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valadil
2007-12-13, 11:36 AM
I was wondering if any of you have seen Complete Mage's reserve feats used in an actual game and what your opinions on them were.

One of the casters in our game (which is a rotating GM game so we vote on everything rather than have one GM dictate what's up) was planning on taking Storm Bolt and some of the other players thought it was the most broken thing ever. I'm of the opinion that it's usable but not really all that special. I mean, at level 17 you can use it for a 9d6 lightning bolt. I guess that it being a spell like ability instead of a spell is pretty sweet, but other than that it just doesn't seem worth it to me.

I looked through the other reserve feats and the only one that seemed broken at first glance was the polymorph one that can grant temp HP as a swift action. Of course I've never seen any of these things in the wild and can only guess at how powerful they end up being. In most games I play casters get to rest between fights and rarely expend all their spells, so in that environment holding off your best spell to gain some half baked lightning bolt just doesn't seem all that worthwhile.

(For the record I have a sneaking suspicion that my group thinks magic is broken in general and wants to gimp it all. This was confirmed last night when I tried to sculpt grease.)

Azerian Kelimon
2007-12-13, 11:41 AM
It IS. Gishes love it, and lady gambiteers can swear by it.

-Cor-
2007-12-13, 11:47 AM
Yes, members of our group, including myself, have used Reserve Feats.

Are Reserve Feats broken? No more than anything else, really.

Two things I've noticed about Reserve Feats:

One, some are powerful, others are worthless. <shrug> I suppose the same is true for most feats.

Two, so far when a player has taken a Reserve Feat, they end up using it way too often. To the point of it becoming almost all they do in combat. This gets real boring real quick. We've found that it makes the character kind of a "one-note" and while it initially adds flavor to a character, eventually that character becomes nothing but that flavor. YMMV, but I say don't go down the Reserve Feats path. That way lies boredom.

Chrizzt
2007-12-13, 11:47 AM
Make sure to read the Errata for Complete Mage. According to it, Stormbolt permits a saving throw for half damage... So, my favorite Reserve Feat is the acid-connected one..

Keld Denar
2007-12-13, 11:51 AM
The reserve feats that do damage are all a waste, unless you are a solo wizard adventuring by yourself. As a wizard, you don't need to produce mediocre damage per round. You either control/kill/disable or if you have to do damage, bring bigger damage to the table than a couple d6 per round. Throwing around d6s is the rogues job.

That said, there are a couple of the reserve feats that are CRAZY overpowered. The two that most stand out are Minor Shapeshift, which you caught onto, and the teleport one.

Minor Shapeshift allows you to gain multiple benefits, but the most prevelent is the pool of temp hp. The fact that you can refresh this pool on any round you don't cast a swift or quickened spell is amazing. Its as close as a wizard can come to personal healing without taking Arcane Disciple or using Stone Body + Transmute Mud to Rock. I have seen first hand this used to good effect, although the guy that was using it was playing more of a Gish type character. He was almost unkillable because his buffed AC was so high, things seldom hit him, and when they did, they barely were able to push through his temp hp pool into his real hp total. The rounds after he got hit, he'd refresh the pool as a swift action and continue fighting/casting/winning. Now, obviously, as a straight wizard, you arn't getting attacked overly often, but its still nice for helping with your squishyness when stuff slips by, or you get caught in AoEs.

The Minor teleport one is not quite as good, but it has very very very useful applications. The primary being that you can get out of any grapple. Just teleport 10' away, and you are out. As a SLA, you can use it in a grapple, even while pinned. Get out of Evards and away from Owlbears. Now, getting a ring of Freedom of Movement or Ankets of Translocation (MIC) would probably be more effective, but its still nice. Plus, you never have to walk anywhere anymore. Just bamf around in non-combat situations and watch people stare. Giving up your standard action in combat is a little rough though, so it should only be used for escape situations in combat.

Craig1f
2007-12-13, 12:01 PM
The reserve feats are nice as a low-level character, because you only have a handful of spells, and will run out quickly. This way, you can be useful in random encounters, and not have to worry about saving your spells ... just cast fireburst or flameburst or whatever it's called.

At later levels, or earlier if you're a sorcerer, you'll have plenty of spells to fling around, along with some wands. The damage you'll do from a reserve feat is mostly negligible, and you're better off using your feats for things like spell penetration, metamagic, etc.

A 17-th level character doing 9d6 damage is not contributing a whole lot. My eldritch disciple, at level 16, could blast for 8d6, but could ignore spell resistance and do a host of other things. But the blast was not very often the most useful thing he could be doing.

If your DM lets you trade, then I say take a reserve feat at lower levels, and trade it out later on when it starts to become negligible.

Kagan
2007-12-13, 12:12 PM
I always imagined reserve feats coming into play during a marathon session - where the otherwise superior choice of using 'save vs. lose' effects is thrown out the window simply due to being horrifyingly outnumbered.

That's the thing though - either you're in a campaign where you don't have that aspect, and the reserve feats aren't needed, or you're in a campaign that's full of those situations, where you might as well play a warlock.

Good idea in all, but fixing vancian casting in 3.5 seems to have the Wizards' capabilities creep into other class roles and responsibilities. Fun, but not really broken.

Tyger
2007-12-13, 12:23 PM
Yeah, the Teleport one (can't remember its name at the moment) is a bit nasty for the escaping situations issue, but overall, the reserve feats are pretty low powered. A 17th level character that can blast a single target for 9d6 damage per round? And this is a wizard? Hmmm... that same action could have been used for a much, much nastier attack. For that matter, the Fighter is exceeding that kind of damage every round easily, the rogue is SAing for 9d6 on top of his other damage, and the druid is making them all look bad. :)

The Teleport one though... well, one of the players in my game took it, and he was using it almost constantly. Even wanted to use it to walk along with the rest of the party. Until I pointed out that he was holding up the group. He's got a 20 foot teleport, usable once per round. And a movement rate of 60 feet per move. So by using his nifty magical ability, he was moving at 1/6th his normal rate. Whoops! The ability to get out of grapples is pretty nice, and I think is the really main advantage to this particular feat.

valadil
2007-12-13, 12:52 PM
I agree that the teleport one is nice, but it didn't seem broken to me, whereas I could see using the polymorph one every single turn. As far as the damage ones go, I'd rather just buy a couple wands. An 8th level wand of lightning bolt costs 18k gp. Unless you're using energy admixture to make the polar ray into a 9th level lightning ray, the wand does more damage than any storm bolt and unless you're defending against a siege or doing shenanigans that let you burn extra charges, you won't use all 50 shots in a single campaign. Beyond low levels, I don't think a feat is worth something you can get for 18k.

Craig1f
2007-12-13, 01:23 PM
Yeah, the Teleport one (can't remember its name at the moment) is a bit nasty for the escaping situations issue, but overall, the reserve feats are pretty low powered. A 17th level character that can blast a single target for 9d6 damage per round? And this is a wizard? Hmmm... that same action could have been used for a much, much nastier attack. For that matter, the Fighter is exceeding that kind of damage every round easily, the rogue is SAing for 9d6 on top of his other damage, and the druid is making them all look bad. :)

The Teleport one though... well, one of the players in my game took it, and he was using it almost constantly. Even wanted to use it to walk along with the rest of the party. Until I pointed out that he was holding up the group. He's got a 20 foot teleport, usable once per round. And a movement rate of 60 feet per move. So by using his nifty magical ability, he was moving at 1/6th his normal rate. Whoops! The ability to get out of grapples is pretty nice, and I think is the really main advantage to this particular feat.

If the party is just single moving, he could make a 60-ft move, followed by a 20-ft teleport, for a total move of 80ft per round.

My Eldritch Disciple (warlock) would use his 50ft Flee the Scene (fancy dim door) power to move 80ft per round (30ft walk with longstrider, 50ft teleport).

It also has the advantage of silencing your movements. You don't risk making noise by walking. And because it's a SLA, you don't have to speak to cast.

KIDS
2007-12-13, 01:28 PM
Reserve feats -> at least from C.Mage - are a mildly good choice at lvl 1-7 when you still run out of spells now and then, but even then they're not very worth it. At high level, they're plain disgusting, underpowered several orders of magnitude.

All in all, if the campaign is made of Helm's Deep styled battles they're great, but 90% of the time they're useless, and that 10% they're just "ok choice". Some exceptions exist, such as grabbing them for half-casting classes, for example a ranger with Storm Bolt or Touch of Healing (C.Champion) is worthwhile and a nice touch.

Anyways, they're quite underpowered but a nice start in moving the game away from the narcolepsy inbred in its character classes (we cast all spells in 5 minutes, sleep for 8 hours, cast again, sleep for 20 hours... and if we don't we're dead meat. No middle ground!). I like them...

p.s. even the most dreaded combo resulting from Reserve feats is not as good as it seems. I'm talking about Precocious Apprentice which gives you a 2nd level spell, which you choose Scorching Ray from and then take Fiery Burst for an endless 2d6 5-foot burst of fire, reflex half as long as your spell is unexpended. Now watch this carefully:

Fiery Burst/Apprentice: 2d6 (avg. 7), Reflex half. Good deal, right?
Heavy Crossbow: 1d10 (avg. 5.5), no save (but attack roll but can crit). At that point you do realize that taking 2x Toughness might have been just the same and maybe even better, and this is the most powerful option of reserve feats.

Suck!!! :smallsmile:

p.s. minor shapeshift is good and a solid choice for full casters, great choice for Hexblades and such.

NobleSavage
2007-12-13, 01:38 PM
Yeah, I'm planning on taking the tele one next level for my wizard/ninja. Just picked up a ring of Xray. No more picking locks, thank you very much, and will make escaping that much easier, being able to jump past walls/doors. Gonna get ugly, especially as our game tends to be heavy on non-combat encounters.

Anyone think of any other magic items that would make any of these feats viable/broken?

Craig1f
2007-12-13, 01:41 PM
Also consider that you could just buy a wand that deals some sort of standard kind of damage. Compare the price of that wand to what you consider a feat to be worth.

I wouldn't take any feat that could be replicated by an item that is worth less than 5000gp.

If you want to be able to constantly attack, consider a wand of magic missile or something. But if you're a wizard, you need to be at full capacity for the really difficult encounters. Let your fighters shine during the easy encounters.

AmberVael
2007-12-13, 01:43 PM
Reserve feats can be handy for non damage purposes.
For wizards they are normally a terrible choice.
For sorcerers they become a much more viable option, since you have limited spells known.
Do remember, however, that they add +1 to your CL of certain spells. That makes them far more handy than they'd otherwise be. That alone can make them good feat choices.
Minor Shapeshift is likely the best of the feats.
Face changer is not bad. Free hat of disguise is fairly nice.
Umbral Shroud (Complete Champion) is fairly interesting. I'd imagine you could get a good use or two out of it.
Sunlight Eyes is quite handy. It's basically the Warlock's Devil Sight invocation.

Still, I'd only take these at lower levels. Once you start getting higher, you'd need to take metamagic.

kjones
2007-12-13, 02:20 PM
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Alacritous Cogitation yet. The wizard in our group gets a lot of mileage out of it; it's perfect for those situations where you're never sure what sort of utility spell you'll need (and don't have the time to leave slots open and prepare stuff as you go). Since this party has spent quite a bit of time in dungeons, it pays off.

It's flavorful, helpful, interesting, and certainly not overpowered. Everything that makes up a good feat.

Craig1f
2007-12-13, 02:30 PM
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Alacritous Cogitation yet. The wizard in our group gets a lot of mileage out of it; it's perfect for those situations where you're never sure what sort of utility spell you'll need (and don't have the time to leave slots open and prepare stuff as you go). Since this party has spent quite a bit of time in dungeons, it pays off.

It's flavorful, helpful, interesting, and certainly not overpowered. Everything that makes up a good feat.

What's that do? I don't know about that one.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-13, 02:37 PM
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Alacritous Cogitation yet. The wizard in our group gets a lot of mileage out of it; it's perfect for those situations where you're never sure what sort of utility spell you'll need (and don't have the time to leave slots open and prepare stuff as you go). Since this party has spent quite a bit of time in dungeons, it pays off.

It's flavorful, helpful, interesting, and certainly not overpowered. Everything that makes up a good feat.

Iiiii'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that no one mentioned it because *it isn't a Reserve Feat*.

It's also massively dwarfed by the totally ridiculous "Uncanny Forethought" feat from Exemplars of Evil.

Uncanny Forethought doesn't require you to be evil, does require Spell Mastery as a prereq, and lets you leave slots open and spontaneously cast Spell Masteried spells from it INT/day... or those INT/day uses can go towards turning prepared spells into ANY SPELL YOU KNOW by upping the casting time one step (so, standard to full-round) and reducing the CL by 2.
Crazy.