Idea for a feat

[Jiggy]

Transformation
Prerequisite: Fighter level 11th
Benefit: When you drink a potion of fox's cunning, you can choose to replace its effects with the following:
You become a casting machine—smarter, fiercer, and more skilled in spellcasting. Your mindset changes so that you relish arcane magic and you can't use weapons (except rays), even if you're proficient with them.
You gain a +6 enhancement bonus to Intelligence (though you gain no additional skill ranks or languages from this increase), a +5 competence bonus to Will saving throughs, and the effects of darkvision, mirror image and overland flight. You gain the following spell-like abilities, each usable once, using your fighter level as your caster level and your (boosted) Intelligence modifier to determine saving throw DCs: magic missile, true strike, touch of fatigue, blindness/deafness, glitterdust, scorching ray, dispel magic, hold person, stinking cloud, black tentacles, dimension door, enervation, cloudkill, dominate person, and baleful polymorph. When you reach fighter level 14th, add plane shift and finger of death to this list. At fighter level 16th, add horrid wilting. At fighter level 18th, add dominate monster.
Your base attack bonus becomes equal to half your character level, you lose your armor and shield bonuses to AC, and your current and maximum hit points are reduced by 2 per character level.
The effects of this feat last for 1 round per character level. You may use this feat once per day at fighter level 11th, twice per day at fighter level 13th, and three times per day at fighter level 15th.

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Whaddya think, balanced?

[blahpers]

Ehh. A wizard must use a spell slot to cast transformation. Being able to do it all day just for having a pharmacy's worth of potions is . . . a bit much. Especially if you get the spell-like abilities back on subsequent potions.

[Jiggy]

blahpers wrote:

Ehh. A wizard must use a spell slot to cast transformation. Being able to do it all day just for having a pharmacy's worth of potions is . . . a bit much.

Quote:

The effects of this feat last for 1 round per character level. You may use this feat once per day at fighter level 11th, twice per day at fighter level 13th, and three times per day at fighter level 15th.

[blahpers]

Oh. Well, all right then.

[voideternal]

I think the spell list lacks Reflex save spells.

[Cyrad]

So a fighter can become a decent spellcaster by drinking a potion. I don't really like this, personally. However, I am rather intrigued at the idea of character options that let martials gain greater benefits from drinking potions.

I've always been a large supporter of the idea that mages and martials should have a symbiotic relationship that makes both players have fun. It's why it annoys me that most polymorph spells only target the caster. It's more fun for everyone if the mage transforms the fighter into a giant hulk that beats people to a pulp, rather than the mage turning himself into a combat beast that temporarily outclasses the fighter.

[Jiggy]

Cyrad wrote:

So a fighter can become a decent spellcaster by drinking a potion. I don't really like this, personally. However, I am rather intrigued at the idea of character options that let martials gain greater benefits from drinking potions.

The only reason the potion is involved is because transformation requires drinking an equivalent potion. I didn't want to leave any room for someone to cry foul, so I made the feat equivalent or worse in every measurable/comparable way I could think of. Uses up a potion, fewer times per day than a wizard gets 6th-level spells, more things taken away than with the spell, etc.

[voideternal]

I think in terms of game balance, this is fine.

As a homebrew feat, though, it feels really out of place. Over my life, I've seen many tropes in fiction works of magic casters augmenting their body to be equivalent warriors, but I haven't really seen much of the opposite. The fluff just feels subjectively weird to me. I'd be torn between taking this feat because it's good, and not taking this feat because it isn't what I envision my fighter doing.

Is this really a homebrew feat that you intend on using in your games, or is this a thought exercise concerning caster-martial prejudice on these forums?

[Atarlost]

Theoretically a feat should be worth about four to eight spells less whatever 1/2 BAB per leve is worth. This gives 18.

Fighters should also not be getting per diem effects. It goes against the theme of the class.

A more fair and appropriate feat would probably give one offensive SLA at will with a once per target per day restriction or an SLA recharged per day as your world's day has hours by an hour's rest but not otherwise limited in uses per day.