Magic without Metamagic

[nolongerchaos]

I have been pondering the following for some time, and am curious as to what the Playground has to say on the matter:

How much overall power is lost from magic by the removal of metamagic?
Which (base) classes would be hurt the most by its removal?
How much do you think it would affect the various uses of magic? (for example, how much would it hurt buffers relative to say, blasters or summoners?)

For funsies, I suppose psionics without metapsionics could be included in the discussion.

(Obviously certain PrCs, e.g. Incanatrix, become pointless, but I'd rather not have PrCs dominate the discussion)

What do you think?

[Pex]

Nothing is lost. There is nothing inherent about metamagic that makes having any one particular feat a must have or else you're The Suck. The value of a metamagic is your personal taste and/or wanting to use a particular tactic. Metamagic can be situational superb, a works well tactical option, or I WIN D&D for particular combinations of spells and metamagic. It is perhaps more useful to spontaneous casters than prepared casters by allowing more flexibility in their limited number of spells known, but prepared casters can do just as well by selecting the right combination for a job needed later that game day.

[Flickerdart]

Clerics become slightly sad, because they can't Persist. Mundanes become slightly sad, because they don't get Extended Greater Magic Weapon on their stuff. A bunch of other duration-related stuff (like Rope Trick) takes a few extra levels to become really useful, because of no Extend. Lack of Quicken means more natively Swift spells get used.

There's definitely a dip in power, but it's not that big.

[Pluto!]

I think it hurts builds on the two relative extremes of caster power levels the most: Free Metamagic is one of the most powerful abilities in the game, and losing it would certainly hurt Incantators, Artificers and DMM-users, but it would also notably clobber blasters, who already aren't known as the most powerful builds (except the situations where they and the aforementioned free-Metamagickers overlap).

The more middle-of-the-road casters like control builds and buffers probably wouldn't notice all that much. They might need to prepare a Web spell instead of a Sculpted Grease, but it wouldn't be a big deal until relatively late in their careers. At high levels, losing Quicken Spell would suck for every full caster, but shouldn't make much impact on class or game balance in a real sense.

[Harrow]

Those who are hurt the most are those who have the least to lose. Warmages come to mind as a class that would be heavily effected.

[HammeredWharf]

Blasters and buffers are hurt the most. God wizards don't care about metamagic that much. Losing Quicken hurts them, but tentacles are tentacles and walls are walls even without any metamagic. Most early access tricks stop working. Things that alter spellcasting in non-MM ways (like Ordained Champion) become more valuable.

Personally, I'm more keen on banning Persistent Spell. It's one of those feats that are either completely useless or very broken.

[LordBlades]

BFC and 'I win' spells are largely unaffected (not like you would apply any metamagic to Planar Binding or Mindrape anyway and most of others just lise Quicken).

Buffing is hurt in various amounts (depending on spell) with Extend and Persist gone.

Blasting is hury a lot as it relies heavily on metamagic to be effective.



Personally, I'm more keen on banning Persistent Spell. It's one of those feats that are either completely useless or very broken.
There is an alternate way to look at this though: while Persist (doubly so with DMM) is very strong, it's also somewhat predictable. A DMM Persist CoDzilla will have his fully buffed stats all the time and the DM can plan accordingly. A non-DMM cleric has the same self-buffing potential except now there's no way to tell where (between non-buffed and fully buffed) he will be for a given encounter.

[sleepyphoenixx]

There is an alternate way to look at this though: while Persist (doubly so with DMM) is very strong, it's also somewhat predictable. A DMM Persist CoDzilla will have his fully buffed stats all the time and the DM can plan accordingly. A non-DMM cleric has the same self-buffing potential except now there's no way to tell where (between non-buffed and fully buffed) he will be for a given encounter.

The problem with this is that it sets a very high baseline that's hard to reach for non fullcasters. It also pretty much requires the DM to rebuild all the monsters if he wants to challenge the player instead of just using them as written.
A non DMM cleric will have the same long term buffs up but will probably only use 1-2 short term buffs in a given encounter instead of as many as he can persist, which is a lot more managable by the standard monsters.

On topic: spellcasters will still rule, just not as much. Blasting may suffer but there are non-metamagic ways to boost damage, if you want to go that way. Not being able to one-hit a Great Wyrm dragon doesn't mean that blasting is useless, after all.

[LordBlades]

The problem with this is that it sets a very high baseline that's hard to reach for non fullcasters. It also pretty much requires the DM to rebuild all the monsters if he wants to challenge the player instead of just using them as written.
A non DMM cleric will have the same long term buffs up but will probably only use 1-2 short term buffs in a given encounter instead of as many as he can persist, which is a lot more managable by the standard monsters.


Even playing a cleric somewhat smart sets the bar way outside the reach of non-fullcasters and requires extensive monster rebuilds. Ofc, it's a subjective issue so it varies from DM to DM but I find DMM Persist clerics easier to manage than n9n-DMM Perssist ones.