(3.5) Epic - metamagic feats

[Laniius]

Are Enhance and Intensify spell worth it for a cleric? They look cool, but I am not sure Enhance Spell is worth the +4 spell slot, nor am I sure that intensify spell is worth the +7 spell slot. Are they? Am I wrong?

[Thrice Dead Cat]

The problem with them is that being [epic] limits them to 21st+ characters (barring Kobold True Dragon-ness doing it instead). That limitation, well, is annoying.

Outside of that, depending on your interpretation, Enhance Spell is in all ways inferior to Reserves of Strength (Dragonlance Campaign Setting).

In the same way, Intensify Spell is only good for the doubling over the maximize floor maximize. For comparison, its two Pre-req feats effectively give you (Full Damage)+.5(Average) for the same slot adjustment of +7 by default.

[Chronos]

It really depends on what level spell slots you have available. Adding a +7 metamagic to a Fireball will leave you with something still underwhelming, for an epic character, but if you've got 16th-level slots, then an Intensified Meteor Swarm or Energy Drain just might be worth it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Enhance is probably not worth it.

Intensify used to be good, back in 3.0 when Bull's Strength etc. gave you 1d4+1 for 1 hour/level, so an Intensified Bull's Strength would give you +10 all day. Currently, I'd say only get it if you're doing some Arcane Thesis Mailman shenanigans, or maybe Time Stop without Persistent Spell.

Probably the best metamagic feat for an epic Cleric is Improved Heighten Spell. Get Earth Sense (RoS), Heighten Spell, Earth Spell (RoS), Divine Metamagic: Heighten (CD), and a pile of Night Sticks (LM), and wear sandals made from stone slabs so you're always standing on stone. Use DMM: Heighten with Holy Word, Dictum, Blasphemy, or Word of Chaos, and Earth Spell will increase your caster level by just as much, so you can automatically kill anything you encounter in a single round. The sad thing is, this is pretty much how everything operates in the epic levels.

If you don't mind a bit of metagaming, put ranks into all the Knowledge skills and roll a check to identify every new monster you encounter. The DC to identify a creature is its HD+10, exactly the same as your target caster level for a Holy Word.

[Laniius]

Right now I'm level 24 in an epic campaign. Complete Divine got the banhammer *Sadface*.

[Mystify]

No, they aren't worth that high of an adjustment.
But may I direct your attention to the Improved Metamagic feat.
Good epic casters will have that. Many times.
Epic casters don't pay that much for intensify and enhanced.

[Godskook]

Enhance is probably not worth it.

For a cleric, you might be right, but for an epic mailman, its essential outside Dragonlance, especially since unlike some metamagics, Enhance combos off every metamagic you've got. Back to the cleric, its really about how much metamagic you're shooting to use and how you're mitigating the costs associated with it. Also depends on optimization and level. At level 21, you've probably got too many other feats left to pick up, but at level 30 or so, you probably might as well if you're still using spells with numeric components in your fighting.

As for Intensify, it requires Empower and Maximize, so you've got a minimum 3-feat investment to make it work. For an easy example, let's take a fireball(10d6 damage). With intensify, you're dealing 120 damage and can't do anything else to improve the number. With Maximize and Twin, you're still doing 120 damage, but you're forcing 2 saves instead of 1, requiring only 2 feats instead of 3, and you can still tack all the other metamagics onto the spell. And the reason I chose those two feats is cause you're using the exact same spell slot in both cases. Basically, Intensify is only good if(and only if) you can only apply one metamagic to a spell.

[tyckspoon]

No, they aren't worth that high of an adjustment.
But may I direct your attention to the Improved Metamagic feat.
Good epic casters will have that. Many times.
Epic casters don't pay that much for intensify and enhanced.

30-rank Spellcraft requirement means you have to be level 27 to even start taking it. It's a good feat, sure, and when you can take it you probably want to take it several times.. but that's well into the levels where the rules pretty much give up, and I'm fairly sure a vast minority of games ever go that high.