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Andion Isurand
2010-08-22, 11:54 PM
The interactions between various metamagic feats placed upon the same spell can be hard to pin down. I often see things stated in more ways than one.

In what instances do you feel that metamagic should fully interact with other metamagic or apply strictly to the base spell?

If there are previous threads on this subject, please link them in your post.

My first question: In your games or by some sage rule, would Twin or Repeat spell effectively mimic other metamagic feats placed on the original spell effect... such as extend, sculpt, energize, consecrate, chain, widen, empower, maximize... or what have you?

WinWin
2010-08-23, 12:00 AM
They should all interact with each other...Unless the changes disqualify specific metamagic.

An example would be twinning a spell. From memory it effects only single target spells. Subsequently chaining the spell might disqualify it.

Andion Isurand
2010-08-23, 12:03 AM
...or would you simply get one chained copy and one normal copy of the spell?

WinWin
2010-08-23, 12:11 AM
In theory if it were to work, you would get 2 chained versions of the spell.

Another example is Persistant and Chained. Persistant requires fixed (or personal) range. Chaining requires a single target. Thus any single target spell with a fixed (non variable) range can be chained and persisted.

Zeful
2010-08-23, 12:32 AM
My first question: In your games or by some sage rule, would Twin or Repeat spell effectively mimic other metamagic feats placed on the original spell effect... such as extend, sculpt, energize, consecrate, chain, widen, empower, maximize... or what have you?

In my games? No. First, because Twin, Repeat, Persistent, Sculpt, Consecrate, Chain (and so on) aren't allowed. Caster classes do well enough with core. Second, because my take is that each one is separate and acts on the base spell independently of each other (for example, you can't use Energy Substitution to qualify a Fireball for Snowcasting). Trying to do otherwise would result in creating a new spell entirely (keeping with the above example, trying to get Energy Substitution to change Fireball to put Snowcasting on it would result in a new spell that works similarly to Fireball but deals cold damage, and has the [Cold] Descriptor).

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-08-23, 01:18 AM
Second, because my take is that each one is separate and acts on the base spell independently of each other (for example, you can't use Energy Substitution to qualify a Fireball for Snowcasting).

Doesn't this make things a lot more complicated than they have to be? A widened enlarged empowered fireball would launch one fireball that dealt (1.5X)d6 damage in a 20ft radius and Xd6 from 20ft to 40ft, with the enlarging doing nothing because if you launched it past the normal range the other two wouldn't apply. Though you don't use Twin and the others in your game, I've seen others use that interpretation, and the same situation arises there, with a twinned cold-substituted lightning bolt creating one cold and one electric lightning bolt.


My take on things is that everything stacks cumulatively. By the existing rules, the only pair that doesn't stack perfectly is Empower + Maximize because it is specifically called out as such, and since that interaction is not nearly as abusive as the designers thought when they made it, I just make it 1.5*max damage instead of max + rolled/2. You can stack metamagics in whatever order you wish, so you can Cold Substitute a fireball to later add Lord of the Uttercold if you wish, for instance.

Really, metamagic isn't broken or even overpowered; upping a spell by two levels to remove verbal and somatic components isn't all that amazing, raising the level by four to cast something twice in one round (either by twinning or quickening) is nice but often overkill against anything but the BBEG, and if you're spending a slot six levels higher a duration of 24 hours is just fine. Metamagic level reducers are the real problem, and if you remove those there is no reason at all why casters shouldn't be able to stack metamagic however they wish.

Morithias
2010-08-23, 01:28 AM
Stacking metamagic, although useful I think needs to be looked at. I mean things often get harder as you go up to make more advanced things usually right? Although the smaller bits are easy to put together alone, it's figuring out how to put them together up and up and up, til you turn iron and coal plus other things into S-grade steel is what's hard.

What if say, for every metamagic you put on a spell past the first one, it increases the spell level by +1 more.

For example if you had quicken (+4) and invisible (+0) on one spell, it would boost it by +5 not +4. Add on say fell animate (+3) and now you have it adding +9 to the spell level. So a quicken, invisible, magic missile that makes a zombie when you kill with it, is now a level 10 spell instead of level 8.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-08-23, 01:34 AM
What if say, for every metamagic you put on a spell past the first one, it increases the spell level by +1 more.

Unless your players use lots of metamagic reducers, that just makes metamagic an even worse option. Now, some particular feats could definitely use an increase in their level adjustment, like Invisible Spell, but dealing 1d4+1 damage plus 1 negative level to 5 separate targets is in no way worth anywhere near a 10th level spell, invisible or not, swift action casting or not, and even 8th level is too high.

Morithias
2010-08-23, 01:40 AM
Unless your players use lots of metamagic reducers, that just makes metamagic an even worse option. Now, some particular feats could definitely use an increase in their level adjustment, like Invisible Spell, but dealing 1d4+1 damage plus 1 negative level to 5 separate targets is in no way worth anywhere near a 10th level spell, invisible or not, swift action casting or not, and even 8th level is too high.

Compared to the non-spellcasters? You might drop them down to tier 2-3. 4 if you're generous.

Zeful
2010-08-23, 01:44 AM
*Stuff*

That's... not what I meant. But I explained it poorly. The way I take it is that each Feat looks at the Base spell and effectively changes only the line that the feat effects, but the feats can't "see" the changes that other feats made.

For a better example: An Enlarged, Widened, Energy substituted [Cold], Maximized Fireball does y6 damage up to 800ft+80ft/caster level and across it's entire area (40ft radius burst?), but you can't apply Snowcasting to it because the base spell doesn't possess the [Cold] descriptor. It doesn't really cause problems with most interactions, but I don't really think that it would be problematic outside of a couple of outliers that I don't really think will be an issue outside of outliers like Energy Substitution/Snowcasting.


Really, metamagic isn't broken or even overpowered; upping a spell by two levels to remove verbal and somatic components isn't all that amazing, raising the level by four to cast something twice in one round (either by twinning or quickening) is nice but often overkill against anything but the BBEG, and if you're spending a slot six levels higher a duration of 24 hours is just fine. Metamagic level reducers are the real problem, and if you remove those there is no reason at all why casters shouldn't be able to stack metamagic however they wish.No, but casters have enough nice things that invalidate pretty much every other class that making metamagic "weaker" really doesn't change much.

Further, I am a horrible optimizer, and find that much of the non-core stuff would make it impossible for me as a DM to create any kind of challenging encounter.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-08-23, 01:54 AM
That's... not what I meant. But I explained it poorly. The way I take it is that each Feat looks at the Base spell and effectively changes only the line that the feat effects, but the feats can't "see" the changes that other feats made.

So what you mean to say is that they're treated as being applied simultaneously rather than applied in any order. That makes much more sense.


No, but casters have enough nice things that invalidate pretty much every other class that making metamagic "weaker" really doesn't change much.

This is true, but I feel that if you're making balance adjustments, sweeping changes of this sort aren't what is needed, spot-nerfing of spells is. Persistent Spell, the most hated offender, is just fine on a cleric if you remove DMM metamagic reduction to make the slot cost substantial, remove or nerf divine power so the cleric can't be a fighter who trades bonus feats for casting, etc. If a metamagicked something-or-other is overly good, chances are the base spell is what's causing the problem; changing metamagic leaves casters with the slightly weaker unmetamagicked options they already had, while changing spells prevents broken options from arising at all while leaving the interesting metamagics for the blaster caster whom they help the most.

Andion Isurand
2010-08-23, 02:01 AM
Here's a post I found concerning a specific (and an albiet extreme example) build combining Twin and Repeat spell that had me wondering if the metamagic feats should really combine like this... although, this set up does use lots of pre-epic metamagic reducing abilities.

For Sorcerers, finding ways to selectively apply the casting time extension for metamagic (Rapid Metamagic, Instant Metamagic ACF, etc) can allow you to do truly silly things, like twinned repeating greater arcane fusion x2, each round.

In this hypothetical scenario, we're a Sorcerer-based Incantatrix 10 with Arcane Thesis (greater arcane fusion and orb of force), Practical Metamagic (Twin Spell and Repeat Spell) and Easy Metamagic (Twin Spell) (yes, it's feat-intensive, but we have bonus metamagic feats, so we can spare a couple). Now we can cast twinned repeating greater arcane fusion as an 8th-level spell. Let's say that inside our GAF we put a twinned repeating arcane fusion (containing a twinned repeating orb of force and some random first-level spell) and a twinned repeating orb of force. Let's assume we cast two of these GAFs in the first round. Anyone care to wager just how much firepower we're about to discharge?

Round 1:
Step 1) Two twinned repeating greater arcane fusions = Four repeating greater arcane fusions, each containing one twinned repeating arcane fusion and one twinned repeating orb of force.
Step 2) Four twinned repeating arcane fusions = Eight repeating arcane fusions, each containing one twinned repeating orb of force and one 1st-level spell.
Step 3) Twelve twinned repeating orbs of force = Twenty-four repeating orbs of force.

That's 240d6 force damage in the first round of combat, plus whatever our eight random 1st-level spells were. But wait, we're not done. Because next round, we've got a whole new rotation of spells that are going off!

Round 2:
Step 1) Four greater arcane fusions, each containing one twinned repeating arcane fusion and one twinned repeating orb of force.
Step 2) Eight arcane fusions, each containing one (1) twinned repeating orb of force and one 1st-level spell.
Step 3) Twenty-four orbs of force.

There. We've resolved all of our Repeating spells from Round 1. However, we have some new spells this round, thanks to our G/AFs. So, let's resolve those now.

Step 1) Four twinned repeating arcane fusions = eight repeating arcane fusions, each containing one twinned repeating orb of force and one 1st-level spell.
Step 2) Eight twinned repeating orbs of force = Sixteen repeating orbs of force.

Ok, our tally now sits at 240d6 + 400d6 = 640d6 force damage. Let's keep going, shall we?

Round 3:
Step 1) Eight arcane fusions, each containing one twinned repeating orb of force and one 1st-level spell.
Step 2) Sixteen orbs of force

Alright, we've resolved the repeating spells from last round. Let's resolve the new spells from this round.

Step 1) Eight twinned repeating orbs of force = sixteen repeating orbs of force

We're now up to 240d6 + 400d6 + 320d6 = 960d6 force damage. On to the last round!

Round 4:
Step 1) Sixteen orbs of force.

Whew, all done. Our final count: 240d6 + 400d6 + 320d6 + 160d6 = 1120d6, or 3920 avg., force damage. Not a record damage number by any means, but for two 8th-level spell slots it isn't too shabby. We still killed just about anything outside of the Force Dragons. And the neat bit? We can spread that pain around in 112 discrete packages, so if we're up against a horde of mooks, we just took them all out. And this isn't even counting all those 1st-level spells we shoved in there. We have 32 of those, whatever they were. Lesser orbs of blah, maybe, or true strikes to help some of our orbs hit home, or maybe a whole bunch of obscuring mist, because we can always use more smoke.

The nice part is that we can do that 4-5 times a day with a decent Charisma score, a couple memento magicas, or maybe a rod of absorption, and we still have all of our other spell slots untouched.

Arcane fusion and greater arcane fusion are the reasons why Sorcerers do blasting better than Wizards, and arcane spellsurge lets you double up each round, spitting out twice as much crazy.

Zeful
2010-08-23, 02:06 AM
So what you mean to say is that they're treated as being applied simultaneously rather than applied in any order. That makes much more sense.Yes.




This is true, but I feel that if you're making balance adjustments, sweeping changes of this sort aren't what is needed, spot-nerfing of spells is. Persistent Spell, the most hated offender, is just fine on a cleric if you remove DMM metamagic reduction to make the slot cost substantial, remove or nerf divine power so the cleric can't be a fighter who trades bonus feats for casting, etc. If a metamagicked something-or-other is overly good, chances are the base spell is what's causing the problem; changing metamagic leaves casters with the slightly weaker unmetamagicked options they already had, while changing spells prevents broken options from arising at all while leaving the interesting metamagics for the blaster caster whom they help the most.
True, and once I get around to it I'm going to look through the spells and adjust the problematic ones by hand (some of which I've already stolen from other posters figured out like Gate, Planar Binding and Wish) and if I can't fix them, I'll ban them.