Damage type version of metamagic school focus?

[Blacktree]

I'm making a druid "of the frozen north" for an e6 campaign and I noticed that Frostburn has the feat Cold Focus that's basically Spell Focus but based on damage type (cold) rather than a magic school. So is there a feat similar to Metamagic School Focus except for damage type, ie allowing you to reduce the cost of a metamagic feat by 1 spell level up to 3 times a day on spells of the cold type?

Thanks.

[Keld Denar]

No. No such feat has ever been printed, to the best of my knowledge. CMage, where MMSF was printed, was printed late in 3.5, and none of the books that followed it dealt very much in magic in general and metamagic in particular.

You'd have to craft something up by homebrew. I'd suggest not, though, on a balance perspective. There's a lot of shanananananananananigans you can do to give just about any spell the [Cold] descriptor, but nothing that I know of to change the school of a spell. With Snowcasting, you could literally apply MMSF to any spell you chose at any time, which makes it significantly more useful and versatile than MMSF.

[Blacktree]

Thanks for the input. Sorry, I don't follow how I'm able to apply MMSF using Snowcasting...

[Keld Denar]

You have MMSF which applies to the school you have Spell Focus to, right?

If you had Cold Focus, which works like Spell Focus, except for [Cold] spells rather than spells of a given school, then you were suggesting the presence of something like Metamagic Cold Focus, which is like MMSF except that it only works for [Cold] spells, right?

Snowcasting allows you to add a pinch of snow to any spell to give it the [Cold] subtype, right?

So, you could use Snowcasting to apply Metamagic Cold Focus to any spell you wanted, irregardless of school or other notation.

This is stronger than MMSF is already, and MMSF is already considered a really strong feat. If its stronger than a strong feat, one might hold that it is too strong. Just my own musings, take them for what you will.

[Aricandor]

The issue would be
1) Snowcasting gives all spells you cast the [cold] descriptor providing the snow material component.
2) A hypothetical, homebrewed "Metamagic Cold Focus" spell would thus reduce the metamagic cost on all metamagiced spells you cast. Metamagic reductions often make for all manner of headache-inducing shenanigans.

Possibly. I think you may end up with a rules void though, given metamagiced spells have to be prepared in specific spell slots. Imagine, if you will, the following if you have Snowcasting and the theoretical feat.

1) You prepare an Empowered Scorching Ray in a 4th level slot.
2) You cast it with Snowcasting, giving it the [cold] descriptor.
3) The Cold Metamagic Focus" reducer kicks in.
4) ???

Pretty much. So, yes. Homebrew is your recourse, but as a prepared caster it'd just be a mess, so it's inadvisable to try. :smallsmile:

[Blacktree]

Keld: I thought you were saying there already IS a way to apply MMSF via Snowcasting, I misunderstood what you were saying at the end of your first post.

Aricandor: You just explained why this would *NOT* be overpowered, nor messy. You have to apply the reduced metamagic when it is prepared, you cannot use Snowcasting to make a spell cold typed when you prepare it.

And it's not unlimited metamagic reduction as long as it follows the MMSF model of being only usable 3 times a day. Even if you could pull those shenanigans with Snowcasting it burns up a move action, which is hardly a small penalty, but as I said, you still couldn't do the "apply MMSF to any spell you want" mojo anyway.

[Aricandor]

Overpowered and not is quite a subjective and campaign-dependant thing. As a DM I allow no metamagic cost reductions at all, because I consider them just asking for trouble, even if they are limited per day, spell, school or descriptor.

YMMV, o'course. :smallsmile:

Reading MMSF again you're certainly right in that you could make it work and it'd be oil and water between it and Snowcasting.

[Blacktree]

Gotchya. Well truthfully the fact that the feat I'm describing doesn't exist makes the discussion mostly academic. Thanks for the input.