The Kenned Mage: A "More Magical" Archetype for the Skald

[Lindley Court]

I was thinking about how the skald's nature is commonly reduced to merely an angry bard, when the fact that it's so much more is so much more interesting. So I made an archetype built around a variant of spell kenning, with no raging song. If you can critique it, it'd really help. :)

The Kenned Mage

[Corlindale]

I really like this. I always thought Spell Kenning was the coolest feature of the Skald, even though people mostly focus on the Rage Song.

I also like the idea of a 6th level caster that sacrifices higher level spells to gain dramatically increased versatility.

I think it should be a tad more spontaneous, though. I'm not sure it would be broken to let the abstract slots be spontaneous as well (but keeping the "gradual access to more lists" restriction). It may sound really powerful, but since you don't get any music this is basically what you have instead of level 7-9 spells. Besides, having some slots prepared and some slots spontaneous seems like it might get a little unwieldy, mechanics-wise.

If you want a middle ground, you could perhaps let Abstracted Kenning change the prepared spell when you regain them?

Finally, I feel that a 6th level caster that gets a pile of free metamagic feats ought to have some way to use them more easily. Maybe allow an option to burn an abstracted slot to apply a free metamagic feat to another spell a few times per day. I'm not sure you'd get that much use out of 6 free Metamagic Feats otherwise (I know you can also take crafting feats, but those don't really work for all campaigns).

[Lindley Court]

Hm... I see your points, but I'd argue that mixing spontaneity and preparation in spellcasting goes back to the Core Rulebook with the cleric's spontaneous casting and the wizard's bonded object. This is just the reverse. I do agree that the metamagic feats should be more easily accessed.

My proposal would be to say that, whenever you would gain a bonus feat from kenned mage levels, you can choose to instead pick one metamagic feat you know from any source, and reduce its spell level adjustment by 1 (minimum +0) when applied to spells prepared in abstracted spell slots.