Arcane Disciple when some spells are already on spell list

Question

Was just looking for a bit of insight into the Arcane Disciple feat. A quick quote on what that does:

Add the chosen domain's spells to your class list of arcane spells. If you have arcane spellcasting ability from more than one class, you must pick which arcane spellcasting ability this feat applies to. Once chosen, this decision cannot be changed for that feat. You may learn these spells as normal for your class; however, you use Wisdom (rather than the normal ability for your spellcasting) when determining the save DC for the spell. In addition, you must have a Wisdom score equal to 10 + the spell's level in order to prepare or cast a spell gained from this feat. Each day, you may prepare (or cast, if you cast spells without preparation) a maximum of one of these domains spells of each level.

I'm looking into a summoner build, and want to get into Thaumaturgist as a sorcerer. I figured I'd take Arcane Disciple and pick the summoning domain for Lesser Planar Ally. As a sorcerer though, all the Summon Monster spells and Gate are already Sor/Wiz spells. Does this mean I now need 19 WIS to cast Gate and the appropriate WIS for Summon Monster 1/2/3/5/7? Or can I still use these spells as a sorcerer and just rely on CHA for the main stat?

For further context, Vow of Poverty is part of the character build for a bit of game-balancing flavour. Just wondering if I need to allocate one of my 4 stat increases to WIS. Otherwise I'd rather put my points into just about anything else. Has anyone seen any rules regarding this? Or is it just a straight "the spells in this domain list now rely on WIS", regardless of whether or not they were already on your class list?

Thanks,

Erik

Answer 1

It’s not spelled out, and if you really want to get pedantic about it we have to get into a semantic argument about whether or not summon monster III from the sor/wiz list is the same spell as summon monster III from the Summoning domain—whether, when “these spells” refers to summon monster III, it refers to the Summoning domain “versions” of them, or it refers to some global object summon monster III that is referenced by both the sor/wiz list and Summoning domain list. Programmers will recognize this kind of problem since “by-reference” and “by-copy” are often things that programmers have to worry about—in that lingo, we wonder if summon monster III is a global singleton object or if each list has their own copy of it.

As far as I know, there is no objective way to resolve that semantic argument. But that’s besides the point—semantics and pedantry aren’t really the best way to approach this question anyway, since it hasn’t asked for semantics or pedantry, it’s asked for rules specifically on the topic—and the answer to that is that there are none. What you have quoted is the length and breadth of what’s available about Arcane Disciple, and there’s no more information to cite.

Given that, the more productive avenue to take the question, since there is no straightforward or objective answer, is to reframe the question as “what ruling here makes for the best game?” And the answer to that is, in my opinion, entirely straightforward—of course the feat shouldn’t nerf your access to spells you already had. That’s nonsense—feats are meant to benefit you. Their effect is literally entitled “Benefits:” in their description. While feats do occasionally apply drawbacks as well, these are explicitly called out—Arcane Disciple would need, in my opinion, to explicitly state that it’s messing with the spells you already have access to. And while many spellcasters—the sorcerer included—could possibly suffer a nerf like this acceptably, for others it’s inappropriate. And for that matter, it’s also a nerf to Arcane Disciple—a fairly mediocre feat—as well as to domain choices where some of the spells are already on your list—which are already weak choices, because you are getting less benefit out of Arcane Disciple that way.

Ultimately, though, if you want greater planar ally—which I’d expect a thaumaturgist to want—you need 18 Wisdom anyway. Getting to 19 Wisdom for gate isn’t much of a hardship at that point, and aside from the minimums to learn and cast these spells, none of them actually use their primary ability score for anything, since they do not offer saving throws. Though I suppose Vow of Poverty really does nerf you that hard where getting that 1 more Wisdom could be a problem. (I realize you are intentionally weakening your character with the feat, but I still feel compelled to state how miserably awful that feat is—the self-nerf you are applying is extreme.)