Some Tome Questions
Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2024 4:40 pm
I've been using a smattering of Tome material in my home 3.5 D&D game and I'm statting up a BBEG with a couple of different builds to see how I like it. I'm running into some stuff where I'm not sure what the design intent is or how to adjudicate the way it works.
First of all, the warlock gets Fiendish Servant at level 11, which has to take one of the Tome Fiend classes or have racial hit dice. How exactly do the Fiend classes work? Am I supposed to pick a demon and then slap the class on top of it? That seems redundant - the whole point seems to be taking the demon and devil traits and spreading them out over a bunch of levels instead of giving them to the creature all at once. But then it has a Race section and says that only an Outsider can take the class. So what kind of Outsider is it supposed to be?
Second, the BBEG is going to be high level and have Expert access to the Magic sphere (I won't bore you with the fluff, but I'm allowing him to take non-Fiendish spheres for story reasons). This gives him access to anyspell, greater anyspell, mnemonic enhancer, and spell engine. I'm not sure I understand how these abilities will work in this case. The text of anyspell has a bunch of language stating things like "the prepared spell occupies your 3rd-level domain spell slot" and explaining that you use your Wisdom for casting. Clearly the designers never considered anyone but a cleric with the Spell domain getting access to this spell - but here we are. Since warlocks don't get domain spell slots of any kind, and this is an at-will SLA with expert access, what happens when this NPC uses this ability? Does he get "virtual" slots that he fills with the prepared spell? Since he can use the SLA at will, does he have an arbitrary number of spell slots containing spells of up to 2nd level (or 5th with greater anyspell)? Or does he get just one, and can swap it out by using the anyspell SLA again? Does he get one 3rd-level slot and one 6th-level slot, since he has greater anyspell as well? For the mnemonic enhancer ability, I think it's pretty clear that you can use the "prepare" version just fine - but I could see an argument that since a warlock doesn't actually get the spell preparation class feature(s), he can't "prepare spells normally" even with this SLA. And I don't know if or how the "retain" version would work with a character who casts spells from nonexistent slots using spell-like abilities. And what about spell engine, a spell that exclusively allows you to swap out prepared spells for other spells? Would this character have prepared spells to swap, or not? Obviously, I've got mind caulk, and I have a set of interpretations for how to resolve this, but I'd like to know how much I'm cheating when and if my PCs call me on this.
Thanks in advance, Denizens!
First of all, the warlock gets Fiendish Servant at level 11, which has to take one of the Tome Fiend classes or have racial hit dice. How exactly do the Fiend classes work? Am I supposed to pick a demon and then slap the class on top of it? That seems redundant - the whole point seems to be taking the demon and devil traits and spreading them out over a bunch of levels instead of giving them to the creature all at once. But then it has a Race section and says that only an Outsider can take the class. So what kind of Outsider is it supposed to be?
Second, the BBEG is going to be high level and have Expert access to the Magic sphere (I won't bore you with the fluff, but I'm allowing him to take non-Fiendish spheres for story reasons). This gives him access to anyspell, greater anyspell, mnemonic enhancer, and spell engine. I'm not sure I understand how these abilities will work in this case. The text of anyspell has a bunch of language stating things like "the prepared spell occupies your 3rd-level domain spell slot" and explaining that you use your Wisdom for casting. Clearly the designers never considered anyone but a cleric with the Spell domain getting access to this spell - but here we are. Since warlocks don't get domain spell slots of any kind, and this is an at-will SLA with expert access, what happens when this NPC uses this ability? Does he get "virtual" slots that he fills with the prepared spell? Since he can use the SLA at will, does he have an arbitrary number of spell slots containing spells of up to 2nd level (or 5th with greater anyspell)? Or does he get just one, and can swap it out by using the anyspell SLA again? Does he get one 3rd-level slot and one 6th-level slot, since he has greater anyspell as well? For the mnemonic enhancer ability, I think it's pretty clear that you can use the "prepare" version just fine - but I could see an argument that since a warlock doesn't actually get the spell preparation class feature(s), he can't "prepare spells normally" even with this SLA. And I don't know if or how the "retain" version would work with a character who casts spells from nonexistent slots using spell-like abilities. And what about spell engine, a spell that exclusively allows you to swap out prepared spells for other spells? Would this character have prepared spells to swap, or not? Obviously, I've got mind caulk, and I have a set of interpretations for how to resolve this, but I'd like to know how much I'm cheating when and if my PCs call me on this.
Thanks in advance, Denizens!