Poll: Is Divine Metamagic allowed in your world. PLEASE VOTE

[monkey3]

I just finished a probability book, and it went on and on about how polls are worthless if the "sample size" is not large enough. For that reason please vote...

Just about every cleric "power post" includes the used of Divine Metamagic (DMM), usually in combination with Persist. I wanted to know just how realistic this combination, is "in the wild" (in the real world). So here's the poll; I tried to cover all possibilities (I hope I didn't miss one).

What's the situation with DMM in the last campaign you played in?

1. We allow DMM with no restrictions at all. We have had clerics use it in combination with Persist.

2. We allow DMM. People do use it, but not with Persist

3. We allow DMM, but no one has wanted to use it.

4. We restrict DMM to allow all uses except Persist

5. We restrict DMM in some other way (Please explain)

6. We ban DMM.

7. This question has not come up, because no one in our campaign has wanted to use DMM.



DAMNIT! why can't I make a poll? I am following the instructions:
http://alt.giantitp.com/forums/faq.php?faq=vb_read_and_post

================================================== =====

Results: (as of post 93, 1/11/13)

Thank you all for voting. I counted 81 votes. Some required interpretation, but I did the best I could. Here's the totals:

1. 21
2. 8
3. 5
4. 2
5. 15
6. 7
7. 23

If you want a quick binary of how many campaigns allow DMM persist, one can add 1 & 5 together vs. all the rest:

Worlds that allow Persist/DMM: 36 -> 44%
Worlds that don't: 45 -> 56%

I realized (and someone pointed out) that I would have a higher rate of DMMPersist in a site that is frequented by power-players. Still, the numbers are higher than I expected, considering the violent rejected that I heard when it was introduced in our campaign.

Thank you all for participating.

[lord_khaine]

Well, if its relevant, our game use of DMM has been 2. so far, though we did have an artificer to abuse persistance instead (the class has gotten banned for the following campaign :smalltongue: )

[Phelix-Mu]

5.

I run a campaign world where I would allow DMM, but with some restrictions.

No metamagic reducers can be used with it.

No night sticks can be used with it. Only turn/rebuke undead uses from class abilities or feats could be used.

I'd probably have to rule that only turn/rebuke undead works with it, not the other flavors of turn/rebuke that ambitious players might try to include in their character build.

No one has tried the Persist trick in my campaign, but I am leaning towards not allowing this combo. Persist Spell itself is quite strong, but combining it with the practically free high-level spell slots created by DMM is a little too much to swallow. Every enemy cleric above a certain level would have already conquered a kingdom before the pcs even heard of him/her.

Divine magic is already quite strong, even without any DMM mischief.

[JaronK]

3. Current campaign is a high powered campaign, so DMM is in play without restriction. However, we're using Tainted Sorcerer and Anima Mage for endless persisted spells, not Divine Metamagic. So... in some ways this is like a 1.

JaronK

[Slipperychicken]

1.

The Cleric, played by yours truly, had similar attack/damage numbers to the fighters. He was essentially Fighter+Spells. He really didn't break the game, since I was just buffing numerical stats, not stacking immunities.

[Amphetryon]

5. Nightsticks do not stack with each other or other methods of gaining Extra Turning. In other words, you can only get one method of Extra Turning per Character.

[Arcanist]

This is a house rule, but I make having your Deity offer the Magic domain a prerequisite for the feat :smalltongue:

[Gildedragon]

1) though nightsticks don't stack. As a cleric PC it allows me to better buff the party, as a non cleric PC it allows me to be better buffed, and as a DM having the bonuses already set makes undead more of a threat and reduces bookkeeping. As most 'days' see only a couple of encounters, persist doesn't benefit players that much, and when it does it streamlines things.

[Yora]

I generally play PHB only.

[gallagher]

1. DMM doesnt give you ridiculous advantages over other spellcasters. Anyone using DMM in my games or games I am in have been good at self-regulating so that the DM doesnt start unfairly targetting them, or make them reroll. Remember, Clerics still have limited amounts of TU, unless they buy a ridiculous amount of Nightsticks.

If anything, limit them to like, one or two nightsticks and tell the Cleric in question to be on their best behavior, because otherwise they will probably get hammered

[Piggy Knowles]

The current game I'm playing in is a 7 - many of the players have pretty poor op-fu, and I would honestly be surprised if they thought to use it. And I'm certainly not going to use it in a game where the biggest damage dealer is a VoP monk.

My last game was a 5. I was the DM, and had a houserule that restricted metamagic reducers across the board.

[Xefas]

Back when I played D&D, it'd be (1), I guess.

We had one person who used Divine Metamagic: Persist, but didn't use Nightsticks, so he had, what... one spell persisted? Never became a big deal.

We also had another person use Divine Metamagic, but with other Metamagics, like Extend. If I recall, that ended up being a bigger deal because it worked on more spells at once, but it could've been due to other factors.

[fryplink]

2) for the most part. We're allowed to use it however we like, but most of us have the decency to not use it inappropriately.

[Malroth]

7. Our groups clerics think CHA is a dump stat, Metamagic is for suckers and that Heavy armour proficiency is their best class feature. Also no nightsticks

[GolemsVoice]

7. Our cleric is a classical healer.

[ahenobarbi]

6.
Apparently it's too powerful.

[Kol Korran]

3. we allow most things but most of us are not good optimizers, and many didn't like these options for clerics (very few play clerics)

[KhaineGB]

The one time I used it, my DM went for no 5.

DMM was allowed. However, because I was a Mystic Theurge, my DM ruled it only functioned for my divine spells.

[JaronK]

Your DM ruled correctly, btw. Divine Metamagic is for divine spells only (Errata or FAQ, I forget which).

JaronK

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1.

Note that the group I play with is extremely high-op, our most recent game (which I DMed) was a Jermaline Druid with Greenbound Summoning, Natural Bond, and a Fleshraker; a Dragonborn Water Orc Mineral Warrior (bought off) Crusader with Entangling Exhalation; a DFI Savage Bard with Wild Cohort for another Fleshraker; a Necropolitan (with Dread Necro and Corpsecrafter creator benefits) Cloistered Cleric archer; and an Evolved (bought off) Necropolitan (same creator benefits) Sorcerer with Ancestral Relic for a custom Runestaff, and he's buying off and gaining another Evolved every three character levels. We've actually got a gentleman's agreement on his Evolved Undead spell-like abilities, since there's actually no minimum caster level for a spell-like ability a 1 HD Evolved Undead could have anything from the list, such as Circle of Death or Cloudkill.

[qwertyu63]

7.

No one has tried, but I wouldn't allow it anyway.

[BowStreetRunner]

1.

Not an extremely high-op party, but DMM has still not been a game-breaking experience. In fact, our DM allows turn/rebuke attempts to stack from things like Air/Earth/Fire/Water domains. DMM-Quicken seems more popular than DMM-Persist though - probably due to the frequency of Dispel and similar effects.

[arguskos]

6. I ban it in my games. It's been far too problematic in the past. I can handle it (since I far out power my players in terms of op-fu), but I don't want to be backed into a corner where I let it go, someone is a **** about it, then I have to set them straight about it. Easier just to kick it and call things a day.

[JoshuaZ]

The one time I used it, my DM went for no 5.

DMM was allowed. However, because I was a Mystic Theurge, my DM ruled it only functioned for my divine spells.

7 for the campaign I'm currently DMing.

[AuraTwilight]

It's allowed in my games by virtue of our cleric not knowing what the hell it is. If he figures out how to cheese it completely on his own, he deserves to have a bit of fun with it before I ban it.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

1. But, Nightsticks are 1 per customer.

[Deophaun]

I just finished a probability book, and it went on and on about how polls are worthless if the "sample size" is not large enough. For that reason please vote...
It also should have said polls are worthless if they don't have a random sample (or as random as you can get it). So, I flipped a coin, and it came up tails.

[RebelRogue]

7. The cleric has swapped just about any of the usual class features for other things anyway. I would allow some use of DMM, should he want it (he surely knows of the trick, I'm sure), but would probably frown at full persist-zilla. We're sort of low-op anyway.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Option 2.

Sure, we could DMM Persist, but I prefer to DMM Chain Spell and buff the whole party as needed. It just seems to be more powerful that way. Everyone now has GMW, MV, Mind Blank (from domain), and a couple other spells that are either duration of 'all day' or 'effectively all day'. If necessary, I party buff with things like Holy Aura, Death Ward, or Freedom of Movement, as they become relevant.

Individually, I'm not that powerful. However, all people in the party have effectively a +5 enhancement bonus to attack, damage, AC (+10 in the case of the dwarven crusader/incarnate/ironsoul forgemaster, due to his shield), in addition to whatever enhancements they purchased... the whole party is immune to divination and enchantment colleges, and can situationally be immune to pretty much anything.

Also, I use Divine Spellpower in conjunction with Holy Word to great effect.

I find it to be quite a lot more powerful than DMM: Persist. Instead of one person being more powerful, the whole dang party is.

[tiercel]

Every enemy cleric above a certain level would have already conquered a kingdom before the pcs even heard of him/her.

7, in part because of this reason.

The players I've gamed with are mostly self-regulating as to what constitutes "cheese" in our groups and what is fair game, but when I DM I try to ban as few things as possible by turning to the "anything you can do, I can do better" defense -- if a tactic is so good that it is overwhelming and/or there is no rational in-game reason not to use it at every point, then some BBEG will have already abused the mechanic long before the PCs have a chance to.

Sometimes this means explicit "gentleman's agreements" but in this case, no one has actually tried DMM. If asked, I'd probably allow it on a trial basis to see how it actually affected the game, and at very least with some kind of agreement about not using Turn-uses-per-day stacking. In general I prefer to allow something and then, if it really is coming out a little strong, just allow it to be retrained for free to something else.

Frankly, I think Cleric is plenty strong out of the box (much less with cherry-picked domains) and doesn't really need [Divine] feat toys to juice up the class even more, but it would depend on the nature of the campaign and other PCs for how much I tried to dissuade a player from using DMM.

[Malimar]

7. I've never played in an optimized (or high-level) enough group that metamagic has ever been used at all, let alone Divine Metamagic or Persistent Spell, let alone the two in conjunction.

If it did ever come up in the game I DM, I would declare 5: DMM and DMM:persist are both permitted, but nightsticks don't stack for it, and you can't use it to cast anything you wouldn't normally be able to cast (e.g., you can't DMM:persist a level 4 spell unless you have level 8 spell slots). And also the group might mysteriously start encountering a lot more foes throwing around Dispel Magic.

[TuggyNE]

7.


DAMNIT! why can't I make a poll? I am following the instructions:
http://alt.giantitp.com/forums/faq.php?faq=vb_read_and_post

Because polls were disabled long ago for various reasons, and hand-performed polls have to be handled with some delicacy to avoid becoming a problem. (I can't find the post in Board/Site Issues I was looking for, but it should be there somewhere....)

[Hirax]

5. Only restriction is that nightsticks don't exist.

[Aethir]

3. Nobody has been interested in playing a cleric or similar as of yet.

[Urpriest]

Be aware that since you're only asking about "real" games, your statistics will be somewhat skewed. Most D&D 3.5 is played in the context of forum rules discussions, not formal games as such.

[Larkas]

1. But we haven't encountered Nightsticks yet, even though we are originally from Ravenloft. Don't know if they exist or anything, I'm not the cleric.

[ericgrau]

3, mostly.

DM 1 (3): One player mentions there's this trick called DMM. He doesn't use it, no one else knows about it.
DM 2-4 (all same group though) (7): Either no one knows about it or doesn't care to use it.

Really that's how everyone I know is with most high OP things. The only thing kinda high OP I've seen in person have been orb of X spells and assay spell resistance used to get around SR. Even those have had limited use. I think a single person with a hack-n-slash mentality tried to make an epic persist cleric (dunno if it had DMM) and I said that wasn't a good idea to let through, but given the rest of his build maybe I should have relaxed.

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

1 but I would rule that nightsticks don't stack (as a player I wouldn't bother even getting 1)

[Gigas Breaker]

We can do whatever but nightsticks don't stack with each other.

[RedWarlock]

5. DMM is allowed, but as with all MM reducers in my game, you must be able to cast the non-reduced spell level. (IE, you could do a 4th lvl spell with a +2 adj, but only if you can use 6th level spells anyway.)

Nobody's tried to use nightsticks. They're not disallowed, but they're not exactly on the main treasure tables either. It has been hinted that DMM+nightstick will result in DM-on-player-thwacking.

[Lonely Tylenol]

5. Nightsticks do not exist in my game.

[Chess435]

My group is 7. I have an unusually high lactose tolerance, so if it came up, I'd allow unrestricted use. If it got really out of hand, however, I'd ban persist and/or disalllow nightstick stacking.

[Togo]

6) It's too powerful. It's also been banned in every game I've played or encountered, except on-line.


Be aware that since you're only asking about "real" games, your statistics will be somewhat skewed. Most D&D 3.5 is played in the context of forum rules discussions, not formal games as such.

Nah, real world games outnumber forum games by a comfortable margin. Last time I tried to estimate some stats, it worked out at about 20-1 real world to online. The online community is vibrant, but a tiny proportion of the hobby overall.

[hymer]

5. It's been done two times as I recall (and know of), with the spoken agreement that if it turned out too much, it would get scaled back (but we never needed to). Also, no nightsticks in my campaigns, though that was never spoken. I just never added any, and the players never asked.

[Crake]

5. Our DM rules that you must be able to apply the metamagic normally before you can use it with divine metamagic, so in this case, if you wanted to DMM maximise you would need to be able to cast 3rd level spells, the same spell slots a maximized 0th level spell would fill.

The question of DMM persist hasnt come up because we aren't playing a particularly high powered campaign and the cleric didn't want to be an ass, and we're all pretty sure the DM would just flat out say no to persist anyway.

[warmachine]

7. Everyone wants to win through in-game cleverness and role playing, not mathematical abuse.

[Badgerish]

2/5.
DMM is fine, persist is fine, nightsticks don't stack and need to be held in hand to use.

Would have been 1/5, but didn't get high enough level.

[Ashtagon]

I just finished a probability book, and it went on and on about how polls are worthless if the "sample size" is not large enough. For that reason please vote...

Just about every cleric "power post" includes the used of Divine Metamagic (DMM), usually in combination with Persist. I wanted to know just how realistic this combination, is "in the wild" (in the real world). So here's the poll; I tried to cover all possibilities (I hope I didn't miss one).

What's the situation with DMM in the last campaign you played in?

...

7. This question has not come up, because no one in our campaign has wanted to use DMM.



7. If it came up, nightsticks are definitely banned, and it'd probably only be an option for clerics of certain deities.

[molten_dragon]

When I'm running a campaign, I allow divine metamagic, and I allow it to be combined with persist spell, but I restrict it in the following ways.

Divine metamagic can only be powered by turn undead or rebuke undead. Other types of turning (such as the turning/rebuking from the elemental domains) doesn't work.

Nightsticks don't exist.

This has served to keep it in check quite well, since it leaves boosting charisma and taking extra turning as the only ways to get more turn undead attempts. Those balance out relatively well, since there's limit to how high you can boost charisma (and it's not all that helpful other than the extra turning attempts) and feats are precious, so there's a definite trade-off if you want to spend them for extra turning. I'll occasionally have a player use the combo, and generally it will let them persist one or maybe two spells a day. Still useful and powerful, but hardly game breaking.

[LordBlades]

In my previous campaign (that just ended recently) we've allowed DMM:persist with the only restriction that Nightsicks don't stack. Between high Cha, rods of Extend and Air Domain he was running 8-10 persisted spells at a time.

[Devmaar]

2.

In my current game I'm playing a Cleric/Malconvoker with DMM Rapid Spell.

I reckon I'd probably be allowed to use DMM Persist if I wanted, with whatever bonuses I could get hold of (I currently have a Reliquary Holy Symbol and plan on buying a Nightstick asap). Don't know if I'd get away with Nightstick stacking though...

[DoctorGlock]

1, with no nightstick stacking

Even dipping sacred exorcist and raven knight does not yield enough turnings to turn the cleric into a shopping list of persisted buffs. It never ended up being a problem. You'd need significant investment to ever have more than 5 buffs persisted.

Admittedly we has time bending psions and incantatrixes in the party, so my views might be skewed

[javijuji]

1. But mostly because no one does too much cheese with it. Besides we also allow artificers to do whatever the $%&# they want. Its a gentlemens agreement mostly

[Urpriest]

Nah, real world games outnumber forum games by a comfortable margin. Last time I tried to estimate some stats, it worked out at about 20-1 real world to online. The online community is vibrant, but a tiny proportion of the hobby overall.

Not forum games, forum discussions. If you look at the total text spent on handbook writing, optimization discussions, etc (even throwing out any actual forum games), it's likely quite a bit higher than what you would get if you took transcripts of every RL game and filtered out all the personal stuff. We're talking discussion almost 24/7, as opposed to at most a few hours once a week per group.

[TopCheese]

1: My players know their cheddar cheese will be met with my pepperjack. So everything is fine to use but if it is used then they know a monster/boss may have someone using the same tactic. We use this in all of our games, it keeps us (when I'm a player) in line.

:smallamused:

[Averis Vol]

1. With the knowledge that if they try to abuse it I know where they live.

But on a serious note, my group started on a continent completely devoid of any piece of the weave at all, and magic is an impossibility unless your in the dome. But once they get out and meet a certain collective hive mind of psions and get on their good side they will be free to do whatever they please as I have no problem starting the arms race and they know that.

[TopCheese]

1. With the knowledge that if they try to abuse it I know where they live.

But on a serious note, my group started on a continent completely devoid of any piece of the weave at all, and magic is an impossibility unless your in the dome. But once they get out and meet a certain collective hive mind of psions and get on their good side they will be free to do whatever they please as I have no problem starting the arms race and they know that.

Arms race with a DM? That should be fun! I wonder who is going to win....

[Averis Vol]

Want a spoiler alert?

I win ;)

[Venger]

1. We allow DMM with no restrictions at all. We have had clerics use it in combination with Persist.

I am currently playing in a game where I'm allowed to use a DMM persist ur-priest, and there aren't any problems.

DMM persist is not a problem at all, because you can really only pull off 1 spell a day with it (maaaaybe two if you have extra turning or something) the real problem is nightsticks. as long as you ban those or put some kind of hard limit on them (they do not stack with themselves, so you can only buy 1) then the problem once more disappears

[Fyermind]

1 ish
DMM persist is allowed, but nightsicks are ruled to work like cognizance crystals as in TU attempts all have to come from the same source. So players are encouraged to DMM smaller things. It didn't work quite as intended. The cleric keeps a couple nightsticks around to be able to turn undead normally and uses DMM to persist mass lesser vigor.

[andromax]

5) No nightsticks, and only turn/rebuke undead works.

[Vizzerdrix]

Option #1. But under the stipulation that as soon as it gets abused, Baddies will start using it in the same fashion.


DMM persist is allowed, but nightsicks are ruled to work like cognizance crystals as in TU attempts all have to come from the same source

Also this.

[Hunter Killer]

5 when I am the DM, which is often.

IMC, The feat only applies to one metamagic feat that you already know, which must be chosen at acquisition of DMM and can not be changed. I allow it to be used with Turning (specifically the Undead kind) granted by class levels, feats, or racial abilities but disallow the use of Turning granting magic items like Nightsticks (because that's honestly just bonkers, and clearly not RAI even if it is RAW). You don't have to be able to cast the level of spell that the metamagic would normally bump the spell to because the feat explicitly says it doesn't increase spell level.

It's still broken, but it's better than banning it. Wouldn't do much to tame the Cleric or balance the classes anyway, and if you're trying to create balance in 3.5, you're playing the wrong game. :smalltongue:

[Curmudgeon]

5. Nightsticks do not stack with each other or other methods of gaining Extra Turning. In other words, you can only get one method of Extra Turning per Character.
Pretty close to this. I allow a maximum of one Nightstick per character for anything other than actual undead turning, and instituted a 24 hour attunement period for the item just to thwart sharing shenanigans.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Varies from DM to DM. Most recently the only restriction was two nightsticks, which was pretty well balanced for our group. That would make me a 5, though for the purposes of your poll I wouldn't mistake this forum discussion for a random sample of D&D players any day.

And I beg to differ on DMM Persistent Spell being less team-friendly than Chain. Mass Lesser Vigor/Vigorous Circle, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful and Recitation make anyone a party buffer. It is less flexible though.

At the end of the day it's mostly a mid-to-high op endurance tool, since you could do much crazier things with all the cash and feats you're using.

[Darth Stabber]

Option 3. If a player thinks they are going to use a pile of night sticks, they are sadly mistaken. If they want to use chain persisted gmw, fine, but that is a lot of resources to blow. What else are you going to do with turn attempts? They are only useful past level 10 with divine feats and devotion feats, may as well allow the best one. If someone wanted to do serious metamagic reduction, there are more powerful ways to do it. Besides without mitigation persist is too espensive to ever see use.

[Kasbark]

We do not allow DMM in our games.

[rockdeworld]

7. My group doesn't have the books. Personally, I would allow it.

Also, you may not be able to make a poll because the thread has already started and people have posted in it.
Tuggyne answered it.

Also also: you probably won't get a large enough sample size from this forum to justify a statistically-relevant conclusion because the population size is quite large (only a small fraction of DMs/gamers from different groups post here).

[Jon_Dahl]

7.

I'm just really happy I found these feats before my players did.

[monkey3]

Thank you all for you participation.

Bumping once to give those people a chance who only look at this thread at work ;)

I'll tally the votes after it dies down.

[Frathe]

7. My group has the book, but no one knows enough/optimizes enough to have tried to use it.

[Silva Stormrage]

5: Same as others I allow it with anything but I do not allow night sticks to stack.

[Coidzor]

7. No one was playing a cleric of high enough level to be interested in it and the cleric was looking more like it was going to theurge it up.

I brought it up once and was building a character for it, but we didn't reach the level where it came together and the DM was still making up his mind exactly what limits he was going to place. Same group but different DM as my last campaign.

My personal inclination is to allow more than one nightstick to be used, they just can't be used at the same time, which seems to differ from what most people have seemed to mean when they say nightsticks don't stack which is that they mean that you're only ever allowed a single nightstick. I might be misremembering though. I'm also fond of the idea that you can use DMM, but you can't use it for a metamagic feat that you couldn't use normally, so if you can't cast 4th level spells then you can't use metamagic reducers to get away with casting it as a 2nd level spell anyway.

[soveliss24]

1. But, Nightsticks are 1 per customer.

This. Plus a bit of gentlemens' agreement about what is too silly to persist. Varies by game and party composition. If everyone's tier 1, we let the Cleric be All Divine Power, All the Time and tank if that's what he really wants to do.

[Wonton]

2. The people I play with know that you don't "win" D&D by making the most powerful character. This isn't to say we don't powergame or minmax - because having a powerful character is still fun - but we definitely stay away from cheese. To that extent, the only DMM I've seen was a Cleric who used DMM: Reach for emergency heals. It was fairly effective, though probably not worth those two feats.

[docnessuno]

Either #1 or #5

Possible restrictions for #5:
Turn undead attempts from item don't stack
Turn undead attempts from nightsticks don't stack
You can use only turn undead attempts from a single item when using DMM (so persist usually requires at least 3 "real" turn attempts)

[demigodus]

In the current campaign it is #1, with nightstick stacking allowed. We found out about this when the DM threw a DMM: Persist abusing, nightstick stacking cleric, 4 levels above us at us. With the reasoning that since there were 5 of us, it was still below the total party CR. Since then, it has been understood that nightstick stacking is allowed. And we got a bunch of nightsticks as loot (though we split the loot, and most of us sold it for cash. Cause screw the guy who just came in with a DMM: Persisting Ur-priest).

If I ran a game, it would be #1, but without nightstick stacking as default. Changed if the party was playing a more high op game. For example, an incantatrix could persist just as much, without sacking most of his WBL on nightsticks. As could a Spelldancer. Or other classes. If everyone was playing at those levels, then nightsticks aren't that bad.

[Forrestfire]

7. There's only one player in my game experienced enough to know about it, and I have a gentlemen's agreement with him that any cheese he uses can be used against him.

[Byke]

2. We use DMM, but persist is banned

also only 1 nightstick per player.

[Esgath]

5. No stacking of Nightsticks

[Mephit]

1. I don't even think it's necessary to note that we don't allow Nightsticks to stack.

[nedz]

7, though I have told the cleric player about the trick so we shall see. :smallsigh:

For future games it will be 6. I have some players who like to play low cheese / low OP and play style difference issues can break groups.

Also no nightsticks.

[Endarire]

In my games, Divine Metamagic is allowed and Persistent Spell is only +4 instead of +6!

Extra Turning (and by extension, Nightsticks) only works once per creature.

[willpell]

My actual answer would be 7 so far...nobody has tried to play a Cleric in my current game, and in the previous game which did have a cleric, I had only recently started playing D&D and I never heard of either DMM or Persist during the time it took that campaign to break apart. More speculatively, I would probably approve the use of either DMM or Persist separately on a case by case basis, but veto the combination of them except in special circumstances. Important plot NPCs might use this combo by special dispensation of their deity, but the only way a player could get it would be through supremely good roleplaying (and it could be revoked if the quality dropped). Not sure how that answer counts for your poll, so 7 will do.

[Mithril Leaf]

3, it's a game of artificers and StP erudites.

[Togo]

Never played in a game where divine metamagic is allowed
Never played in a game where persistent spell is allowed.
Never run a game where either is allowed.

[monkey3]

Now that the "poll" is closed, I will add my vote which is 4. In our campaign only Persist is banned.

I have edited the original post with the results. Please take a look, and thanks to all who voted.

[StreamOfTheSky]

5, though 4 is practically true, too.

I allow DMM.
I ban Persistent Spell for anyone, its entire premise is broken.
I ban nightsticks, or if someone really wanted it, would allow a max of 1 to function for a person.

EDIT: Wait, 5 counts as "I allow DMM Persist"?! Changing mine to 4, then. I most certainly do not, nor do my friends.

[DarkEternal]

5. Night sticks do not exist in my campaign world. If you want more turns, spend feats on it.

[Acanous]

I suppose we'd be a 5 where applicable (Party likes "Core only" games so it doesn't usually come up. when it does, DMM is fine, but Nightsticks do not exist)

[Draz74]

Well, my longest-running D&D group (by far) was Core-Only; the DM would not have even considered allowing DMM. So option 6.

But technically, my most recent 3.5e campaign was one I DM'ed. No one asked to use DMM (we had a Rogue/Swordsage, an Egoist, a Druid, and a Bardbarian), but if they had, I would have said:

With no Nightsticks and with a metamagic feat other than Persist? Sure.
With Nightsticks and a metamagic feat other than Persist? Eh ... I guess that's ok, but don't go overboard. (You're probably ok if you don't have multiple Nightsticks, or the otherwise-lame Undeath domain.)
Typical DMM: Persist? No, I'm not going to allow that unless it's a player I trust a lot and he assures me the spells he'll be Persisting aren't going to be overpowered ones.


So I guess that's kind of like Option (3) or (4)?

I actually think it's a pity, just aesthetically, that DMM dominates the use of Turn Undead so thoroughly, when there's a number of less-cheesy powerful options to burn your Turn Undead attempts on. Like Divine Spell Power, Divine Defiance, Law Devotion, or Travel Devotion.

[monkey3]

...
I actually think it's a pity, just aesthetically, that DMM dominates the use of Turn Undead so thoroughly, when there's a number of less-cheesy powerful options to burn your Turn Undead attempts on. Like Divine Spell Power, Divine Defiance, Law Devotion, or Travel Devotion.

This. This nails the nail on the head for me.

The "premiss" behind options (according to wotc) is that one should not be so much better than another that is completely invalidates the previous. That is the goal of a new class/prc/feat. But I agree with you, DMM is a much better use of turn ability than anything else. To be fair, there is a bunch of such choices in 3.5 (if you are good, you are crazy not be a Radiant server of Pelor. There are many others...)

[Autopsibiofeeder]

2 for me. However, it might turn into 4 when someone ends up (ab)using DMM:Persist.