at level 1 is always a good combo, and factotum3 is nice for brain over brawn, then cleric 1 for turn undead and domains is a nice final dip before chameleon. If you're dipping that much though, remember to take practised spellcaster to actually properly qualify for extra spell/extra slot, as your chameleon casting does NOT qualify you for those feats, however they CAN still be applied to your chameleon casting if you qualify separately). You use the extra spell slot feat, along with spell level boosting metamagic, and leapfrogging with the chameleon's floating bonus feat to get spellslots above the chameleon's normal max of level 6. By level 12 you can squeeze in 9th level spellslots, but if you want to be less gamebreaking, you can easily have it by level 15, and you have double aptitude to also have divine spellcasting. This is what gives you access to every spell in the game, double 9s from chameleon 10.

Edit: I have, as a DM, allowed that exact build in one of my campaigns by the way. The character had wedded to history, with the atrophied backstory, and the fluff behind the build was that they were remembering their former power as a previously epic spellcaster. They were basically retired as a character once they were able to cast double 9s super early on, but it was a fun concept to include.

[ciopo]

- If a wizard 18/chameleon 2 is still limited to wizard only spells, then how does that allow them to learn every spell: Simple, you have the wrong build. The correct build is eidetic wizard 1/whatever 4/chameleon 10. You use the extra spell slot feat, along with spell level boosting metamagic, and leapfrogging with the chameleon's floating bonus feat to get spellslots above the chameleon's normal max of level 6. By level 12 you can squeeze in 9th level spellslots, but if you want to be less gamebreaking, you can easily have it by level 15, and you have double aptitude to also have divine spellcasting. This is what gives you access to every spell in the game, double 9s from chameleon 10.

Do remember that none of the chamaleon class features can be used to qualify for anything, with the only exception being the floating feat itself.

This functionally means that as far as extra spell is concerned, chamaleon levels are equivalent to levels in commoner. When asked the "what is the highest spell level a commoner 10/chamaleon 10 can access" question, the answer is "none, chamaleon doesn't have spellcasting".


On the permanence of "resources" gained by the floating feat, that's a whole different kind of discussion

[Crake]

Do remember that none of the chamaleon class features can be used to qualify for anything, with the only exception being the floating feat itself.

This functionally means that as far as extra spell is concerned, chamaleon levels are equivalent to levels in commoner. When asked the "what is the highest spell level a commoner 10/chamaleon 10 can access" question, the answer is "none, chamaleon doesn't have spellcasting".

Correct, I addressed this in an edit, but to reiterate, you need at least CL5 from an outside source other than chameleon to qualify for extra spell or extra slot, this can be accomplished by either taking more than 1 level of wizard, or by taking the practised spellcaster feat. It could also in theory be provided by a spell-like ability of some kind, but wizard 5/chameleon 10 also works fine.

Keep in mind that while chameleon cannot be used to QUALIFY for feats, it can still be the recipient for their benefits, so you can qualify via wizard, but apply the benefits to chameleon.



On the permanence of "resources" gained by the floating feat, rthat's a whole different kind of discussion

Just remember, however you rule it for a physical spellbook, thats how it should work for an eidetic spellbook. If you wanna rule that it magically disappears from the physical spellbook, then by all means, remove it from the eidetic one too, but if it stays in the physical one, it should stay in the eidetic one too. Personally it makes more sense for me that it stays, rather than vanishes.

[St Fan]

- If a wizard 18/chameleon 2 is still limited to wizard only spells, then how does that allow them to learn every spell: Simple, you have the wrong build. The correct build is eidetic wizard 1/whatever 4/chameleon 10 (factotum+able learner at level 1 is always a good combo, and factotum3 is nice for brain over brawn, then cleric 1 for turn undead and domains is a nice final dip before chameleon. If you're dipping that much though, remember to take practised spellcaster to actually properly qualify for extra spell/extra slot, as your chameleon casting does NOT qualify you for those feats, however they CAN still be applied to your chameleon casting if you qualify separately). You use the extra spell slot feat, along with spell level boosting metamagic, and leapfrogging with the chameleon's floating bonus feat to get spellslots above the chameleon's normal max of level 6. By level 12 you can squeeze in 9th level spellslots, but if you want to be less gamebreaking, you can easily have it by level 15, and you have double aptitude to also have divine spellcasting. This is what gives you access to every spell in the game, double 9s from chameleon 10.


Okay, I really want to dismiss all of this as utter gibberish, but I would be lying to say that I'm not interested. However, I understand barely half of what you are saying, so I'd like for further, CLEAR explanations with intelligible words, so that I can at least properly consider how utterly unworkable that is.

How in the Nine Hell do you get spell slots above level 6 with a Chameleon? Extra slot itself is limited to one level lower. What level-boosting metamagic are you talking about? And no character can get level 9th spell slot before level 17, so there's no way any DM would let you get one at level 12. And HOW does that gives you access to more (arcane) spells, since a Chameleon still have to learn them like any wizard?

Explain, or admit you're making things up.

[Anthrowhale]

A wizard 20 with eidetic spellcaster taking Spell Mastery, Uncanny Forethought, and Obtain Familiar has 1 more feat than a sorcerer 20, several more spells known, and for levels 3,5,7,9,11,13,15, and 17 can access spells which the sorcerer cannot. The sorcerer does at least have more spells/day of available levels, but overall I could imagine a player preferring the sorcerer-by-wizard approach.

So, while eidetic spellcaster does not generally increase the power of a wizard, it does seem to create a fairly appealing alt-sorcerer.

Overall, it seems better than 'horrid' to me, although not a power-increasing choice. I applied it to the clockwork wizard (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?496834-The-Clockwork-Wizard-Everything-in-no-time) for flavor reasons---I didn't want a spellbook which decayed into dust after a few megayears of apparent time.

[Anthrowhale]

And no character can get level 9th spell slot before level 17...

Note that an Ur-Priest does this routinely. In fact, a Duskblade 2/Tainted Spellcaster 3/Ur-priest 10 would get access to 9th level spells at character level 11 using the preferential level drain rules from Tainted Spellcaster.

[redking]

How in the Nine Hell do you get spell slots above level 6 with a Chameleon? Extra slot itself is limited to one level lower. What level-boosting metamagic are you talking about? And no character can get level 9th spell slot before level 17, so there's no way any DM would let you get one at level 12. And HOW does that gives you access to more (arcane) spells, since a Chameleon still have to learn them like any wizard?

Explain, or admit you're making things up.

There are some very questionable exploits involved. I simply do not accept that it is possible.

The only real way to get dual 9s on a chameleon is for your chameleon to be an epic wizard, cleric or other spellcaster. Then take three lots of improved spell capacity. This will improve all of the spell slots, including those of chameleon.

Alternatively, you could be any relevant class (eg; factomum) 5 + trapsmith 5 + chameleon 10, then start taking improved spell capacity when you reach epic levels.

[St Fan]

There are some very questionable exploits involved. I simply do not accept that it is possible.

The only real way to get dual 9s on a chameleon is for your chameleon to be an epic wizard, cleric or other spellcaster. Then take three lots of improved spell capacity. This will improve all of the spell slots, including those of chameleon.

Alternatively, you could be any relevant class (eg; factomum) 5 + trapsmith 5 + chameleon 10, then start taking improved spell capacity when you reach epic levels.

More than questionable, indeed. Since the class features of Chameleon are very clearly specified as being unusable as a prerequisite for anything, applying Improved Spell Capacity to its Arcane Focus, even if you have epic levels of other spellcasting class on the side, is just not possible.



Improved Spell Capacity [Epic]
Prerequisite
Ability to cast spells of the normal maximum spell level in at least one spellcasting class.

Benefit
When you select this feat, you gain one spell slot per day of any level up to one level higher than the highest-level spell you can already cast in a particular class. You must still have the requisite ability score (10 + spell level) in order to cast any spell stored in this slot. If you have a high enough ability modifier to gain one or more bonus spells for this spell level, you also gain the bonus spells for this spell level. You must use the spell slot as a member of the class in which you can already cast spells of the normal maximum spell level.


I see it now: the exploit is based on the pretense that the words "in a particular class" doesn't imply that said class is the one you have reached maximum levels with to qualify for the prerequisite.

Except the feat just spells it out clearly later: "You must use the spell slot as a member of the class in which you can already cast spells of the normal maximum spell level." No way this could ever be applied to Arcane Focus, since even at maximum level Chameleon just doesn't count as being a spellcasting class for the prerequisite.

That's exactly what I thought: like many so-called "awesome powergaming tricks", it just immediately falls on its face as soon as you closely look at it

[St Fan]

Note that an Ur-Priest does this routinely. In fact, a Duskblade 2/Tainted Spellcaster 3/Ur-priest 10 would get access to 9th level spells at character level 11 using the preferential level drain rules from Tainted Spellcaster.

When I say "no character", I of course mean "no character without blatant cheating".

[martixy]

Honestly it seems like spellbooks (for the most part) are just another Grod's Law attempt to make spells/spellcasters not overpowered. Nobody in the entire party is having more fun because a character has to read a book for an hour in order to use overpowered abilities.

___

Also fully agree with OP on pretty much all points. The only real value of a spellbook should be to exchange spells with others. I can't think of a fantasy environment outside of D&D where that wasn't the case.

They're no attempt to balance anything.

They have spellbooks because wizards in movies and books typically have spellbooks.

These boards forget there often exist considerations other than RAW and balance. Way more often than you'd think...

[SirNibbles]

They're no attempt to balance anything.

They have spellbooks because wizards in movies and books typically have spellbooks.

These boards forget there often exist considerations other than RAW and balance. Way more often than you'd think...

Having a spellbook and having to study it for an hour every day in order to use your main class feature is not the same thing.

[Scots Dragon]

They're no attempt to balance anything.

They have spellbooks because wizards in movies and books typically have spellbooks.

These boards forget there often exist considerations other than RAW and balance. Way more often than you'd think...

Pretty much this. The wizard has a spellbook because wizards have spellbooks.

As a frequent wizard player regardless of the edition, I find the stuff you can do with spellbooks to be pretty cool. I especially like some of the stuff on workbooks and greatbooks in Complete Arcane (originally also in Magic of Faerûn), and there's just something evocative about a character whose power is specifically associated with the written word. Probably reinforced by the fact that I'm a notorious book-hoarder.


Having a spellbook and having to study it for an hour every day in order to use your main class feature is not the same thing.

As a wizard, your main class feature is studying a book for an hour every day to memorise the spells in it.

[ToranIronfinder]

They're no attempt to balance anything.

They have spellbooks because wizards in movies and books typically have spellbooks.

These boards forget there often exist considerations other than RAW and balance. Way more often than you'd think...

So I think the ACF if I understand it is a means of preventing spellbook theft. Earlier editions seem to assume this would happen occasionally, though probably should not happen regularly. Stealing a spellbook being the equivalent to a cleric losing abilities for violating their ethos, etc. Additionally, it depends on why the spellbook was stolen, the theives guild might steal a spellbook and promise to return it for performing "a favor," or the person seeking revenge who created a spell to calm a Barbarian (ending rage early), stole the Wizard's spellbook, and cursed the rogues boots to always squeak (ending sneaking) creates an interesting opponent and challange.

Additionally, spellbooks had page rules, so high level casters required more than one. There is no rule making them immune to item damage from things like fireballs (oddly listening to games on YouTube, or CR, no one seems to ever remove their heavy backpacks before entering battle in DnD, which would in many cases eliminate encumbrance), this led to characters having a permanent collection of spellbooks, likely trapped and guarded by henchmen, and a traveling spellbook or two for the adventure, due to weight and risk (I lost my backpack, uh oh). Here, then Eidetic spellcaster would have some value.

But perhaps a problem for lost spellbooks is the costs in 3.x appear to be applied to the inks used to scribe the spells (the copy spell in fact could transcribe the spell for the cost of a drop of ink). Earlier and in 5e, the costs are assumed to apply to researching the spell to understand the spell, not to the costs of transcribing it. Going back to a system like this would probably improve a few things for 3.5, the problem with multiple spellbooks for a wizard is the cost of copying them, but this means the costs would be more negligible. That means no learning spells on the fly so easily, but it would eliminate the possibility of losing the only copy one possesses.

[Anthrowhale]

When I say "no character", I of course mean "no character without blatant cheating".

Where do you think the blatant cheating is?

Duskblade 5/Ur-Priest 10 gets 9th level spells at level 14, 3 levels before level 17. The Tainted Spellcaster stuff is just another twist and explicitly legal (see here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?588329-Temporary-Tainted-Spellcaster)) to get you to ECL 11 9th level spells

[bekeleven]

How in the Nine Hell do you get spell slots above level 6 with a Chameleon?

This is the Chameleon Bootstrapper (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?425036-Chameleon-Bootstrapper-Level-Spellcasting). It relies on some rules interpretation, but not an outrageous amount; I think it's RAW, although obviously not RAI. I'm a big fan of chameleon so I like exploring its TO as well as its PO side.

[St Fan]

This is the Chameleon Bootstrapper (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?425036-Chameleon-Bootstrapper-Level-Spellcasting). It relies on some rules interpretation, but not an outrageous amount; I think it's RAW, although obviously not RAI. I'm a big fan of chameleon so I like exploring its TO as well as its PO side.

I'm pretty sure it absolutely doesn't work by RAW either. The assumption that "the highest level of spell you can cast" can be pushed up through metamagic is ridiculous on its face, and confuses actual spell level and effective spell level. A metamagic feat modify a spell at the time of casting and doesn't change what is the highest spell slot at your disposal. And how the devil are you supposed to pile up the effect with several Extra Slot with the floating feat, since changing it in the morning makes you lose the previous extra slot?

Just as I was expecting, this is not pushing RAW to its limit, it's plain and simply making things up. Why do all those "creative use of the rules" I heard about so often end up being plain delusional?

[Darg]

I'm pretty sure it absolutely doesn't work by RAW either. The assumption that "the highest level of spell you can cast" can be pushed up through metamagic is ridiculous on its face, and confuses actual spell level and effective spell level. A metamagic feat modify a spell at the time of casting and doesn't change what is the highest spell slot at your disposal. And how the devil are you supposed to pile up the effect with several Extra Slot with the floating feat, since changing it in the morning makes you lose the previous extra slot?

Just as I was expecting, this is not pushing RAW to its limit, it's plain and simply making things up. Why do all those "creative use of the rules" I heard about so often end up being plain delusional?

Because breaking something is fun and people only see what they want to see.

[icefractal]

I'm pretty sure it absolutely doesn't work by RAW either. The assumption that "the highest level of spell you can cast" can be pushed up through metamagic is ridiculous on its face, and confuses actual spell level and effective spell level. A metamagic feat modify a spell at the time of casting and doesn't change what is the highest spell slot at your disposal.I don't have a strong opinion on this particular case, but as a counterpoint - "the highest level of spell you can cast"

Not the highest level you can cast consistently, not the highest level slot you have. The highest level that you can cast, at all. If you had a weird class feature like "once per week you can cast Summon Monster IX, but only for an Elder Air Elemental, and the only thing it will do is tell other Air Elementals to leave you alone, it won't fight for you or help against any other type of enemy" ... then the highest level spell you can cast is 9th.

Now is that the intended use? No. Should it be used in a real game? Depends, but not in most of them. Is it cheating? No. TO is not cheating, and the difference is important.

[Crake]

This is the Chameleon Bootstrapper (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?425036-Chameleon-Bootstrapper-Level-Spellcasting). It relies on some rules interpretation, but not an outrageous amount; I think it's RAW, although obviously not RAI. I'm a big fan of chameleon so I like exploring its TO as well as its PO side.

Huh, interesting that my build actually got given a name. The character's use of this build predates that thread by a good couple of years, but yes, it follows the same basic principles. The character in question used snowcasting, as they were a winter unseelie fey, instead of earth spell, but yeah, basically you bunny hop at level 9 with your regular feat. By that level, a chameleon can cast 3rd level spells innately, with snowcasting and sanctum spell, you can bring that up to 5th level spells, which allows your floating bonus feat to give you an extra 4th level slot. This brings your highest level spell you can cast up to 6th level, which means you can use your level 9 feat to get a 5th level slot, and then reassign your floating bonus feat to a 6th level slot. Then at level 12, you can repeat the process, using your level 12 feat to get a 7th level slot, then reassign your bonus feat for an 8th level slot. Now with that 8th level slot, you can use your divine casting and the dark chaos feat shuffle to reassign your 12th level feat to a 9th level slot, and then rejig all your wasted low level feats, leaving only a single metamagic feat to maintain self qualification for extra slot 9, either sanctum spell or snowcasting, since heighten/earth spell cap at level 9.

Is it a super cheesy build? Yes. Does it break the game when put in the wrong player's hands? Yes. Can it be a fun and flavourful character when played correctly? Most definitely.

It is a borderline TO build, and definitely not one I would bring to any table and expect to work, but it is also definitely a situation where eidetic spellcaster fits absolutely perfectly into making a supreme caster who is able to know and cast any spell ever.

Its worth noting that this build is also the epitome of quadratic, as in, it starts of practically completely flat, and requires a lot of babysitting, as your first... well, probably like 9 or so levels, you're way behind the curve. That being said, it IS possible, with flaws, to get 9th level spells at level 9 this way. Sanctum spell, snowcasting, and earth spell, this allows you to cast 3 spell levels above your normal maximum. That means at 8th level you can get a 5th level slot with your floating bonus feat, at 9th level you can get a 7th level slot with your levelup feat, and then reassign your floating bonus feat for a 9th level slot, then use divine focus to do the dark chaos feat shuffle to swap your feats out to actually useful feat choices.

If you use that version of the build, the power spike is basically a right angle, flatlining until level 9, then skyrocketing into the stratosphere.


I'm pretty sure it absolutely doesn't work by RAW either. The assumption that "the highest level of spell you can cast" can be pushed up through metamagic is ridiculous on its face, and confuses actual spell level and effective spell level. A metamagic feat modify a spell at the time of casting and doesn't change what is the highest spell slot at your disposal. And how the devil are you supposed to pile up the effect with several Extra Slot with the floating feat, since changing it in the morning makes you lose the previous extra slot?

To clarify on this: The aforementioned feats increase the actual spell level of the spell you cast. If you were to cast that spell into a globe of invulnerability, or against someone with spell turning, the spell would actually function as an X+2 or X+3 level spell, unlike say, a maximized spell, which has a spell slot adjustment of +3, but is still treated as it's normal spell slot level.

As for how you pile up the effects, you specifically stack it at a level you get an actual level up feat. So at level 8 your floating feat is extra slot 4, at level 9 you use your floating bonus feat to qualify your actual levelup feat for extra slot 5, then reassign your floating bonus feat using your actual levelup feat to qualify for extra slot 6. The term I've always used for it has been leap frogging, as I think it best explains the process, you use your floating bonus feat to leapfrog your levelup feat ahead of what you could normally do, you in essence get 3 feats over 2 levels to quickly climb up the spell slot levels.

If you wanted to make a version of the build that more matches the power progression of normal casters, you can get 5th level spells at level 9, 6th level spells at level 11 with your floating bonus feat, which you can then make permanent via your level 12 feat, 7th level spells at level 13 onward with your floating bonus feat, 8th level spells at level 15 with your levelup feat, and 9th level spells at level 17 using the dark chaos feat shuffle to rejig your feats.

That could be done with literally just snowcasting and sanctum spell (and one other random metamagic feat to qualify for sanctum spell).

[False God]

Can't you just take Scribe Scroll as a feat afterward anyway?

And a scroll is specifically a magical item, but nothing is stopping you from writing down your spells in a completely mundane manner. Likewise, nothing is stopping an eidetic wizard from having a spellbook, it's just a mundane book, with mundane writing, and the loss of it means nothing to him other than some completely rules-free downtime writing it again.

Anyway, I mostly take the option because I've played with rather brutal DMs who kill my familiar and destroy my spellbook. So having neither of those things is absolutely a benefit.

[Crake]

Likewise, nothing is stopping an eidetic wizard from having a spellbook, it's just a mundane book, with mundane writing, and the loss of it means nothing to him other than some completely rules-free downtime writing it again.

You were correct up until the rules-free part.

Spellbooks definitely have a cost associated with them. Scribing spells into them costs gold, its not free, and it takes a LONG time, so losing the book wouldnt just be something you shrug off and just scribe again. A completely full wizards spellbook (100 pages) has a market value of 10,000gp just based on the ink used to scribe the spells (though it usually sells for half that, as with all items)

[Troacctid]

To clarify on this: The aforementioned feats increase the actual spell level of the spell you cast. If you were to cast that spell into a globe of invulnerability, or against someone with spell turning, the spell would actually function as an X+2 or X+3 level spell, unlike say, a maximized spell, which has a spell slot adjustment of +3, but is still treated as it's normal spell slot level.
Both of the feats you named are quite explicit that they only apply to the spell when you cast it. If the game checks the spell's level at any other time, for any other purpose—like, for example, during level-ups when checking for feat prerequisites—return's the spell's normal, non-boosted level. At the time you take the feat, the spell in question only has its normal, non-boosted level, so the feat doesn't see the boost. It's easy to make this mistake because Sanctum Spell and Snowcasting are clearly inspired by Heighten Spell, which does not have that same restriction. A heightened spell counts as the higher level at all times for all purposes, not just when you cast it. But as it turns out, different effects work differently, and your preferred pair doesn't work that way.

Furthermore, if you use the chameleon bonus feat to qualify you for another feat, the text says that swapping out your chameleon feat triggers you to suffer the normal penalties for losing the prerequisites to the feat you leapfrogged to—and swapping alone is sufficient to trigger these penalties, regardless of whether or not the swap actually causes you to lose the prerequisites, so the fact that you still meet the prereq after the swap is irrelevant.

On top of that, cheating your way into having a higher-level spell slot than you could normally use is not the same thing as being able to cast spells of that level. Most of the textual evidence suggests that a 5th-level wizard who suddenly found herself with a 7th-level spell slot would be incapable of actually using it to cast a 7th-level spell (unless she was specifically granted permission to do so by the effect that gave her the slot).

All in all, it feels a little sloppy for TO, like you sort of assumed similar effects work the same way as one another even though they're worded differently, and didn't pay close attention to the text that's supposed to be foundational to the build. Sanctum Spell, Snowcasting, and Earth Spell all fail because of the first problem, and Chameleon fails because of the second problem. And even if you only use level-up feats for Extra Slot and switch to Eldritch Corruption as your heightening method, you still run into the third problem. And even if you find a solution for that...Eidetic Spellcaster still sucks, and has nothing to do with the trick! Giving up your familiar and your level 1 bonus feat is way too high a price to pay for something you could already do with tattoos without needing an ACF.

[Crake]

Both of the feats you named are quite explicit that they only apply to the spell when you cast it. If the game checks the spell's level at any other time, for any other purpose—like, for example, during level-ups when checking for feat prerequisites—return's the spell's normal, non-boosted level. At the time you take the feat, the spell in question only has its normal, non-boosted level, so the feat doesn't see the boost. It's easy to make this mistake because Sanctum Spell and Snowcasting are clearly inspired by Heighten Spell, which does not have that same restriction. A heightened spell counts as the higher level at all times for all purposes, not just when you cast it. But as it turns out, different effects work differently, and your preferred pair doesn't work that way.

This matters when an ability checks for a prepared spell, for example, reserve feats, however, when something checks for what you're capable of casting, then cast-time effects are definitely applicable, since you are capable of casting things to that effect. Snowcasting, for example, would not allow you to use a higher powered reserve feat effect, because it is not applied to the spell slot until casting, however when posed the question of "what is the highest spell level you are able to cast", snowcasting definitely applies, as it is part of your toolset to cast spells. It would be like saying you lose qualification for things that require X spell level when you've expended your higher level spell slots, simply because you are incapable of casting to that effect in this moment.


Furthermore, if you use the chameleon bonus feat to qualify you for another feat, the text says that swapping out your chameleon feat triggers you to suffer the normal penalties for losing the prerequisites to the feat you leapfrogged to—and swapping alone is sufficient to trigger these penalties, regardless of whether or not the swap actually causes you to lose the prerequisites, so the fact that you still meet the prereq after the swap is irrelevant.

Well, firstly, the spell level is not actually part of the prerequisite of the extra slot feat. The only prerequisite that feat has is CL4 (or CL5, i can't remember), which is met outside of the feat itself. What DOES remain "self qualifying" is the spell slot you gained, which needs to be 1 lower than then maximum spell level you can cast. This is not a prerequisite to the feat, and thus does not interact with the chameleon's text on disqualification based on prerequisites.


On top of that, cheating your way into having a higher-level spell slot than you could normally use is not the same thing as being able to cast spells of that level. Most of the textual evidence suggests that a 5th-level wizard who suddenly found herself with a 7th-level spell slot would be incapable of actually using it to cast a 7th-level spell (unless she was specifically granted permission to do so by the effect that gave her the slot).

I'd need a citation for this. Psions specifically have this limitation, in that they have a specified maximum power level they can cast which is determined separately, but spellcasters have no such stipulation, their limitation is (normally) purely based on their spell slots. If this WAS the case, then earth spell, sanctum spell, and snowcasting would all suffer a disfunction when trying to use them even normally at their maximum effect, since you are apparently not allowed to cast a spell above your normal spell slot's maximum.


All in all, it feels a little sloppy for TO, like you sort of assumed similar effects work the same way as one another even though they're worded differently, and didn't pay close attention to the text that's supposed to be foundational to the build. Sanctum Spell, Snowcasting, and Earth Spell all fail because of the first problem, and Chameleon fails because of the second problem. And even if you only use level-up feats for Extra Slot and switch to Eldritch Corruption as your heightening method, you still run into the third problem.

I hope I've made it clear by now that I've actually thought it through fairly thoroughly (wow say that 3 times fast), I've considered the chameleon's prerequisite requirements, and how spell level boosters are worded and interact with spell level requirements, there's definitely nothing sloppy about it, beyond maybe the way I explained it in this thread.


And even if you find a solution for that...Eidetic Spellcaster still sucks, and has nothing to do with the trick! Giving up your familiar and your level 1 bonus feat is way too high a price to pay for something you could already do with tattoos without needing an ACF.

The whole point was that an eidetic spellbook is limitless in size, and using your floating bonus feat for extra spell every day, you can eventually put every arcane spell that exists into your eidetic spellbook, and since divine focus already has access to every divine spell ever, you can use dual aptitude to have access to literally any spell ever. Body tattoos are still limited in how many spells you can scribe on your body, even a boccob's blessed book has limitations.

[Darg]

A heightened spell counts as the higher level at all times for all purposes, not just when you cast it. But as it turns out, different effects work differently, and your preferred pair doesn't work that way.

Heighten Spell doesn't work that way either. It's effect doesn't come into effect until you cast the spell like all metamagic feats. Increasing the level of the spell for the purpose of preparation and casting is a baseline feature of the metamagic rules on pg 88 of the PHB with plenty of examples of explicit mentioning of increasing the level of the spell. Therefore when it says that the spell is treated in all ways as a 4th level spell it is prepared as, cast as, and effectively a 4th level spell. "Effectively" as in it modifies the effect of the spell so that the level of the effect is of the heightened level. "Effective level" as it were. Even the plain text is pretty certain that the spell is not higher level than normal outside of actually casting the spell.


On top of that, cheating your way into having a higher-level spell slot than you could normally use is not the same thing as being able to cast spells of that level. Most of the textual evidence suggests that a 5th-level wizard who suddenly found herself with a 7th-level spell slot would be incapable of actually using it to cast a 7th-level spell (unless she was specifically granted permission to do so by the effect that gave her the slot).

The PHB tells you that it normally shouldn't happen on pg 7.


In addition to having a high ability score, a spellcaster must be of high enough class level to be able to cast spells of a given spell level. (See the class descriptions in Chapter 3 for details.)

As a general rule I don't allow it to happen even with stuff like DMM or cheesing versatile spellcaster. Based on the text for sudden metamagic in CArc there is no exception made for those feats and the power spike is tremendous for relatively minimal investment. For the specific text, sudden metamagic specifically doesn't raise the level of the spell while DMM and versatile spellcaster only adjusts the spell slot required. This is relevant due to the wording in the PHB about metamagic.

[St Fan]

Darg and Troacctid answered the issue much better than I would have, so thank you to both.

I am all for exploiting RAW to its limit, and I have done so plenty in theoritical build, but I want to see exploits that actually WORKS.

Final conclusion: Chameleon Bootstraping doesn't work and is based on stupid assumptions from the start. Full stop.

[Crake]

Darg and Troacctid answered the issue much better than I would have, so thank you to both.

I am all for exploiting RAW to its limit, and I have done so plenty in theoritical build, but I want to see exploits that actually WORKS.

Final conclusion: Chameleon Bootstraping doesn't work and is based on stupid assumptions from the start. Full stop.

I mean, neither of the addressed my points posted after troacctid posted, but sure, go off I guess. Whoever crowned you the official crier for what is RAW and not made a good choice.

Seriously though, I couldn't really care about trying to convince you, RAW arguments about a nearly 20 year old game at this point (older if you include 3.0) are a waste of time. This isn't a video game to exploit, it's a shared storytelling medium. If you wanna use it as a DM, or approve it for a player, that's all that matters.

[Darg]

I mean, neither of the addressed my points posted after troacctid posted, but sure, go off I guess. Whoever crowned you the official crier for what is RAW and not made a good choice.

Well, I did quote where the rules say you can't cast based on level. Nor is there any dysfunction when when you can't cast higher level spells without being high enough level. Heighten spell only modifies the effect, "effective" level comes into play here, which only manifests after the spell is cast. It's the same for snowcasting which explicitly says it increases the "effective level."

So, there's no actual rules legal way to artificially cast higher level spells above your normal maximum. Heighten spell only allows you to calculate the effects at the heightened level. The spell itself remains it's normal level.

I'm not going to bother arguing whether chameleon can qualify for the feats because that's not the cheese.

[Anthrowhale]

Heighten spell only allows you to calculate the effects at the heightened level. The spell itself remains it's normal level.
The text of Heighten Spell disagrees with this.

A heightened spell has a higher spell level than normal...

[Darg]

The text of Heighten Spell disagrees with this.

It doesn't if all metamagic only comes into effect once the spell has been cast which is how all metamagic works. That is where this all comes into play. A spell isn't heightened until it's prepared or cast. You don't learn a 9th level heightened magic missile. You learn 1st level magic missile heightened to 9th level for the purpose of preparation, casting, and effects. Magic missile is still a 1st level spell.

It's mind boggling how people think heighten spell is an exception to the rules when in fact it says nothing close. One has to ignore the context of the rules in which the feat is written to make that presumption. There is no declaration of conflict, are no words being contrary. So the default assumption should be that there isn't a conflict or change except as stated within the feat which tells you exactly what it means when it says that the spell is of a higher level.


Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies. All effects dependent on spell level (such as saving throw DCs and ability to penetrate a lesser globe of invulnerability) are calculated according to the heightened level.

[Troacctid]

It would be like saying you lose qualification for things that require X spell level when you've expended your higher level spell slots, simply because you are incapable of casting to that effect in this moment.
No, that would directly contradict the rules in several places.


Well, firstly, the spell level is not actually part of the prerequisite of the extra slot feat. The only prerequisite that feat has is CL4 (or CL5, i can't remember), which is met outside of the feat itself. What DOES remain "self qualifying" is the spell slot you gained, which needs to be 1 lower than then maximum spell level you can cast. This is not a prerequisite to the feat, and thus does not interact with the chameleon's text on disqualification based on prerequisites.
Chameleon doesn't care about self-qualifying. Changing the floating feat that you used to qualify for anything is treated as losing the prerequisite for the thing, even if you still have the prerequisite afterwards. It's a sufficient condition on its own. That's what the text says. If you take Dodge as a floating feat, then take Mobility as a level-up feat, then swap Dodge for Desert Wind Dodge, you lose the benefits of Mobility.


The whole point was that an eidetic spellbook is limitless in size, and using your floating bonus feat for extra spell every day, you can eventually put every arcane spell that exists into your eidetic spellbook, and since divine focus already has access to every divine spell ever, you can use dual aptitude to have access to literally any spell ever. Body tattoos are still limited in how many spells you can scribe on your body, even a boccob's blessed book has limitations.
Or just...buy a second spellbook? 🤔


Heighten Spell doesn't work that way either. It's effect doesn't come into effect until you cast the spell like all metamagic feats. Increasing the level of the spell for the purpose of preparation and casting is a baseline feature of the metamagic rules on pg 88 of the PHB with plenty of examples of explicit mentioning of increasing the level of the spell. Therefore when it says that the spell is treated in all ways as a 4th level spell it is prepared as, cast as, and effectively a 4th level spell. "Effectively" as in it modifies the effect of the spell so that the level of the effect is of the heightened level. "Effective level" as it were. Even the plain text is pretty certain that the spell is not higher level than normal outside of actually casting the spell.
Heighten Spell definitely works when the spell is prepared, not just cast. It's an important distinction for reserve feats if nothing else.

[icefractal]

Am I speaking a different language? Because I keep seeing statements like "Heighten Spell only applies at the time the spell is prepared/cast" as if that was meaningful in the context of "the highest level spell you can cast". Not "the highest level you know" or even "the highest level you can prepare".

Is the point that it isn't RAI? That they meant "the highest level you have full access to via your class's spellcasting progression"? Sure, no argument there. But that's different from "it doesn't work RAW".

And IMO, RAI is not very important. "This is too much cheese for my table" is an entirely cromulent reason to disallow something, and much more relevant than what some designers thought 15 years ago.

[Darg]

Heighten Spell definitely works when the spell is prepared, not just cast. It's an important distinction for reserve feats if nothing else.

It's also important for cleric and druid spontaneous casting.


Am I speaking a different language? Because I keep seeing statements like "Heighten Spell only applies at the time the spell is prepared/cast" as if that was meaningful in the context of "the highest level spell you can cast". Not "the highest level you know" or even "the highest level you can prepare".

Is the point that it isn't RAI? That they meant "the highest level you have full access to via your class's spellcasting progression"? Sure, no argument there. But that's different from "it doesn't work RAW".

And IMO, RAI is not very important. "This is too much cheese for my table" is an entirely cromulent reason to disallow something, and much more relevant than what some designers thought 15 years ago.

The metamagic feat rules apply to the preparation and casting. Heighten spell itself only applies to the spell effect (hence, "effective level"). Therefore snowcasting and earth spell is not casting the spell as a higher level spell than one would normally be able to.

The big confusion is that cast and cast are both future and past tense with the same spelling and pronunciation. When something is asking for what you can cast, it isn't asking for what you have cast. An earth spell can only be higher level in the past tense because until you cast it it is never a higher level than you can normally cast.

[icefractal]

I don't see a meaningful distinction between "can cast" and "can have cast" here. If you had the ability "any clothing you wear turns green" and a red shirt, then you can wear green clothing.

[Morphic tide]

If you take Dodge as a floating feat, then take Mobility as a level-up feat, then swap Dodge for Desert Wind Dodge, you lose the benefits of Mobility.

Firmly not in that case, because Desert Wind Dodge is a valid replacement for Dodge for prerequisite purposes and you don't lose Mobility itself. So even if there's a instant during changeover you don't have a Dodge feat, you inarguably return to qualifying for Mobility once the changeover is done.

The Chameleon Bootstrapper asks three things: that there not be such an in-between state, choices within are not Prerequisites, and changes in effective level at cast time mean you cast a spell at that level for options of a qualified-for feat. Thus Extra Slot (3rd) from having a 4th-level spell cast due to metamagic increases sets your highest castable spell level to 5th, making a 4th-level slot a valid choice within Extra Slot because this is not at all part of its Prerequisites entry.

It's sound Rules As Written: The spell is in fact cast at +2 levels, so one level lower than than the highest you can cast is one level higher than your current highest level slot. The spell level dependency is entirely unmentioned within Prerequisites text that Chameleon doesn't count for. And as both instances of Extra Spell qualify for the after-the-fact, lacking an in-between instant of absence would allow the "bootstrapping" as you make the choice of the "highest level you can cast" with the previous instance of Extra Spell still there.

Indeed, because the spell level check is not in Prerequisites, you'd actually keep it even without a +1 to self-qualify, because you must stop meeting the Prerequisites to lose the Benefit. No amount of insisting on ontological differences undescribed in the rules matters, because such things are actually the norm. How often have you let somebody use their Gloves of Dexterity or racial bonus to reach 19 Dex for Greater Two-Weapon Fighting? Because this is the exact same thing.

This is the bizarre legalism of 3.5 RAW. If the rules do not have a solid argument against a particular interpretation, then it's valid. It matters not how comprehensive a violation of common sense it is, Deathless Frenzy by strict RAW either leaves you Disabled, or enables unerrata'd Iron Heart Surge nonsense. Hence why so much of this stuff is described as "Theoretical Optimization", because only the most absurdly gonzo of campaigns would ever allow it.

[Crake]

Chameleon doesn't care about self-qualifying. Changing the floating feat that you used to qualify for anything is treated as losing the prerequisite for the thing, even if you still have the prerequisite afterwards. It's a sufficient condition on its own. That's what the text says. If you take Dodge as a floating feat, then take Mobility as a level-up feat, then swap Dodge for Desert Wind Dodge, you lose the benefits of Mobility.

Did you completely ignore the part where the only prerequisite those feats have are caster level, which isnt being met by your chameleon levels nor the bonus feat at all? Seems like you’re intentionally ignoring the fact that the floating bonus feat is not actually being used to meet any prerequisites at all, not that i agree with your base statement in the first place, i disagree that you would permanently and irrevocably lose the benefit of mobility in your example. The chameleon prerequisites text merely means that you suffer losing access to feats you lack the prerequisites for as normal, meaning if you swapped dodge for something else, youd lose access to mobility, but if you swapped back to dodge, or desert wind dodge, youd get mobility back, for as long as you had dodge/dwd as your floating feat.

But again, that argument is entirely irrelevant, because extra slot’s prerequisites are not being met by the bonus feat, so however you rule the text, its not relevant.

[Darg]

I don't see a meaningful distinction between "can cast" and "can have cast" here. If you had the ability "any clothing you wear turns green" and a red shirt, then you can wear green clothing.

The difference is that magic missile remains a 1st level spell.


For instance, at 3rd level, Mialee chooses to gain Silent Spell, the feat that allows her to cast a spell without its verbal component. The cost of doing so, however, is that in preparing the spell, she must use up a spell slot one spell level higher than the spell actually is.


You can cast a spell as if it were a higher-level spell than it actually is.

Metamagic doesn't increase the spell level of spells. Heighten Spell does not make magic missile a 9th level spell.

[Anthrowhale]

I'm kind of wondering if the issue for some folks is being unable to say "No" as in "No, I would not allow that in my game." It's ok to say "No". If you get comfortable with saying "No", then it's not really necessary to assert that no one can cast L9 spells before character level 17, make claims that appear directly contradictory to the text of heighten spell through some sort of preferred parsing of the tense of 'cast', or drag the benefit of a feat into it's prerequisites.

I personally probably would not allow the chameleon bounce trick if it came up in a game, so I'm comfortable with just saying "No" here.

[Crake]

I'm kind of wondering if the issue for some folks is being unable to say "No" as in "No, I would not allow that in my game." It's ok to say "No". If you get comfortable with saying "No", then it's not really necessary to assert that no one can cast L9 spells before character level 17, make claims that appear directly contradictory to the text of heighten spell through some sort of preferred parsing of the tense of 'cast', or drag the benefit of a feat into it's prerequisites.

I personally probably would not allow the chameleon bounce trick if it came up in a game, so I'm comfortable with just saying "No" here.

Yeah, i allowed it under very specific circumstances that will probably never be met again, so I doubt I would ever let it fly at my table in the future.

Thats the great thing about dnd, its not a video game you can exploit just because you found some combo, it has a real person behind it making decisions, and if they feel something isnt healthy for their game, they can just say no, regardless of how rules-legal something is or isnt.

Pretty much the reason I’ve grown out of RAW shenannigans, as a DM, I just do what I want, and as a player, I tell them DM what I want, and work it out with them, rather than trying to shoehorn something via the rules.

[Troacctid]

Firmly not in that case, because Desert Wind Dodge is a valid replacement for Dodge for prerequisite purposes and you don't lose Mobility itself. So even if there's a instant during changeover you don't have a Dodge feat, you inarguably return to qualifying for Mobility once the changeover is done.
Why do you think I picked that example? It doesn't matter whether you qualify again afterwards because it's not losing the prerequisites that causes the FTQ, it's changing the bonus feat. "You can use your bonus feat to qualify for such options, but if you change the feat, you suffer the normal drawbacks for no longer meeting a prerequisite or requirement."


Did you completely ignore the part where the only prerequisite those feats have are caster level, which isnt being met by your chameleon levels nor the bonus feat at all? Seems like you’re intentionally ignoring the fact that the floating bonus feat is not actually being used to meet any prerequisites at all, not that i agree with your base statement in the first place, i disagree that you would permanently and irrevocably lose the benefit of mobility in your example. The chameleon prerequisites text merely means that you suffer losing access to feats you lack the prerequisites for as normal, meaning if you swapped dodge for something else, youd lose access to mobility, but if you swapped back to dodge, or desert wind dodge, youd get mobility back, for as long as you had dodge/dwd as your floating feat.

But again, that argument is entirely irrelevant, because extra slot’s prerequisites are not being met by the bonus feat, so however you rule the text, its not relevant.
The rule in question applies when you use your floating feat to "qualify for a feat, prestige class, or other option". Not just when you use it to meet the prerequisite line of a feat.


I'm kind of wondering if the issue for some folks is being unable to say "No" as in "No, I would not allow that in my game." It's ok to say "No". If you get comfortable with saying "No", then it's not really necessary to assert that no one can cast L9 spells before character level 17, make claims that appear directly contradictory to the text of heighten spell through some sort of preferred parsing of the tense of 'cast', or drag the benefit of a feat into it's prerequisites.

I personally probably would not allow the chameleon bounce trick if it came up in a game, so I'm comfortable with just saying "No" here.
The rules have plenty of dysfunctions all on their own without having to invent new ones that aren't in the text. The fact that I would not allow leapfrogging in my games is entirely independent of the fact that the particular leapfrogging method referenced earlier in the thread is built on flawed RAW interpretation. Besides, most of my criticism is about things that could be easily fixed, so it doesn't really threaten the core concept of the trick, only the suggested execution.

[ToranIronfinder]

Didn't the sage say that heighten spell with something like versatile spellcaster worked precisely as the Chameleon build states it does?

The problem as I see it would be applying the extra alot feat to the chameleon's casting class, since the Chameleon explicitly states you can't use the class to qualify for this kind of thing. That is you could get an extra spell for whatever base class you used to qualify for the feats to heighten the spell, but not for the Chameleon's arcane or divine focus. Whether or not the heightening of the spell applies to extra slot, which is dubious, you couldn't apply it to Chameleon as if it were a spellcasting class.

As to leap frogging, you would have spell slots, but that doesn't give you the ability to put spells into those slots, you might be able to use them for metamagic, as per say epic level casters do with 10th or 11th level slots, but not for casting a spell you don't have access too.

[Crake]

The problem as I see it would be applying the extra alot feat to the chameleon's casting class, since the Chameleon explicitly states you can't use the class to qualify for this kind of thing. That is you could get an extra spell for whatever base class you used to qualify for the feats to heighten the spell, but not for the Chameleon's arcane or divine focus. Whether or not the heightening of the spell applies to extra slot, which is dubious, you couldn't apply it to Chameleon as if it were a spellcasting class.

It cant be used to qualify, no, but it doesnt say it cant be the benefactor. Just like you could qualify for extra slot as a wizard and apply it to cleric casting, you can do the same for chameleon. The feat itself doesnt specify that it has to be applied to a class’s spellcasting that qualifies for the feat.


As to leap frogging, you would have spell slots, but that doesn't give you the ability to put spells into those slots, you might be able to use them for metamagic, as per say epic level casters do with 10th or 11th level slots, but not for casting a spell you don't have access too.

Thats where extra spell comes in. Use your floating bonus feat to learn a new spell each day, 1 lower than the maximum spell level you can cast. Now you actually have spells to put into those spell slots.

[Morphic tide]

Why do you think I picked that example? It doesn't matter whether you qualify again afterwards because it's not losing the prerequisites that causes the FTQ, it's changing the bonus feat. "You can use your bonus feat to qualify for such options, but if you change the feat, you suffer the normal drawbacks for no longer meeting a prerequisite or requirement."
There is not actually an in-between state in the game logic. One instant you have Dodge, the next you have Desert Wind Dodge, and both are valid prerequisites for Mobility. You have to insert a theoretical moment of having neither to be lacking the benefits of Mobility at some point, which actually will be the case in practice because you have to use the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle for this one, which is a multi-step process during which you do lack a Dodge feat.

As opposed to "One instant I have the ability to cast a 5th-level spell out of the 3rd-level Extra Slot, the next with no gap in between I get a 4th-level slot with which I can cast a 6th-level spell". There does exist ruling dependency, but it's very logically consistent dependency. That what you have to qualify for is the Prerequisite, to get the independent Benefit. Extra Slot is not written like Weapon Focus, its Prerequisite makes no mention of what its Benefit applies to.


The problem as I see it would be applying the extra alot feat to the chameleon's casting class, since the Chameleon explicitly states you can't use the class to qualify for this kind of thing. That is you could get an extra spell for whatever base class you used to qualify for the feats to heighten the spell, but not for the Chameleon's arcane or divine focus.
This is what Extra Slot gives you:


You gain one extra spell slot in your daily allotment, at any level up to one lower than the highest level of spell you can currently cast.

Nothing about this demands it be applied to the source of CL 4, and the level constraint is simply setting an upper bound on the Benefit rather than being stated a Prerequisite in any way. So you can apply it to Chameleon (or a CL 3 side of a Theurge), and the worst that happens is that the slot level goes down if you mess up a step while Dark Chaos Feat Shuffling. Unless you defecate over all concept of mechanics parsing to declare something in the Benefit section to be a forbidden qualification.

And I'm emphasizing Prerequisite and Benefit to try to rub in that this is all bizarre formalities, as is the nature of TO. From wholly natural language these (e:) counter-arguments (/e) are sensible conclusions, but 3.5 doesn't "really" run on wholly natural language, it's a fuzzy-logic program that does have rules-relevant formatting and mechanically-significant phrasing.

[ToranIronfinder]

There is not actually an in-between state in the game logic. One instant you have Dodge, the next you have Desert Wind Dodge, and both are valid prerequisites for Mobility. You have to insert a theoretical moment of having neither to be lacking the benefits of Mobility at some point, which actually will be the case in practice because you have to use the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle for this one, which is a multi-step process during which you do lack a Dodge feat.

As opposed to "One instant I have the ability to cast a 5th-level spell out of the 3rd-level Extra Slot, the next with no gap in between I get a 4th-level slot with which I can cast a 6th-level spell". There does exist ruling dependency, but it's very logically consistent dependency. That what you have to qualify for is the Prerequisite, to get the independent Benefit. Extra Slot is not written like Weapon Focus, its Prerequisite makes no mention of what its Benefit applies to.


This is what Extra Slot gives you:



Nothing about this demands it be applied to the source of CL 4, and the level constraint is simply setting an upper bound on the Benefit rather than being stated a Prerequisite in any way. So you can apply it to Chameleon (or a CL 3 side of a Theurge), and the worst that happens is that the slot level goes down if you mess up a step while Dark Chaos Feat Shuffling. Unless you defecate over all concept of mechanics parsing to declare something in the Benefit section to be a forbidden qualification.

And I'm emphasizing Prerequisite and Benefit to try to rub in that this is all bizarre formalities, as is the nature of TO. From wholly natural language these (e:) counter-arguments (/e) are sensible conclusions, but 3.5 doesn't "really" run on wholly natural language, it's a fuzzy-logic program that does have rules-relevant formatting and mechanically-significant phrasing.

True which would be an Interesting argument if you were running a say a wizard 4 druid 1, but that isn't the problem I noted, which is that you can't use aptitude focus this way.

There are two peoblems 1, the feat conveys a slot, but not the ability to learn a spell to place in the slot, (and neither the class nor the feat specify anythimg about learning spells above lvl 6). Again, I suppose it could be used for other metamagic feats, but not for accessing higher level spells and 2. The aptitude focus cannot qualify you for a feat, prestige class or other options like say a level seven spell slot. Chameleon's innate limitations to gaining other options do not specify that they apply only to prerequisites, and therefore by the convoluted approach taken in TO the limitation applies to qualifications as they pertain to benefits as well as to prerequisites. In many cases, the benefits have no qualifications, but in this case a qualification exists within the benefit itself.

In this case the feat, unlike weapon focus, the benefits of the feat have qualifications attached, to qualify for seventh level slot you must be able to cast eighth level spells. Since you cannot use aptitude focus to qualify for anything, including say the ability to cast eighth level spells, then by RAW even if all these tricks work to cast an eighth level slot, you still wouldn't be able to use aptitude focus to qualify for the desired benefit.


Besides the questionable approach to separating RAW from intent, (something I roll my eyes at pretty regularly) chameleons can only cast a level 7 spell by getting the ability through a different class, and both reasons are significant. You are partially right, I am arguing that the benefit has a requirement qualification, but your rather foul analogy aside, even by RAW standards the word qualify here and in other feats that provide variable benefits have qualifications that exist outside of the benefits.

[Crake]

There is not actually an in-between state in the game logic. One instant you have Dodge, the next you have Desert Wind Dodge, and both are valid prerequisites for Mobility. You have to insert a theoretical moment of having neither to be lacking the benefits of Mobility at some point, which actually will be the case in practice because you have to use the Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle for this one, which is a multi-step process during which you do lack a Dodge feat.

As opposed to "One instant I have the ability to cast a 5th-level spell out of the 3rd-level Extra Slot, the next with no gap in between I get a 4th-level slot with which I can cast a 6th-level spell". There does exist ruling dependency, but it's very logically consistent dependency. That what you have to qualify for is the Prerequisite, to get the independent Benefit. Extra Slot is not written like Weapon Focus, its Prerequisite makes no mention of what its Benefit applies to.


This is what Extra Slot gives you:



Nothing about this demands it be applied to the source of CL 4, and the level constraint is simply setting an upper bound on the Benefit rather than being stated a Prerequisite in any way. So you can apply it to Chameleon (or a CL 3 side of a Theurge), and the worst that happens is that the slot level goes down if you mess up a step while Dark Chaos Feat Shuffling. Unless you defecate over all concept of mechanics parsing to declare something in the Benefit section to be a forbidden qualification.

And I'm emphasizing Prerequisite and Benefit to try to rub in that this is all bizarre formalities, as is the nature of TO. From wholly natural language these (e:) counter-arguments (/e) are sensible conclusions, but 3.5 doesn't "really" run on wholly natural language, it's a fuzzy-logic program that does have rules-relevant formatting and mechanically-significant phrasing.

It doesnt even matter if there is an inbetween moment of not qualifying, because the “normal penalties of not meeting the prerequisites or requirements” also include the fact that if you meet the prerequisites again later, you resume being able to use the feat, so if you use a floating bonus feat as a prerequisite for another feat, which then self qualifies, the “normal penalties” would apply, in that nothing would happen, because the new feat is self qualifying.

[Crake]

True which would be an Interesting argument if you were running a say a wizard 4 druid 1, but that isn't the problem I noted, which is 1, the feat conveys a slot, but not the ability to learn a spell to place in the slot, (and neither the class nor the feat specify anythimg about learning spells above lvl 6). Again, I suppose it could be used for other metamagic feats, but not for accessing higher level spells and 2. The aptitude focus cannot qualify you for a feat, prestige class or other options like say a level seven spell slot. Chameleon's innate limitations to gaining other options doesn't specify do not specify that they apply only to prerequisites, the statment would seem to becessarily apply to benefits as well.

In this case the feat makes specific points within the benefits, to qualify for seventh level slot you must be able to cast eighth level spells. Since you cannot use aptitude focus to qualify for anything, including say the ability to cast eighth level spells, then by RAW even if all these tricks work to cast an eighth level slot, you still wouldn't be able to use aptitude focus to qualify for the desired benefit.


Besides the questionable approach to separating raw from intent, (something I roll my eyes at pretty regularly) chameleons can only cast a level 7 spell by getting the ability through a different class.

I mean, if you want to rule it this way, you could use the leapfrogging to get yourself a single 9th level wizard spell slot instead, which you then can use to qualify you for 9th level spell slots, which you can then apply to chameleon instead. Means one feat will always have to randomly be assigned to a 9th level spellslot for your wizard levels, but it would otherwise work the same, though personally i think that just makes the build messier and basically forces you to skyrocket to 9ths at 9, instead of allowing the more granular approach, which allows you to keep pace with normal progression.

I still dont particularly agree with the interpretation though. The only requirement to qualify for the feat is caster level 4. You can TAKE the feat with just that. The feat’s EFFECT scales based on other factors, but those are not required to qualify for the feat.

Ultimately its largely irrelevant, RAW or not, nobody’s gonna use it in a game ever, anyone still playing 3.5 is old enough and mature enough to just homebrew something themselves rather than needing to play word games in a 20 year old system

[ToranIronfinder]

I mean, if you want to rule it this way, you could use the leapfrogging to get yourself a single 9th level wizard spell slot instead, which you then can use to qualify you for 9th level spell slots, which you can then apply to chameleon instead. Means one feat will always have to randomly be assigned to a 9th level spellslot for your wizard levels, but it would otherwise work the same, though personally i think that just makes the build messier and basically forces you to skyrocket to 9ths at 9, instead of allowing the more granular approach, which allows you to keep pace with normal progression.

I still dont particularly agree with the interpretation though. The only requirement to qualify for the feat is caster level 4. You can TAKE the feat with just that. The feat’s EFFECT scales based on other factors, but those are not required to qualify for the feat.

Ultimately its largely irrelevant, RAW or not, nobody’s gonna use it in a game ever, anyone still playing 3.5 is old enough and mature enough to just homebrew something themselves rather than needing to play word games in a 20 year old system

My point in the discussion is the reasoning, as I noted, by RAW it doesn't work house rules or no, and logical exercises have benefits, even if it is to point out the absurdity of interpreting a text aside from its author's intentions.

But my point is, in this case you can't do it because with extra slot, the benefits as well as the prerequisites require you to qualify for the specific spellslot you receive, and you can't use aptitude focus to qualify for anything, whether we are talking about a qualification relating to a prerequisite or a qualification related to a degree or specification within the benefits, therefore it doesn't work. That is, even by the shaky standards of RAW used by TO approachs, the Chameleon prestigenclass would need to limit the qualification statement to prerequisites, something that really doesn't fit the fuzzy logic of TO. In other
words, yes by RAW you can qualify for the feat, but not for this specific benefit.

And as I noted even if you got the slot, say by leapfrogging in another class. that doesn't confer upon you the ability to put something in the slot, because the feat states nothing about learning spells, and Chameleon doesn't provide the benefit of learning spells above 6th level (even in epic level play, I would think Chameleon probably advances as half-casters do rather than full casters). You could use it for metamagic, but not for access to new spells. If you want to get a seventh or eighth level to heighten a spell, OK, maybe, but it doesn't let you learn say limited wish.

[Crake]

And as I noted even if you got the slot, say by leapfrogging in another class. that doesn't confer upon you the ability to put something in the slot, because the feat states nothing about learning spells, and Chameleon doesn't provide the benefit of learning spells above 6th level (even in epic level play, I would think Chameleon probably advances as half-casters do rather than full casters). You could use it for metamagic, but not for access to new spells. If you want to get a seventh or eighth level to heighten a spell, OK, maybe, but it doesn't let you learn say limited wish.

The feat doesnt have to specify learning spells. Firstly, in divine focus, the chameleon can prepare literally any divine spell, no spell knowledge required, secondly, in arcane focus, the chameleon can prepare whatever is in their spellbook, with a spell list of “any arcane spellcasting class”.

Keep in mind, even for wizards, there isnt actually any limiting text preventing a wizard from scribing a spell into their spellbook above the level they’re actually able to cast. If a 1st level wizard gets a scroll of acid arrow, they can still scribe it into their spellbook in preparation for when they hit level 3 and can cast it.

Same applies to chameleons and their spellbooks.

[ToranIronfinder]

The feat doesnt have to specify learning spells. Firstly, in divine focus, the chameleon can prepare literally any divine spell, no spell knowledge required, secondly, in arcane focus, the chameleon can prepare whatever is in their spellbook, with a spell list of “any arcane spellcasting class”.

Keep in mind, even for wizards, there isnt actually any limiting text preventing a wizard from scribing a spell into their spellbook above the level they’re actually able to cast. If a 1st level wizard gets a scroll of acid arrow, they can still scribe it into their spellbook in preparation for when they hit level 3 and can cast it.

Same applies to chameleons and their spellbooks.

But there isn't any limiting text that specifies that a fighter can't cast spells, nor that the wizard can't rage. Here then it's not RAW you are appealing to but something eisegeted into the text RAIHIT (rules as I have interpeted them), without explicit license it cannot logically be called RAW (an absence of limiting text is an absence of written rules), it is an assumption you added. Yes we can infer the wizard can learn second level spells at level 3 because he can cast them (casting a second level spell entails 1. the second level spell slot and 2 the ability to access spells on the list to put in that slot) from the chart and text related to his number of spells per day, but you do not have grounds to make the same inference from the ability to learn third level spells at level 3, because there is nothing entailing the ability to learn the spell as there is with second level spells. Also the text on bonus spells under ability seems on point, which notes that bonus slots don't apply because there is a minimum level threshold to cast spells at a certain level (not a minimum slot threshold) exists to cast spells specific levels of spells. As the Chameleon's bonus spells from intelligence and wisdom work the same way, then here, to, we have a minimum level threshold to cast spells as shown in the level chart.

[Crake]

But there isn't any limiting text that specifies that a fighter can't cast spells, nor that the wizard can't rage. Here then it's not RAW you are appealing to but something eisegeted into the text RAIHIT (rules as I have interpeted them), without explicit license it cannot logically be called RAW (an absence of limiting text is an absence of written rules), it is an assumption you added.

Thats a false equivalence. Theres nothing saying a wizard CAN rage, or a fighter CAN cast spells.

On the other hand, a wizard is given the capability to add spells to their spellbook by scribing scrolls, and it is this ability, that says you CAN do something, that has no such limitation on it saying they CANT do that thing that would otherwise fit in the rules of what you CAN do. The only limitation is that the wizard must have an int score of 10+spell level minimum to learn a spell.

The only time a wizard is limited on spells going in their spellbook is the free spells on levelup

[ToranIronfinder]

Thats a false equivalence. Theres nothing saying a wizard CAN rage, or a fighter CAN cast spells.

On the other hand, a wizard is given the capability to add spells to their spellbook by scribing scrolls, and it is this ability, that says you CAN do something, that has no such limitation on it saying they CANT do that thing that would otherwise fit in the rules of what you CAN do. The only limitation is that the wizard must have an int score of 10+spell level minimum to learn a spell.

The only time a wizard is limited on spells going in their spellbook is the free spells on levelup

Except the text I noted from the abilities section, so not a false equivalency. My point being on this issue it's not RAW so much as an inference you are making from the RAW, an inference which isn't explicit. Anyway, getting bored

[Crake]

Except the text I noted from the abilities section, so not a false equivalency. My point being on this issue it's not RAW so much as an inference you are making from the RAW, an inference which isn't explicit. Anyway, getting bored

The ability score section is not the relevant text for adding spells to your spellbook. Page 178-179 of the phb is. Note that the section on spells gained at levelup specify that the spells *must be of a level they can cast*, wheras the copying from a spellbook/scroll has no such text limiting it. Hows that for inference.

[ToranIronfinder]

The ability score section is not the relevant text for adding spells to your spellbook. Page 178-179 of the phb is. Note that the section on spells gained at levelup specify that the spells *must be of a level they can cast*, wheras the copying from a spellbook/scroll has no such text limiting it. Hows that for inference.

It's still an inference, and no the text I cited would still be relevant, as it entails a limit to the spells a character can cast based on level, which caps at 6 for Chameleon.

But again, once something is an inference as you are not noting a rule that explicitely states Wizards can learn spells above the levels they can cast (and unless such a text explicitely exists, then by definition the point is no longer RAW). Inferences are an interpretational stance, they are not properly basic. But that would still imply they can't cast from the extra spell slots.

But again, getting bored, since the premise underlying RAW is flawed.

[Crake]

since the premise underlying RAW is flawed.

Shrug. Agree to disagree then, because you haven't really done much to convince me of that.

[ToranIronfinder]

Shrug. Agree to disagree then, because you haven't really done much to convince me of that.

Problem is, burden of proof here is properly yours, not mine, since you are arguing something is allowed.

The person claiming X is permissible because of Y has the burden of proving both thst Y is true and that if Y is true X must follow. I'm merely pointing out that your case is "not proved" as Scottish jurists would say. That and perhaps demonstrating that that RAW cannot exist aside from RAI.

Though also, I find TO threads to be fascinating epistemologically, main reason I pay attention, though I usually don't weigh in. Thansk for the show.

[Scots Dragon]

The ability score section is not the relevant text for adding spells to your spellbook. Page 178-179 of the phb is. Note that the section on spells gained at levelup specify that the spells *must be of a level they can cast*, wheras the copying from a spellbook/scroll has no such text limiting it. Hows that for inference.

Reinforcing this. Copying spells they're not yet able to cast is a fixture of wizards in previous editions. Notably official stats include mention of wizards whose spellbooks contain spells they're not yet able to cast on a few occasions, including the stats made for Khelben Ravenscloak.

Also, this is the relevant entry from the Rules Cyclopedia;


ADDING SPELLS TO A SPELLBOOK
Spellcasters who use spellbooks can add new spells to their spellbooks through several methods.

Gained Spells
Spellcasters who use spellbooks perform spell research between adventures. Each time such a caster attains a new level in the appropriate arcane spellcasting class, that spellcaster gains spells to add to the spellbook according to the class’s description and any restrictions from specialization. Spells so gained must be of spell levels the caster can cast. Spells gained in this way don’t have the time and money costs for spell’s copied or researched (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook and Researched Spells).

Copied Spells
Spellcasters who use spellbooks can add a spell to their book whenever they find one on a scroll or in another caster’s spellbook. The spell to be copied must be on the copier’s class spell list. No matter what the spell’s source, it must first be deciphered. Next, the decipherer must spend a day studying the spell. At the end of the day, if the decipherer can learn the spell, he makes a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell’s level). If the check succeeds, the spellcaster understands the spell and can copy it into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). The process leaves a spellbook unharmed, but a spell successfully copied from a scroll disappears fromthat scroll.

If the check fails, the spellcaster can’t understand or copy the spell. After such a failure, the decipherer can’t learn or copy that spell again until he gains another rank in Spellcraft. A spell that was being copied from a scroll doesn’t vanish from the scroll in this case.

In most cases, wizards charge a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks. This fee is usually equal to the spell’s level × 50 gp.

Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook
Once a spellcaster understands a new spell, he can record it into his spellbook. The process takes 24 hours, regardless of the spell’s level. A spell takes up one page of the spellbook per spell level. Even a 0-level spell takes one page. Materials for writing the spell cost 100 gp per page. A typical spellbook has 100 pages.

Relevant section highlighted by me. Effectively, they're saying here that only spells gained through levelling up, with the explicit wording of 'spells so gained', are limited that way.

Incidentally, I was also under this same misconception. But reading the rules... nope. You can add any spell you can meet the spellcraft check for.

[Crake]

Reinforcing this. Copying spells they're not yet able to cast is a fixture of wizards in previous editions. Notably official stats include mention of wizards whose spellbooks contain spells they're not yet able to cast on a few occasions, including the stats made for Khelben Ravenscloak.

Also, this is the relevant entry from the Rules Cyclopedia;



Relevant section highlighted by me. Effectively, they're saying here that only spells gained through levelling up, with the explicit wording of 'spells so gained', are limited that way.

Incidentally, I was also under this same misconception. But reading the rules... nope. You can add any spell you can meet the spellcraft check for.

Thanks scots, for taking the time to quote and highlight the relevant rules, I was at work on my phone, so couldnt get the time to properly format a post for it

[St Fan]

I'm kind of wondering if the issue for some folks is being unable to say "No" as in "No, I would not allow that in my game." It's ok to say "No". If you get comfortable with saying "No", then it's not really necessary to assert that no one can cast L9 spells before character level 17, make claims that appear directly contradictory to the text of heighten spell through some sort of preferred parsing of the tense of 'cast', or drag the benefit of a feat into it's prerequisites.

I personally probably would not allow the chameleon bounce trick if it came up in a game, so I'm comfortable with just saying "No" here.


You are mistaken in thinking that the point of contention is whether or not it should be allowed in game. OF COURSE it should never be allowed, it's completely broken and pure Munchkin bilge.

The issue here is that it ALSO doesn't work by RAW, as it is based on (not just one, but several) complete misinterpretations of the rules. That's what we've been debating about.

[Anthrowhale]

The issue here is that it ALSO doesn't work by RAW, as it is based on (not just one, but several) complete misinterpretations of the rules. That's what we've been debating about.

I don't have a bone of contention here, so one good argument would convince me.

What's unconvincing is bad arguments like this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25681903&postcount=31). If you have a good argument, it's much better to not camouflage it with bad ones. What's your single best argument?



Besides, most of my criticism is about things that could be easily fixed, so it doesn't really threaten the core concept of the trick, only the suggested execution.

Looking at your first post, there are two arguments that don't convince me.

At the time you take the feat, the spell in question only has its normal, non-boosted level, so the feat doesn't see the boost.

Extra Slot says:

You gain one extra spell slot in your daily allotment, at any level up to one lower than the highest level of spell you can currently cast.
This isn't a test of prepared spells or existing slots, it's just a test of the effect that you can generate. If the effect that you generate is effectively of the desired level, that's fine.



On top of that, cheating your way into having a higher-level spell slot than you could normally use is not the same thing as being able to cast spells of that level.

The argument against that I'm aware of here is a minimum caster level requirement which aren't super explicit but which are implied in various parts of the text. But there are many ways to increase caster level, so that doesn't seem like a real issue.

This one seems more interesting.


Furthermore, if you use the chameleon bonus feat to qualify you for another feat, the text says that swapping out your chameleon feat triggers you to suffer the normal penalties for losing the prerequisites to the feat you leapfrogged to—and swapping alone is sufficient to trigger these penalties, regardless of whether or not the swap actually causes you to lose the prerequisites, so the fact that you still meet the prereq after the swap is irrelevant.

Chameleon says:

You can use your bonus feat to qualify for [a feat, ...], but if you change the feat, you suffer the normal drawbacks for no longer meeting a ... requirement.
Technically, I think this doesn't apply since you don't "change the feat"---it's just a different application of extra slot after vs. before. Of course, the ability to change the application of the feat does not come with the feat.

Once selected, the extra spell slot never changes level.
so you are using the change of feat rules in Chameleon to reset a feat's options. However, the change of feat rules in chameleon say:

...you can choose to change your bonus feat to any other feat for which you meet the prerequisites.
If you must choose an 'other' feat, the bootstrap breaks. Is this a good argument against?

[ToranIronfinder]

Reinforcing this. Copying spells they're not yet able to cast is a fixture of wizards in previous editions. Notably official stats include mention of wizards whose spellbooks contain spells they're not yet able to cast on a few occasions, including the stats made for Khelben Ravenscloak.

Also, this is the relevant entry from the Rules Cyclopedia;



Relevant section highlighted by me. Effectively, they're saying here that only spells gained through levelling up, with the explicit wording of 'spells so gained', are limited that way.

Incidentally, I was also under this same misconception. But reading the rules... nope. You can add any spell you can meet the spellcraft check for.

1. Interesting, and yes copying spells and learning spells in 2e were completely different things, although I believe to add a higher level spell then you could cast in 2e you had to use the copy spell, or something like it, and of course the same thing could happen through level drain.
2. But you missed an important delimiter, I'll leave it for you to locate it. It is a significant problem for application to the Chameleon.
2. Once again you have stated an inference, from the bolded text, and one which may not follow, and as it is an inference it isn't by definition, RAW.
3. And the ability score section still indicates that you might be able to claim the ability scribe the scroll, but even gaining the higher level slot doesn't let you cast it, as there is a minimum level to cast a spell do so (and this appears to underlie precocious apprentice early entry requirement discussions by the sage). For a RAW statement to the contrary you need an explicit statement that let's you put the 7th level spell into the 7th level chameleon slot you have created.

My point again being that what TO call RAW is often loaded with a series of inferences that aren't explicitly stated and therefore aren't rules as written. That is, unless the text provides grounds explicitely stating a chameleon can cast 7th, 8th or 9th level
can never be RAW because it isn't written that they can. What is described accepted as RAW is often an inference from the RAW rather than the direct statement of the text itself. RAW for TO is itself highly interpretive, rather than something properly and explicitly basic to the enterprise. That is, the text (RAW proper) is the statutory law, but what the TO board accepts as RAW isn't actually the statuatory law, its a type of case law, and one I've watched shift over the years, both in its interpretational standards and in what is accepted as RAW. There are a number of interesting and at best uncertain interpretations here, some of which I noted, some of which I haven't.

[Troacctid]

The ability score section is not the relevant text for adding spells to your spellbook. Page 178-179 of the phb is. Note that the section on spells gained at levelup specify that the spells *must be of a level they can cast*, wheras the copying from a spellbook/scroll has no such text limiting it. Hows that for inference.
The text limiting it is in RC's rules for magical writings.


Looking at your first post, there are two arguments that don't convince me.

Extra Slot says:

This isn't a test of prepared spells or existing slots, it's just a test of the effect that you can generate. If the effect that you generate is effectively of the desired level, that's fine.
If all you have to do is generate an effect of the appropriate level, the whole trick is a wasted effort. Just buy a candle of invocation. It lets you cast a 9th level spell. Now you can skip all the other steps.


The argument against that I'm aware of here is a minimum caster level requirement which aren't super explicit but which are implied in various parts of the text. But there are many ways to increase caster level, so that doesn't seem like a real issue.
It's honestly more explicit than a lot of things we take for granted about how multiclass spellcasting works, TBH.

[Anthrowhale]

If all you have to do is generate an effect of the appropriate level, the whole trick is a wasted effort. Just buy a candle of invocation. It lets you cast a 9th level spell. Now you can skip all the other steps.

I wasn't precise enough in my wording---the generation must be via casting. Restated:

This isn't a test of prepared spells or existing slots, it's just a test of the effect that you can generate by spell casting. If the effect that you generate by spell casting is effectively of the desired level, that's fine.


It's honestly more explicit than a lot of things we take for granted about how multiclass spellcasting works, TBH.
I'm fine living with minimum caster level, but I think we can assume that any sufficiently wealthy caster can achieve any minimum.

[Darg]

I wasn't precise enough in my wording---the generation must be via casting. Restated:

This isn't a test of prepared spells or existing slots, it's just a test of the effect that you can generate by spell casting. If the effect that you generate by spell casting is effectively of the desired level, that's fine.


I'm fine living with minimum caster level, but I think we can assume that any sufficiently wealthy caster can achieve any minimum.

Did I lose track of something here? The extra slot feat asks for the level of the spell, not the level of the spell effect.

[ToranIronfinder]

Back to the ACF:

It is interesting with a Cerebremancer:

Wizard 1 (precocious apprentice, Heighten spell)
Psion 1
Psion 2 (Cerebremetamagic)
Psion 3
Cerebremancer 1-10
Incarnate 1-2
Soul manifester 4

Or using alternate spell features
Wizard 1/psion 3/Cerebremancer 2/archivist 1/cerebremancer 10/psionic theurge 6 using the same entry.

[Troacctid]

I wasn't precise enough in my wording---the generation must be via casting. Restated:

This isn't a test of prepared spells or existing slots, it's just a test of the effect that you can generate by spell casting. If the effect that you generate by spell casting is effectively of the desired level, that's fine.
The candle's ability allows you to cast gate as a spell. It says so in the text. Definitely spellcasting.

In addition, burning a candle also allows the owner to cast a gate spell, the respondent being of the same alignment as the candle, but the taper is immediately consumed in the process.

[Anthrowhale]

Did I lose track of something here? The extra slot feat asks for the level of the spell, not the level of the spell effect.
Is there a difference between effective spell level and spell level?

All effects dependent on spell level ... are calculated according to the adjusted level.
One of the effects of spell level is qualifying extra slots.


The candle's ability allows you to cast gate as a spell. It says so in the text. Definitely spellcasting.
Yeesh, I hadn't appreciated this. I'm gonna go with "No" again here just because CoI breaks the game to much. I'm not sure what other resolutions there are. Are you aware of any other items which grant the ability to cast spells? (Not spell completion or spell trigger.)

It would be kind of funny though if you carried around a CoI, dropped it one day, and then were suddenly lobotomized as a character.

[Troacctid]

One of the effects of spell level is qualifying extra slots.
But since you're not casting it in your sanctum (or at all), the spell would count as a level lower instead.


Yeesh, I hadn't appreciated this. I'm gonna go with "No" again here just because CoI breaks the game to much. I'm not sure what other resolutions there are. Are you aware of any other items which grant the ability to cast spells? (Not spell completion or spell trigger.)
Sure. Strand of prayer beads is another example. The candle was just the only one I could think of that casts a 9th-level spell.

[Darg]

Is there a difference between effective spell level and spell level?

One of the effects of spell level is qualifying extra slots.

Spell level doesn't have an effect. It's just a constant the rules use to base calculations off of and categorize a selection of spells.

As is described in heighten spell, effective spell level is the modified constant used in calculating the effects of a spell already in effect (i.e. post casting). The effect, not the spell. As an example, almost no one would agree that heighten spell brings into existence a 9th level magic missile that wizards can copy into their spell books. Most everyone would agree that copying a heightened to 9th magic missile scroll would give you only access to the 1st level spell. Heighten Spell is not increasing the level of the spell, but rather its effect. The heightened magic missile is still a first level spell even though its effect is equivalent to a 9th.

[Scots Dragon]

The text limiting it is in RC's rules for magical writings.

No it isn't, I checked. The section I quoted above is from the section of the Rules Compendium you mentioned and has no such limitation for copied spells, only spells gained from levelling.

You can't really use the too-high-level spells copied into your book. But you can copy them into your spellbook in advance of being high level enough to cast them.

[Crake]

The text limiting it is in RC's rules for magical writings.

Having just gone and read the rules compendium section on spellbooks... no, its not. The only added specification was that the spells copied need to be on the caster's spell list, which, considering the chameleon's spell list is "any arcane spell list", isn't much of an issue for them. Under copying a spell, rules compendium does not add the requirement that the spell must be of a level you can cast.

Of course, under the section for level up spells, it still has the requirement that it must be of a level you can cast, but that's only for levelup spells.


Yeesh, I hadn't appreciated this. I'm gonna go with "No" again here just because CoI breaks the game to much. I'm not sure what other resolutions there are. Are you aware of any other items which grant the ability to cast spells? (Not spell completion or spell trigger.)

It would be kind of funny though if you carried around a CoI, dropped it one day, and then were suddenly lobotomized as a character.

Yeah, but also there's a reason people don't base builds around items you can't create yourself in some reliable manner. The DM is under no obligation to allow you to find or purchase an item. Even if we did grant that CoI allowed you to pick up extra slot (8).

Personally though, I would simply rule that the item granting you the ability to cast a spell is not the same as you having the ability to cast the spell yourself. Whether that's raw or a houserule, I don't know, but as a DM, it's the call I would make regardless of the rules.


But since you're not casting it in your sanctum (or at all), the spell would count as a level lower instead.

That's largely irrelevant. You can cast in your sanctum, and are capable of generating said effect, even if under most circumstances, you are not able to. Personally though, I just use snowcasting, it's more consistent, and it fit more with the winter fey theme that the character who used this build had.

Also, it doesn't have the prerequisite of needing another metamagic feat, so you can replace more of your other feats with extra slots. Personally, I get at least 1 extra slot of 7, 8 and 9, just to get more value out of having a high ability score bonus.

On a side note, the writers could have solved this problem by instead wording extra slot as "you gain a spell slot up to 1 level lower than the highest spell slot you have available", rather than referring to spell level you can cast.

[Anthrowhale]

But since you're not casting it in your sanctum (or at all), the spell would count as a level lower instead.
It's the capability, not the action, which matters for qualification.


Sure. Strand of prayer beads is another example. The candle was just the only one I could think of that casts a 9th-level spell.
Looking at wealth by level, the Candle of invocation provides access to the ability to cast a 9th level spell 10 levels earlier than normal. None of the others seem to provide advanced access, although they could be used in delayed access situations. Anyways, I'd say 'no' here in practice.


Spell level doesn't have an effect. It's just a constant the rules use to base calculations off of and categorize a selection of spells.
The second sentence contradicts the first. Restated, qualification for a prestige class (for example) is an effect of the ability to cast a spell level in the normal and natural usage of the word 'effect'.



As is described in heighten spell, effective spell level is the modified constant used in calculating the effects of a spell already in effect (i.e. post casting).
The description in Heighten spell says 'All effects dependent on spell level are calculated according to the heightened level.' One of these effects is qualification for certain things.

It's really much easier to just read things in the straightforward way. Then, you don't have to explain how "all" doesn't mean actually mean all, how constants don't effect calculations, or how "has a higher spell level than normal" doesn't imply the spell has a higher level than normal.

[Darg]

The second sentence contradicts the first. Restated, qualification for a prestige class (for example) is an effect of the ability to cast a spell level in the normal and natural usage of the word 'effect'.

Spell level can "affect," not make an "effect." It's used as an adjective, not a noun, when referred by rules. The ability to cast spells of a certain level is a feature of class levels

In addition to having a high ability score, a spellcaster must be of high enough class level to be able to cast spells of a given spell level. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#abilitiesAndSpellcasters)


The description in Heighten spell says 'All effects dependent on spell level are calculated according to the heightened level.' One of these effects is qualification for certain things.

It's really much easier to just read things in the straightforward way. Then, you don't have to explain how "all" doesn't mean actually mean all, how constants don't effect calculations, or how "has a higher spell level than normal" doesn't imply the spell has a higher level than normal.

If you want it straight forward, just read the plain text. It tells you exactly how the feat works:


You can cast a spell as if it were a higher-level spell than it actually is.

It blatantly tells you that the spell you cast stays the original level. It's extremely simple and easy to understand. It's only the effect of the spell modified by the feat. You don't have to worry about all the butterfly effect ramifications causing complications, confusion, and beggaring belief.

I have to ask what you think the effects of a spell are? Because I can tell you right now that your ability to cast a spell is not an effect of the spell.

[Morphic tide]

Spell level can "affect," not make an "effect." It's used as an adjective, not a noun, when referred by rules.
By that bizarre reading, Heighten Spell does literally nothing, because it solely refers to "effects dependent on spell level", specifically referring to a spell that blocks 3rd-level and lower spells with no phrasing to separate this. Why does a spell Heightened to 4th level pierce a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as explicitly stated in Heighten Spell, something that "excludes all spell effects of 3rd-level or lower", yet not let you take Extra Slot for a 3rd-level spell slot? Qualify for Dimensional Jaunt or Holy Warrior?


The ability to cast spells of a certain level is a feature of class levels

In addition to having a high ability score, a spellcaster must be of high enough class level to be able to cast spells of a given spell level. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#abilitiesAndSpellcasters)
This here is a solid note of support, as it means the "spell effect level=cast level" would break Snowcasting and Earth Spell used as intended, but the fact that it took several pages to get around to this point and the definition of "high enough level" is left solely to the spell slot table rather than having an explicit definition like non-Ardent psionic manifesters goes to show the morass that is D&D RAW debate and the poor wording of 3.5 driving it.


It blatantly tells you that the spell you cast stays the original level. It's extremely simple and easy to understand. It's only the effect of the spell modified by the feat.
Heighten does not render Fireball a 4th-level spell, but what makes you so certain that you have not "cast a 4th-level spell"? Fireball doesn't have DC 14+casting ability modifier, either, but Heighten has given it by making it function as if it were a 4th-level spell, so the effect that was cast is 4th level irrespective of the base spell.


You don't have to worry about all the butterfly effect ramifications causing complications, confusion, and beggaring belief.
Most TTRPGs are designed to use the DM as a garbage collector to deal with nonsense like this regardless of how well the text supports it. That's why it's called Theoretical Optimization, because it runs on smashing every ambiguity with a sledgehammer of intentionally-bizarre interpretation to see how far things could be stretched.

As I put over in the concurrent Ardent debate, my position is simply that it can be read this way due to the ambiguities of the wording, whereas yours (and Troacctid's) is that it positively cannot by insisting on specific inferences and presumptions that do not actually appear in the rules for several posts before trawling rules for something different. The underlying point of contention is that the line between "spell known", "spell cast", and "spell effect" is almost entirely undefined, and thus there is a lot of weirdness that can be conjectured for TO shenanigans which any sane DM would deny by using a different resolution to the ambiguity of the text.

[Darg]

By that bizarre reading, Heighten Spell does literally nothing, because it solely refers to "effects dependent on spell level", specifically referring to a spell that blocks 3rd-level and lower spells with no phrasing to separate this. Why does a spell Heightened to 4th level pierce a Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as explicitly stated in Heighten Spell, something that "excludes all spell effects of 3rd-level or lower", yet not let you take Extra Slot for a 3rd-level spell slot? Qualify for Dimensional Jaunt or Holy Warrior?

I did state that it modifies the level of the effect which would in fact allow it to pierce the globe. The effect is a spell after all. If a summoned creature is roaming in front of you, you'd say the "spell" is still active. Or would you only refer to it as the "effect" instead of "spell effect?"


This here is a solid note of support, as it means the "spell effect level=cast level" would break Snowcasting and Earth Spell used as intended, but the fact that it took several pages to get around to this point and the definition of "high enough level" is left solely to the spell slot table rather than having an explicit definition like non-Ardent psionic manifesters goes to show the morass that is D&D RAW debate and the poor wording of 3.5 driving it.

It's on page 7 of the PHB. It's one of the earliest rules a player should have learned if they've read the PHB. If not, it's under the basic rules in the SRD which is still very close to the front.


Heighten does not render Fireball a 4th-level spell, but what makes you so certain that you have not "cast a 4th-level spell"? Fireball doesn't have DC 14+casting ability modifier, either, but Heighten has given it by making it function as if it were a 4th-level spell, so the effect that was cast is 4th level irrespective of the base spell.

The key word here in your statement is the past tense of you having cast the fireball. The fireball is not a 4th level spell before it takes effect, but when it takes effect.

As metamagic modifies the effect of a spell when cast, the present tense of the first line of heighten makes sense in the chronological state of when it takes effect. Just to reiterate what I have said before, regardless of the metamagic used, all metamagic increase the level of the spell for the purpose of preparation and casting. So if "ability to cast" is so open that anytime a spell is treated as a higher level spell than it actually is that it qualifies as casting a higher level spell, any metamagic fits the bill from the very start in the metamagic rules before you even look at the individual feats.


Most TTRPGs are designed to use the DM as a garbage collector to deal with nonsense like this regardless of how well the text supports it. That's why it's called Theoretical Optimization, because it runs on smashing every ambiguity with a sledgehammer of intentionally-bizarre interpretation to see how far things could be stretched.

As I put over in the concurrent Ardent debate, my position is simply that it can be read this way due to the ambiguities of the wording, whereas yours (and Troacctid's) is that it positively cannot by insisting on specific inferences and presumptions that do not actually appear in the rules for several posts before trawling rules for something different. The underlying point of contention is that the line between "spell known", "spell cast", and "spell effect" is almost entirely undefined, and thus there is a lot of weirdness that can be conjectured for TO shenanigans which any sane DM would deny by using a different resolution to the ambiguity of the text.

You can read anything as anything, that doesn't make it true. There is structure to the rules; so within that structure the way things can be read must be limited in scope to fit within the structure. I agree that RAW can get out of hand. But much of the "RAW" conjecture is easily thrown out the window by simply putting it in the context of the rules environment it should exist in. It's only when it can't be thrown out that it is actually RAW.

[Crake]

Spell level can "affect," not make an "effect." It's used as an adjective, not a noun, when referred by rules. The ability to cast spells of a certain level is a feature of class levels

In addition to having a high ability score, a spellcaster must be of high enough class level to be able to cast spells of a given spell level. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#abilitiesAndSpellcasters)

To me this has always read as being high enough level to have a spell slot. Theres no actual text in any of the classes specifying which level enables which level of spells, so the only determining factor left is spell slots, and other external capabilities.

If, on the other hand, classes had specified maximum spell levels by class level, the same way that psion does, this would be less of an issue. Unfortunately, they do not, and without any actual supporting text in the class descriptions, I cant reasonably give this rule precedence over more specific rules in feat descriptions.

[Darg]

To me this has always read as being high enough level to have a spell slot. Theres no actual text in any of the classes specifying which level enables which level of spells, so the only determining factor left is spell slots, and other external capabilities.

If, on the other hand, classes had specified maximum spell levels by class level, the same way that psion does, this would be less of an issue. Unfortunately, they do not, and without any actual supporting text in the class descriptions, I cant reasonably give this rule precedence over more specific rules in feat descriptions.


At each new wizard level, she gains two new spells of any spell level or levels that she can cast (based on her new wizard level) for her spellbook. For example, when a wizard attains 5th level, she can cast 3rd-level spells.


For instance, upon reaching 4th-level, a sorcerer could trade in a single 0-level spell (two spell levels below the highest-level sorcerer spell he can cast, which is 2nd) for a different 0-level spell. At 6th level, he could trade in a single 0-level or 1st-level spell (since he now can cast 3rd-level sorcerer spells) for a different spell of the same level.


she can’t cast fireball with a caster level lower than 5th (the minimum level required for a wizard to cast fireball).

The minimum level to cast fireball is 5th, therefore you can't reduce the caster level below 5th. There's all this evidence for it even if it doesn't come out and say it directly in the class descriptions. Who knows, it could be based on spell slots. The problem is that there isn't any evidence for that. It's quite obvious that the game was never designed to give you spell slots above your maximum (ability scores not adding them is a big sign). And the only way to get new spell slots above your maximum is to cheese it. So there isn't precedence for casting spells above your level except for epic levels.

[Morphic tide]

I did state that it modifies the level of the effect which would in fact allow it to pierce the globe. The effect is a spell after all. If a summoned creature is roaming in front of you, you'd say the "spell" is still active. Or would you only refer to it as the "effect" instead of "spell effect?"
You drew a very specific line stating that a spell's level does not have any "effect", but instead "affects" things... A term that means "to have an effect", making this a bizarrely specific terminology complaint that seems to come from obsessively over-extending this line in "Spell Description":


A spell’s level affects the DC for any save allowed against the effect.

Unless you can find something declaring an ontological separation between Heighten Spell's text and feat constraints like Extra Spell's Benefit, this is "you have good grounds to ban it as a DM", not "solid TO counterargument". TO counterarguments need to demonstrate active logical contradiction, showing that it truly cannot be the case without changing the words that were written or needing mutually-exclusive interpretations of a single line.


It's on page 7 of the PHB. It's one of the earliest rules a player should have learned if they've read the PHB. If not, it's under the basic rules in the SRD which is still very close to the front.
There are piles and piles of mechanical minutia that exist in single sentances inside stretches of a dozen paragraphs which matter for a very scarce few interactions. Expecting people to memorize the exact phrasing of every line and immediately refer to it, especially when you take multiple posts to refer to any such thing yourself, is rather unreasonable. This is doubly strange given your responses on the Ardent matter, where you seem to completely miss that there's a "Maximum Power Level known" column and it has its own heading on every other Psionic class, considering you think that "Maximum Power Level known" is poorly defined yet this limit on maximum spell level is somehow clear.


The key word here in your statement is the past tense of you having cast the fireball. The fireball is not a 4th level spell before it takes effect, but when it takes effect.
What makes you so certain about the tenses involved? How is this separate from the constraint on the Benefit of Extra Slot, which is an effect of the feat just like Lesser Globe of Invulnerability's Spell Level check? Malicious interpretation of tenses is rather low on the list of defilement of designer intent.


So if "ability to cast" is so open that anytime a spell is treated as a higher level spell than it actually is that it qualifies as casting a higher level spell, any metamagic fits the bill from the very start in the metamagic rules before you even look at the individual feats.
The metamagic rules specifically note that "This does not change the level of the spell", it's just harder to cast. Then Heighten Spell makes specific note that it does so anyways, an example of the rather vital "Specific Trumps General" interpretation responsible for how enormous swaths of the game mechanics are worded, including feats often having Normal sections to remind people what the feat is overruling.


You can read anything as anything, that doesn't make it true. There is structure to the rules; so within that structure the way things can be read must be limited in scope to fit within the structure. I agree that RAW can get out of hand. But much of the "RAW" conjecture is easily thrown out the window by simply putting it in the context of the rules environment it should exist in. It's only when it can't be thrown out that it is actually RAW.
What you're missing is that the "structure" only holds for the tautological cases due to the system's reliance on very small parts overriding the baseline. Filling in the definitions for maximum available spell level through the class's highest-level slot is at least close, but because the game relies on exceptions it only takes one thing that says you can do otherwise to horribly torture even the most obvious of conclusions, if only in that case.

[RandomPeasant]

The minimum level to cast fireball is 5th, therefore you can't reduce the caster level below 5th.

It says that's the minimum level to cast fireball. How do you know it's the minimum level to cast stinking cloud or major image or summon undead III?


So there isn't precedence for casting spells above your level except for epic levels.

Sure there is. Consider a Binder 5/Ur-Priest 3. Such a character has an Ur-Priest caster level of 3, and gets 3rd level spell slots. In the absence of an explicit rule that says they can't use them, I would say that an approach to understanding the rules that reads in such a restriction creates dysfunction, and is therefore less suitable than one which does not.

The rules don't work by implication. They work by text. If there is not text that explicitly says you must have a particular caster level to cast spells of a particular level, you do not need it.

[Troacctid]

It says that's the minimum level to cast fireball. How do you know it's the minimum level to cast stinking cloud or major image or summon undead III?
It says so in the class.

The notion that your minimum caster level for a spell restricts the heighten tricks you can get away with may be almost as controversial as the heighten tricks themselves, but that's not because the rules don't tell you how to calculate the minimum caster level. The text on it is actually refreshingly transparent in comparison to something like e.g. how the heck multiclass spellcasters work. The DMG lists minimum caster levels for every spell level for all of the core classes (in the chapter on magic items), and the PHB gives a general rule for how to determine what level is too low (in that bit where it tells you how to read the class tables), and then of course for more context, there are examples like the one that was just cited.

That part isn't really ambiguous. The interesting discussion comes when you ask to what extent minimum caster levels apply to effects that ought to allow you to cast above what you normally could. Does the heighten effect take precedence because it's more specific? Or does the general rule win out because it was never contradicted in the first place? And does the answer change depending on which interaction you're looking at? Those are the proper crunchy bits where the text is vague and open to interpretation. Yessirree, I bet you could have a pretty robust debate on that.

...But just to be clear, Eidetic Spellcaster is still a bad trade regardless of which side you land on.

[Anthrowhale]

Consider a Binder 5/Ur-Priest 3. Such a character has an Ur-Priest caster level of 3, and gets 3rd level spell slots.
My present understanding is that minimum caster levels is always a function of spell and a class, so for Ur-Priest a 3rd level spell would have a minimum caster level of 3. I don't know any rules which states a general minimum caster level independent of class.

[Darg]

You drew a very specific line stating that a spell's level does not have any "effect", but instead "affects" things... A term that means "to have an effect", making this a bizarrely specific terminology complaint that seems to come from obsessively over-extending this line in "Spell Description":



Unless you can find something declaring an ontological separation between Heighten Spell's text and feat constraints like Extra Spell's Benefit, this is "you have good grounds to ban it as a DM", not "solid TO counterargument". TO counterarguments need to demonstrate active logical contradiction, showing that it truly cannot be the case without changing the words that were written or needing mutually-exclusive interpretations of a single line.


There are piles and piles of mechanical minutia that exist in single sentances inside stretches of a dozen paragraphs which matter for a very scarce few interactions. Expecting people to memorize the exact phrasing of every line and immediately refer to it, especially when you take multiple posts to refer to any such thing yourself, is rather unreasonable. This is doubly strange given your responses on the Ardent matter, where you seem to completely miss that there's a "Maximum Power Level known" column and it has its own heading on every other Psionic class, considering you think that "Maximum Power Level known" is poorly defined yet this limit on maximum spell level is somehow clear.


What makes you so certain about the tenses involved? How is this separate from the constraint on the Benefit of Extra Slot, which is an effect of the feat just like Lesser Globe of Invulnerability's Spell Level check? Malicious interpretation of tenses is rather low on the list of defilement of designer intent.


The metamagic rules specifically note that "This does not change the level of the spell", it's just harder to cast. Then Heighten Spell makes specific note that it does so anyways, an example of the rather vital "Specific Trumps General" interpretation responsible for how enormous swaths of the game mechanics are worded, including feats often having Normal sections to remind people what the feat is overruling.


What you're missing is that the "structure" only holds for the tautological cases due to the system's reliance on very small parts overriding the baseline. Filling in the definitions for maximum available spell level through the class's highest-level slot is at least close, but because the game relies on exceptions it only takes one thing that says you can do otherwise to horribly torture even the most obvious of conclusions, if only in that case.

The fact that you're arguing that a feat has benefit before it's actual use is the most mind boggling part here. I have to explain these things as they come up because they apparently aren't something people take into consideration that I automatically do. I don't know what you don't know until it becomes clear. I've also quoted page 7 another time in this thread before the quote you quoted. So it's not like I'm bringing it up out of no where.

I have to ask, where does it say in the rules that a feat has an effect prior to its use? Where does it say that metamagic modifies the source of the spell at all? The PHB states twice that heighten does not actually modify the level of the spell regardless of how it is cast. The first is in the metamagic feat rules and the second is in the plain text of the feat itself. You have nothing to support you except for the benefit text in the feat which has explanatory text afterward stating exactly how it works on the effect itself.

Again, heighten specifically increases the level of the spell WHEN it comes into effect, not in the spell list. There is no conflict with the general rules at all except when the spell's effect is manifest. It's illogical (tortured) extrapolation to say that a heightened spell is a higher level spell in all ways spell levels matter mechanically.

[Anthrowhale]

...You have nothing to support you except for the benefit text in the feat ...
Agreed here at least :-) Traditionally, that's what you use when interpreting the rules.


Again, heighten specifically increases the level of the spell WHEN it comes into effect...
And here we disagree.

The text of heighten (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#heightenSpell) is quite short. The first sentence contradicts the scope limitation of "when it comes into effect". The second sentence makes it explicit that Heighten spell violates the normal rules for metamagic. The third sentence reiterates the first and again contradicts the limited scoping. The fourth sentence is immaterial to the claim.

[Darg]

Agreed here at least :-) Traditionally, that's what you use when interpreting the rules.


And here we disagree.

The text of heighten (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#heightenSpell) is quite short. The first sentence contradicts the scope limitation of "when it comes into effect". The second sentence makes it explicit that Heighten spell violates the normal rules for metamagic. The third sentence reiterates the first and again contradicts the limited scoping. The fourth sentence is immaterial to the claim.

The SRD has text missing. It shouldn't be used as an authoritative source.


You can cast a spell as if it were a higher-level spell than it actually is.

It's clearly stating that it isn't actually increasing the level of the spell, just like how the rules for metamagic state they aren't actually increasing the level of the spell either and yet still several times mention increasing the level of the spell. As if it were, but actually isn't.

The feat itself uses the word "heightened," or the past tense of the word heighten. Metamagic as a baseline treats spells as a higher level for the purpose of preparation and casting. The first sentence of the benefit is making a declaration of what happens when applying the feat to a spell. The second sentence is telling you what makes it different because all metamagic feats do the same thing to a degree already. The third sentence explains it in a mechanically relevant way. No where does it allow you to actually increase the level of the spell, just the spell effect. The statement "heightened magic missile cast from a 3rd level slot is a 1st level spell with a 3rd level effect" is a true statement.

Metamagic cannot apply to a spell before the preparation/casting phase. All metamagic modify the level of the spell for the purpose of preparation and casting. What's left for heighten to do? Declare which slot it takes up (first sentence) and modify the effect of the spell. Other than those two things there is nothing left for the feat to influence. There is a reason "effective level" is used instead of just "level." It doesn't actually increase the level of the spell, but it's "effectively" a higher level spell when cast because it ticks all the boxes of what a higher level spell would.

[Crake]

Do you believe a fireball spell prepared as a heightened 5th level spell would make the fiery burst feat do 3d6 or 5d6 damage?

For reference, the FAQ says it would do 5d6 damage. For me, that's evidence enough that a heightened spell is simply considered a spell of it's heightened level, and not some weird hybrid schrodinger's state of "not a spell of that level, but an effect of that level, but not actually, but actually".

Alternatively: would said prepared fireball be able to be converted into a scrying spell (4th level spell) via spontaneous divination?

[Zanos]

Yeah, I don't know how you can possibly read the benefit of heighten spell and come away with the conclusion that people saying a heighten spell is treated as a higher level is the "tortured" interpretation. The text says three times that spell is treated as the heightened level, and the last sentence is even that the spell is treated as the higher level in "all ways."

[Darg]

Do you believe a fireball spell prepared as a heightened 5th level spell would make the fiery burst feat do 3d6 or 5d6 damage?

For reference, the FAQ says it would do 5d6 damage. For me, that's evidence enough that a heightened spell is simply considered a spell of it's heightened level, and not some weird hybrid schrodinger's state of "not a spell of that level, but an effect of that level, but not actually, but actually".

Alternatively: would said prepared fireball be able to be converted into a scrying spell (4th level spell) via spontaneous divination?

The FAQ isn't conflicting with my interpretation. I guess if I boil it down, it just means that you can't use earth spell, sanctum spell, or snowcasting to say you have the ability to cast higher level spells than normal because the actual level of the spell hasn't gone up. According to the PHB any metamagic spell with an increase in slot level counts as a higher level spell for reserve feats because it is asking for spells you can cast not your ability to cast spells.


Yeah, I don't know how you can possibly read the benefit of heighten spell and come away with the conclusion that people saying a heighten spell is treated as a higher level is the "tortured" interpretation. The text says three times that spell is treated as the heightened level, and the last sentence is even that the spell is treated as the higher level in "all ways."

It's about context. It's metamagic so it must work in the context of the metamagic rules unless explicitly stated otherwise. You aren't going to say copying a heightened level 9th magic missile to your spell book is going to take up 9 pages and allow you to cast a 9th level magic missile without the heighten spell feat are you?

[Crake]

. According to the PHB any metamagic spell with an increase in slot level counts as a higher level spell for reserve feats because it is asking for spells you can cast not your ability to cast spells.

The FAQ says ONLY heighten works to increase the effect of reserve feats, because it actually increases the spell level of spells, wheras the other metamagic do not

[Darg]

The FAQ says ONLY heighten works to increase the effect of reserve feats, because it actually increases the spell level of spells, wheras the other metamagic do not

Sure, but that's the FAQ. It's not like it's the most reliable source of information either. Both the metamagic rules and the Heighten Spell feat say otherwise. The FAQ can be taken as RAI, but never as RAW. And when the rules and the feat itself says it isn't actually increasing the level of the spell, it's really hard to say the FAQ is following RAW.

[Crake]

Sure, but that's the FAQ. It's not like it's the most reliable source of information either. Both the metamagic rules and the Heighten Spell feat say otherwise. The FAQ can be taken as RAI, but never as RAW. And when the rules and the feat itself says it isn't actually increasing the level of the spell, it's really hard to say the FAQ is following RAW.

Explain to me how normal metamagic feats will affect a reserve feat, when they do not adjust a spell’s spell level? So far youve just made such a claim twice without backing it up

[bean illus]

... you aren't going to say copying a heightened level 9th magic missile to your spell book is going to take up 9 pages and allow you to cast a 9th level magic missile without the heighten spell feat are you?

I know this isn't what you asked, and has nothing to do with eidetic spellcaster, but what would be the worst thing that could happen?

[Morphic tide]

You aren't going to say copying a heightened level 9th magic missile to your spell book is going to take up 9 pages and allow you to cast a 9th level magic missile without the heighten spell feat are you?
The underlying interpretation is that "ability to cast an Nth level spell" occurs after Heighten Spell applies, because it's checking for "a spell that has been cast at 9th level", not "a spell that is 9th level". Essentially, a spell's level has three "stages" in the mechanics:


Spell level as known (affects ability to learn, "base" price for items)
Spell level as prepared (affects minimum slot level, benefits for expending containing it)
Spell level as effect produced (affects save DC and after-cast interactions)


Only "War Spells" from Dragon #309 and off-list access affect stage 1, to my recollection. All metamagic affects stage 2 partially, which we typically call "metamagic adjustment". Heighten Spell (especially with Earth Spell improvemnet) and Sanctum Spell are the two mainstays for changing stage 3, which is the stage that a spell that "has been" cast at. Heighten is also feature-complete for stage 2 to determine what level a spell "is" cast at, unlike other metamagic adjustment.

You seem to be insisting that Heighten Spell does not affect spell level for the benefit constraint of Extra Slot, despite official confirmation it does for Reserve feats' not meaningfully different rules text and a lot of consensus on all sorts of items and feats and features using the Heighten level.

[Troacctid]

The underlying interpretation is that "ability to cast an Nth level spell" occurs after Heighten Spell applies, because it's checking for "a spell that has been cast at 9th level", not "a spell that is 9th level".
No, it's checking for "the size and complexity of the spells that can be encompassed within a character's mind." Those are the exact words used by the book.

Beyond the limits of magical power, a spellcasting level requirement measures the size and complexity of the spells that can be encompassed within a character’s mind. As spells increase in level, they become exponentially more complicated, requiring a discipline of thought and an understanding of principles impossible for low-level characters to learn. Wizards master these advanced principles through careful study; sorcerers and other spontaneous arcane casters intuit what they need to know as their spellcasting experience grows.
Simply being able to produce a 5th-level spell effect is explicitly not sufficient to meet an "Able to cast 5th-level spells" requirement.

[Crake]

Simply being able to produce a 5th-level spell effect is explicitly not sufficient to meet an "Able to cast 5th-level spells" requirement.

Except that it does for reserve feats.

[Troacctid]

Except that it does for reserve feats.
Reserve feats have two separate requirements: able to cast (prerequisite for the feat), and available to cast (prerequisite for the reserve effect). A spell can fulfill one without fulfilling the other. The latter prerequisite is similar, but different, and is described in detail on page 37 of Complete Mage. If you are a prepared caster, only the spell as it exists in its prepared form is relevant to what its characteristics are for the purpose of a reserve effect. If you are a spontaneous caster, only the spell as it exists in its known form is relevant. So in fact, Heighten Spell does not, by RAW, allow a spontaneous caster to trivially power reserve feats at their highest level. And regardless of the type of caster you are, Snowcasting will never help you power a reserve effect.

[Crake]

Reserve feats have two separate requirements: able to cast (prerequisite for the feat), and available to cast (prerequisite for the reserve effect). A spell can fulfill one without fulfilling the other. The latter prerequisite is similar, but different, and is described in detail on page 37 of Complete Mage. If you are a prepared caster, only the spell as it exists in its prepared form is relevant to what its characteristics are for the purpose of a reserve effect. If you are a spontaneous caster, only the spell as it exists in its known form is relevant. So in fact, Heighten Spell does not, by RAW, allow a spontaneous caster to trivially power reserve feats at their highest level. And regardless of the type of caster you are, Snowcasting will never help you power a reserve effect.

Correct, so you agree then, heighten spell does in fact increase a spell’s given level and allow it to actually qualify as a spell of its boosted level rather than the lower level. Given that, it means that spell level boosters do actually count for meeting qualifications.

Reserve feats specifically look at prepared spells “loaded” and ready to cast, which is why, and we agree on this point, feats like snowcasting and sanctum spell do not count for reserve feats, however, when merely looking at what a caster is CAPABLE of casting, snowcasting and sanctum spell both would count. To disqualify them would be tantamount to saying “you dont meet the qualification because you’re out of spell slots for the day”

[Troacctid]

Correct, so you agree then, heighten spell does in fact increase a spell’s given level and allow it to actually qualify as a spell of its boosted level rather than the lower level.
Uh...well, for prepared casters, yes, for spontaneous casters, no. But Darg was the one you were replying to earlier about this, not me.


Given that, it means that spell level boosters do actually count for meeting qualifications.
No, this does not follow. Like I said, "able to cast" and "available to cast" are different requirements.


To disqualify them would be tantamount to saying “you dont meet the qualification because you’re out of spell slots for the day”
No it wouldn't, because, again, "able to cast" and "available to cast" are not the same thing. This goes back again to the passage I quoted earlier from CAr, as well as that passage from PHB p23 which I'm sure has probably been cited upthread at some point.

[Crake]

No, this does not follow. Like I said, "able to cast" and "available to cast" are different requirements.


No it wouldn't, because, again, "able to cast" and "available to cast" are not the same thing. This goes back again to the passage I quoted earlier from CAr, as well as that passage from PHB p23 which I'm sure has probably been cited upthread at some point.

Available to cast is a subset of able to cast.

Anything available to cast is necessarily something you are able to cast. Thus, if a heightened 5th level fireball is considered a 5th level fire spell available to cast, it must necessarily be a 5th level spell you are able to cast, else it would not qualify as one available to cast.

[RSGA]

One odd thing to note about reserve spells and spontaneous casters is that in a rare show of mercy spontaneous casters get to count higher level slots for keeping their reserve feats active. This gives them in that one case a rough equivalent to how a prepared caster can use a higher level slot on a lower level spell by default behavior.

[Troacctid]

Available to cast is a subset of able to cast.

Anything available to cast is necessarily something you are able to cast. Thus, if a heightened 5th level fireball is considered a 5th level fire spell available to cast, it must necessarily be a 5th level spell you are able to cast, else it would not qualify as one available to cast.
Well, Snowcasting definitively does not increase the level of spell you have available to cast, nor does Sanctum Spell or Earth Spell, so if this is the case, then it only reinforces my initial opinion from earlier in the thread that it was sloppy to use them for your leapfrogging build when you could have used Eldritch Corruption.

[Crake]

Well, Snowcasting definitively does not increase the level of spell you have available to cast, nor does Sanctum Spell or Earth Spell, so if this is the case, then it only reinforces my initial opinion from earlier in the thread that it was sloppy to use them for your leapfrogging build when you could have used Eldritch Corruption.

Well, no, because as I said, available to cast is a subset of able to cast. Leapfrogging requires able to cast, while reserve feats require available to cast. Just because it doesnt work for reserve feats, doesnt mean it doesnt work for leapfrogging.

However, the fact that the level increase granted by heighten DOES count as a proper spell level increase, and not this hypothetical middle-ground, it means that other similarly worded spell level increases also count for proper spell level increases.

This suggests that an earth spell, sanctum spell, snowcasted heightened ray of frost in a 5th level spell slot, cast inside a sanctum would actually count as casting an 8th level spell, which means that you as a caster are ABLE to cast 8th level spells, meaning you qualify to take extra slot 7th.

[Troacctid]

However, the fact that the level increase granted by heighten DOES count as a proper spell level increase, and not this hypothetical middle-ground, it means that other similarly worded spell level increases also count for proper spell level increases.
Okay, well, Eldritch Corruption is similarly worded—in fact, it just straight-up applies Heighten to the spell. The others have substantially different wordings. So, again, you should just be using Eldritch Corruption. It has a much better foundation in the rules and it saves on feat economy because it heightens two levels by itself and can be gained as a bonus feat automatically once you meet the prerequisite.

[Crake]

Okay, well, Eldritch Corruption is similarly worded—in fact, it just straight-up applies Heighten to the spell. The others have substantially different wordings. So, again, you should just be using Eldritch Corruption. It has a much better foundation in the rules and it saves on feat economy because it heightens two levels by itself and can be gained as a bonus feat automatically once you meet the prerequisite.

Well, despite being the greater mechanical option, it is not necessarily the greater fluff option. Much easier to make snowcasting, sanctum, or earth spell work for you, or even versatile spellcaster if you’re part of the crew that thinks it allows you to sacrifice prepared slots for spontaneous casting.

[Darg]

Explain to me how normal metamagic feats will affect a reserve feat, when they do not adjust a spell’s spell level? So far youve just made such a claim twice without backing it up

Because it's prepared as a higher level spell, as I've mentioned several times already from the PHB.


The underlying interpretation is that "ability to cast an Nth level spell" occurs after Heighten Spell applies, because it's checking for "a spell that has been cast at 9th level", not "a spell that is 9th level".

It's the exact opposite. It's wanting your ABILITY to cast nth level spells, not the spell level at which you can cast particular spells

[Crake]

Because it's prepared as a higher level spell, as I've mentioned several times already from the PHB.

Thats a distinction without a difference. If a reserve feat scales with a heightened spell, while using the very straightforward wording that it does, then a spell prepared at a higher spell level with heighten spell is functionally no different than a spell prepared of that level, and if there is no functional difference when prepared, then there is no functional difference when cast.

Thus, being able to cast a heightened 5th level fireball would qualify you as being able to cast 5th level spells, which then logically follows that if a heightened 5th level fireball qualifies for 5th level spells the same would apply to other spell level increases, even if they are conditional.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Let's get back on topic here, please. If you want to continue the side conversation, please take it to another thread.

[St Fan]

Well, I was enjoying the show, but the mage moderator is right, it did veer off-topic.

Would you guys agree that the homebrew of reducing the cost for Eidetic Spellcaster to only the Scribe Scroll feat and Spellbook feature (thus leaving the possibility to summon a familiar) would at least balance things a bit?

[Crake]

Well, I was enjoying the show, but the mage moderator is right, it did veer off-topic.

Would you guys agree that the homebrew of reducing the cost for Eidetic Spellcaster to only the Scribe Scroll feat and Spellbook feature (thus leaving the possibility to summon a familiar) would at least balance things a bit?

I mean, you can get a familiar via a feat in the form of obtain familiar anyway, and its actually better, since its tied to caster level, not class levels, so prestige classing doesnt gimp it.

But what I’m guessing you really want is the familiar ACFs

[bekeleven]

If Eidetic Caster were a feat, few optimizers would take it over Obtain Familiar or a metamagic (or item creation) feat. Therefore, dropping its cost from 2 feat-equivalents to one would make it more palatable from that angle.

[Crake]

If Eidetic Caster were a feat, few optimizers would take it over Obtain Familiar or a metamagic (or item creation) feat. Therefore, dropping its cost from 2 feat-equivalents to one would make it more palatable from that angle.

Or give it something extra to make up for it. Maybe have it automatically count as spell mastery for qualifications, since its basically spell mastery +, and so you can go straight into uncanny forethought

[St Fan]

Or give it something extra to make up for it. Maybe have it automatically count as spell mastery for qualifications, since its basically spell mastery +, and so you can go straight into uncanny forethought

Yeah, its similarity with Spell Mastery is another big issue. It really isn't a well-thought ACF.

[Crake]

Yeah, its similarity with Spell Mastery is another big issue. It really isn't a well-thought ACF.

well, considering spell mastery only gives you what, your int modifier in spells that you can memorize, it's in theory worth the spell mastery feat many times over.