Innate Spell
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How does Innate Spell work in the spell point system? spell details below. I think there are other forms of this Feat that produce similar affects, but haven’t pulled them out of my notes yet so there may be better forms of the same ability.
Innate Spell
( Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, p. 36)[General]
You have mastered a spell so thoroughly you can now cast it as a spell-like ability.
Prerequisite
Quicken Spell (PH) , Silent Spell (PH) , Still Spell (PH) ,Benefit
Choose a spell you can cast. You can now cast this spell at will as a spell-like ability, once per round, without needing to prepare it. One spell slot eight levels higher than the innate spell is permanently used to power it. (Note that spell slots above 9th level can be achieved with the rules in the upcoming Epic-Level Campaigns book.) If the innate spell has an XP component, you pay the XP cost each time you use the spell-like ability. If the innate spell has a focus, you do not need the focus to use the spell-like ability. If the innate spell has a costly material component (see the spell description), you need an item worth 50 times that cost to use as the focus for the spell-like ability. If the innate spell has a material component with negligible cost, you do not need the material component to use the spell-like ability. Since an innate spell is a spell-like ability and not an actual spell, - a cleric cannot convert it to a cure spell or an inflict spell, nor can , it be converted to a signature spell (see the Signature Spell feat). Divine spellcasters who become unable to cast divine spells cannot use divine innate spells.Special
You can choose this feat more than once, selecting another spell each time. You have to pay the costs in spell slots, focuses, and material components for each innate spell you acquire. -
@halfgiant said in Innate Spell:
How does Innate Spell work in the spell point system?
No one ever asked.
Losing a spell slot means losing a single spell per day with the old casting rules.
Specifically losing a 9th level spell per day to gain a 1st level spell at will.
I am not sure that a permanent reduction of you mana pool by 9 spell points is as much of a cost.
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you’re basically permanently reducing your manapool to fuel an “at will” ability…
Erok did it with Stoneswimming (which apparently cloud has forgotten over the ybeers), the psionic Adapt Body - Earth, which at the time cost him something like 25 psp’s permanently gone out of his psionic pool -
@dwarf said in Innate Spell:
Erok did it with Stoneswimming (which apparently cloud has forgotten over the ybeers)
I don’t recall it being permanent. I just assumed he was burning PSP all the time.
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@dwarf said in Innate Spell:
you’re basically permanently reducing your manapool to fuel an “at will” ability…
Right, I’m simply not sure if 9 spell points for a 1st level spell is enough.
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guess i look at it as - if a mage is willing to permanently burn 1-2 levels worth of his manapool to plink out magic missiles, who am i to argue ? considering that warlocks get a new “at will” invocation every 2 levels too, which tend to be a lot stronger than a 1st lvl spell…
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@dwarf said in Innate Spell:
guess i look at it as - if a mage is willing to permanently burn 1-2 levels worth of his manapool to plink out magic missiles, who am i to argue ? considering that warlocks get a new “at will” invocation every 2 levels too, which tend to be a lot stronger than a 1st lvl spell…
I’m also assuming that people will not just be dropping magic missile at will.
Epic level feats create spell slots above 9 and thus spells above 1 can be made at will.
I am also fairly certain that there are feats to let metamagic be used on innate abilities.
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riiiight… but even if you bump it a few notches, its still just the ability to honk off a locked spell effect. whether its a fireball at will (at 12 points, which’d be 3 levels of manapool burned for a standard 18 int wizard) or a Dregnothian Quickened Twinned Acidic Fireball (at twice that for 6 levels of manapool burn for a typical wizbang or a lil’ over 3 levels for the mad one himself @ int24)
i mean, is that REALLY gonna tip the cosmic balance overmuch ??
“Don’t mess with the NEW dregnoth, he’ll melt your face off !!”
… “Versus how he’d just eat me or dissect me, like before… umm, okay.” -
So to complicate matters a smidge.
If i wanted to choose fireball (3rd level spell - 3 spell points)
Add in Arcane Thesis - When casting that spell, you do so at +2 caster level. When you apply any metamagic feats other than Heighten Spell to that spell, the enhanced spell uses up a spell slot one level lower than normal.
A empowered maximized fireball would works as follows:
+1 for empowered, down from +2, and +2 levels for maximized, down from +3 - fireball is a third level spell so we would be using 6 spell points to generate the following -Arcane Thesis + Empowered + Maximized Fireball (now 6-points)
Adding on Innate Spell ( to be a bastard of course ), technically not a metamagic feat so no Arcane thesis reduction, so we have a +8 adder.
Now we have -
Innate Spell + Arcane Thesis + Empowered + Maximized Fireball = 14 spell points permanently removed from your pool, but you can cast that spell at will.So using Kargin as a example a 13th level spell caster + practiced spellcaster(+4) + Arcane Thesis (+2) he is casting a at-will spell 19th level. Which equates to -
19d6 (maximized - 114) * 1.5 = 171 (at-will) in damage.The cost of that is he is now carrying two feats permanently that are specifically for a single at-will spell, and has burned 14 spell points out of his pool permanently.
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so more thinking…
thins is workable.Innate is +8 levels? Not sober at the moment…
buring 3+8 spell points permanently would let you cast fireball at willl.
I can see this… comments?
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I don’t see this as being overpowered or unreasonable and to have a at-will power should come at considerable cost. Even in the example i gave, I’m really finding it difficult to come up with a good example that justified a permanent mana pool reduction though.
I think its not the permanent mana pool cost, as much as you have to now carry that feat permanently, consuming that feat slot plus the pool reduction.
Have to ponder some more.
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IMUHO it would appear, mathemagically, to justify the cost and trouble of innating spells you use EVERY time you play.
something like an innate Big Ohm, for example, would make sense for any of the party’s healers and save them serious spellpoints in the long run (not to mention making them virtual messiahs as they bop from town to town).
stoneswim, for erok, was the obvious choice as he used it almost every session he was toying with the idea of innate kinetic control, energy containment and 2-d weapon when that campaign ended - for the same reason…
innate Fly, on the other hand, makes more sense as a magic item (to dregs) merely because a persistent one isn’t that much drain on his manapool… -
Innate heal is pretty good one, but with the creation of regenable big ohms it looses a bit of its attractiveness. Does the use of a innate spell, make the heal a free action or does it mean a standard action.
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@halfgiant said in Innate Spell:
spell-like ability.
Per the original post here, it becomes a spell-like ability.
Spell-like abilities are always a standard action.