Are Reserve feats worthwhile?

[Tempest Fennac]

I was just looking over http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/featsform.pl due to several people mentioning Reserve Feats lately, and I thought they looked interresting, but I'm not sure about how worthwhile they are. Touch of Healing looks good for large parties and Summon Elemental can be cheesy, but some of the others look weak. Also, shouldn't Storm Bolt have a Rflex save for half damage?

[UserClone]

Well, the short answer is: depends. Depends on what you want to get out of it. Do you want to have something you can use essentially all day, that you can smite mooks with so as not to waste your spells? They're great! Are you looking to be killing something every round, all day long? Not realistic, sadly. Also, it depends on the type of campaign setting. Are you somewhere or otherwise in a situation where you won't have much/any time to refresh spells? Well, they can save your butt in that case! At low/low-mid levels is where they shine the most, because much higher than that and you'll basically have enough spells to last you the day anyhow.

[Hal]

I think the one which gets the most love on these boards (IIRC) was Dimensional Jaunt. YMMV.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

They're pretty useful. Some suck, but Dimensional Jaunt is good, and the secondary benefits usually make you better at what you already do.

Actually, has anyone seen Minor Shapeshift? Use the Vigor benefit for temp hit points equal to your HD and make the enemies even more useless.

[Jack_Simth]

I was just looking over http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/featsform.pl due to several people mentioning Reserve Feats lately, and I thought they looked interresting, but I'm not sure about how worthwhile they are. Touch of Healing looks good for large parties and Summon Elemental can be cheesy, but some of the others look weak.

Most of them are weak. That's part of the point. However, quite a few of them are useful if you're looking at them from the right perspective (do note: Most of these are at least slightly specialized).

Minor Shapeshift is a very good feat for a Gish, Druid, or anyone who expects to be in melee, can qualify, and will usually have their free action available - for just the temp HP aspect. Renew it every round. It's Improved Toughness on steroids.

Dimensional Jaunt is great for a Wizard who has a DM that enjoys grappling - you can use it while pinned and threatened with no roll, as it's a Su ability (no components, no concentration check).

Face Changer is pretty much designed for the Beguiler - it makes one of their first-level spells usable at whim. Only useful in decidedly social campaigns, though.

The direct-damage ones (yes, I'm grouping them all together) are also Su abilities - which means if you're up against something that's got too much SR for you to beat, you can still attack it directly. They're also usable at will - which means you could (theoretically, anyway) use them to tunnel. This is also a very useful note when you're using Reserve feats to make the Wizard into the trapmonkey (as you can physically destroy most traps).

Sunlight Eyes is darkvision at the cost of a feat and a spell slot that penetrates even magical darkness with no exceptions. That's hard to get.

You're clearly already aware of the uses for Summon Elemental.

Mostly, though, they're for flavoring. As a Full Caster is already at the top of the heap from a power perspective, why not?

Also, shouldn't Storm Bolt have a Rflex save for half damage?

It was added in the errata, which Realmshelps apparently doesn't include.

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for telling me. I know what you mean about them being great for flavour. Holy Warrior looks really useful for a melle Cleric, and I know what you guys mean about Monor Shapeshift being good.

[Vortling]

I was just looking over http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/featsform.pl due to several people mentioning Reserve Feats lately, and I thought they looked interresting, but I'm not sure about how worthwhile they are. Touch of Healing looks good for large parties and Summon Elemental can be cheesy, but some of the others look weak. Also, shouldn't Storm Bolt have a Rflex save for half damage?

As others have noted they're situationally useful. The most important note here is that full casters usually don't get the most benefit from these feats. The classes that get the most benefit tend to be the half casters like bards, factotums, and multiclass characters.

[Kurald Galain]

Most of them aren't worth it. However, Dimensional Jaunt is good, as is Summon Elemental, and Acidic Splatter if you've got a few rogue levels for sneak attacking (or if you want to nuke objects).

And I'd be tempted to take Dimensional Reach simply because it's funny, and Face Changer might be useful in certain social/political campaigns.

And yes, Storm Bolt should have a ref save.

[Tempest Fennac]

I know what you mean about Storm Bolt (would it work as a Ranged Touch attack as well? I'm guessing it would be about as powerful as the Acidic Splatter feat if it was right? I was just thinking that it could be used like that against single targets based on the description and the lack of a save).

[Kurald Galain]

I know what you mean about Storm Bolt (would it work as a Ranged Touch attack as well?

I don't think that's the intent; it is a "line" and therefore an area attack. I believe the idea is to make one reserve feat for every possible attack form - hence we have one ranged touch attack, one ranged non-touch, a cone, a blast, and so forth.

[Tempest Fennac]

That is a good point (I hadn't noticed the other areas of effect). I know it was intended as multi-target attack (I was mainly thinking about the lack of saving throw suggesting that it could be used as a RT attack instead).

[LibraryOgre]

I've often heard that they're more useful for Sorcerers than Wizards... with a bit of planning, they can let your sorcerer have a wide variety of abilities that he can use all day.

[Tempest Fennac]

That is an interresting idea (to be honest, I thought they were better for casters who stored spells ue to them only needing to use 1 spell sopt to use these feats, but I can see how they would be good for Sorcerers). Which ones would you recommend for a Sorcerer? I'm guessing that Magic Disruption could be good for some builds, and Born Aloft looks neat.

[Kurald Galain]

Born Aloft looks neat.

Except for the fact that you have to land at the end of your turn, and that if you actually have access to fifth-level air spells you can just as easily cast Overland Flight.

Oh yeah, a nice trick I've seen used once or twice is that casting a high-level spell requires a minimum ability score, whereas using said spell to empower a reserve feat does not.

[AmberVael]

They're better for Spontaneous casters because as long as you KNOW spells that correspond to the reserve feats, and you have a slot open that could utilize it, you can use the reserve feat.
You can have fun with this in a variety of ways.

Lets say you have Minor Shapeshift, Acid Splatter, Storm Bolt, and... Dimensional Jaunt.
A prepared caster would have to have one of each type of spell prepared, and after he cast those spells, he couldn't use the reserve feats.
On the other hand, a spontaneous caster would just have to know the spell- he could toss out spell slots left and right, and as long as he had ONE slot left, and knew all of the spells he'd need for the above feats, he could still use every single one.
You can also have fun with this if you get Heighten Spell. Suddenly, as long as you have a spell of any level for your reserve feats known, you can use your reserve feats at the highest level spell slot you have left.

[Tempest Fennac]

That is interresting about Empower. Could I just check an example of how it works, please? If a level 14 sorcerer had 1 level 3 spell slot and Lightning Bolt along with Storm Bolt, they would be able to use Empower spell for free in order to get Storm Bolt to cause 7d6 of damage as long as they had 1 level 7 spell slot left, right? (I just wanted to check that it worked that way.)

[Eldritch_Ent]

No, I think you'd need "Empower Supernatural Ability" for that.

I've gotten a surprising amount of work out of the Thunderclap (Sonic Touch attack) and Elemental Summoning reserve feats. Earth Elementals are great for looking around in subterranean areas (Especially if your DM doesn't enforce the range limitation), and you can at least use them to flank and set off traps. Thunderclap is great when you don't really have anything better to do with your actions anyway- At least I think so. It beats clubbing things with a quarterstaff when you're out of spells.

Of course, if you have some way of changing elements, such as Arcane Master of Elements from Archmage, Acid Splatter might be better in the long run since it has a range of 45 feet rather than touch, although in my month of searching I have yet to find a level 9 [Acid] spell.

[Tempest Fennac]

I don't know if your familiar with Domain Wizards, but a lot of the spells they get are versions of existing spells with different elemesnts, so you could make an Acid Domain and use an Acid version of Meteor Swarm: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/cl...ntDomainWizard

[LibraryOgre]

The way I'm reading it, your Reserve abilities cannot be affected by metamagic BUT some people think that you can use the Heighten metamagic to qualify for a reserve feat when you are a spontaneous caster. For example, a 6th level sorcerer who has the Acid Splash cantrip, Heighten Spell, and the Acidic Splatter reserve feat would be able to, by this interpretation, use a 3D6 Acidic blast at a range of 15 feet... because he CAN cast Acid Splash as a 3rd level spell.

[Tempest Fennac]

Thanks for the clarification. I don't think they were designed to work like that looking at the descriptions.

[Jack_Simth]

They're better for Spontaneous casters because as long as you KNOW spells that correspond to the reserve feats, and you have a slot open that could utilize it, you can use the reserve feat.
You can have fun with this in a variety of ways.

Lets say you have Minor Shapeshift, Acid Splatter, Storm Bolt, and... Dimensional Jaunt.
A prepared caster would have to have one of each type of spell prepared, and after he cast those spells, he couldn't use the reserve feats.
On the other hand, a spontaneous caster would just have to know the spell- he could toss out spell slots left and right, and as long as he had ONE slot left, and knew all of the spells he'd need for the above feats, he could still use every single one.
You can also have fun with this if you get Heighten Spell. Suddenly, as long as you have a spell of any level for your reserve feats known, you can use your reserve feats at the highest level spell slot you have left.

Catch:
If you read the Reserve Feat type header in Complete Mage, it spells out that a spontaneous caster must know a spell that fits at that level. Heighten spell doesn't apply for them. Prepared casters can make use of Heighten Spell, although they're probably better off researching a spell that really serves no other function than to meet the requirements for all/most of their reserve feats, and Heighten that.

Of course, if you have some way of changing elements, such as Arcane Master of Elements from Archmage, Acid Splatter might be better in the long run since it has a range of 45 feet rather than touch, although in my month of searching I have yet to find a level 9 [Acid] spell.

As a prepared caster, you just need Heighten Spell (Acid Fog works well for that) or Energy Substitution[Acid]. You could also research something - it's not like a 1d6/level direct-damage spell is going to be broken at any level.

But yes - due to the wording on Su abilities acting just like spells except for a short list of things, the Archmage's Mastery of Elements technically applies to the Su ability of Acidic Splatter.

[AmberVael]

Ah yes, the dreaded "metamagic enhanced spells do not count as known spells" argument.

A spellcaster who does not need to prepare spells (such as a sorcerer) must know an appropriate spell and must have at least one unused spell slot of that spell's level or higher. If the character has more than one appropriate spell known, he gains the benefit only from the highest-level spell for which he has an unused spell slot of that level or higher.

So the requirements are this:
1) Know a spell that fits the feat's requirements
2) Have an unused spell slot that you can use to cast said spell.

There is a clause as well:
You're basing the benefit from the highest level spell known that you can cast.

However, it never says said spells can't be increased in level by Heighten spell, it only says that the ones known have to be high enough level to qualify, and that you need a spell slot to use them. You have to base the effect off of the highest level spell you have- which is fine, it just means you heighten that one rather than all of the others.

[Eldritch_Ent]

Actually, to power my reserve feat my GM lets me prepare a summoning spell as a specific creature at the beggining of each day. (IE Summon Monster 5 becomes "Summon Acid Elemental 5".) Gives me less flexibility (I can't just summon any old monster from a spell prepared that way) but it gives me a spell with both the [summon] and [acid] descriptors to work off of for my reserve feats.

[Kurald Galain]

Ah yes, the dreaded "metamagic enhanced spells do not count as known spells" argument.

That you can cast a 3rd-level spell in a higher slot through metamagic, doesn't change the fact that it is a third-level spell.

In other words, it's not RAW; you can try to convince your DM to rule it that way, but I would not be surprised if he denies it on grounds of rules lawyering.

[Idea Man]

Probably the surest way around that problem would be to use the optional rule to have a metamagic-enhanced spell as a permanent selection. In other words, have Heightened Lightning Bolt as one of your 6th level spell selections. Not optimal, by any means, but certainly a legal, unambiguous option.

And, yes, I know chain lightning would be better.

[monty]

That you can cast a 3rd-level spell in a higher slot through metamagic, doesn't change the fact that it is a third-level spell.

In other words, it's not RAW; you can try to convince your DM to rule it that way, but I would not be surprised if he denies it on grounds of rules lawyering.

Uh, no.

A heightened spell has a higher spell level than normal (up to a maximum of 9th level). Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies. All effects dependent on spell level are calculated according to the heightened level. The heightened spell is as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level.

Emphasis mine, and a parenthetical example was eliminated for clarity. A level X spell heightened to level Y is, for all purposes, level Y.

[Draz74]

Dimensional Jaunt is great for a Wizard who has a DM that enjoys grappling - you can use it while pinned and threatened with no roll, as it's a Su ability (no components, no concentration check).

I think I read in Sage Advice that, technically, there's nothing that says [Su] abilities are among the abilities you can actually use while grappled. (I imagine many DMs would allow it, but under the strictest enforcement of grappling rules, apparently this trick doesn't work.)

[Talic]

Emphasis mine, and a parenthetical example was eliminated for clarity. A level X spell heightened to level Y is, for all purposes, level Y.

I believe he was referring to other metamagics.

It is worth noting that spontaneous casters can't take advantage of this, as they don't apply metamagic to spells until they cast, and the original spell may not qualify.

Same applies to Archmage's mastery of elements. Sure you can cast Meteor Swarm as a level 9 acid spell, but until you change it, you only have a level 9 fire spell available.

[Leon]

Touch of Healing is a Life saver of a feat.

Ah, i had guess that the days of Glory on Storm bolt would come to an end (i wasn't allowed to take on my druid for that reason)

Save or Not, i have a backup character idea for the current game that involves Stormbolt and Call lightning in a bit of Quasi Techomancing
a Variant Evoker (Electrical Affinity) with the Arcane Disciple feat in the Storm domain
He has a small object* bound with copper and such connected to a glove array that projects the bolts


*Those who know IK, think Storm chamber