Ideas for fixing broken Metamagic

[Josh the Aspie]

Hey there all. There are some uses of metamagic that I view to be out-right abuses in many cases. Because of this, there is a list of house rules I am working on to limit this.

Edited, based in part on comments below.

1. No negative metamagic adjustments. Even if something does not mention this explicitly, the absolute minimum a metamagic can be reduced to is +0.5. This applies to all examples of 'free' metamagic granted by class abilities, etc. Metamagics that start with a +0 metamagic adjustment are unaffected by this house rule.

2. When determining the adjustments for these metamagic feats, round down. Thus, the first 'free' metamagic is, indeed, free, but applying multiple 'free' metamagic effects will have a cost.

If a prepared caster with dynamic methods of adding free metamagic wishes to apply multiple free metamagic effects to their spells, they may do so by memorizing those spells in a higher slot. Any dynamic free metamagic uses may be used to fill that space. Examples of such uses include Ultimate Magus, Divine Metamagic, and Rods of Metamagic.

3. Nightsticks are usually not allowed, due to my games usually not allowing libris mortis. But in games where I allow the book (if it comes up), they can be used to give the cleric turning attempts, but these attempts can only be used for actual attempts to turn, not for divine metamagic. Due to the two rules above, I am not sure if this would be necessary or not, especially since I usually run games from level 1 up.

[DracoDei]

1 and 3 should be very good.

2 I am not so sure about... A subdual substituted, sonic substituted Fireball does not strike me as cheesy for example. Perhaps differentiate between naturally +0 and things that have been altered to be +0 by other feats or class abilities.

[Fitz10019]

Hey there all. There are some uses of metamagic that I view to be out-right abuses in many cases. Because of this, there is a list of house rules I am working on to limit this.

For example.

1. No negative metamagic adjustments. Even if something does not mention this explicitly, the absolute minimum adjustment for applying a metamagic is +0.

2. For every 2 +0 / Free metamagic applications, the effective level of the spell is increased by 1. In other words, the increase to the spell level from otherwise free metamagic effects is 1/2 the number of such spells applied, rounded down. You can still have one free metamagic applied without cost.

3. Nightsticks are not allowed, due to my games usually not allowing libris mortis. But in games where I allow the book (if it comes up), they can be used to give the cleric turning attempts, but these attempts can only be used for actual attempts to turn, not for divine metamagic. Due to the two rules above, I am not sure if this would be necessary or not, especially since I usually run games from level 1 up.

If you're #1 had a minimum of .5, the rounding rules would automatically give you your #2.

[Yora]

I don't ever allow metamagic spells to be reduced to less than +1.

[Josh the Aspie]

The reason I separated #1 and #2 is two fold. I wanted to be able to discuss them separately, and I also wanted to avoid giving players the ability to argue over whether 0.5 rounded down" meant they could apply multiple meta-magics for free.

And the large amount of flexibility that those 0 level metamagics give you over learning other versions of the spells might be a good reason to keep even +0 adjustment metamagics included in the rule, but I do see your point DracoDei. I've made adjustments based on this.

I'm still debating over rule #3.