anti meta magic...

[sideswipe]

i was wondering. has this ever been done? homebrew or not?

for example, applying diminish spell, halving the numerical effects to make it take up a lower level spell slot.
this would be the reverse of empower so a spell cast would be two levels lower.
e.g. diminished fireball would be level 1. doing half damage.

concentrate spell to lower a spell by 3 levels and half the numerical size effects.

shorten spell for 1 slot lower (reverse enlarge)

reduce spell is the reverse of heighten exactly.

slow spell would increase casting time from standard to 2 rounds, full round to 3 rounds, anything measured in rounds or greater would be x4 cast time. and reduce spell by 4 levels.


looking at them the reductions instantly seem too much. so possibly make the reduction one level less.

so empower ups by 2 levels but diminished reduces by 1 level. and all other "reverse meta magics" are one less.
what do you guys think?

[Kantolin]

Many of these are alarmingly abusable.

For example, most of these options you have listed are irrelevant if you are using a buff, or something that lasts hours/level, or something that you only use out of combat anyway.

Knock as a cantrip?
Teleport as a first level spell, just take a few rounds to cast it? Not something you'd use in combat, but that's fine.

Even certain spells that would make thematic sense with it could get absolutely vicious. With magic missile, for example, many people only cast that spell to apply 'rider' effects to (fell drain being a very popular one). Thus, it doing 'half damage' and having less range wouldn't matter anywhere near as much as the fact that now you can quicken (or something) it as a first or even 0th level spell.

[heavyfuel]

It's only been done in homebrew before as far as I know and the ones I've seen have it as one less level than the opposite Metamagic (so Quicken is +4, Slow would be -3)

All in all, it's a bad move, even then. A Slowed Persisted X is only a +3 adjustment. That makes it even more easy to negate. A Minimized Timestop is a 7th lv spell that stops time for 2 rounds. Don't even get me started on the implications this would have in conjunction to Arcane Thesis.

[sideswipe]

i thought as much. but i have not refined them at all.

if they came with some restrictions and stuff, what sort of things would make them viable? this was literally nothing more then a quick passing thought.

[Kantolin]

Really, this is the kind of thing you'd want to apply to very specific spells, not as a general procedure. So maybe a 'minimized fireball' can exist as a thing, but not put it as a general metamagic.

At the very least, however, putting in the restriction 'If an anti-metamagic is applied, you cannot also apply metamagic' would help. Maybe throw in an exception clause for metamagics that aren't quicken, persist, fell drain, maximize, chain, and empower - those are the most problematic ones.

That wouldn't fix 'Level 1 teleport' stuff, but it'd help.

It'd also work a little better for psionics if it reduced the pp cost, but also then reduced the pp cost /cap/ by the same amount. So if you use an energy ball that's normally 7pp, you can use an anti-metapsionic feat to drop it to 5pp - but then you can't augment it further. Still leaves some abuses, but less so than magic.

[heavyfuel]

i thought as much. but i have not refined them at all.

if they came with some restrictions and stuff, what sort of things would make them viable? this was literally nothing more then a quick passing thought.

One restriction I see making this viable is to cap any MM reduction to at least +0 (can't go into negatives). As in, even if you Slow, Minimize, Depower a spell, the minimum adjustment to it is +0. So a Slowed Teleport is still a 5th lv spell.

This will make the mechanics less abusive, but doesn't completely solve the issue.

[sideswipe]

One restriction I see making this viable is to cap any MM reduction to at least +0 (can't go into negatives). As in, even if you Slow, Minimize, Depower a spell, the minimum adjustment to it is +0. So a Slowed Teleport is still a 5th lv spell.

This will make the mechanics less abusive, but doesn't completely solve the issue.

the original idea i had was that the spells are actually lower levels. but the reduction would be less than the counterpart improvements.
though not being allowed to apply both meta and anti meta would be a start. maybe the idea is just flawed from the start.

[Pex]

It doesn't work.

Let's try a new metamagic feat.

Minimize Spell

A spell that uses a die roll to determine its effect treat all dice rolled as if they were 1's. A Minimize Spell uses a spell slot 1 level lower than its normal level.

What do we get?

Minimize Cure Light Wounds

At 1st level heal 2 hit points for a level 0 spell, already better than Cure Minor Wounds. At 5th level you're healing 6 hit points for a 0 level spell.

Minimize Magic Missile

At 9th level for a 0 level spell slot you deal 10 damage, no saving throw, no to hit roll.

[Snowbluff]

I don't know about you, but I usually have more first level spells than cantrips in 3.5. Not to mention that spending a feat to deal 10 damage 6 times per day is pathetic at level 9.

In Pathfinder, I recall Wayung Spellhunter never being fixed, so I can already do better than this for a trait. That's half of a feat.

[eggynack]

It's still pretty borked in other contexts. Even assuming that you restrict the metamagic to spells for whom there actually is a dice roll, you could always pick spells where the die roll exists, but is mostly irrelevant. For some examples, freezing fog would just lose most of its tiny cold damage, and leonal's roar would basically just become a straight holy word for druids. Those aren't particularly insane, but you're still talking about incredibly cheap reductions in spell level.