Flexible Spellcasting

[ElementalofCuteness]

Does it effect any multiclass prepared spellcasting you get?

[HammerJack]

No. It's a Class Archetype that modifies the spellcasting class feature of the class the archetype is applied on.

The spellcasting abilities of a multiclass archetype are separate from your class's spellcasting feature.

[breithauptclan]

Also, you have to take it for a class that uses the same spell progression table for spell slots as Cleric, Druid, Wizard.

If you wrote out a table for an Archetype spellcasting progression, it wouldn't match that table for Wizard.

[glass]

I'm not the OP, and I agree with both of the previous posters as to the RAW. But now I am wondering: If I houseruled it to (optionally) also apply to casting archetypes if you took it for your main class, how badly would that break things?

[breithauptclan]

glass wrote:

I'm not the OP, and I agree with both of the previous posters as to the RAW. But now I am wondering: If I houseruled it to (optionally) also apply to casting archetypes if you took it for your main class, how badly would that break things?

It depends on how you are applying it.

Obviously, saying that instead of getting 1 1st rank spell, 1 2nd rank spell at level 6, and 1 3rd rank spell at level 8 that you instead follow that table for Flexible Spellcasting slot progression and have 2 spell slots of each rank from 1-4 by level 8 - that is pretty bonkers levels of broken.

If instead you say that you have one less spell of each rank, well ... that is also pretty bonkers levels of broken, but in a bad way. That means that unless you take the archetype breadth feat that you will have zero spell slots of each spell rank. And even with the breadth feat, you would still have zero of your two highest archetype spell slot ranks. Similarly, having two less cantrips generally also means zero cantrips. It would be -1 cantrips in the case of Witch archetype, and -2 cantrips in the case of Summoner archetype. I'm not sure how to handle Psychic archetype. They normally get one cantrip and the amp to go with it.

So what, exactly, are you proposing for how to apply Flexible Spellcasting to archetype spellcasters?

Not requiring paying any cost to their archetype spellcasting and just letting them freely heighten their spells?

Combining the archetype spell slots with their regular class spell slots and allowing the tradition of those spell slots to switch in addition to having more freely heightened spell slots without any Flexible Spellcasting cost to them?

[glass]

breithauptclan wrote:

So what, exactly, are you proposing for how to apply Flexible Spellcasting to archetype spellcasters?

I wasn't really proposing anything in particular, just thinking out loud.

I was not thinking of messing with the archetypes' number of slots in either direction. As you note, applying table 5-1 directly would mean increasing them, which would be broken in multiple ways (not to mention ridiculous). But OTOH, they don't really get enough spell slots to subtract from (they'd end up with zero in a lot of cases).

I guess I was wondering whether the pretty severe reductions to main-class slots and the delaying the archetype by three feats was already enough of a cost for applying it to the archetype casting too.

But having looked it up, it is only actually a one-feat delay, as the Flexible Spellcaster Dedication feat lacks the usual text about two more feats before another dedication (or indeed, any more feats to take). Which does rather shift things in a more broken direction, especially when using the Free Archetype variant (which I am).