[Tome] Homebrew skill/metamagic feats

[virgil]

I tweaked a couple of the skill feats from the Community material out of a desire to see better use out of them (Steady Stance is junk). In theory, I'd prefer to avoid making skill feats for the skills that are near guaranteed to see use (Disable Device, Search, Listen, Concentration, etc).

Probably in the next few days I'll devise a few more skill feats, not sure which ones I'd like to work with though.

Subtle Magic [Metamagic]
You woke up to a new spell you cast in your sleep. You're not sure what it does.
Highest Spell Level Available
0: You gain Eschew Materials as a bonus feat. The DC to identify your magic with Spellcraft is increased by 5, as is the DC to recognize your enchantments with Sense Motive.
3: All but your highest spell level, are automatically treated as if subject to the Still and Silent Spell feats.
6: All of your summons gain a +5 enhancement bonus to Hide & Move Silently. Except for those affected, spells have a base DC of 15 against Spot & Listen to be noticed; they glide in like owls in the night.
9: Creatures that succeed at a saving throw are not intuitively aware they were targeted by a spell.

Seer [Metamagic]
You can see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Highest spell level available:
0: All divination spells you cast gain the benefits of Extend Spell, Widen Spell, Enlarge Spell, Still Spell, & Silent Spell.
3: All divination spells with a casting time longer than a minute have their casting time reduced to a minute
6: Divination spells that gradually grant information (detect magic, detect thoughts, etc) instead grant their information in a single round
9: Divination spells gain the benefits of the Persistent Spell feat.

War Mage [Metamagic]
You do not help dispel your profession's trigger-happy stereotype.
Highest spell level available:
0: Whenever preparing or spontaneously casting spells that deal energy damage, you may change the damage type to fire, acid, cold, or electricity.
3: All evocation spells are subject to the Widen Spell and Enlarge spell feats.
6: With any evocation spell cast, if the caster maintains concentration, the effects of the spell repeat the following round.
9: All evocation spells are maximized.

Counterspell Mage [Metamagic]
No means no.
Highest spell level available:
0: With a readied action, interrupt a spell cast within LoS with an opposed caster level check (no spells required to be cast); cannot counter spells not on your spell list
3: You gain a +4 bonus to caster level for dispel checks and the DC to dispel your own spells is increased by +4.
6: You can counterspell as an immediate action
9: You emit magical interference that distracts from spellcasting you do not approve of. Enemy spellcasting within Medium range requires a Concentration check, DC 25+spell level

Overcharged Mage [Metamagic]
Your spells try to be all that they can be.
Highest spell level available:
0: Gain the Heighten Spell feat, and any spell cast from a higher level spell slot due to metamagics are treated as if heightened to that spell level.
3: +4 to caster level checks to overcome spell resistance
6: Raise the damage dice cap of all of your spells by 5. Their advancement continues at the usual pace.
9: All spells are treated as your highest spell level as if heightened (save DCs and countering globes of invulnerability)

Eternal Caster [Metamagic]
Your spells just keep going and going.
Highest spell level available:
0: You gain the Extend Spell feat.
3: Your effective caster level is 5 higher for purposes of calculating duration.
6: Any spell with a per level duration subject to the Extend Spell feat has its time interval advanced instead. Rounds become minutes become hours become days become Permanent.
9: You gain the Persistent Spell feat, but it only increases the spell level by +4.

Skill Focus: Climb [Skill]
Bitten by a radioactive gecko, you hope you don't have to lick your eyes too.
Climb Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill, you are never treated as flat-footed while making a climb check
4: Use your ranks in Climb as BaB for Edge if using the Grab On maneuver or if both parties are climbing. Also gain a +10 bonus to checks to catch yourself and others when falling.
9: You are constantly under the effects of spider climb, with a climb speed equal to your land speed. You are acclimated to high altitudes.
14: You can climb using only your feet, leaving both hands free and allowing you to run while climbing. Those who continue to use their hands while climbing are treated as prone against you.
19: You are immune to falling damage, as is anyone within reach

Skill Focus: Jump [Skill]
WHEN I TELL YOU TO JUMP, YOU SAY "HOW HIGH...woah
Jump Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill, you perform standing jumps as if you made running jumps
4: You ignore armor check penalties to Jump checks. You have higher ground if your Jump bonus exceeds your opponent's.
9: Reduce the DC for all high jumps to one-quarter. You are acclimated to high altitudes.
14: When you make a Reflex save against an area effect, use your Jump check instead, and you instantly move your full speed in any direction
19: If you make a Jump check during a charge, you deal double damage. You do not provoke an AoO from movement during a jump

Skill Focus: Balance [Skill]
Please note that mental balance is not guaranteed by this skill, but your checkbook never looked so good.
Balance Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill.
4: You suffer no penalty to Balance checks whiles moving your full speed
9: You suffer no penalty to AC from charging or running
14: You can balance on a stable surface that cannot support you, be it tree branch, liquid, or even cloud. The cloud must be thick enough to provide concealment within to be able to balance on it.
19: You can balance on ranged attacks that exit your space, such as spears or arrows or even rays. With an AoO, make a Balance check against a DC equal to the attack. You dismount at any point along its path, provoking AoOs for movement as normal

Skill Focus: Tumble [Skill]
This time you're a shoe-in for the Power Rangers!
Tumble Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill
4: You suffer no penalty for tumbling at full speed
9: You may use your Tumble modifier rather than your Balance modifier when resisting a Trip or Bullrush attempt
14: You can stand up as a free action rather than a move-equivalent that does not provoke an AoO
19: You can designate any threatened square as the square from which flanking against an ally is determined (including the square where you stand, as normal). This can even include impassable or occupied squares.

Skill Focus: Appraise [Skill]
You know the price for true love, and with Skill Focus (Gather Information), you can get a discount!
Appraise Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill. You can perform an appraise check as full-round action
4: You can identify magic items with an appraise check against a DC equal to 15+caster level
9: Appraise check equal to DC 10+CR of target creature, swift action, identifies DR penetration
14: All of your damaging attacks ignore an amount of hardness equal to your ranks in Appraise
19: If greater, use your bonus to appraise instead of your attack bonus with attacks against any opponent wearing armor (non-armor is that, not armor)

Skill Focus: Gather Information [Skill]
Like tomatoes from a garden
Gather Information Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill. You can substitute a Knowledge (local) check with your Gather Information bonus, and you count as trained.
4: After a Gather Information check is made in an area, any in the area at the time start out friendly (opposed by Sense Motive)
9: You can buy and sell magic items with a standard skill check, as limited by city resources. The DC is 10+caster level of the item; for every 5 points you exceed the DC, you improve its sale/purchase by 5%.
14: Rumours and gossip are like prophecies to the discerning ear, tapping the akashic memory. A Gather Information check (DC 25) can be used to gain the benefits of Contact Other Plane (Astral) as if cast by a caster equal to your character level.
19: If you make a Gather Information check concerning a specific person, you are considered to have the benefit of Foresight the next time you fight them and have the Edge if your ranks in Gather Information exceeds their ranks in Bluff. You lose this benefit against them after the fight until you make another Gather Information check.

Skill Focus: Craft (Basketweaving) [Skill]
For the real roleplayers.
Craft (Basketweaving) Skill Ranks
0: +3 to the skill. You are both proficient in Wicker Armor and its ASP is reduced by -4 for you.
4: Your wicker is exceptionally tough, and has a hardness equal to your ranks in Craft (Basketweaving).
9: Any basket you make & carry is treated as a Bag of Holding, with a maximum capacity equal to the light load of a Medium creature whose Strength is equal to your bonus with Craft (basketweaving).
14: With 1 week downtime, 500gp materials, and a humanoid body, you can make a wicker man. Statistically identical to the flesh golem, except add fire vulnerability and you can substitute the Charisma check to calm it down with a DC 24 Craft (basketweaving) check if within melee range.
19: Uhmm...something involving baskets?

Polyglot [Skill]
You shall never be unable to find the bathroom again.
Speak Language Skill Ranks
0: Speak Language is always a class skill.
4: With a minute of listening, you can learn enough of a creature's language to communicate & understand basic needs/goals.
9: You gain Dark Speech and Words of Creation as bonus feats.
14: Your gift of gab expands to include the natural world, granting you at-will speak with animals, speak with plants, speak with dead, & stone tell.
19: You are immune to [language-dependent] effects.

[JonSetanta]

Decent stuff. I like the diversity, even while more bonus-tossing early on still makes me cringe.

I wonder about the balance of Seer and similar. It seems too good to be true, but in application not really. I wonder if a similar concept using crappy and school-specific metamagic feats would work?

Why not scale by caster level rather than spell slot?

[virgil]

Skill Focus before gave a +3 bonus, and I didn't want prior builds that used the feat to lose that.

As for not scaling the feats by caster level, how many different ways are there to boost your caster level? Besides, with BaB like the Combat feats, there are classes with less than full progression, unlike the non-primary caster. All of the classes with reduced spellcasting don't have reduced caster level, they have reduced spell level caps.

Yeah, Seer surprised me as well. I tried to keep a similar outlook to the evocation school with the War Mage feat. I did not want to boost the individual throughput, but instead boost their sustainability, though I think I may switch the SL 6 ability with one of the lower ones to get encourage such.

[Prak]

Skill Focus: Balance [Skill]
Balance Skill Ranks:
0: +3 to the skill.
4: You suffer no penalty to Balance checks whiles moving your full speed
9: You suffer no penalty to AC from charging or running
14: You can balance on a surface that cannot support you, be it tree branch, liquid, or even a cloud. The cloud must be thick enough to provide concealment within to be able to stand atop it
19: You can balance on arrows or even rays. With an AoO, make a Balance check against a DC equal to the attack. You dismount at any point along its path, provoking AoOs for movement as normal

what about spears that you yourself throw?

The skill feats look awesome, Virgileso, I haven't looked at the magic ones yet though.

[virgil]

Good catch. That was my intent, and I didn't make the language clear enough.

[Akula]

Why no abilities at 1st level spells? Because casters are awesome?

[Prak]

Good catch. That was my intent, and I didn't make the language clear enough.

I figured as much, glad I asked.

you might want to revise the text for Overcharged Mage's first ability, it took me a few reads to understand what it meant, and it probably needs to be immediately comprehensible.

[Koumei]

I like how you can't figure out what to do for the later on ability of the Seer, which is about Divining - magically figuring things out. I guess we know what feat you didn't take :D

[virgil]

My biggest limiter is that I want feats to do something other than grant an SLA.

[Mask_De_H]

To state the obvious: how about granting a Persistent effect for the divination spells for the 9th level ability virgileso?

[JonSetanta]

Why no abilities at 1st level spells? Because casters are awesome?

I tried that for Feybook.
Shit's near impossible, given that the worth of a feat is usually incomparable to that of a spell.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Yea, on a cursory glance of higher level Divination spells, I don't see anything wrong with giving a free Persistant as a 9th level ability.

It also works in core with a 18th level Divination wizard burning all his low level slots on Persistant Detect Everthing.

Actually, instead of Persistant, I think I may go with "any spell with a duration of longer than 1 round now lasts for 24 hours, this effect does not stack with Extend or similar effects."

[virgil]

Alright, that works for now; thanks for the help. If anyone finds an exploit in Seer, feel free to post such so I can attempt to fix it.

While I'm at it, let's add quotes for the Skill Focus feats.

[Surgo]

Those skill focus feats for Jump and Climb seem pretty weak. Those are really weak skills to begin with -- they need to be made awesome somehow.

[virgil]

A couple tweaks added to those two feats.

[TarkisFlux]

Hope I'm not late to the suggestion party...

Counterspell Mage:
[*]Does the initial ability require spell expenditure, or is that straight up action cancellation? It's not really clear. In case it matters, I much prefer the latter, resource free version I think you're suggesting, as it would actually get used and wouldn't just waste resources.

Eternal Caster:
[*]Given their already strong extension abilities, I think a free persist / day in addition to their current rank 9 abilities would round it out nicely.

Climb:
[*]I think for the rank 14 ability that the intent is to let people walk up walls, but it's not clear that they no longer have to use their hands. Do they also gain the ability to take a run action up walls at that point?
[*]I'm not fond of the rank 19 ability, mostly because the flavor feels weird. No idea what you'd do instead, though an auto-catch ability or a never-fall ability might be more in line and accomplish the same thing (so long as there was a wall within reach).

Jump:
[*]The rank 19 double damage on jump charge + jumps don't provoke seems kinda weak. You could drop that into the 9 rank thing (and change the provoking so that you only don't provoke if your ranks in jump are greater than their BAB) and it would be fine. In the new gap I'd put the immune to falling damage ability from climb; it feels more appropriate here given jumping's greater reliance on landing from great heights.

Balance:
[*]The rank 19 ability is technically included in the rank 14 ability, since you can already balance on physical things that can't support your weight, aren't held up by anything else, and will carry you along with them (i.e. clouds). That one is moving faster than the other doesn't seem to disallow it with the wording you've got. Which is fine, I'd rather have it at that level anyway. You could put in a new rank 19 thing where you can balance on air while running instead or whatever.
[*]Also, is there a DC associated with any of these things?

Appraise:
[*]I don't understand the parenthetical comment in the rank 19 ability. Are you just referring to the fact that their armor doesn't protect them as much at that point, or is there some non-armor that I'm not recalling?

[virgil]

The first ability in Counter Spell Mage is straight up action cancellation.

I'm a bit hesitant on adding more onto Eternal Caster, since as you stated it's already strong.

I'll clear up the free hands part for Skill Focus (Climb), and the rank 19 ability was the closest thing I could think of, as an auto-catch ability at that level would be obsolete due to the DCs involved.

You can't balance on arrows unless you use a readied action, which means no riding your own attacks unless you have an immediate action moving ability. Also, magic rays don't have 'surfaces' in the way water does, so they definitely can't be rode upon with the rank 14 ability. The original intent was that the DCs would remain the same, a tree branch only 3 inches wide would be use the standard DC; while large bodies of water and clouds are auto-success because they have plenty of surface area to balance on, and are at worst difficult surfaces (which have a base DC 10, which you're passing in your sleep by this point).

The parenthetical comment in Skill Focus (Appraise) refers to the Tome's non-armors (Tome of War, specifically), which is a class of armor that you don't need proficiency in armor to be able to wear without penalty (such as camo, magic clothes, etc).

[TarkisFlux]

I should have been a bit more clear about Eternal Caster. I meant to give them a 1/day persist of a low level spell, like a 4th or below. Anything better than that is probably too strong. And if that's already too strong (and it's only saving them an 8th level slot or so for something else), that's fine. It's hardly necessary, just felt more in line with their other stuff than a slightly discounted metamagic option.

Point made on the auto-catch. Back to falling forever then, as every other climbing thing I can think of (except the run action, which isn't a rank 19 ability) is covered by Spider Climb and its 'you never need to make a check to climb anything, at all, ever' ability.

I had forgotten about the rays while writing that. Yeah, balancing on disintegrate rays and the like really should be at rank 19. It's written as a ray or attack 'exiting' your space, so does it count if the attack would pass through your space? Like if it were targetting you, and you started balancing on it, and so it exited your space because the target was no longer in the way?

Appraise covers both types then. That could be made a bit more clear, but I was also word flipping in my reading haste. Sorry :-/

[virgil]

Spider Climb is a very easy ability to get for free practically on a magic item, as the slippers are only 4.8k, on top of it being a world of flying. Thus, thinking of new climb-only abilities is really hard, especially that level 16 ability. Personally, I don't worry too much about that level for feats, because it's a level I just don't care about.

Yes, you can balance on attacks that pass through your space, which was the intent.

[virgil]

Three new feats have been added!

[schpeelah]

How about Climb 19 granting personal Objective Directional Gravity, with or without a maximum range?

[DragonChild]

Is there any reason that the metamagic feats only have 4 powers, instead of the usual 5?

[virgil]

Mainly because spellcasters are awesome and the non-caster feats were partially put in to help enhance non-casters so they could actually be on par.

[virgil]

Having Climb create objective directional gravity is basically granting them flight, which runs counter to the rest of the feat.

Also, new metamagic feat added (Subtle Magic).

[schpeelah]

You're thinking about subjective directional gravity. I was talking about the one that attracts you towards nearest solid object.

Also, I do not think Delay Spell should have a spell slot increase, there should be a different limitation. The thing is, the benefit of delaying a spell is very small - unless you specifically want to nova, in which case +2 spell slot level is not enough. How about a limit on the number of spells waiting to go off at any given moment?