Trafficking with the Genies: a Sha'ir Handbook

[Saintheart]

Nice handbook! Always been interested in the Sha'ir, it's good to see someone take an in-depth look at it.

That said, some slight comments: I'd take out the reference to making runestones out of arcane spells under Alternative Source Spell, because if that's referring to the Runecaster PrC or the Inscribe Rune feat, you'll likely need several DM RAW judgments to make that trick work.

First, there's the issue that Inscribe Rune itself, the item creation feat that allows you to create runes, has a prerequisite of "divine spellcaster level 3rd". I get that you're saying that because this class can cast divine spells it therefore is a divine spellcaster on your reading, but that's going to need a DM adjudication, particularly given the class's description is "a flexible arcane spellcaster who relies on a spirit ally to fetch his spells from across the planes".

Second, there's the issue that crafting runes via the Inscribe Rune feat requires that the spell to be placed in the rune must be prepared. So again, it's a DM ruling about whether getting the spells in via the Sha'ir's gen counts as preparing the spells, noting that you can draw on the fact the Sha'ir's text tells us that "Once retrieved, a spell remains set in the sha'ir's memory, like a wizard's prepared spell".

Third, if you're going into the Runecaster PrC, there's good odds it won't advance the Sha'ir's casting, since that looks to be arcane rather than divine.


As has been said further above, the cute trick of removing ACF chance because it's prepared as a divine spell is already a sweet exploit for Alternative Source Spell. I wouldn't worry about the capacity to make runes, it takes too many DM RAW rulings in your favour in my view.