Cultivators and Qi spells as well as a few other questions

[J S 728]

The descriptions say that their focus spells count as qi spells, but I can't find any sort of standard as to what they actually have available besides the ones available via feats.

Does this mean that I have to be a monk or take the monk dedication for the multi class option to access the monk derived list of qi spells?

Thinking about some homebrew options and wanted thoughts on how overpowered or underpowered some of them will actually be long term:

Fighter, and other 10 hp/level fighter equivalents, taking monk dedication: Allow access to a feat that gives an extra level of multiclass feat access per 3 character levels. Flurry of blows cool down reduced to 1d3. Barbarians instead reduce the cooldown to 1d2.
(This is to replace the HP increase one that is utterly useless for them.)

Allow items to be found before the level they're assigned to at 10% cost increase per level difference, or higher if rare/uncommon.

[TheFinish]

So, to the first question (the second one isn't really for the Rules forum, I'd recommend asking in Advice or Homebrew and House Rules):

The important bit is they count as Qi spells for prerequisites and abilities that care about how many Qi spells you have.

So, a Monk with Cultivator dedication could take feats that have a Prerequisite of Qi Spells (like Realign Qi, Qi Center, Advanced Qi Spells, etc) even if they don't have the 1st level feat "Qi Spells", because Cultivator gives them Qi spells for that purpose.

A different class that takes Cultivator and then takes Monk Dedication could also acquire those feats just through their Cultivator Qi Spells.

It's a rather narrow use-case for now but if later options get printed with that prerequisite Cultivators would be able to take those too.

[Finoan]

To say the same thing, but from the other side of things:

Yes, you need to either be Monk base class or take Monk Archetype in order to get access to the Monk feats that give the standard Monk Qi spells.

Having Cultivator Dedication doesn't by itself give you access to Monk Qi spells like Qi Strike, Qi Blast, or Wind Jump. As TheFinish noted, Cultivator Dedication would allow you to bypass the initial Monk feat Qi Spells and jump straight to Advanced Qi Spells if you wanted to. But you would still have to have access to those Monk feats by being a Monk.

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Quote:

Allow items to be found before the level they're assigned to at 10% cost increase per level difference, or higher if rare/uncommon.

For one or two levels higher, that is fairly standard for prewritten adventure APs to do already. Finding higher level loot is pretty typical.

Being able to buy it is also somewhat common, though if following the normal wealth by level progression, it is hard to afford on-level items, much less higher level ones.

For several levels higher, finding items that powerful is more of a game balance problem and should be used with care. Consumables would probably be fine, but permanent items could make characters perform outside the normal expected bounds.