The optimizer in me instinctively didn't want to take Devotion feats without any turn attempts to fuel extra usages, since I'm not getting full use out of the feat. However, I can't help wondering if some of them wouldn't be worth taking for just the one daily usage – like Travel, Trickery, or Animal for example.
To make this more concrete – are there any Devotion feats that are worth taking as a spellthief at level 3 for just the one daily usage? (Only other feat so far is Weapon Finesse)
Best Answer
Knowledge Devotion is awesome, and doesn’t care about Turn Undead
Knowledge Devotion can be used at will; it does not reference or use turn undead in any way. It provides a minimum of +1 attack, +1 damage, but with fairly easy Knowledge checks, can produce larger bonuses. Dramatically better returns than the Weapon Focus et al. line, without requiring you to be a fighter, or tying you to a single weapon. A very solid feat.
Travel Devotion is good enough to be worth a feat even 1/day
Travel Devotion gives you a minute’s worth of swift-action movement; that’s worth a feat. Of course, it gets massively better with more Turn Undead; a Cha of 12 nets you 3 minutes of swift-action movement per day, while a Cha of 16 (which, as a spellthief, you may actually have) gets you 4.
Trickery Devotion, again, 1/day could be enough
Trickery Devotion is a bit tougher to use, but you burn Turn Undead uses very quickly getting more of it (since it uses 3 per use), so not having Turn Undead probably won’t slow you down very much. And getting to make a duplicate of yourself for a minute/level each day is, well, very tricksy indeed.
Law Devotion gives a hefty bonus for a minute/day
Like Trickery, Law uses 3 uses of Turn Undead per use of the devotion, which means you do not get dramatically more uses out of it by having Turn Undead. Each use gives you a pretty large bonus to attack or AC for a minute (+3 until 10th, then +5 until 15th, then +7). You need to hit if you’re going to steal anything.
Animal Devotion, if you’re desperate
Animal Devotion gives flight in a feat. That is very rare. Without Turn Undead, you only get 1 minute/day, which sucks, but 1 minute/day is still an awful lot better than none. Also has some other solid uses, once you get yourself set up with a more permanent form of flight.
Cleric dips are really strong!
Don’t ignore the possibility of just taking a level in (cloistered) cleric. You’d get all the devotion feats you want for free, plus Turn Undead to fuel them, plus a smattering of spells. Which, if you do go cloistered cleric, includes identify as a 1st-level divine spell – and identify doesn’t have an expensive material component when used as a divine spell. This is awesome.
Bonus Mention: Godsblood Spelltheft sounds thematically appropriate, is very useful
Godsblood Spelltheft is a feat introduced by Class Chronicles: Factotums and Spellthieves, the same place we got Font of Inspiration from. It is somewhat specific to the Forgotten Realms, but it’s easy enough to fit into any campaign setting, either with a different list of gods and domains, or the same domains but for different reasons, or whatever. Point is, the feat allows you to be sure that, no matter what spell you steal, if it’s useless you can always use one of these domain spells. That’s worth a lot to a spellthief.
For the list of domains that you are eligible to choose, see this question.