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Hey folks, I was reading over the War Mage dedication for the Wizard again, as I saw someone mention it on the forums.
It occurred to me there is a potential action loop using the Spellshield feat and Bond Conservation as a means to constantly cast the same heightened spell over and over again during an encounter.
Here are the assembled pieces, and its actually pretty basic.
Your shield becomes a bonded item capable of storing your spells. You gain the arcane bond class feature and the Drain Bonded Item action. You must select a shield as your bonded item. When you make your daily preparations, you can prepare one fewer wizard spell to infuse that magic into your bonded item. This spell must be at least 1 rank lower than the highest-rank wizard spell slot you have. When you Drain your Bonded Item to Cast a Spell, that spell is automatically heightened to the rank of spell you infused into your shield, no matter what rank you originally prepared it at.
You expend the magical power stored in your bonded item. During the current turn, you can cast one spell you prepared today and already cast, without spending a spell slot. You must still Cast the Spell and meet the spell's other requirements.
Requirements: The last action you used was to Cast a Spell enabled by Drain Bonded Item
By efficiently and carefully manipulating the arcane energies unleashed by your bonded item, you can conserve just enough power to cast another spell, though this second spell is slightly weaker. You gain an extra use of Drain Bonded Item. You can use it to cast a spell 2 or more ranks lower than the previous spell, and must use it before the end of your next turn or you lose it.
By way of example, say you are a 12th level Wizard capable of casting 6th rank spells. During your daily preparation you infuse a 5th rank spell slot into your shield.
During an encounter, having already cast a 3rd rank spell, set your turns as follows:
T1:
Action 1: Any single action
Action 2&3: Use Drain Bonded Item free-action on that expended 3rd rank, Spellshield heightens it to 5th rank. Turn ends.
T2:
Actions 1-3: Use Bond Conversation on the 5th rank spell we just cast, we use the additional granted use of Drain Bonded Item on a spell 2 ranks lower - our original 3rd rank slot - Spellshield heightens it 5th again, and we cast the spell.
T3 Onwards: Repeat turn 2.
You can then, in turn, use Superior Bond to kickstart the loop over again during a 2nd encounter that day once you reach 14th level and beyond.
Obviously it comes with all the problems of becoming an immobile spell turret that can't break it stride without ending the loop, but, on paper this seems like a fairly simple loop that can be performed about 2 encounters a day at high level.
Thoughts on if this works as it reads?
Do you need two turns? Couldn't you just do:
Turn 1: Drain Bonded Item (Free Action) -> Cast 3rd Rank Spell (2 actions) -> Bond Conservation (1 Action)
Then repeat in subsequent turns.
As far as I can read then yeah this works fine. It's probably not intended, but I'm also trying to think of a spell I'd want to cast nonstop in combat without being able to do anything else but the loop. Maybe force barrage to really become a turret?
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My first reaction is "that can't be right", but it could be possible yeah.
A couple of details though;
* Abilities that talk about "your most recent action was X" are intended to be "your most recent action THIS TURN was X". That still works, but it means that Bond Conservation has to be the last action of turn 1, not the first one of turn 2.
* You can still only use Arcane Bond once per day. You can keep repeating it with Bond Conservation, but once that's done you're done for the rest of the day. So this is good for one combat only.
So although it looks powerful at first, I think this is limited enough that it's actually not "too good to be true";
* It's only once per day.
* It's at one rank below your maximum.
* You're paying a spell of that rank for it in advance.
* You must have already used one of the spells you want to keep reusing before starting this.
* You have to keep using bond-spells or the combo ends.
* It costs two level 8 feats, which makes it fairly pricy, and available from level 10+ only.
* You're a sitting duck (Haste can help. R7 Haste is going to be available at level 13.)
* Many encounters are decided in the first 1-3 rounds, which means that infinite spells of a rank below your max, aren't that relevant.
It's limited and it's sufficiently priced, so the power level isn't insane. I do like the combo though, because it gives you what I'd call "bossfight insurance". During most of the adventuring day, you can be a bit more aggressive with how many spells you cast from slots. And then if you end up in the big fight of the day, you can bring all of them back again for an encore performance.
Normally, in a fight, I try to open with some powerful spells to give the party an advantage, and then when the balance of the fight is shifted to our side, I finish up with cantrips to conserve spell slots. With this, once per day you can do that with actual slots instead. And the difference at level 10 between a rank 4 slot spell and a rank 5 cantrip is getting serious.
I usually still wouldn't open the fight with this combo though, because you have to keep going, and if it looks like the big fight, I'd wanna open with a rank 5 spell instead.
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My first reaction is "that can't be right", but it could be possible yeah.
A couple of details though;
* Abilities that talk about "your most recent action was X" are intended to be "your most recent action THIS TURN was X". That still works, but it means that Bond Conservation has to be the last action of turn 1, not the first one of turn 2.
I’d quibble this.
Bond Conservation is a spellshape feat, and as such follows the spellshape rules
Actions with the spellshape trait tweak the properties of your spells. You must use a spellshape action directly before casting the spell you want to alter. If you use any action (including free actions and reactions) other than casting a spell directly after, you waste the benefits of the spellshape action. The benefit is also lost if your turn ends before you cast the spell. Any additional effects added by a spellshape action are part of the spell's effect, not of the spellshape action itself.
It still seems to be that Bond Conservation needs to happen as you cast the spell itself, with a backwards looking trigger condition. Or else Bond Conversation itself wouldn’t really work at all, regardless of the interaction mentioned here.
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My first reaction is "that can't be right", but it could be possible yeah.
A couple of details though;
* Abilities that talk about "your most recent action was X" are intended to be "your most recent action THIS TURN was X". That still works, but it means that Bond Conservation has to be the last action of turn 1, not the first one of turn 2.
I’d quibble this.
Bond Conservation is a spellshape feat, and as such follows the spellshape rules
Actions with the spellshape trait tweak the properties of your spells. You must use a spellshape action directly before casting the spell you want to alter. If you use any action (including free actions and reactions) other than casting a spell directly after, you waste the benefits of the spellshape action. The benefit is also lost if your turn ends before you cast the spell. Any additional effects added by a spellshape action are part of the spell's effect, not of the spellshape action itself.It still seems to be that Bond Conservation needs to happen as you cast the spell itself, with a backwards looking trigger condition. Or else Bond Conversation itself wouldn’t really work at all, regardless of the interaction mentioned here.
Interesting, yeah they kinda painted themselves into a corner there.
The real killer app would be infinite wall of stone construction but unfortunately that’s a three action spell.
Infinite 7th rank invisible object is kind of spicy though. Maybe that’s why all the art depicts people without helmets - they actually are wearing them, they’re just invisible.
Like most cheese, in an actual game, I would shut it down for being cheese rather than spending a ton of time trying to nitpick the rules.
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Use Bond Conversation on the 5th rank spell we just cast, we use the additional granted use of Drain Bonded Item on a spell 2 ranks lower - our original 3rd rank slot - Spellshield heightens it 5th again, and we cast the spell.Yeah, absolutely not. Rules-lawyering strikes again!
This is what actually happens: You use Bond Conversation on the 3rd rank spell you just cast (with its effects heightened to 5th rank, which is irrelevant to anything further). You then use the additional granted use of Drain Bonded Item on a spell 2 ranks lower - 1st rank slot spell (with its effects heightened to 5th rank, which is irrelevant to anything further). And this is the end, because there's nothing less than 1st.
I think that's an order of operations issue, and I'm not sure your order of operations is correct.
Let's take a step back. Say you have a regular, non-war-mage wizard, who prepared a heightened spell. Say, a rank 3 force barrage. Then casts it. Then uses Drain Bond to cast it again. It would be another rank 3 force barrage, not a rank 1 force barrage. It doesn't matter what the base ranl of the spell is, it matters what rank of the spell was that you cast.
Now let's come back to the war mage. You cast a spell and spellshield heightens it. Then you do bond conservation and bond conservation asks "what was the rank of the spell you just cast?". At that moment, it was already heightened. The spell was heightened; it wasn't a high slot it was cast from. The Bond Conservation feat doesn't make a difference between those two because that difference never mattered before, but with this ability it does.
I think there's something to be said for "technically, the spell that Bond Conservation is looking at is heightened so it's fine". But it's also fair to say "that sounds like a strained technical reading, and it's too good to be true" and by the Too Good To Be True rule principle reject it.
*My* take on it is that the cost you pay for it, and the limitations on it, are enough that it's not *too good* to be true. It's good and it's a little bit on the edge of things, but it's not OP. Actually, it's kind of a fun way to manage resources for wizards and Nethys knows they can use some help keeping up with sorcerers anyway.
Now let's pan back to the war mage. You use bond conservation and spell shield to cast a spell.
That all the 'cascade' spells which Bond Conversation gives become heightened to max rank-1 is crazy enough. I would maybe burn with fire even that. But what you propose definitely doesn't happen.
It's really important to remember that "all" the cascade spells you're talking about are actually very few spells, and that you already paid a max-1 slot for it.
Think about it: suppose you're a level 12 wizard with Spellshield but no Bond Conservation. What does it do for you? You can burn a rank 5 slot so that if you use Drain Bond that day on a rank 1-4 spell, it'll heighten to rank 5. You might as well just prepare your favorite spell in a rank 5 slot instead, and save a level 8 feat.
Then add in Bond Conservation. Okay, now you could then Drain to do one rank 6 spell, next round do a rank 4 spell that gets heightened to 5, then the round after do a rank 2 spell that gets heightened to 5, and then nothing.
Is that really worth a level 8 and then a level 10 feat slot? Your level 10 slot is competing with Quickened Casting, Overwhelming Energy, and honestly just multiclass archetype feats, since those tend to have some really good stuff in the level 8-10 range.
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No, not at all. Spellshield heightens effects of it.
It heightens the entire spell. If someone were to try to counteract it, they would need to deal with the heightened rank. If the spell has the Incapacitation trait, you use the heightened rank.
For all intents and purposes you're casting a spell with Rank equal to the spell infused into the shield. It has the same wording as Cantrips, Focus Spells or the Cleric's Font and nobody here is going to argue they're actually Rank 1 (or whatever rank the original focus spell is) spells whose effects have been heightened, instead of just plain old Rank X spells.
Maybe I wasn't clear, I also don't want any kind of rules-lawyer discussion.
Then don't come into the Rules Discussion forum?
The result is final: the bond conservation gives you only what you would have gotten without Spellshield. Spellshield only changes spell effects heightening, nothing else. How you get to this result doesn't matter.
The result isn't final, it is ambiguous precisely because this is a unique situation that hasn't been possible before.
If Drain Bonded Item could be used on Focus Spells you would've seen this combo pop up much earlier. Now we have an ability granting Focus auto-heightening to Drain Bonded Item, so of course there's gonna be debate.
And you're doing yourself no favors by misrepresenting Spellshield. It's crystal clear:
"When you Drain your Bonded Item to Cast a Spell, that spell is automatically heightened to the rank of spell you infused into your shield, no matter what rank you originally prepared it at."
There is no talk of "only effect" or anything of the sort. They even say "No matter what rank you originally prepared it at" to indicate the Rank is changing.