Allowing scribed spells from Planar Touchstone (Catalogues of Enlightenment).

[Craiconn]

A new PC is entering my 12th level campaign (I'm DMing in the Forgotten Realms).  As a quick preface, I am a DM who welcomes & encourages sensibly optimized game-play - although nothing broken or TO is welcome.

His 12th level wizard wants to take the feat - Planar Touchstone (Catalogues of Enlightenment) - as his 6th level feat.  The Catalogues are EL8.  So it's assumed that his character had to shift to the Catalogues with another 250 gp spent at a later point in his build sequencing.

He would like for his starting character to have had his wizard spellbook fleshed out with a healthy number of clerical domain spells that he acquired through the Catalogues "domain shuffling" via the prior levels he had leading up to 12th level.  I am willing to work with him on that since that's a creative use of the feat.   

I'm coming to you folks for sound advice on how to adjudicate my wizard PC obtaining these clerical spells to his spellbook.  And what kind of limit I should impose.  Obviously, he will be paying 50gp/Spell Level for scribing purposes into his BBB.  But since I have little experience with this feat and Planar Touchstone nuances, I could use some help in framing this allowance with RAW/RAI and keeping it from getting broken.

Thanks for your help and guidance.

[X-Codes]

Wizards already have most of the top-tier spells in the game, so becoming even stronger from a few spell picks from Cleric domains isn't too big of a concern, really.  The thing to look out for, primarily, would be the Spell domain's Anyspell and Greater Anyspell.  That said, RAW, these are only useful to casters with domain slots.  I would also look out for any domain spells that are exclusive to their domain.  An example of one such spell is Moon Blade, which is actually fine on it's own but can normally only be cast by Clerics with access to the Moon domain.  Unlike Moon Blade, there are many domain exclusive spells that are really good.

[Craiconn]

Thanks, X-Codes.  That's good advice.  Especially since domain-specific cleric spells seem to be a litte more powered-up (I guess to compensate for their extreme exclusivity).

I'm wondering though ... since these are "cleric domain spells" that are being scribed into his wizard spellbook ... if they should have the same casting-per-day limitations (i.e. *once*) that's mentioned for wizards getting access to domain spells in the rules on Pg. 20 in Complete Divine [under 'Extra Domains' section]. Similar to what you'd expect from a wizard going into the Divine Oracle PrC and getting access to the Oracle domain spells.

[phaedrusxy]

If he were actually casting them via the Planar Touchstone feat, then they would be limited to 1x/day. Since he's instead scribing them into his spellbook, they're just like normal spells to him.

You could just ban this whole thing, since I've seen some pretty decent arguments about how it's not really 100% legal. However, as X-codes said, it really isn't a huge power-up, since wizards already get most of the good spells, anyway. (And there are other ways for them to steal spells from other lists already, like Recaster, Wyrm Wizard, etc).

In a way, it may make him a bit weaker, as he can take the place of the party "healer"/cleric, but if he does, this will require a fraction of his daily spell slots. (OK, overall he won't be weaker, but it may spread his resources a bit thinner).

What you should be more worried about is if he picks up Uncanny Forethought, or some other way to cast his spells spontaneously.

[Craiconn]

Hey PhaedrusXY.  I appreciate your insight.  Yeah, knowing my incoming player, he's likely to be bringing Uncanny Forethought into combination with these domain spells.  Especially ones with long casting times and what-not (for Standard Action casting).

As for your comment about the less-than-100% legality of this spell scribing tactic, I'd love to hear about that.  My Google-Fu for finding a linked thread about the legality issue turned up nothing (on MinMax, BG, GitP, Wotc).

Thanks again!

[X-Codes]

Oh, IMO just don't allow Standard Action casting of long time spells with Uncanny Forethought.  I'm almost certain that was an oversight by an editor somewhere who forgot that not all spells are cast as a standard action.

As for the legality issue, I think it's an issue that's lumped in with the whole "Wizards can cast any spell in the game" argument, where a Wizard somehow gets spells not on the Wizard spell list in his spell book, and then prepares said spells based on the idea that any spell in his book is fair game.  From what I know about it... it's less interesting than it sounds.  A really nitpicky argument of semantics.

[phaedrusxy]

Yeah, I was never that convinced by the arguments against it...

Even without allowing Uncanny Forethought to "speed up" long casting times, the feat is still quite overpowered. If you want to be a spontaneous caster, roll up a sorcerer. Being able to cast spontaneously from your enormous spellbook is ridiculous.