Runesmith for sorcerers = Arcane Preparation++ ?

[Rebel7284]

I was looking at Runesmith and it occurred to me that it can be entered as a sorcerer and then the Rune Magic (Ex) ability allows them to prepare a large number of spells. While there are some references in the ability text to preparing "as normal, but" which is a bit strange for a sorcerer, overall, it seems to work, allowing con mod spells to be prepared.
1. Am I understanding this correctly?
2. Is there anything abusable about a sorcerer, or any other spontaneous arcane caster I guess, being able to prepare many of their spells?

[ciopo]

the conservative reading of the prestige class is that rune magic does nothing if you enter it as a sorcerer.
A sorcerer doesn't prepare spell, hence it can't scribe runes, because they don't have any "normal preparation" they fall back to on which to piggyback the Rune magic feature

On the assumption it's been left to work instead, the share rune feature still consumes one of your slots per day for each rune you "prepare", so you don't actually gain any extra slot, all you've obtained is a "+2 metamagic" option that let your allies use some of your spells, and whatever abuse you find for that is no different for sorcerers than it would be for wizards/bards/etcetera

As for possible pro of using rune magic for a spontaneous, what comes to mind is if you make runes of metamagicked spells, you could argue that activating those runes is not a full round action, but whatever normal casting time of that spell, so you could use this PrC to bypass the asinine "metamagic is a full round action for spontaneous casters" rule.

Can't think of much other benefits, other than general gaining access to stuff that require specifically the ability to prepare spells, such as Mage of the arcane order, but you might as well just take the arcane preparation feat for that, instead of heavy armor profiency, so I'd focus on the shenanigans of allowing your allies to use your spells, tho +2 metamagic is not insignificant as a cost for that

[Gruftzwerg]

2. Is there anything abusable about a sorcerer, or any other spontaneous arcane caster I guess, being able to prepare many of their spells?

Yes to some extent...

Ingredients:
1. Arcane Preparation feat
2. (Greater) Arcane Fusion
3. (ideally a persisted) Arcane Spellsurge
4. any metamagic (ideally twin and/or repeating)

When you cast either a prepared meta Arcane Fusion or an unprepared non-meta Arcane Fusion, you cast it as a swift action.

Any non-prepared meta-spell is cast as standard action.

This allows you to cast effectively 4 spells per round. Add twin metamagic for more fun.

Further, we can now pick metamagic versions of spells (with the fitting effective level!) for our (Gr.) Arcane Fusion, since the casting time isn't altered anymore when preparing. Thus it also makes you more flexible.

If you wanna see the combo in full action have a look at my Cooperative Dvati Sorcerers of the Arcane Legions build that showcases the full scale of abuse potential here.

___________________


- Note that there is also Accelerate Metamagic which prevents the casting time increase for a single metamagic feat (for spontaneous casters).


- Also note that full-round action spells qualify for multiple sneak attacks if you have that ability. So the so called downside of spontaneous casting can be abused to. It's not sole a downside. Have a look at my Nest of Bees build that showcases the abuse potential of this aspect if you are interested.