How often per day can Channeled Succor be used

clericfeatspathfinder-2espell-slots

Channeled Succor is a Cleric feat that allows you to cast one of a number of spells instead of one prepared Heal spell.

You can remove conditions with divine grace. You can sacrifice one heal spell you've prepared in your extra slots from healing font to cast one of the following spells instead: remove curse, remove disease, remove paralysis, or restoration. The spell is heightened to the same level as the heal spell you sacrificed.

This is not an action and has no frequency; it can't be activated as such, it just happens when you want it to.
So, how often can it be done per day?

a) Once per day: You can sacrifice one of your prepared heal spells, not two or three. Next day, none of your prepared heal spells are sacrificed, so you have one to go.
b) As many times as you have heal spells: You can sacrifice one of your prepared heal spells, so you do. After that, what does the feat say? It says you can sacrifice one of your prepared heal spells. So you do.
c) Once, ever (not likely): You can sacrifice one prepared heal spell. Next day, ask yourself: Did I already sacrifice one prepared heal spell? Yes, I did, that one time.

Best Answer

B) As many times as you have heal spells*

The feat itself does not impose any restriction on its use, just provides a cost and effect.

You can sacrifice one heal spell you’ve prepared in your extra slots from healing font to cast one of the following spells instead:

For the cost of one of your healing font heal spells, you can instead cast one of the spells listed. When you're done with that casting, you could do so again for the cost of another heal from your Healing Font.

This is in line with (most) Feats, which are always on. If it was otherwise, it would indicate "once per day", "once per 10 minutes", "once, ever" or similar. One such example (not counting innate spells) is Dance of Intercession (from the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix AP if you're concerned about spoilers) which restricts its use to "up to three times per day."

*note that only heal spells from your Divine Font feature qualify, so you are still limited to using this 1+Cha times per day

No, you can't cast it using a spell slot.

Spells you can cast because of your race aren't spells you know, and thus can't be spells you prepare. Per the PHB (p. 201, "Known and Prepared Spells"):

Before a spellcaster can use a spell, he or she must have the spell firmly fixed in mind ...

... and it goes on to describe some of the class-specific variations of knowing and preparing spells. But in any case, having a feature from your race or class that allows you to cast a spell isn't the same as knowing the spell.

This is spelled out clearly in the multiclassing rules for Pact Magic quoted in the question (PHB p. 164; emphasis mine).

If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast warlock spells you know.

Likewise, the Drow Magic trait clearly distinguishes the known cantrip from the merely castable other spells (PHB, p. 24; bold for emphasis mine):

You know the dancing lights cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the faerie fire spell once per day. When you reach 5th level, you can also cast the darkness spell once per day. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

If the intent of the rules was that Drow also knew the non-cantrip spells, it would say so.

Do spells cast using the Cleric’s ACF Spontaneous Domain Casting qualify as casting a domain spell

Touch of Healing: Definitely Yes

Getting the easy part out of the way first. If you can spontaneously cast a Conjuration (Healing) spell, and have a spell slot available in which to do so, you have it “available” as required by Touch of Healing. The fact that you have something else currently prepared in that slot doesn’t matter in the least when you can ditch that whenever you want.

Otherwise, Touch of Healing would fail entirely for favored souls, and I don’t think anyone wants to make that case.

Empowered/Maximized Healing

RAW, probably Yes

Unfortunately, the rules not only fail to delineate exactly what a “domain spell” is or is not, but also use that phrase to refer to two related, but subtly different, things.

That is, we have that

Each domain gives the cleric access to a domain spell at each spell level he can cast, from 1st on up...

If a domain spell is not on the cleric spell list, a cleric can prepare it only in his domain spell slot.

where “domain spell” is used to refer to each of the spells on your domain lists, as unprepared, almost abstract concepts—potential spells you have the option of preparing and casting, but before we get to those steps. Tellingly, it says “Each domain” has—or, more accurately, “grants access to,”—a domain spell per spell level—that is important because most clerics have more than one domain, so we are talking about more than one domain spell per spell level. The latter quote here clearly indicates that “domain spell” as a phrase can refer to any of the spells on domain lists, even if they aren’t yet prepared—because it specifies where you can prepare them, which is meaningless if you’ve already done so.

Contrast that with

A cleric also gets one domain spell of each spell level he can cast, starting at 1st level.

Here we’re taking about a real, tangible thing, a prepared spell, that the cleric could cast, or, say, a spellthief could steal. And you only get one of this kind of “domain spell” per spell level per day, unlike the other meaning of that phrase where you got (access to) one for “Each domain,” and there is no “per day” involved because your access to them is permanent and constant. This one domain spell per day is the result of taking the access to domain spells provided by our domain, and preparing them in our domain slot:

When a cleric prepares a spell in a domain spell slot, it must come from one of his two domains (see Deities, Domains, and Domain Spells, below).

(For context, this sentence immediately follows the previous quote. Note that the “Deities, Domains, and Domain Spells” section referenced here is the source of the first two quotations in this answer.)

So we have two subtly-different meanings of the term “domain spell” here—one refers to any and all spells found on domains, and the other refers to the one spell per level per day you can prepare in your domain slot and cast, and both are just “domain spell.” Herein lies our real problem—which of these two meanings of the phrase is radiant servant of Pelor using? Radiant servant of Pelor, itself, doesn’t really give us a lot to go on either way.

However, there is a context that is very important: the one place where “domain spell” is definitively used to refer to the actual prepared-and-cast spell is in a paragraph that is all about discussing how many spells of each level a cleric can cast per day. That is, what they’re discussing here actually is your one “domain spell” per day of each level. In this sense, a “spell per day” is different from a “spell,” in that your “spells per day” (for each spell level) is the number that your domain spells ability adds +1 to, while the “spell” is the actual, ya know, spell, found on the domain list.

Also, importantly, that one time “domain spell” is used to refer to that one spell per day per level is in the spells section—and immediately refers you to the “Deities, Domains, and Domain Spells” section for more details. The section that includes “Domain Spells” in the title, and to which everything else directs you for information about domain spells, uses the term solely to refer to the spells on your domains’ lists, and not your one extra spell per day per spell level that is prepared in your domain slot.

Therefore, it seems to me, that the most likely definition for “domain spell” is “a spell found on your domains,” and not (necessarily and solely) “a spell prepared in your domain slot.” The use of that phrase in the cleric’s spells ability is actually (in context) the result of eliding the “per day” that was already under discussion, and which is indeed limited to one per spell level that corresponds to whatever you decide to put into your domain slot for each level. It is therefore very likely that “properly speaking,” RAW, the radiant servant of Pelor is referring to any spell of the Healing domain list, regardless of how it is cast.

But a strong circumstantial for No being the intent

But we should go back to the radiant servant of Pelor at this point, because while it doesn’t give us a lot to go on, there may be something:

When a radiant servant of Pelor of at least 2nd [6th] level casts a domain spell from the Healing domain, that spell is affected as though by the Empower [Maximize] Spell feat. This spell does not use up a higher-level slot.

If we understand “domain spell” to refer to those spells you got access to because of the domains you have, the use of that phrase here would be entirely redundant with “spell from the Healing domain,” since of course (near-tautologically) a spell from the Healing domain is a spell from a domain. Furthermore, radiant servant of Pelor here is emphasizing that you cast the domain spell, which isn’t quite something you can do with a spell on a list—you have to prepare it in a slot, and then it is the prepared spell that you cast. This is a lot closer to what the spells section is talking about when it says “A cleric also gets one domain spell of each spell level he can cast,” since that prepared spell is the physical manifestation of that extra spell per day (per spell level) that the cleric gets. That makes for a strong, if circumstantial, case for thinking that the authors of radiant servant of Pelor may not have been as careful about this as we may have liked, and were referring specifically to the one prepared in your domain slot.

On top of this, spontaneous domain casting itself even states you cannot use “a domain spell” to spontaneously cast another spell from your chosen domain. again, that only makes sense if they’re talking about the spell prepared in your domain slot—otherwise any spell available from one of your domains, or maybe even from any domain, would be ineligible for being spontaneously converted to one of the spells from your chosen domain, and that certainly doesn’t seem likely at all.

How things work out in each case:

If a “domain spell” is any spell you get access to from a domain, as RAW seems to indicate, then you can use spontaneous domain casting to cast it and it’s still a domain spell, but then at that point you could have just prepared it to begin with (or, in the case of most Healing domain spells, spontaneously cast them using the core cleric spontaneous casting feature).

If a domain spell is specifically the spell prepared in the domain slot—which, again, it probably isn’t RAW, but there’s evidence here that both the authors of radiant servant of Pelor and spontaneous domain casting itself thought it was—then spontaneous domain casting doesn’t really help. Nothing in the ACF specifies that the process of spontaneously casting one of these spells with the ACF made it into a domain spell.

On balance: I’d allow it

It seems pretty clear to me that the authors were not clear on what exactly “domain spell” as a term should refer to. Furthermore, radiant servant of Pelor is a pretty garbage prestige class, and the empowered and maximized healing features are extremely poor. At the end of the day, the real answer is the one that makes for the best game, and that at least is quite clear: cure spells need all the help they can get, and someone dedicating themselves to those spells does likewise. Frankly, I’d nix all mention of “domain spell” from radiant servant of Pelor and allow those features to apply to any of the spells from the Healing domain, regardless of how or when you cast them. So you shouldn’t even need the spontaneous domain casting ACF for it (though you may want it since a few of those spells are superior to the cure spell you’d otherwise be able to cast spontaneously).