Wizard Bonus Feats


Pathfinder Society

2/5

Wizards receive bonus feats at 5th and 10th level that must be item creation feats, metamagic feats, or Spell Mastery.

Since no item creation feats are allowed in PFS, would it make sense to allow wizards to take a Spell Focus feat instead? Or Spell Penetration?

Otherwise you're forcing the player to take two metamagic feats for a class with only 8 feats, since no one I know would ever consider taking Spell Mastery.

I'm not saying metamagic feats are bad, they're just not something every player wants to use.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

With UM, you can also use the bonus feats to select discoveries.

The Exchange 5/5

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

As Joel mentioned, there are plenty of options available for Wizards to use these feats on. Remember that Wizards already get a free spell focus at first level to replace the loss of Scribe Scroll.


Kyle Pratt wrote:
Remember that Wizards already get a free spell focus at first level to replace the loss of Scribe Scroll.

one could easily argue that it is almost implied that spell focus is added to the list because of the fact that scribe scroll is automatically replaced with a spell focus feat.

most of the discoveries suck.

in my opinion the list of options really should be officially expanded to at least include spell focus.

Dark Archive 4/5

Feral Speech, Fast Study, Opposition Research, Split Slot and Staff-like-wand are all really good! That's 5/10 and 3/5 of the remaining aren't allowed and Immortality you cannot get until 20th. That leaves Multimorph, which is situational at best.


Todd Morgan wrote:
Feral Speech, Fast Study, Opposition Research, Split Slot and Staff-like-wand are all really good! That's 5/10 and 3/5 of the remaining aren't allowed and Immortality you cannot get until 20th. That leaves Multimorph, which is situational at best.

2 more with the addition of faiths of purity. Not sure how good they are in play however.


Todd Morgan wrote:
Feral Speech, Fast Study, Opposition Research, Split Slot and Staff-like-wand are all really good! That's 5/10 and 3/5 of the remaining aren't allowed and Immortality you cannot get until 20th. That leaves Multimorph, which is situational at best.

i'm pretty sure that staff like wand wouldn't be legal in society play due to the pre-req... and that's the only one on this list that looks good to me.

PS. it seems pretty clear in my mind that what is "good" is a matter of how your play style, concept, and how you're building the wizard come together... and to a certain extent personal opinion. I think the fact that they eliminated so many good choices for those bonus feats by outlawing item creation is reason enough to add at least some other options... spell focus seems like one of the most obvious due to the swap they give for scribe scroll.


Most of my GMs have banned item creation feats to begin with actually. I don't think its a huge hit. Metamagic is pretty powerful, and a great option, though not everyone likes it. I think its a little wierd spell focus isn't a choice, nor other wizard specific feats.

Another two options are Yuelral's Blessing and Steward of the Great Beyond.


MrSin wrote:

Most of my GMs have banned item creation feats to begin with actually. I don't think its a huge hit. Metamagic is pretty powerful, and a great option, though not everyone likes it. I think its a little wierd spell focus isn't a choice, nor other wizard specific feats.

Another two options are Yuelral's Blessing and Steward of the Great Beyond.

I'm not disputing that there are options that a lot of people will like, I just think it makes sense to provide alternatives if you are eliminating options. it's not like they just outlawed 1 feat choice... it's a huge proportion of the possible options that have been eliminated.

PS. furthermore, if the available options are so good, why not allow spell focus or spell penetration or spell specialization as well?


P.P.S. I must admit, Forest's Blessing actually looks pretty awesome... but I would have to spend $10 if I wanted to use it :(


gniht wrote:
P.P.S. I must admit, Forest's Blessing actually looks pretty awesome... but I would have to spend $10 if I wanted to use it :(

Yeah, its quiet a bit of bookkeeping to remember which spells it applies to. I put a little asterisk by spells in my spell book it applies to when I learn them. You can try to borrow faiths of purity from a friend maybe. On the other hand, 10 dollars is like... 10 tacos. I'd rather have the tacos.


MrSin wrote:
On the other hand, 10 dollars is like... 10 tacos. I'd rather have the tacos.

haha, that makes me want to start a "tacos vs player companions" thread.

i'm thinking tacos by a landslide.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 *** Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant

gniht wrote:
it's not like they just outlawed 1 feat choice... it's a huge proportion of the possible options that have been eliminated.

Huge proportion eliminated?

Went and counted, ~12 Item Creation feats vs. ~39 Metamagic and 1 Spell Mastery

I don't consider 1/5 a huge proportion of the options. You've still got ~77% of other options available and that's not even counting the discoveries.


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Eric Clingenpeel wrote:
gniht wrote:
it's not like they just outlawed 1 feat choice... it's a huge proportion of the possible options that have been eliminated.

Huge proportion eliminated?

Went and counted, ~12 Item Creation feats vs. ~39 Metamagic and 1 Spell Mastery

I don't consider 1/5 a huge proportion of the options. You've still got ~77% of other options available and that's not even counting the discoveries.

perhaps this is a matter of personal opinion, but I think 23% is huge.

PS. when you look at a wizard build up to level 20, then picking up more meta also seems a lot better than if you're looking at a build retiring at 12th, which is the typical situation in PFS afaik.

Dark Archive 4/5

Feral Speech is kind of awesome. This is one of the only ways for a wizard to get speak with animals, and you get it at will! Split Slot and Fast Study both make for a much more versatile spellcaster.

For metamagic, Extend Spell, Empower Spell, Persistent Spell, Quicken Spell, and several others should leave you with no problems picking things.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 *

Wraith: I must admit Ive had similar issues with my Fire Elementalist and do agree that the spell focus (or even Elemental focus) feats could be lumped into the mix here. I generally try to build ahead in regards to characters and I herolab my characters ahead so I can see what they might be down the road and Ive always struggled with the picking of feats for him.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

I took Silent Spell at 5th level and it has worked for me, but I feel a majority of discoveries are situational when used in PFS. But, they add some flavor and variety to the character. At 10th level, I took opposition research.


Silh wrote:
I took Silent Spell at 5th level and it has worked for me, but I feel a majority of discoveries are situational when used in PFS. But, they add some flavor and variety to the character. At 10th level, I took opposition research.

yeah there are some (conceptually) cool things to get, but when you look at how few higher-level slots you'll have to play with through most of your career up to 12th... it's hard to imagine wanting much in the way of meta. they're still usable but for the most part are best applied from rods. if going all the way to 20th it'd be a bit different story but how it looks to me the bulk of the metamagic aren't really good options as things to drop feats on... in fact, most seem almost completely unusable unless you have something like the magical lineage trait for the spell.

maybe i'm being overly pessimistic and in a couple more levels i'll have spell slots galore but at the moment it seems prohibitive to prepare a spell with persistent or empower, and even a +1 slot level increase seems really rough to me. I could see having metamagic feats would be much more worthwhile to a spontaneous caster, but we're obviously talking about wizards.

Scarab Sages

i feel at the very least improved familiar should be legal since its only useful for the wizard for most metamagic feats your better of with a lesser metamagic rod the only metamagic feat i like is extend spell since the others aren't worth the spellslot

3/5 5/5

Fast study is utterly bonkers. One minute to fill a spell slot. One minute. One of the strengths of the alchemist is being able to create an extract in one minute, and that's with a limited spell list. When you have the best spell list in the game, being able to produce a spell as needed with one minute of downtime is ridiculously good.

1/5

My wizard took extend and intensify at 5th and 10th and makes significant use of both, intensified snowballs turn out to be very useful. He also took Opposition Research with a normal feat at 9th because getting rid of an entire opposition school made him much more flexible.

I really cannot see ever having any trouble picking bonus feats from the legal choices.

4/5

hmmmm, I can see the point of not just whittling down from a balance perspective (assuming everything is balanced "as is").
I can see adding some replacement choices. PFS tries to stick as closely to the basic game with minimal changes. This means a thumbs down("no") to adding more change.
The class should have been compensated for losing crafting and that didn't happen.

So this was just an impact of banning magic item creation. There are a lot of good options left AND you get a feat at level 5 from character advancement which is not restricted. So overall this isn't a restriction if you just pretend the magic item feats aren't there. It's going to hit home more at 15, 20 when you've taken most of the desirable choices for the character design, but then again immortality can come in handy.

for the home game comment - I can't see banning magic item creation. Home games are all about individual creativity and what not.

Grand Lodge 5/5

Stephen Ross wrote:

hmmmm, I can see the point of not just whittling down from a balance perspective (assuming everything is balanced "as is").

I can see adding some replacement choices. PFS tries to stick as closely to the basic game with minimal changes. This means a thumbs down("no") to adding more change.
The class should have been compensated for losing crafting and that didn't happen.

So this was just an impact of banning magic item creation. There are a lot of good options left AND you get a feat at level 5 from character advancement which is not restricted. So overall this isn't a restriction if you just pretend the magic item feats aren't there. It's going to hit home more at 15, 20 when you've taken most of the desirable choices for the character design, but then again immortality can come in handy.

for the home game comment - I can't see banning magic item creation. Home games are all about individual creativity and what not.

I'll be honest, in my home games item creation hasn't been banned - but almost no one makes use of it either. It's super powerful, but the downtime and feats required just often isn't worth the investment (in our eyes), brew potion and scribe scroll see a bit of use, but no one really has gone after anything big (though I do intend to go Craft Construct in one for RP reasons). I think it's a big reason PFS keeps item creation banned, with infinite downtime item creation becomes a simple feat tax that gives a ton of options and power.

4/5

well, mainly I play wizards and craft. So it's just cause I'm not in your game 8^)

It's easier now that you don't expend XP, but still time consuming. There are some old 3.5 craft items feats you might want to talk to your GM about, Attune Gem took one hour and cost was just Price=$50*SplLvl*(CstrLvl +1). So just a tad higher than potion cost. The cheese was in the activation. I crafted a runic mithral guardian (golem) (heheheee) he was killer.

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