I'm sure this has been brought up before, but the Arcane Apotheosis power is pretty bad:
Arcane Apotheosis (Ex): At 20th level, your body surges with arcane power. You can add any metamagic feats that you know to your spells without increasing their casting time, although you must still expend higher-level spell slots. Whenever you use magic items that require charges, you can instead expend spell slots to power the item. For every three levels of spell slots that you expend, you consume one less charge when using a magic item that expends charges.
Just one level previously, you could add metamagic spontaneously without casting time increases five times per day. Let me point out that a magic item usable five times per day is no less expensive than one usable at will, because it is available in every encounter, and twice in one of those encounters. Since the most powerful metamagic feat is Quicken Spell, which is already time-increase-free for sorcerers, and most fights last 5 rounds or less, the increase from 5/day to unlimited is an incredibly marginal boost.
Which leaves us with the magic item charges ability.
Now, since the text doesn't specify that the items must be wands or staves, there's probably a wondrous item out there that can be abused (I'll go looking for one after I'm done posting this), but it's pretty clear that this power was intended to mimic the Master Staff and Master Wand Epic Feats from 3.5 edition. It's not exactly the same, though. In fact, it's worse. For wands, you only come out ahead if they have an expensive material component, or are 4th-level, allow no save, and do not have a caster-level dependent effect (or the caster-level-dependent effect is minor). And 4th-level wands are almost all overpriced for what they do. The possible exception is the wand of stoneskin, which this power can eventually make pay for itself.
However, by level twenty, you are so close to wrapping up the campaign that making items pay for themselves is essentially impossible.
Wand of stoneskin: For a third-level slot, you reduce the damage from 7 attacks (that aren't adamantine or otherwise special) by 10 each (this assumes that by 20th level there are no attacks dealing less than 10 damage each). Any attack mitigation not used within 1 hour and ten minutes are wasted. Very suboptimal use of resources for this level.
I will now list the staves that contain arcane spells for which the charge cost and spell level result in an even trade or better, and where the net effect is cheaper than a ring of spell knowledge.
Staff of frost: You can use ice storm, a 4th level spell, with a 3rd-level slot. You can't add any metamagic. The slot advantage, particularly for this spell, is just not worth it at 20.
Staff of heaven and earth: Allows you to use stone shape as if it were one level lower. You cannot add metamagic. Unlikely to be useful for the price, especially at 20.
Staff of one hundred hands: JACKPOT! In exchange for giving up the ability to add metamagic to them, this (incredibly expensive) staff allows you to add crushing hand to your list of spells known and use grasping hand at a 1-level discount, clenched fist at a 2-level discount, and forceful hand at a 3-level discount. Since forceful hand can do everything interposing hand can for the same cost, it might as well be left off the staff, reducing the price by 34,000 gp.
Staff of passage: JACKPOT AGAIN! This incredibly expensive staff allows access to five spells (though two of them suck), all at a significant level discount, and removes the material component cost for astral projection. However, it eats up nearly a quarter of your wealth at level 20 and has little or no in-combat utility.
Staff of power: Not as beneficial as one would expect. Gain access to fireball, lightning bolt, ray of enfeeblement, and globe of invulnerability. Heighten your fireballs and lightning bolts by 2 levels. Now that ray of enfeeblement allows a save, heightening it is actually useful. Globe of invulnerability is very situational.
Staff of the planes: Add planar binding to your spell list, cast planar adaptation at a 2-level discount.
Staff of travel: Use dimension door at a 1-level discount.
Staff of vision: Use arcane eye at a 1-level discount. Too expensive for such a niche benefit.
So, only the staff of passage and the staff of one hundred hands are clearly superior. The staff of passage, though boosted by arcane apotheosis, is very situational. Unless you make extensive use of astral projection, the only selling point is greater teleport as a 6th-level spell.
This leaves the staff of one hundred hands as the clear winner. Also, interposing hand is useless overkill, as the staff can produce a superior effect for the same price (even without arcane apotheosis). So the staff's true price should be 146,200 gp. The hand spells are awesome battlefield control, and if you never learned any, this stave gives you access to them on the cheap.
However, it's really disappointing that the arcane bloodline's capstone is basically limited to cheesing one item, or abusing the custom staff creation rules (i.e. crafting a staff with all three of your non-bloodline 9th-level spells at 1 charge each for 137,700 gp in materials, thus more than doubling your 9th-level spells per day, or approximately tripling them with a 70,000 gp ring of wizardry).
Thus, the arcane bloodline's capstone is either mostly useless, or absolutely broken. There has to be a middle ground. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I would also point out that this feature allows you to gain virtually unlimited utility spells known; just buy a bunch of 10-charge wands (or if your DM is dumb, 1-charge wands) of every spell that you might ever care about.
With that said, that doesn't actually change your assessment that it is "mostly useless or absolutely broken". No ideas off the top of my head, but it does need a fix.
Additionally, a staff of limited wish costs only 86,400 gp and gives the sorcerer access to all sorcerer/wizard spells of 6th-level or lower and all other spells of 5th-level or lower that don't have material costs in excess of 1,000 gp.
Thhe arcane bloodline is generally considered to be the absolute best bloodline in the game, even if you are correct that its capstone is crap. Does it really need a boost?
No, because it lets you triple your 9th-level spells per day for 1 feat and 1/4th your WBL. It's broken, and needs a rework.
IMO: If it is only broken through "cheesing" (your word) staff creation rules, I'd argue that it isn't actually broken. DM puts a kabosh on cheesing item creation and everything is good.Thhe arcane bloodline is generally considered to be the absolute best bloodline in the game, even if you are correct that its capstone is crap. Does it really need a boost?No, because it lets you triple your 9th-level spells per day for 1 feat and 1/4th your WBL. It's broken, and needs a rework.
That's an argument in favor of all broken combos. "The DM can fix it, so it isn't broken." So why did Paizo spend so much time rejiggering save-or-dies, polymorph effects, etc., if the DM still has to hunt down broken combos? And what about DMs without the experience to just say no? Are their campaigns just screwed?
Even granting the premise that the capstone is bad, the rest of the bloodline more than makes up for it, and how long do you really play at 20th level anyway? I'd rather my 20th level power suck than my 1st.
Even granting the premise that the capstone is bad, the rest of the bloodline more than makes up for it, and how long do you really play at 20th level anyway? I'd rather my 20th level power suck than my 1st.
Well, there's guidelines in the PFSRD for going above 20th level (albeit only three or four more levels if you know what's good for you), and the mythic rules are coming out in August, so capstones are about to become more important.
And I'm not arguing that the capstone is bad, per se, I'm saying that, per the rules as written, they require a house rule to prevent ludicrous abuse.
And it would be a simple fix, as well.
Arcane Apotheosis: At 20th level, your body surges with arcane power. You can add any metamagic feats that you know to your spells without increasing their casting time, although you must still expend higher-level spell slots. When you activate a spell trigger item, you can substitute a spell slot instead of using a charge. The spell slot must be one you have not used for the day, and must be equal to or higher in level than the specific spell stored in the item, including any level-increasing metamagic enhancements. You cannot emulate a charge for an item function that does not match a specific spell, such as the smite ability of a staff of power.
Note that the above is actually a nerf.
P.S. since Master Staff and Master Wand are in the OGL, it wouldn't have been problematic for Paizo to reuse their mechanics in Pathfinder.