Must Know X Spell... [3.5]

[Zaq]

So, there are a handful of PrCs out there that require you to know a certain spell. Off the top of my head I can think of Dread Witch, Sacred Exorcist, Arcane Trickster, Mindbender, and Skypledged, and that's without opening a book.

For arcane casters, on the whole, whether or not you qualify is pretty cut and dried. If you choose the target spell as a Sorcerer known spell, or if it happens to be on the Beguiler list, then you're golden... and while I could see the twistiest rule misinterpretations denying a wizard with the target spell in their spellbook (assuming they can cast a spell of that level and school, naturally) access, I don't buy it for a second. I don't think it makes any sense that you have to have the spell currently prepared, because otherwise you'd disqualify yourself every time you ran out of spell slots, and that would be downright silly. I don't expect too much disagreement on this front, really.

For divine casters, we're also pretty ok. I don't see any reasonable way of telling a Cleric she "doesn't count as being able to cast" a spell on her list just because she chose to prepare something different. Domains change things slightly, of course, but not appreciably. For the forgotten spontaneous casters, the Shugenja and the Favored Soul, it's pretty much the same as the Sorcerer... if you chose it, you're good. So far so good. There's very little ambiguity on any front, here... so let's get to the curveball that inspired me to post this in the first place.

What about the Spirit Shaman?

On the one hand, the Spirit Shaman is like the Cleric or Druid in that just because she didn't choose the target spell today doesn't mean she can't have it ready to go tomorrow. However, the Spirit Shaman doesn't prep spells... she preps a spell list, really. She's kind of like a Sorcerer who gets an automatic Psychic Reformation every morning. Complete Divine does contain the line (on pg. 16) "Like a sorcerer, a spirit shaman knows only a small number of spells." (Emphasis mine.) This indicates that a Spirit Shaman doesn't "know" any spell that her imaginary friend spirit guide didn't retrieve this morning. That said, we come back to the whole "just because you don't have it RIGHT NOW doesn't mean you don't have it" thing (taken to its extreme, the "must have it RIGHT NOW" argument would indicate that a 6th level Sorcerer who burns all of his highest slots loses the prerequisites for any class that requires him to be "able to cast 3rd level spells"), which is just ugly.

So, what do you think? It's an interesting corner case, at least. Thoughts?

[gbprime]

Rules as written state that you have to be capable of casting it, not that you always have it ready to cast. So long as you have that capability, you're good.

A Spirit Shaman could choose different spells one day and still qualify for their PrC, but a Cleric who only qualifies for a PrC while a Candle is burning, for example, will be unable to access any of the PrC abilities without the candle lit.