Talk:Augmented Thaumaturge (3.5e Feat)

It Probably too Strong

It by far superior to all of the similar feat on the wiki, probably because it HD limit is equal to your HD. I personally would make it HD-1 or something. --Leziad (talk) 20:53, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Stronger than Divine Metamagic? Plus, HD - 1 doesn't seem like a very meaningful change, if you want the power to be lowered. Also, I don't see it breaking the game--how is it "too strong" when it's potentially VH? (I put unquantifiable because someone might choose... like, Paladin or Adept or something as their chosen class.) --Ghostwheel (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

There VH things that are too strong, looking at most of these [spellcasting] feats by example... As for it being unquant, I don't particularly mind. DMM Persist is really really strong, but it also much more specialized. In any case, losing caster level and not being a full caster is usually the reason why most full caster don't do dips or take LA, losing even one or more caster level mean you are going to get your Godly power significantly later than the rest of the party (especially if you are a sorc). The tricky thing is that making it HD-1 still make them suffer from the trade off, yes they are better at everything because of the dip/LA but their spellcasting suffer. In it current from I do not see why every wizard wouldn't take a LA 2 template/race of do a 2 level in dip in some really strong class and just alleviate all losses with a single feat. --Leziad (talk) 21:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Small correction RHD 2, not LA 2. It based on HD no CL. Silly me. --Leziad (talk) 21:46, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Why doesn't every character just not take 14 levels of non-wizard and then fill up those levels with this feat? Because it's the use of feats. If there aren't any VH feats made for wizards that are worth taking, then people should start working on those IMO. (And the argument, "wizards are strong enough already, they don't need VH feats, so we won't make any" isn't really a good one, since clerics are way strong even with the crappy domains in core, and people here are making custom ones that are far stronger than those created by WotC, giving them even bigger power boosts via homebrew).

That said, I'm still not seeing this as being too strong, considering this doesn't let you be any better than an actual wizard. It doesn't increase vertical power compared to potentially other characters. So I'm not seeing it as "too powerful". --Ghostwheel (talk) 21:51, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Minor nitpick. The reason there aren't any good wizard feats isn't that there aren't any good wizard feats (there are), but the feats tend to specialize wizards to being good at something. For example, metamagic. They can take more and more awesome metamagic feats, but they run into action economy issues. That is, it doesn't matter if you have 100 bazookas, if you can only fire one at a time.

Why does this feat stack by the way? Most default to non-stacking for the purpose of forcing the choice of being a wizard with a little bit of fighting, or being behind on the casting. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 21:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I would say that most metamagic feats are far from being VH on their own. Want an example of something that would probably be a high-VH feat? Spend a spell of level X as a free action, you can automatically apply a metamagic feat that you possess on your next spell cast that bumps spell level by X or lower. Boom, that's the kind of power VH feats should have.

And two reasons; first, to give people the option of spending all their feats to be mostly-casters if they want (or if you want to tone it down, only allow it to apply to ... adepts or psywars or something in your campaign). Second, why shouldn't you be able to spend that resource? Why do you NEED to have the choice between being a wizard or a fighter? In VH-land, feats are STRONG (heya, Combat School and your daze per attack). Warriors are STRONG (here's looking at you, Tome Fighter). Even if you could be a wizard AND a fighter, you're still not getting more actions than anyone else. You're just getting more options. Unless you're counting swift actions to cast quickened spells, but if a VH fighter doesn't have anything to do with their swift actions, then they're just asking for it. --Ghostwheel (talk) 22:18, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

You are right, most metamagic feats are not VH, but some are. More to the point is that the addition of options was running into a completely different barrier (action economy).

The funny thing. The examples you gave as VH material is all examples of what I consider VH trash. VH still has a ceiling after all. Your suggested feat sits poorly with me too th... oh, and it's a thing. At the very least it has a pre-req (which was something I heard it hadn't at first, it's good you have it there). It's still far too easy and I would argue it is more broken than Divine Metamagic. There's reasons for this I will go over on the appropriate talk page over there. Back on subject.

I don't know what to rate this right now. The idea, restoring lost caster levels, is sound. The stacking concerns me. Though there are limited feats, I know that's not actually consistent. And all of the class features which matter in wizard is the spellcasting, so the idea you can choose to gestalt in a non-gestalt game (at the cost of many of your feats). I really don't know.

Mulling a bit more, lemme go address that new feat. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)