Designing Reserve Feats
The Complete Mage book introduced the concept of reserve feats and it detailed many of these reserve feats. Reserve feats are feats that give extra magical powers to spellcasters as long as those spellcasters keep a related spell of a minimum spell level in “reserve” (in other words they haven’t used a particular spell yet that day.) Reserve feats also include a secondary benefit which is typically a +1 bonus to the spellcaster’s caster level for the reserve feat’s spell type.
For example, the “Aquatic Breath” reserve feat gives the spellcaster the ability to breath underwater if the spellcaster has a 2nd level or higher water spell memorized. If the spellcaster did not choose an appropriate spell for the day or he has already used it, he still has a +1 bonus to his caster level when casting any water-based spells.
With that background out of the way, what makes a good reserve feat?
