[RPG] Turn spells into spell-like/supernatural abilities

dnd-3.5espells

Is it possible to turn spells into spell-like/supernatural abilities?
A single spell or all of your spellcasting.

Best Answer

Turning a single spell, or limited number of spells, into a spell-like ability or supernatural ability is definitely possible.

For spell-like ability, the most immediate example is the archmage, which has an option for its high arcana class feature simply called “Spell-like Ability.” You choose a spell, permanently lose one 5th-level spell per day as well as one spell per day of the chosen spell’s level, and you get to use that spell 2/day as a spell-like ability. This results in basically trading a 5th-level spell slot for a higher level spell slot, but you lose the flexibility of having possibly prepared something else in those slots.

There are other ways to get spell-like ability versions of selected spells; too many to list here.

Supernatural spells are rarer. The only example to come to mind is the dweomerkeeper prestige class from the web enhancement to Complete Divine. This is generally considered an overpowered class because of its ability to turn any spell into a supernatural ability, since supernatural abilities have significant advantages over spells. In particular, unlike the archmage, dweomerkeeper neglects to say you still have to pay material and XP components on the chosen spell, which means you can use, for example, wish as a supernatural ability that doesn’t require XP.

There is no way to turn all of a chosen class’s spellcasting to spell-like or supernatural. However, one particular class does this naturally: the shadowcaster from Tome of Magic. There are a lot of things going on with the shadowcaster, which I’ll skip, but the long and short of it is that the shadowcaster uses “mysteries,” which start out as arcane spells. When the shadowcaster gets 4th-level mysteries, his 3rd-level and lower mysteries start to count as spell-like abilities (his new 4th-level mysteries are still cast as arcane spells). Then when he gets 7th-level mysteries, his 3rd-level and lower mysteries start to be used as supernatural abilities (and his 4th through 6th-level mysteries start to be spell-like, and his new 7th-level mysteries are still arcane).