Wildcard Sorcerer (Apath)
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Your powers rely on chance. That you were even conceived is a freak accident, and your life has been a long line of strange coincidences. You have learned to stack the deck in your favor.
A wildcard sorcerer's magic is wild and unpredictable, mutating from day to day. Spell preparation and exchange is like a form of introspective divination, where the wildcard sorcerer probes his own mind to find what powers he has for the day. Many use divining tools in this process, such as a deck of cards. The selection of spells is often colored by the environment he is in; a wildcard sorcerer who finds himself in a hot desert environment often finds his magic changes either to adapt, giving him fire spells, or in opposition, giving him cold spells.
In game world terms, the wildcard sorcerer has no direct control over his spell selection. The magic changes more or less randomly over time. In play the opposite is true; the player has exact control over the wildcard sorcerers spell selection, but should try to select spells that make a good story and create a reasonable sense of magical resonance with what the sorcerer is doing. Of course, since spells that make sense and add to the story also have high utility, this is rarely a problem.
Class Features
The wildcard sorcerer has all the class abilities of the normal sorcerer, except as follows.
Class Skills
Add Sleight of Hand (Dex) to the wildcard sorcerer's list of class skills. This replaces the bloodline skill
Wildcard Bonus Feats
At level 7, 13, and 19 select one bonus feat from this list: Bouncing Spell, Greater Spell Focus, Greater Spell Penetration, Persistent Spell, Selective Spell, Spell Focus, Spell Penetration.
Wildcard Arcana
Each day when preparing spells, the wildcard sorcerer may exchange one of his current known spells for another. All normal rules apply to what spells he can learn and the spell must be of the same level as the one it replaces and from the sorcerer spell list. This replaces bloodline arcana and bloodline spells.
Wildcard Deck
You trust your luck and have tied your powers to the draw of cards. And you learn to cheat.
You make a deck of spells that you can cast randomly. These are sorcerer spells, but need not be spells known to you. Actually writing the names and pertinent details of the spells of your deck makes a handy prop for this ability. When preparing the deck, you follow these rules.
- Pick one spell of the highest level you can cast.
- Pick two spells of the next-highest level of spells you can cast.
- Pick three spells of two levels lower than the highest you can cast.
- No spell can be on this list more than once.
- All spells in the deck must have a casting time of one standard action and may not have a costly material component. Any components the spell has are ignored. The spell instead has a somatic components (drawing the card) and a focus component (the card itself).
- As you gain the ability to cast spells of new spell levels, you remove spells who are now of too low level to qualify and add new spells to fill out the deck.
- When you gain a level as a wildcard sorcerer without learning a new level of spells, you can rebuild your deck at will, following the above rules.
- The deck contains spells of level zero and up. You can't add spells of a negative level, so you don't get your full deck of 6 spells until you can cast second level spells.
- Your bloodline abilities allows you to draw cards from this deck. Unless otherwise noted, drawns cards are removed from the deck. You can continue to use abilities that use cards until you are out of cards. Return all used cards to the deck when you next prepare spells.
Luck of the Draw (Sp): At 1st level, as a standard action, you can pull a card from this deck. Before the end of your current turn, you can cast the spell on the card once as a free action.
Double Draw (Sp): At 3rd level, as a standard action, your can draw two cards from your deck and select one of them to use. Return the other card. It is traditional to draw one card from the top of the pile, and the other from the bottom, but this is not required.
Quick Card (Sp): At 9th level, you can draw a card from your deck as a swift action and then have the option to use it as a free action.
Jack in the Hole (Ex): At 15th level, you can make an informed selection of any one card from your power deck and use it as a standard action. Shuffle the remainder of the deck.
Shuffle Deck (Su): At 20th level, three times per day, you can return all used cards to your deck of power cards and shuffle the deck. This is a full-round action. This replaces bloodline powers.
Summary of Changed Class Abilities
These abilities of the original class are lost or modified in this archetype:
- Bloodline Spells
- Bloodline Arcana