The Noctuary (D&D 3.5e, Level 20+ Adventure)

[chaincomplex]

Also, would you allow: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/alertness/
(So in our case +2 Spot/ Listen and Sense Motive?)
It's a crappy prerequisite for a PrC, hence my "interest".

Nope. This is a much better implementation, yes. But where D&D and PF overlap I'm going with D&D. The role of allowing limited PF imports is to fill in gaps, not to better D&D.

@chaincomplex- Just for clarification, does that mean I can use it now, or as I put it forward, as an epic progression? Because if I can use it now, I'll do so.

It's permitted as a prestige class, straight up. For everyone, not just for you, taken as you will.

Regarding Bloodlines: I think capping caster/initiator/binding/... level to ECL and saying "no shenanigans" (e.g. you can't use the augmented skill rank limit AND later buy off the Bloodline level) would curb pretty much any abuse. What remains is fairly weak LA.

A simple solution might be to say that CL can't exceed ECL? That way, even if you buy off the bloodline levels, you'd need to have dropped CLs somewhere to benefit. It's a small buff to any remaining LA, but not so much that it really affects anything (and if you were trying to cheese CLs, it's still an overall nerf, which is slightly mitigated by the LA).

Yeah, alright. I've made my final ruling: go ahead and treat bloodline "levels" as LA instead. Explicitly: you can buy them off. But they add to your LA!

General idea: the onus has always been on the tacit contract between player and the game not to grab feats like Item Familiar and push it to its nutty limits. With this in mind, I'll assume you're not going to do any silly tricks with bloodlines, and that you'll let me know if you feel like you're being weird with bloodlines. I'm not even sure most early qualifications are particularly strong anyways, so I don't want to ban them full out.

Is it acceptable to use this formula/table for pricing out metamagic rods that don't otherwise appear in the books?

Yes. But only for the ones that don't appear, as stupid as pricing may be. No need to ad hoc away from RAW here.

Separate question, since I can't really find a straight answer one way or the other in the RAW: can one apply metamagic rods to spell completion/spell trigger items? If the answer is definitely "no" for wizards on the grounds that you think metamagic can't be applied to spells from items, can it be a "yes" for artificer since I have class features specifically allowing me to apply metamagic feats to spells from items?

I think a careful reading of RAW suggests the answer is no generically, since the metamagic rods confer an ability that is in most aspects like having the respective feats, which cannot be applied to spell completion or spell trigger items for anyone. But by this same token, the answer is yes for Artificers, straight out of RAW, since they can apply metamagic feats to their spell completion or spell trigger items.

Finally, requesting Easy Metamagic feat (dragon 325 pg 62).

Ah, a classic opti tool. Go ahead. Use this power wisely.

I hear Planar Shepard is very very cheesy so I'm keen to avoid it.

It's very strong. In fact AFAIK it might be unequivocally the best build for druid as it advances every important class feature and replaces useless ones with superior alternatives. But unless your chosen plane is an absolute meme, like Dal Quor or something, it's not necessarily pure cheese.

I am also debating with myself whether Able Learner feat si worth taking, with the game-rule "Once in class, always inclass".

Yeah, that ruling definitely reduced the value of Able Learner. But Able Learner is a prereq for at least one pretty good generalist PrC so YMMV.