Dual 9s Chameleon - How many feats?

[OblivionSmurf83]

Everyone's presumably familiar with the Dual 9s Chameleon spellcasting trick.

My question is: how many times do you have to take the extra spell feat to get dual 9s spellcasting. 3? Or 6?

[Sohala]

Extra Spell, the feat that gives knowledge of a spell one level below your max?

I'm going to need this trick linked to or explained, please.

[KellKheraptis]

There are several ways, actually.  Sanctum Spell lets you bump everything up a level, as does IIRC Snowcasting, so that alone can preclude using Planar Touchstone (the easiest way, as that'll get you a 9th level spell).  Sanctum Spell and Planar Touchstone however can get up to 10th level spells, opening up 7-9 with Extra Spell.  It's generally 5 feats total, though once you've leapfrogged up, you can retro out the unneeded ones as you're self qualifying for the rest.  It isn't at all needed though...dual 9's and at will 20 BAB should be enough to handle any army of liches/dragons/whatever thrown at you, as you have access to literally every divine and arcane spell out there

[Shadowmind]

Extra Spell, the feat that gives knowledge of a spell one level below your max?

I'm going to need this trick linked to or explained, please.

Taken from the Chameleon Hanbook on the old BG boards:
Method 1 - The Easy Feat Way

    Planar TouchstonePlH: Your first stop to higher level casting is The Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment on the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus. Link yourself there and you gain the granted power of any domain. But what you are after is the higher power, 3 times 1/day you can cast a spell from that domain as if you were a cleric of you level. This qualifies you to take...
    Extra SlotCAr: Now that you can cast spells higher than 6th level you can gain an extra slot equal to one level lower than your maximum. You will need to take this a couple times if you want 7th and 8th level casting. Note that this effects both your arcane and divine casting and also you get bonus spells based off your Intelligence/Wisdom.
    Improved Sigil (Krau)RoD: While this feat is not necessary it does let you get the spell levels at the same time as a normal caster would. A couple of things to note the spells need to have a verbal component and you can only get to 8th level casting using this as the feat specifies as heighten spell and heighten is limited to 9th level spells. Note that Sanctum SpellCAr cannot achieve this because due to the wording of Planar TouchstonePlH metamagic cannot be applied (there is no actual preparation involved) and Versatile SpellcasterRotD requires actual spell slots.

[OblivionSmurf83]

The reason I ask is that its not clear if you need three Extra Spells (or Slots), or six. That is, will one 'bundle' of three Extra Spells/Slots cover both your Arcane and Divine spellcasting, or will you need two bundles?

Since Extra Spell/Slot were never designed to be used this way, I don't think there's a clear answer, I'm just looking for a bit of a discussion on it.

[Fadier]

The reason I ask is that its not clear if you need three Extra Spells (or Slots), or six. That is, will one 'bundle' of three Extra Spells/Slots cover both your Arcane and Divine spellcasting, or will you need two bundles?

Since Extra Spell/Slot were never designed to be used this way, I don't think there's a clear answer, I'm just looking for a bit of a discussion on it.

From the discussions I had with people on the topic I think it was always considered to be only 1 'bundle'. You can think of Extra Slot as adding to the table of what spells you get, making it apply to both your divine and arcane. But as you say those feats don't hold up very well in stressful situations.

Really the only reason you can get higher level casting is that Extra Slot is not worded very well, it does not specifically exclude from using one class (or ability for planar touchstone) to gain a new slot for another. It also only has a requirement of Caster Level 3rd so RAW as long as you have a caster level of 4 from somewhere you can get around the "You can’t use any abilities gained from your aptitude focus [...] to qualify for a feat, prestige class, or other option." clause.

IMHO the Extra Spell trick with Chameleons is 100% legit, and not really that broken with the added benefit of no arguments on if you can take a spell from outside your class list.

Sanctum Spell and Planar Touchstone however can get up to 10th level spells, opening up 7-9 with Extra Spell.

Yeh, my slight pet peeve with Planar touchstone is that from the wording of it. You have the domain spells as if you prepared them but you never actually do, so technically you cannot prepare any metamagic on the spells from planar touchstone. Now if you could get a Sudden Sanctum feat that would be a different story.



On a slightly different note I did port the Chameleon Handbook over to these boards (check out my signature) and I was once of the first people to do so, sadly it seems to be buried under all the other ones

[OblivionSmurf83]

Yeah, I've been reading the Chameleon Handbook

I was actually tempted to start my own, focusing on pure caster and gish chameleons, but that'll have to wait till uni's done.

[FlaminCows]

The reason I ask is that its not clear if you need three Extra Spells (or Slots), or six. That is, will one 'bundle' of three Extra Spells/Slots cover both your Arcane and Divine spellcasting, or will you need two bundles?

Since Extra Spell/Slot were never designed to be used this way, I don't think there's a clear answer, I'm just looking for a bit of a discussion on it.

I'll be honest with you: I'm not sure either. I've always interpreted it as requiring only one bundle, but my explanation doesn't seem perfect to me. I'd love to see somebody else give it a shot.

The short version is that, the way I see it, the Extra Slot feat would add a slot to the Chameleon's class table (5-2). Both Arcane Focus and Divine Focus reference that same table and grant that daily allotment of spells, so if you use both aptitude focuses at the same time you would be getting an extra slot in the allotment each focus grants, as they are both based on the Chameleon's allotment which is the one the feat increased. That's my take on it, anyway.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Extra Slot is the key feat to the Miracle At Level 6 build.

It has to be re-hashed every now and then.
iirc - the original thread even had a Chameleon version too.

[Fadier]

Yeah, I've been reading the Chameleon Handbook

I was actually tempted to start my own, focusing on pure caster and gish chameleons, but that'll have to wait till uni's done.

My Chameleon Handbook is mainly just a list of lower level or cross arcane/divine spells with a bit added on. I just started compiling them when I had some spare time, eventually I just decided to post it for other people to use. Its also good for things like wands/scrolls for UMD users.

[Sohala]

Glossing over the fact that you are using spells from an Aptitude Focus to use these feats, don't you just need Extra Slot? Chameleon uses a spellbook for arcane spells and knows all divine spells, where is the need for taking Extra Spell (other than to pin new spells in your spellbook)?

[Fadier]

Glossing over the fact that you are using spells from an Aptitude Focus to use these feats, don't you just need Extra Slot? Chameleon uses a spellbook for arcane spells and knows all divine spells, where is the need for taking Extra Spell (other than to pin new spells in your spellbook)?

To get the casting yes, but you can take Extra Spell in your Chameleon floating feat and then write the spell you've selected into your spellbook and then the next day change your Extra Spell feat to another spell keeping the first spell because its written in your spellbook. Repeat as needed.

And your right a Chameleon's aptitude focus cannot be used for a prerequisite but to take Extra Slot the only prerequisite you need is 4 ranks in Spellcraft (RAW at least).