Crafting feats as Gifts

[Septire]

Title says it all: I'd like to see the addition of a new gift(s) that allow a new character to take Scribe Scroll, Craft Wand, and/or Brew Potion with an increase to ECL (or some other drawback, maybe a negative to ability scores, or to take this as a Path). The goal of this suggestion is to show some love for support-role characters (those who sacrifice XP to improve other characters as a service or generosity) without adding more to a powerbuilt character's repertoire.

This gift(s) would only be available to characters starting with levels in a caster class able to take the feats. Characters would not be able to take it as a non-caster even if they plan to multiclass into a caster-class later (due to the prerequisites on the feats in question).

Please keep in mind that Craft Wand has a prerequisite of "spellcaster level 5+ ". You could include it anyways, don't include Craft Wand, or do a check for this gift upon leveling up and award the feat when a character does reach spellcaster level 5+.


A bit of reasoning why I'd like to see this as a gift: I mostly play in the Underdark nowadays, and having visited the shops both on the surface and across the Underdark, it's very clear that there's a disparity in the quality of things being sold. I thought to myself, "Why not create a caster-crafter to fix this perceived issue?" I wasn't at all concerned with what this character was able to do in terms of PvE and PvP, I merely wanted to provide two things: Utility by the means of craft feats (to try to help out the availability of goods in-house), and utility by means of epic spell focuses (scry, yoink, maybe send_image) so the character wasn't purely a workhorse. I quickly noticed that for a cleric or a multiclassed character, it's not possible to have your cake and eat it to, even though the feats put a drain on gold and XP and you would likely never have a moment to yourself without fulfilling orders (enchanters know what I am talking about, and perhaps this gift would make finding an artificer more common and take some pressure off the existing scroll-scribers).

As for the drawbacks: I realize that this gives casters disposable firepower without sacrificing too much by the way of feats. Is this going to make casters taking this feat grossly overpowered? I don't think so. It simply makes consumable items more abundant for the caster and for those they sell their wares to. Having played several non-casters over the course of... too long, scarcity of magic consumables puts those non-caster characters at the mercy of casters (competencies will vary). Yes, it is possible for a caster to take this to increase their own disposable firepower with scrolls and never share. Will all characters taking this gift do that? Probably not. The ECL or negative ability scores should deter powerbuilders from picking this up, as it's designed to be a mercantile/utility pick for support-role characters. If the ECL is around +2 or +3, the utility of the gift would (should) likely balance out with the added difficulty making the choice less of an automatic pick and more of a meaningful choice for their character.

This suggestion should nevertheless be weighed carefully. These feats are not available as bonus feats on items (creature hides) in NWN, meaning the character likely needs to be adjusted via Letoscript (or some equivalent). Removal of this gift would also require Letoscript (or some equivalent). I can foresee some issues arising amongst characters who already have scribe scroll from wizard or took one of the three aforementioned feats at level 1. Then again, this is very much an edge case, I can't see something like this happening but it should be included for consideration. I don't know of any instances of gifts being removed and the gifts being stripped from all characters (spell-shielding characters kept spell-shielding post-removal, for example).