Am most of the way through the Fey Forms for my Polymorphamory guide, and one thing I'm really a bit unsure of is the enhancement of Spell Likes the form gives. Specifically, it says:
When you cast a spell that the creature has as a spell-like ability, it requires no verbal or somatic components and can’t be countered.
So that means if you're in a Silence AoE, or tied up, you can still do it. Pretty niche. It means you can't be countered, but whilst players might occasionally build to be an effective counterspeller, it's a pretty rare thing for a GM to throw at you.
About the only place where I can see it being useful is using it to cast in armour - having a few spells that you can cast with no spell failure because now they have no Sonomatic components, and then deal with the rest by either having a pretty low spell failure for them, or something like Arcane Armour training, and use those Swift actions for most spells, but not need to for the form's one.
But again, that's pretty niche, and the only form with a noticeable cluster of useful spells for something like that is the Svartalfar and its touch attacks.
So, is there a clever way of using it that I'm missing? Or is it a nice extra, but not really meaningful in picking good forms
What about if you often need to Silence yourself for Stealth purposes? (Yes, I know you can't normally get Silence and Fey Form on the same caster unless you're really crazy and go Mystic Theurge, but it could be reasonably common in some campaigns that the divine caster or Bard might need to Silence the party for stealth, and the arcane caster needs to be able to work within the Silence.) Of course, you could invest in Silent Spell and/or a Metamagic Rod thereof to work through this, and you will probably need to anyway for those spells that aren't SLAs for the form you choose, but if you find a form that has some SLAs you are going to use often, not having to bump them up by a casting level (and if you are a spontaneous caster not having to increase the casting time) is a nice perk.
Also, having some spells you don't need Somatic or Verbal components to cast is nice if you are going up against something that likes to garrote/grapple/suffocate you (and that you can't be sure of being able to stay away from).
Hmmm, Silence is a good one, though again, pretty niche.
Looking at the rules, there doesn't appear to be any benefits to no Somatic components in a Grapple - it's Concentration which is the issue, and no components doesn't help there. Full on Pinned, or Suffocating/otherwise unable to speak is place where its useful.
So I'll discuss it at the start of that bit of the Fey Form section, but only mention it on individual forms where there's a real cluster of relatedly useful ones like the Svartalfar.
^Oops, yes, Pinned is what I was thinking of when I said Grappled.
Spells with somatic components also require a free hand. Since you can cast without a somatic component you can cast spells while both hands are occupied. Among other things it allows a caster to cast the spell while still using his weapon and shield.
As far as the grapple goes don’t forget that a humanoid without two hands free takes a -4 penalty on the combat maneuver roll. This would allow you to cast a spell with an casting time of swift action and take no penalty to your combat maneuver to escape the grapple.
You can cast Charm Person on an enemy without making it obvious to its allies. It's essentially a way to stealthily cast Enchantment spells.
Afraid not, though with Cunning Caster/other similar things, it could make it easier.
Although this isn’t directly stated in the Core Rulebook, many elements of the game system work assuming that all spells have their own manifestations, regardless of whether or not they also produce an obvious visual effect, like fireball. You can see some examples to give you ideas of how to describe a spell’s manifestation in various pieces of art from Pathfinder products, but ultimately, the choice is up to your group, or perhaps even to the aesthetics of an individual spellcaster, to decide the exact details. Whatever the case, these manifestations are obviously magic of some kind, even to the uninitiated; this prevents spellcasters that use spell-like abilities, psychic magic, and the like from running completely amok against non-spellcasters in a non-combat situation. Special abilities exist (and more are likely to appear in Ultimate Intrigue) that specifically facilitate a spellcaster using chicanery to misdirect people from those manifestations and allow them to go unnoticed, but they will always provide an onlooker some sort of chance to detect the ruse.
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9tza