Best Metamagic for Call Lightning/Call Lightning Storm

[Yogibear41]

Working on an urban druid build and was interested in making it a blaster type focusing more on dealing damage and spells, and less on urban shape/urban companion.

Seeing that my damage dealing spells were basically limited to the call lightnings and disintegrate I decided to focus on metamagics+metamagic reducers to accomplish this goal, originally I was just going to go for maximize/empower etc. but then I got to thinking about other possible metamagics such as Fell Drain.

If I put a fell drain metamagic on these spells does it it apply a negative level every time I call down a bolt or is it only once per casting?

What other metamagic feats would you recommend for these spells?

I plan to take 3 levels in the Metaphysical shaper prestige class for reduced metamagic cost, as well as taking the practical metamagic feat to reduce the level adjustment as well.


If it helps I expect most of the enemies I will be fighting will be Undead, Evil-Outsiders(most likely demons), and humanoids.

I was going to take the COR version of corrupt spell to get around Demons immunity to electricity, for Call Lightning storm at no level adjustment. (Going to be an evil vs evil type campaign for the most part)

[Zaq]

If you can mitigate the action cost (being dazed sucks), Born of the Three Thunders adds some nice control effects to Call Lightning without any increase in slot. Likely feat-heavy, though, since you have to take the semi-useless Energy Substitution (Electricity) feat (which, I suppose, at least opens up other energy-based spells to BotTT), you have to take BotTT itself, and then you likely have to sink one or more feats into mitigating the self-dazing issue (Quick Recovery for a one-feat solution that doesn't always work, or Mark of the Dauntless for a two-feat solution that's more robust but more costly). But it's still some damn nice control, especially on a spell like Call Lightning that works over multiple rounds.

Fell Drain is a little ambiguous, and it's a good idea to check with your GM whether it triggers once per casting of the spell or once per instance of damage. I personally feel like it makes sense to have it be once per instance of damage, but the immediate (balance-based, not necessarily rules-based) counterargument is that a Fell Drain Magic Missile that launches five missiles shouldn't be allowed to stack all five levels on one target at once (Enervation is 4th level, while FDMM is only 3rd level and is strictly better). If you're only casting one bolt per round, it's likely semi-reasonably balanced, but it's ultimately up to the GM.