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I need opinions. Could a Spirit Shaman benefit from the Spontaneous Healer feat? The feat description says the cure spell needs to be on their class list (which it is) and that they then spontaneously cast cure spells as a cleric does, but the mechanic for clerics involves replacing a prepared spell with a cure, and spirit shamans don't prepare spells, per se.
How would you Paizonians rule?
Yes he can. I always go by what the feat says and if it makes no mention of disallowing spellcasters with slots instead of prepared spells then the feat works normally.
I agree with Phil. This is actually rather clever.
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That's what I thought too. Since the Spirit Shaman's method of "retrieving" spells isn't that different from preparing, it doesn't seem to game breaking anyway.
Here's a follow-up question, though... What about Favored Souls? My initial thought was that the feat has no application for them, since if they know the cures, they cast them spontaneously anyway. But the feat doesn't say they have to "know" the spell, it says it has to be on their class list. Could a Favored Soul take the feat and cast cures spontaneously without ever taking a cure as a spell known?
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That's what I thought too. Since the Spirit Shaman's method of "retrieving" spells isn't that different from preparing, it doesn't seem to game breaking anyway.
Yes and no. Essentially what this feat does is that it allows them to "prepare" one additional spell known at each spell level. For the "cost" of one feat, that seems rather powerful. Look at it this way, would you allow a sorcerer to know an additional Abjuration spell at each spell level at the cost of only one feat?
On the other hand, healing is often times not terribly game balancing and is often very necessary.
I would probably allow it with a smaller group of players but not with a larger group (and I would explain to the player why).
Here's a follow-up question, though... What about Favored Souls? My initial thought was that the feat has no application for them, since if they know the cures, they cast them spontaneously anyway. But the feat doesn't say they have to "know" the spell, it says it has to be on their class list. Could a Favored Soul take the feat and cast cures spontaneously without ever taking a cure as a spell known?
This would pretty much be "no". You should only allow something like this if you would allow something similar with the sorcerer class.
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In terms of game balance, I look at it this way. Is giving the Spirit Shaman the Spontaneous Healer feat any more unbalancing than a Druid with the same feat? I don't think it is, which is why I'm generally in favor.
I agree that giving the feat to a Favored Soul is pretty cheesy, and probably shouldn't be allowed, and am largely playing devil's advocate here. Maybe I should ask the sage.
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In terms of game balance, I look at it this way. Is giving the Spirit Shaman the Spontaneous Healer feat any more unbalancing than a Druid with the same feat? I don't think it is, which is why I'm generally in favor.
It is different (Druid vs. Spirit Shaman). The Spirit Shaman gets to cast more spells at the cost of how many spells they can know each day. By giving them access to more spells that they can know, you (potentially) give them much greater flexibility than the class had been set up for. At 6th level, a druid has 5/3/3/2 for number of spells that they can cast. At 6th level a spirit shaman has 6/6/5/3. The druid really has to think about whether swapping out one of their three 2nd level spells is really worth it, whereas the spirit shaman has two more spells at 2nd level that they didn't really memorize anyway, so it really isn't quite as big a deal.
I too am doing a little "devil's advocate". As I said before, I don't think that access to more healing will end up being terribly game balancing, but I do think that this combination would make this class more powerful than the game designers had intended.
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Interesting. I know few people consider WotC customer service to be an authority on anything, I decided to ask them anyway. They said that both the Spirit Shaman and Favored Soul can use the feat.
I asked the sage too, because I'm greatly interested in this question.
It's worth mentioning (in case anyone's overlooked it) that the feat has limited uses per day.
Anyway, it'll be fun to see if my question makes it into Dragon.
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Interesting. I know few people consider WotC customer service to be an authority on anything, I decided to ask them anyway. They said that both the Spirit Shaman and Favored Soul can use the feat.
I asked the sage too, because I'm greatly interested in this question.
It's worth mentioning (in case anyone's overlooked it) that the feat has limited uses per day.
Anyway, it'll be fun to see if my question makes it into Dragon.
The limit to the number of times it can be used each day is (kind of) a good balance to the feat.
Taking a close look at the feat I have a few other questions/comments --
One of the prerequisites is the ability to cast any cure wounds spell. This would imply that the Favored soul would need to take at least one cure wounds spell as one of their known spells. But then it implies that (essentially) they would "know" all the other cure wounds spells. Again that seems a bit over-powered for the cost of just one feat.
The idea of "spontaneously casting" spells (to me) is that you swap out a memorized spell for a spell that you didn't memorize. This seems to effectively negate the ability for Spirit Shamans and Favored Souls to take this feat.
If Favored Souls can take this feat, can Bards?