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Hello community.
Cast [reaction] ; Trigger A creature within 30 feet casts an arcane spell
You gather the embers of another caster's spell, using your understanding of unified magic to pick apart their formulas and incantations well enough to imitate the spell yourself, if only for a short time. Until the end of your next turn, you can Cast the triggering Spell by expending a wizard spell slot of the same rank. That caster's spells can't trigger your interdisciplinary incantation again for 24 hours.
Q) Do you get to know what the spell does?
Q) Does the spell's tradition(s) matter in the above question?
Q) Either way, do you get to know if you have a sufficient spell slot before pulling the trigger?
Q) Can you cast a lower rank (non- or less- heightened) version of the spell with your available spell slots?
Q) If the answer to all the above questions is "no", do you only find out after paying both the reaction, focus point, and casting action costs, just watch your efforts fizzle?
Asking for a friend!
=)
Hello community.
** spoiler omitted **
Q) Do you get to know what the spell does?
Q) Does the spell's tradition(s) matter in the above question?
Q) Either way, do you get to know if you have a sufficient spell slot before pulling the trigger?
Q) Can you cast a lower rank (non- or less- heightened) version of the spell with your available spell slots?
Q) If the answer to all the above questions is "no", do you only find out after paying both the reaction, focus point, and casting action costs, just watch your efforts fizzle?Asking for a friend!
=)
Q1) Yes, since the Focus spell says "unified magic to pick apart their formulas and incantations well enough to imitate the spell yourself, if only for a short time."
Q2) It has to be Arcane to be able to trigger Interdisciplinary Incantation. Otherwise it doesn't matter.Q3) You should, but keep in mind you'll need to follow the rules for Identifying Spells to know what the spell is (which you need to do anyway in order to know if the spell is Arcane or not to even use the reaction).
Q4) No. The focus spell is clear "you can Cast the triggering Spell by expending a wizard spell slot of the same rank". It needs to be a wizard spell slot and it needs to be of the same rank as the spell. No heightening or downcasting.
I still don't think it's very good because you as a wizard have no way to use it unless a) You have the spell prepared, so you can immediately know what it is or b) The enemy casts it twice and you manage to identify it in the interim. Even with those, if you've expended all your relevant slots it's still worthless. I don't see that happening so much though since you need to know what spell it is (and thus, the spell level, and whether or not you still have slots) before you use the reaction.
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Q3) You should, but keep in mind you'll need to follow the rules for Identifying Spells to know what the spell is (which you need to do anyway in order to know if the spell is Arcane or not to even use the reaction).
But, how?
If you want to identify a spell but don't have it prepared or in your repertoire, you must spend an action on your turn attempting to identify it using Recall Knowledge. You typically notice a spell being cast due to its sensory spell manifestations (page 299). Identifying long-lasting spells that are already in place requires using Identify Magic instead of Recall Knowledge because you don't have the advantage of watching the spell being cast.
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Q3) You should, but keep in mind you'll need to follow the rules for Identifying Spells to know what the spell is (which you need to do anyway in order to know if the spell is Arcane or not to even use the reaction).But, how?
If you want to identify a spell but don't have it prepared or in your repertoire, you must spend an action on your turn attempting to identify it using Recall Knowledge. You typically notice a spell being cast due to its sensory spell manifestations (page 299). Identifying long-lasting spells that are already in place requires using Identify Magic instead of Recall Knowledge because you don't have the advantage of watching the spell being cast.=)
Yes, that's why I said I don't think it's very good.
If you can't identify the spell you can't use the reaction, because you won't know if it's Arcane or not. And in order to identify the spell immediately, as a wizard, you need to have it prepared. Otherwise you need to Recall Knowledge, pass the check, and then hope they use the same spell again.
Unless you do something like Ready an action to use Recall Knowledge to try to identify the next spell cast, or something.
So yeah, not very good.
Unless you do something like Ready an action to use Recall Knowledge to try to identify the next spell cast, or something.
Ready would use your reaction, so you wouldn't have your reaction available to cast the focus spell with after you identify the spell.
Yeah, strict RAW this spell doesn't really work. There are a lot of ways a GM could shut it down and make it completely ineffective.
If the GM instead wants to allow the spell to work as intended, then I would recommend the answers be:
1) You will see the effects of the original casting and know approximately what it does. So if the spell is Breathe Fire, then you will know that the spell does a cone of fire damage. No spell identification needed.
2) You will know if the spell is an arcane spell or not when it is cast. No spell identification needed.
3) Yes. You should probably know the Rank of the spell. Or at least have the GM tell you that you do or don't have an available spell slot of that Rank.
4) I would let you do the trick of spending a higher Rank spell slot with no heightening effect. So if the spell originally cast is a 2nd Rank Breathe Fire, you could spend a 4th Rank spell slot to re-cast the 2nd Rank version of the spell.
Addendum: I could see spells with the Subtle trait causing problems with this and therefore Conceal Spell being used by an enemy caster as a countermeasure.
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For an attempt at a RAW argument that the spell does work, what I come up with is that triggers for published reactions are allowed to trigger on game mechanics. The limitations on trigger choices for Ready (that the trigger has to be something observable by the character) are limited to Ready. Because that is a trigger chosen by the players on the fly rather than something that was run past the game developers.
Many reactions and free actions that are published have triggers that are based entirely on game mechanics. All of the ones with a trigger of 'at the start of your turn' for example are forbidden by the limits of Ready.
So when Interdisciplinary Incantation lists its trigger as "A creature within 30 feet casts an arcane spell" you as a player will at least know that your character can or can't use the reaction based on knowing the tradition of the spell. The character may only know that a spell was cast. You as a player would know that your reaction doesn't trigger because it was a Divine spell.
This argument does still leave the GM with the option of having you spend your reaction and focus point and then telling you that you don't have a spell slot of the appropriate Rank available to actually cast the spell with. And you may not know what the spell does if the spell's effect is not visibly obvious.