Practiced Spellcaster (Bard) for Sublime Chord?

Question

I've been putting together a build I'm calling the “Disney Princess”, inspired by the classic archetype — friend to all living things, sings to inspire their companions, can accomplish mundane tasks in a musical montage featuring adorable woodland creatures.

The build I've come up with is:

• Bard 1
• Druid 3
• Bard 1
• Green Whisperer 2 (Dragon 311 p.69)
• Arcane Hierophant 3
• Sublime Chord 1
• Arcane Hierophant 7
• Green Whisperer 2

This is an actual character I intend to play, if I can get it all to work correctly. (I'm planning to deliberately drop a couple of power tiers by trading away Wild Shape, picking on-theme spells, and writing a massive personal ban list.)

Anyway, as I understand it, I'd end up with a Bard caster level of 7 (Bard 2 + Green Whisperer 2 + Arcane Hierophant 3) and a Sublime Chord caster level of 17 (everything but Druid). I would like to take Practiced Spellcaster to improve this.

If I take Practiced Spellcaster (Bard), then I would end up with a Bard caster level of 11. If I take Practiced Spellcaster (Sublime Chord), then I would eventually have a Sublime Chord caster level of 20. But would Practiced Spellcaster (Bard) also improve my Sublime Chord caster level?

I've seen a dozen contradictory interpretations of how Sublime Chord combines with other things and all of them make my head hurt (and with the build I'm looking at, I probably deserve it). In the end, I might just propose a simplified rewrite to the DM. But if there is a clear-cut answer by the rules as written, then at the very least I would like to use that as a starting point.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, sublime chord awkwardly based your caster level on your level in a chosen arcane spellcasting class—not your caster level in that class. Then other prestige classes claim to stack with some class for the purposes of determining caster level.

I think the easiest way to understand this is to imagine that sublime chord actually just stacks with some arcane spellcasting class for caster level, as a more normal prestige class does (but only for caster level), and then uses that class’s caster level for its own spells. If you think of things that way, the basic result is unchanged, and it allows for clear, reasonable adjudication of corner cases like Practiced Spellcaster.

Under this interpretation, your first level of sublime chord would bump your bard caster level up to 8th (2 from bard levels, 2 from green whisperer levels, 3 from arcane hierophant levels, 1 from the sublime chord level). Your sublime chord spells would also use your bard caster level, so those are also cast at caster level 8th. You could take Practiced Spellcaster (bard) to bump this up—for both classes—to 11th.

This “interpretation” of sublime chord, though, is really not technically accurate. Sublime chord does have a separate caster level of its own. However, there are interpretations of sublime chord caster level that work out mathematically-identical to this, and this interpretation is much easier to understand and reason about.

On the other hand, though, you could argue all sorts of other interpretations that would change things. You could argue that sublime chord specifies class levels, not caster levels, so your other prestige classes before sublime chord don't count—not even for that class, since sublime chord redefines how that class does its caster level. Bonuses may or may not even be applicable under such an interpretation. On the other hand, you could (and people have) argue crazy double-dipping, particularly with other things that mess with how caster level is determined (e.g. Nar demonbinder, Master Spellthief). I don’t think any of these is particularly helpful for practical play, however.