Houserule thought experiment: Fair costs of metamagic?

[Zaq]

Let us propose that we are playing in an environment where metamagic reduction is under a hard ban. No DMM, no Incantatrix, no Practical Metamagic, no Arcane Thesis, nothing like that. (We might allow Metamagic Rods exactly as written, but that's as far as I'd be willing to go; I don't think we'd let Artificers burn extra wand charges to apply metamagic, for example). The spirit of this discussion does not involve trying to work around or circumvent the hard ban on metamagic reduction, so please don't spend too much effort trying to do that. For the sake of discussion, assume that casters are expected to bring appropriate levels of magic to solve problems, that we don't want to let casters completely overshadow noncasters but that we understand that a broad-brush nerf approach is beyond the scope of this discussion (preferring a basic gentlemen's agreement sort of thing that still acknowledges that players can and should get to do cool stuff), and that we don't want to open up too many new abuses but also aren't terribly concerned with TO shenanigans or making the Tippyverse or anything, because hopefully we won't play with anyone who's trying to do that without full group buy-in.

In such an environment, what would be a fair cost for the existing metamagic feats? I'm totally willing to assign different spell level adjustments to the various metamagic feats than what WotC did. A feat is a big cost (let's ignore DCFS and similar things), and we don't have to worry about low spell level adjustments being mitigated or ignored (or chained with Arcane Thesis or anything), so the goal here is to figure out what the actual fair spell level cost of various metamagic feats would be if those costs are actually what one needs to pay.

Going through this in my head, my gut reaction to a lot of these is to just shave 1 level off of what WotC priced things as, though there are exceptions. I'd love to hear your thoughts, though.

Extend Spell is my go-to example of a metamagic feat that WotC did right. I'm totally cool with it being a +1, since I think the effect you get is useful enough that it should cost more than the feat but really shouldn't cost that much more. You won't necessarily be tempted to put it on every single spell, but it also can't let you do much that you couldn't do with two castings of the base spell, and because it's rarely used on rounds/level spells, the action economy advantage is minor enough that we don't really need to extract much cost beyond the feat itself.

Silent and Still, on the other hand, seem overpriced. I know that "normal" casters are far stronger than Shadowcasters, but still, the Shadowcaster's Still Mystery feat just works all the time without being considered gamebreaking, and users of psionics are basically Still and Silent with no investment beyond Concentration, which they were going to do anyway. Paying a feat to get around verbal and/or somatic components seems no worse than paying a feat to get around basic material components, and few people call for Eschew Materials to be nerfed. Casting in armor without ASF isn't so powerful that I'm willing to freak out about it.

Enlarge and Widen are a little harder. My gut says that the feat cost for Enlarge is enough of a cost, but I'd be willing to listen to arguments that it's balanced at +1. Widen Spell is clearly more powerful than Enlarge and should almost certainly have a higher adjustment (or, at a minimum, no lower) than Enlarge does, but how much so? It's relatively rare (outside of true full-scale warfare situations, which aren't the default expectation) for Widen to let you affect significantly more than Sculpt does, and Sculpt is generally thought of as being reasonably balanced at +1, so I kind of feel like +1 is appropriate on Widen as well, but I feel less certain about that than about some of the others.

Empower and Maximize are almost certainly overpriced as well, at least if they're not used on Awaken or other spells where there's a "variable, numeric effect" that isn't usually thought of as such. (I'm fine with them on SM and SNA, though, and most of Awaken's problems stem from the spell rather than the feats.) I'm tempted to just give them a similar reduction to most of the others mentioned so far and rate Empower at +1 and Maximize at +2, though that's at least partially because I feel like Maximize needs to be at least a little pricier than Empower and I feel like Empower is just a little too good to have no level cost.

Quicken might be balanced at +4, honestly, because it's one of the bigger action economy abusers around. I'm not really 100% convinced that a Quickened 1st level spell is perfectly balanced with an unmodified 5th level spell, but I'm also not sure if it makes sense to go much below that. We do want to assume that players aren't idiots and will be casting strong and appropriate low-level Quickened spells rather than weak and irrelevant ones, of course, but I could maybe see going to +3 instead of +4? I'd love feedback on this one.

Heighten is fine. There's no practical way to change its cost without breaking it.

Dipping into Complete Arcane, I mentioned already that I like Sculpt at +1 and think it should stay there. Explosive Spell, assuming that we're not doing Locate City Bomb nonsense, seems overpriced at +2 considering that it's relatively limited and does have a baked-in failure rate, so +1 is likely better. It's probably a little too good to have it just be +0.

Transdimensional Spell seems overpriced when one considers how incredibly narrow it is in scope. Taking a feat for that is a big cost. +0 seems fine. Maybe implement some kind of cost similar to psionic focus that would basically translate to an action cost more than anything else, but that's expanding the scope of this little exercise more than I'd ideally like.

Twin Spell should almost certainly have the exact same cost as Quicken Spell, since, while they do different things, still mess with the action economy in rather similar ways. Split Ray is a little trickier, since it's basically Twin Spell that only works on rays. It's less generally applicable, but it's not like there aren't some very powerful rays out there. Its RAW cost of +2 actually seems underpriced. I'd be tempted to ban it or roll it into Twin, since I'm not convinced that "can only be used on rays" is a sufficient balance point to warrant a change in cost from Twin.

Sanctum Spell should be axed. The extremely narrow non-abusive use of it ("a character, usually an NPC, casts better at home than not at home") is in no way worth the headache caused by its abusive uses.

Chain Spell is hard because WotC forgot that there are spells that don't do damage or have save DCs that are good choices to Chain. Like, you know, buffs and stuff. The "half damage and -4 to save DC" clause makes +3 possibly a little overpriced when using it on offensive spells, but it's probably an acceptable price when used on buffs and stuff. I don't know what changes I would make to this one.

Energy Substitution, Cooperative Spell, Born of the Three Thunders, Lord of the Uttercold, and Black Lore of Moil all don't have a level adjustment, and the only one that would potentially need it is BotTT on a build that finds a way to negate the dazed cost. I actually like the dazed cost of BotTT, though, given that it adds potentially a ton of control to a big spell but has enough of a downside to make it always be a choice to make rather than a no-brainer (if you aren't ignoring the self-inflicted daze somehow).

Fortify Spell is almost certainly overpriced, but like Heighten, I don't see an elegant way of fixing it. Might be best to leave it alone.

Delay Spell is baffling at +3. I suppose it has some abuse potential with Time Stop, but the problem there is primarily with Time Stop rather than with Delay. I guess an Unseen Seer or another very, very stealthy character who's extremely good at deciding exactly when combat will start can technically use it to get a big action economy advantage? Outside of getting the drop on something (when, within reason, you likely SHOULD get an advantage anyway), I don't see what's so bad about this. Would it be broken at +0 or +1?

Energy Admixture is about equal to Quicken or Twin when used on an energy-based blaster and has next to no uses other than blasting. I can see an argument for keeping it equal to Twin, and I can also see an argument for letting it be a little lower, perhaps closer to Maximize (especially since it does cost a prereq feat and also raises the specter of multiple forms of resistance).

Nonlethal Substitution doesn't seem like it needs a spell level cost, given that it's already gated behind a prereq feat and some skill ranks (not very difficult skill ranks, but it doesn't work at level 1). It's relatively rare to need to use nonlethal damage unless you're going Vow of Nonviolence, and I don't think that VoNV folks need to be discouraged from doing stuff like this. Plus, it only works on a single energy descriptor for some reason.

Repeat Spell is likely fairly balanced at +3, given that it's basically Twin Spell but slightly worse on action economy.

Persist Spell makes me throw my hands up in the air. I'm not convinced it's balanced at any price. It's almost definitely overpriced at +6 (there are exceedingly few, if any, spells that are actually worth it at +6 when cost reduction is hard-banned). +4 seems too low given that it's almost strictly better than Quicken for buffs (Quicken can be used on non-buffs, but if it's relatively rare for that to be wise, and Persist has more effect than just "you can have this magic on you without spending a standard action in combat on it"). I'm not convinced that splitting the difference to +5 is sufficiently helpful. I'm not certain that it's possible to use Persist and have it be truly balanced at both ends.

Moving to Complete Divine, Rapid Spell is either balanced as written or slightly overpriced and worthy of being dropped down to +0. It helps with action economy, but it's rare for it to truly crack the action economy over your knee, and as always, it's got a nontrivial cost. Maybe make it +0 but gate it behind a prereq that can't be met before level 3 or level 6?

Reach Spell is one I'm not sure about. If it's actually just used to keep you out of melee, it's a little overpriced at +2. Most of the problems with it come when using the "effectively a ray" language to let it qualify you for other metamagic that normally doesn't work on touch spells (like Split Ray and, highly debatably, Persist). If we've balanced/nerfed/axed the other metamagic feats properly, then it can probably be justified at +1, but do discuss.

Consecrate and Corrupt aren't terribly crazy. I'm not going to stress out over them being +1, but I also feel like a feat is sufficient cost for the moderate benefit of "only half of this blasting spell's damage is subject to resistance/immunity" without also increasing the spell level.

Talking about Cityscape for a minute, Invisible Spell should be hard-banned. Nothing good comes out of Invisible Spell. Either it's basically pointless like Invisible Fireball (whatever benefit you get out of Invisible Fireball is in no way worth the cost of the feat, and trap feats are bad) or it's broken and/or confusing. It is bad juju and should not be used.

City Spell has no cost other than only working in certain locations. This seems fine.

Deceptive Spell seems difficult to use at all, given that it doesn't circumvent cover or anything, and it's not actually clear if it lets you change the origin square of your spell (one of the examples is actually Lightning Bolt coming from the floor, but it doesn't actually say that you would trace the line from a square other than your own—just that it wouldn't "appear" that way). I'm not convinced that it needs a spell level adjustment, but it might need a few editing passes.

The Libris Mortis feats are harder. Energize is super narrow outside of an undead campaign but almost equal to Empower in an undead campaign. Enervate is about equal to Empower most of the time. The fact that they cause the spells in question to do less damage to the "other" type is about equal parts cost and benefit and can probably be ignored. It'll be a very niche build to get way more use out of either than out of a simple Empower.

Let's look at the Fell feats. Fell Drain is probably balanced as written, plus or minus some confusion with whether a single creature can be affected multiple times by a single FD spell. Fell Frighten is slightly overpriced (+1 is better) if you let the fear stop at shaken and probably balanced if you make fear-stacking a regular feature. Fell Weaken is probably overpriced and isn't awful at +0, but it's probably semi-acceptable at +1 as written. Fell Animate is something that I've been led to believe looks better than it is, given that it's nontrivial to ensure that the FA'd spell is the killing blow on something you care about animating; it can save you some GP on onyx compared to just casting Animate Dead normally, but the combination of the feat cost and the finickiness make me think that +3 is too much and +2 or even +1 might be better. Probably +2 just to prevent it from being put on everything.

There are lots of other metamagic feats that we can look at, but I think that's enough to get the ball rolling. I don't intend to be too dogmatic about any of the rulings I've thrown out here, and my main goal is to have a discussion. I hadn't intended for my go-to stance to be "-1 cost almost across the board," but I do tend to value feats pretty highly. What do you think?

[Cosi]

Let us propose that we are playing in an environment where metamagic reduction is under a hard ban. No DMM, no Incantatrix, no Practical Metamagic, no Arcane Thesis, nothing like that. (We might allow Metamagic Rods exactly as written, but that's as far as I'd be willing to go; I don't think we'd let Artificers burn extra wand charges to apply metamagic, for example). The spirit of this discussion does not involve trying to work around or circumvent the hard ban on metamagic reduction, so please don't spend too much effort trying to do that. For the sake of discussion, assume that casters are expected to bring appropriate levels of magic to solve problems, that we don't want to let casters completely overshadow noncasters but that we understand that a broad-brush nerf approach is beyond the scope of this discussion (preferring a basic gentlemen's agreement sort of thing that still acknowledges that players can and should get to do cool stuff), and that we don't want to open up too many new abuses but also aren't terribly concerned with TO shenanigans or making the Tippyverse or anything, because hopefully we won't play with anyone who's trying to do that without full group buy-in.

So if I understand correctly, you're basically asking "if we ban metamagic reduction entire, how cheap can metamagic feats be without being broken on their own"?


Silent and Still, on the other hand, seem overpriced.

Agree. If Invisible Spell and Eschew Materials don't bump up spell levels, I see no reason these should.


Enlarge and Widen are a little harder.

I think the circumstances where either of these will be useful will be rare enough that the cost of a feat is probably enough.


I'm tempted to just give them a similar reduction to most of the others mentioned so far and rate Empower at +1 and Maximize at +2, though that's at least partially because I feel like Maximize needs to be at least a little pricier than Empower and I feel like Empower is just a little too good to have no level cost.

This is one of the ones that is kind of weird. I think damage dealing spells could mostly use the boost of getting free Empower. At the same time, something like enervation probably doesn't deserve it. I would be tempted to give out some kind of benefit that let you do Empower for +0 for damaging spells.


Quicken might be balanced at +4, honestly, because it's one of the bigger action economy abusers around.

I think WotC certainly seemed to believe that an extra spell was worth about for spell levels (see, if you squint, celerity, and (greater) arcane fusion).


I'm not really 100% convinced that a Quickened 1st level spell is perfectly balanced with an unmodified 5th level spell, but I'm also not sure if it makes sense to go much below that. We do want to assume that players aren't idiots and will be casting strong and appropriate low-level Quickened spells rather than weak and irrelevant ones, of course, but I could maybe see going to +3 instead of +4? I'd love feedback on this one.

It's an interesting one. I think if people are just throwing out offensive spells straight up, it might honestly only be worth a +2 adjustment. I'm not sure double finger of death is comparable to wail of the banshee, for example (not to mention that it costs more spell slots). On the other hand (as you point out), reducing the cost has the potential to make it very powerful with various offensive combos. Also there is the potential concern that if you make the cost small enough, you'll get some kind of degenerate Ruby Knight Vindicator build that tries to win fights by dropping like thirty spells in one round.


Heighten is fine. There's no practical way to change its cost without breaking it.

Honestly, Heighten probably shouldn't exist. Spell DCs should be like ability DCs and scale with half CL.


Persist Spell makes me throw my hands up in the air. I'm not convinced it's balanced at any price. It's almost definitely overpriced at +6 (there are exceedingly few, if any, spells that are actually worth it at +6 when cost reduction is hard-banned). +4 seems too low given that it's almost strictly better than Quicken for buffs (Quicken can be used on non-buffs, but if it's relatively rare for that to be wise, and Persist has more effect than just "you can have this magic on you without spending a standard action in combat on it"). I'm not convinced that splitting the difference to +5 is sufficiently helpful. I'm not certain that it's possible to use Persist and have it be truly balanced at both ends.

Persist is weird. On the one hand, there are a lot of spells where it kind of sucks. On hour/level spells it's straight up worse than Extend by the time you can use it at all. At 10 minutes/level it's mediocre, because you can probably get your whole day's worth of adventuring out of the two-or-three hours the base duration gives you (let alone an Extended casting). At minutes/level or rounds/level it's good enough to take something from "one or two fights" to "all the fights", which is good though I'm not sure how much. At rounds/level it's totally insane it turns swift fly into a better overland flight, which means +4 is probably a hard minimum.

Honestly, I liked a fix I saw somewhere which turned both Extend and Persist into "+1 level adjustment, go up one rank on rounds/minutes/10 minutes/hours". I think that fix (or maybe another one I saw?) removed the idea of actually putting things in higher level spell slots entirely and said you were allowed to put as much metamagic on a spell as would put its level to the highest level you can cast, but it still cost the same slot (so you could cast a Quickened cloudkill at 17th level, but it still only took a 5th level slot).

[Endarire]

I pondered this topic as well and I came to similar conclusions: Most metamagic feats are overpriced. Reducing spell slot costs by 1 each generally work. Remember, you're spending a feat to get this effect.

For core stuff, Extend Spell is probably good at +1 level, though in certain games I ran I was OK with it as +0. Either works. Quicken is probably also balanced at +4.

Otherwise, combine Enlarge and Widen at +1. Comebine Still and Silent at +1. Keep Heighten as-is OR totally remove it and incorporate its effect automatically. Empower is +1 and Maximize is +2.

For non-core feats, Persistent is the one I pondered the most. I felt +4 was balanced for it. Either cast a spell as a swift action OR make it last all day. Overall, subtract 1 from the spell slot of each of these.

[ericgrau]

It depends what the alternate feats are. Among core feats the metamagic options are some of the best already.

I'd make widen +2, enlarge +0, silent +0 and still +0. It's a no brainer because nobody takes them as-is, and even with the adjustments they aren't easy choices. I'd also remember the RAW that monsters get a DC 0 (plus penalties) listen check every time you cast without silent because it must be in a "strong voice". Otherwise it's a nearly useless feat.

Empower is already one of the best as-is, because of non-damage options like ray of enfeeblement. Fireball/scintillating sphere and magic missile aren't bad either.

Maximize OTOH doesn't seem that popular except for style points. Half the time empower is just as strong or stronger at a lower cost. I'm tempted to make it +2, but then I'm afraid no one will take empower. And that says something because empower is really good. And it's so similar to empower already. I'd consider making it a +2 but with empower as a pre-req. The payment of a 2nd featy lets you pick the better of the two for +2, or both for +4.

Heighten could give a discount of 1 to make it not such a rare choice. So you get 1 level for free, but only if you pay for at least 1 level (for a minimum augment of 2 levels).

Alternatively you good nerf all the good ones, and every caster feat, but that's a lot more work. At that point you should do something to the class itself instead.

[Elkad]

Heighten shouldn't even take a feat. If you stick a 1st level spell in a 3rd level slot, it should become a 3rd level spell. For free. Only if you didn't meet the casting stat requirement would it stay the lower level. (or partway inbetween - 12int mage with Grease in a 3rd level slot would only get 2nd level effect out of it.)

[ericgrau]

Heighten shouldn't even take a feat. If you stick a 1st level spell in a 3rd level slot, it should become a 3rd level spell. For free. Only if you didn't meet the casting stat requirement would it stay the lower level. (or partway inbetween - 12int mage with Grease in a 3rd level slot would only get 2nd level effect out of it.)
And maybe spells in the higher level slot should do more damage and so on too... That may be a neat idea but now you're opening up a can of worms by adding power to the class.

We should be careful about neither adding or taking away power from the class via metamagic, and compare the metamagic feats only to other feats. Feat tax, free feats, etc. create issues rather than solving them. If you want to change the class itself then change the class itself and don't mess with feats in the process. Or else it won't really address the issue of feats that are too weak to see play / too strong to take anything else. What you're getting into is actually a homebrew class change, and it better not start and end with "let's add a buff to wizards".

Comments on more spells:
Explosive spell only adds a little extra damage but it pushes foes. Possibly into pits, farther away from X, or other nice places. Large AoE spells get a little more damage. +2 is fair.

Chain spell on buffs seems fair for +3. I'd be more worried about it being a little weak on attacks, but I guess just don't use it on attacks as often.

Fortified spell I'd change to +3 vs SR per spell level. 3 or 4 levels will auto punch through most SR and that seems about right.

Persist spell could have a cost based on the spells original duration. For example hour/level would be +1. Round per level might be +5, as then it is slightly better than quicken.

There are a ton of metamagic feats to look at... but the basic question is "would anyone ever get this feat at this cost" and "will this feat keep people from selecting most other feats at this cost". Ideally you want all feats to be taken only some of the time and not overshadow each other. Feats that never get taken and feats that always appear in optimization discussions are both problems. Which is part of the problem with balance; if you're used to taking popular feats then the temptation is to buff almost everything. But really it's easier to just nerf the popular feats a little bit instead. And if players cry because they're spoiled then start them at a higher level and call it a day. This way we only have to change a small portion of feats.

[Fizban]

Eh, why not?


Extend Spell is my go-to example of a metamagic feat that WotC did right. I'm totally cool with it being a +1, since I think the effect you get is useful enough that it should cost more than the feat but really shouldn't cost that much more. You won't necessarily be tempted to put it on every single spell, but it also can't let you do much that you couldn't do with two castings of the base spell, and because it's rarely used on rounds/level spells, the action economy advantage is minor enough that we don't really need to extract much cost beyond the feat itself.
The problem/value of Extend Spell ties into the bigger problem of spell durations in general. Spell durations aren't really "fair" compared to each other or simple abstractions of time: 10 min/level spells regularly infringe on hour/level spells, and min/level spells eventually infringe on 10 min/level spells, and 24 hour spells are ridiculous, and next to those Extend is only a minor part. Gotta fix durations before you can have any fair value for Extend.


Silent and Still, on the other hand, seem overpriced. I know that "normal" casters are far stronger than Shadowcasters, but still, the Shadowcaster's Still Mystery feat just works all the time without being considered gamebreaking, and users of psionics are basically Still and Silent with no investment beyond Concentration, which they were going to do anyway. Paying a feat to get around verbal and/or somatic components seems no worse than paying a feat to get around basic material components, and few people call for Eschew Materials to be nerfed. Casting in armor without ASF isn't so powerful that I'm willing to freak out about it.
Shadowcaters aren't considered gamebreaking because hardly anyone plays them and their class mechanics are intentionally dramatically inferior. Psionics are in fact overpowered in this aspect, if verbal and somatic components are ever considered part of caster balance. The XPH writers clearly didn't think so, the Silent and Still Spell writers clearly did. Being able to cast silently, bound, both, or right in front of people without notice is huge, and being able to do so with your most powerful effects is even more huge. +1 for each is a perfectly fine price.


Enlarge and Widen are a little harder. My gut says that the feat cost for Enlarge is enough of a cost, but I'd be willing to listen to arguments that it's balanced at +1. Widen Spell is clearly more powerful than Enlarge and should almost certainly have a higher adjustment (or, at a minimum, no lower) than Enlarge does, but how much so? It's relatively rare (outside of true full-scale warfare situations, which aren't the default expectation) for Widen to let you affect significantly more than Sculpt does, and Sculpt is generally thought of as being reasonably balanced at +1, so I kind of feel like +1 is appropriate on Widen as well, but I feel less certain about that than about some of the others.
Enlarge has the same problem as Extend: sell ranges vary wildly, vary wildly between caster levels, and vary wildly compared to things that aren't spells. Widen is obviously based on the same price as Maximize if you ask me: "+100%" damage= "+100%" area, nevermind that maximize isn't quite doubling and most areas are squared or cubed, it looks equivalent before you do the math. I wouldn't mind dropping the cost on Widen to +2, if there were more variety in spell areas, but as-is it should probably stay at +3 if you want fairness.


Empower and Maximize are almost certainly overpriced as well, at least if they're not used on Awaken or other spells where there's a "variable, numeric effect" that isn't usually thought of as such. (I'm fine with them on SM and SNA, though, and most of Awaken's problems stem from the spell rather than the feats.) I'm tempted to just give them a similar reduction to most of the others mentioned so far and rate Empower at +1 and Maximize at +2, though that's at least partially because I feel like Maximize needs to be at least a little pricier than Empower and I feel like Empower is just a little too good to have no level cost.
And here I reach what you mean by fair- not what I'd call fairness, but "fairly priced for my feat power expectations." Empower is if anything undercosted, making spells generally more powerful than their higher level counterparts. This is at best a tradeoff of DC for damage but Empowered X is pretty much always considered more powerful overall, so how could this effect be overpriced? What is a metamagic feat expected to do? You expect them to give moar powar, while I'm fairly certain the expectation is more options, not more power. So you'll probably dislike a lot of my input when you want to cheapen core metamagic feats in response to splatbooks, while I'm rating them based on their effects compared to other spells.

Maximize is costed high enough that you've usually hit the damage cap on things you can properly maxmize, so it's basically a fixed spell, aside from spells that don't actually function that way- and that 10d6 maximized to 60 is less than 12d6 empowered to 63, or only tad higher with 90 vs 84 on 8th level spells (and at that level the DMG has an affordable +1cl). But, there's all those spells that don't have simple scaling damage, for which maxmize definitely produces higher average results than empower, and the simple fact that maximized effects are extremely reliable. I see no reason to reduce the cost, while increasing the cost would make it decidedly inferior to Empower.


Quicken might be balanced at +4, honestly, because it's one of the bigger action economy abusers around. I'm not really 100% convinced that a Quickened 1st level spell is perfectly balanced with an unmodified 5th level spell, but I'm also not sure if it makes sense to go much below that. We do want to assume that players aren't idiots and will be casting strong and appropriate low-level Quickened spells rather than weak and irrelevant ones, of course, but I could maybe see going to +3 instead of +4? I'd love feedback on this one.
With enforced metamagic costs one can at least properly evaluate Quicken based on the "best" spells of each thing at each level. In core the lowest level quickened teleport is 8th, but of course adding splats brings in 2nd and even 1st level tps to quicken at 6th or 5th (which still leave the Anklets of Translocation hilariously underpriced of course). This is one you might just barely be able to justify reducing in cost, if there are tons of swift action spells- but there aren't. Most swift action spells come with drastic reductions in duration or effect that leave them far worse than a quickened spell would be, justifying their lower levels.


Heighten is fine. There's no practical way to change its cost without breaking it.
I mean, it makes a perfect example of how metamagic is supposed to be options and tradeoffs rather than raw power. The usual expectation seems to be 1 feat=+1 on all the spell DCs I care about, and that metamagic feats should make spells more powerful than their higher level counterparts, so by that logic Heighten should be giving more than +1. If you're gonna make everything else cheaper, why not make Heighten +2/level? Or 1+bonus levels?


Dipping into Complete Arcane, I mentioned already that I like Sculpt at +1 and think it should stay there. Explosive Spell, assuming that we're not doing Locate City Bomb nonsense, seems overpriced at +2 considering that it's relatively limited and does have a baked-in failure rate, so +1 is likely better. It's probably a little too good to have it just be +0.
Sculpt not only area changes but often the area increases, making many 1st and 2nd level spells once again superior to their higher level counterparts at only +1. It should be +2, possibly even +3 with an (incorrect) reading that lets prepared casters choose the area spontaneously. Explosive spell is a rider, those usually come up at about +2 levels, probably fine.[/quote]


Transdimensional Spell seems overpriced when one considers how incredibly narrow it is in scope. Taking a feat for that is a big cost. +0 seems fine. Maybe implement some kind of cost similar to psionic focus that would basically translate to an action cost more than anything else, but that's expanding the scope of this little exercise more than I'd ideally like.
Transdimensional Spell is insanely powerful, the only thing capable of striking extradimensional spaces, capable of striking creatures on the etheral and even shadow plane when they're completely incapable of retaliaion. Having a niche use does not make those any less powerful, and the niche becomes a lot larger once people start assuming Rope Tricks all over the place. Is this something you want on people's most powerful spells for free? I'd think not.


Twin Spell should almost certainly have the exact same cost as Quicken Spell, since, while they do different things, still mess with the action economy in rather similar ways. Split Ray is a little trickier, since it's basically Twin Spell that only works on rays. It's less generally applicable, but it's not like there aren't some very powerful rays out there. Its RAW cost of +2 actually seems underpowered. I'd be tempted to ban it or roll it into Twin, since I'm not convinced that "can only be used on rays" is a sufficient balance point to warrant a change in cost from Twin.
Twin Spell is value, it literally doubles the damage of a spell rather than figuratively doubling it, or "quickens" a second copy at no additional slot cost. I'd take Twin over Quicken every time for offense, and it's only the fact that they have very different uses that one isn't obviously more powerful than the other. I'm glad to see you recognize Split Ray's power (though "underpowered" was the wrong word there). As it literally doubles the power of most ray spells, but isn't quite as good as Twin, it most appropriately belongs at +3 alongside Maximize.


Sanctum Spell should be axed. The extremely narrow non-abusive use of it ("a character, usually an NPC, casts better at home than not at home") is in no way worth the headache caused by its abusive uses.
What Sanctum Spell?


Chain Spell is hard because WotC forgot that there are spells that don't do damage or have save DCs that are good choices to Chain. Like, you know, buffs and stuff. The "half damage and -4 to save DC" clause makes +3 possibly a little overpriced when using it on offensive spells, but it's probably an acceptable price when used on buffs and stuff. I don't know what changes I would make to this one.
What other chain-able spells concern you besides dispeling? They printed a Chain Dispel, and most Mass versions of spells are at around +3 levels- with the popular examples of course being those that cost less than that.


Energy Substitution, Cooperative Spell, Born of the Three Thunders, Lord of the Uttercold, and Black Lore of Moil all don't have a level adjustment, and the only one that would potentially need it is BotTT on a build that finds a way to negate the dazed cost. I actually like the dazed cost of BotTT, though, given that it adds potentially a ton of control to a big spell but has enough of a downside to make it always be a choice to make rather than a no-brainer (if you aren't ignoring the self-inflicted daze somehow).
Cooperative Spell needs clarifcation on it's mechanics, BoTT needs the correct "lose your next turn" rather than cheesable status conditions, and Black Lore of Moil is actually pretty weak and might warrant a decrease on the gp cost, maybe.


Fortify Spell is almost certainly overpriced, but like Heighten, I don't see an elegant way of fixing it. Might be best to leave it alone.
Double the penetration bonus, or make it a +2 that just ignores SR. If your balance point is splatbooks full of SR-no spells then an SR-no feat might as well be +1, or just admit that SR isn't considered an serious part of game balance and axe it completely, if that's how your game works. I'm of the "put SR back on" camp and nerf Assay Resistance, so I'd go with +4/level if I wanted Fortify to compete with Spell Penetration.


Delay Spell is baffling at +3. I suppose it has some abuse potential with Time Stop, but the problem there is primarily with Time Stop rather than with Delay. I guess an Unseen Seer or another very, very stealthy character who's extremely good at deciding exactly when combat will start can technically use it to get a big action economy advantage? Outside of getting the drop on something (when, within reason, you likely SHOULD get an advantage anyway), I don't see what's so bad about this. Would it be broken at +0 or +1?
I would guess it has something to do with Delayed Blast Fireball and DMs that let people stealth-cast delayed spells without penalty (verbal and somatic components say "hi" again). But the combo assumption isn't wrong, especially when you yourself are advocating free Silent/Still, at which point Delay Spell is worth multiple quickened spells in the assumed context.


Energy Admixture is about equal to Quicken or Twin when used on an energy-based blaster and has next to no uses other than blasting. I can see an argument for keeping it equal to Twin, and I can also see an argument for letting it be a little lower, perhaps closer to Maximize (especially since it does cost a prereq feat and also raises the specter of multiple forms of resistance).
Twin allows multiple instances which might not stack, while flat doubling the dice on a single instance can be superior, while Admixture also lacks any bars on Empower/Maximize combinations (same as twin). Allowing multiple energy types is actually a boom in a world where free Searing/Piercing isn't a thing, so +4 remains appropriate.


Nonlethal Substitution doesn't seem like it needs a spell level cost, given that it's already gated behind a prereq feat and some skill ranks (not very difficult skill ranks, but it doesn't work at level 1). It's relatively rare to need to use nonlethal damage unless you're going Vow of Nonviolence, and I don't think that VoNV folks need to be discouraged from doing stuff like this. Plus, it only works on a single energy descriptor for some reason.
Nonlethal damage is pretty important in any game where you're not allowed to just kill people, which should include any city-based game. It also runs up against the few nonlethal damage based spells, which are specifically built with lower damage, though they also tend to include riders and untyped damage.


Persist Spell makes me throw my hands up in the air. I'm not convinced it's balanced at any price. It's almost definitely overpriced at +6 (there are exceedingly few, if any, spells that are actually worth it at +6 when cost reduction is hard-banned). +4 seems too low given that it's almost strictly better than Quicken for buffs (Quicken can be used on non-buffs, but if it's relatively rare for that to be wise, and Persist has more effect than just "you can have this magic on you without spending a standard action in combat on it"). I'm not convinced that splitting the difference to +5 is sufficiently helpful. I'm not certain that it's possible to use Persist and have it be truly balanced at both ends.
Correct, Persist Spell is not balanced (or properly written for use) at any price. 24 hour spells aren't balanced in the first place, so a feat that creates them obviously won't be.


Moving to Complete Divine, Rapid Spell is either balanced as written or slightly overpriced and worthy of being dropped down to +0. It helps with action economy, but it's rare for it to truly crack the action economy over your knee, and as always, it's got a nontrivial cost. Maybe make it +0 but gate it behind a prereq that can't be met before level 3 or level 6?
Rapid Spell depends on the number of spells with actual natural casting times greater than a standard action, which is almost none of them. The only spells that Rapid Spell really affects are Summon Monster/Nature's Ally. If you think those should be standard action, then make it a +0.


Reach Spell is one I'm not sure about. If it's actually just used to keep you out of melee, it's a little overpriced at +2. Most of the problems with it come when using the "effectively a ray" language to let it qualify you for other metamagic that normally doesn't work on touch spells (like Split Ray and, highly debatably, Persist). If we've balanced/nerfed/axed the other metamagic feats properly, then it can probably be justified at +1, but do discuss.
Once again, the ranged versions of touch spells, when they exist in such pairs, are made at +2 or more levels. Scorching Ray and the proliferation of no-save d6/level damage skews things so it looks like everything should be ranged, but non-damage spells with touch range tend to be obviously way more powerful without that limitation. So this is another "well if your game doesn't care about touch range then sure make it +1 or +0."


Consecrate and Corrupt aren't terribly crazy. I'm not going to stress out over them being +1, but I also feel like a feat is sufficient cost for the moderate benefit of "only half of this blasting spell's damage is subject to resistance/immunity" without also increasing the spell level.
Compared to Scorching/Piercing, I would agree, but note that those two feats were written long after Consecrate and Corrupt, and the spells themselves still tend to consider non-energy or split types worth something.


Talking about Cityscape for a minute, Invisible Spell should be hard-banned. Nothing good comes out of Invisible Spell. Either it's basically pointless like Invisible Fireball (whatever benefit you get out of Invisible Fireball is in no way worth the cost of the feat, and trap feats are bad) or it's broken and/or confusing. It is bad juju and should not be used.
What Invisible Spell?

City Spell has no cost other than only working in certain locations. This seems fine.
Deceptive Spell seems difficult to use at all, given that it doesn't circumvent cover or anything, and it's not actually clear if it lets you change the origin square of your spell (one of the examples is actually Lightning Bolt coming from the floor, but it doesn't actually say that you would trace the line from a square other than your own—just that it wouldn't "appear" that way). I'm not convinced that it needs a spell level adjustment, but it might need a few editing passes.
City Spell is just a dumber variant on half-non-energy damage. Deceptive Spell by itself should barely do anything, but once again you've proposed making Silent and Still free, which take Deceptive Spell from a minor inconvenience to serious mind games (that are also harder to adjudicate what with a DM that actually knows what's going on).


The Libris Mortis feats are harder. Energize is super narrow outside of an undead campaign but almost equal to Empower in an undead campaign. Enervate is about equal to Empower most of the time. The fact that they cause the spells in question to do less damage to the "other" type is about equal parts cost and benefit and can probably be ignored. It'll be a very niche build to get way more use out of either than out of a simple Empower.
Energize is like Purify without the alignment component and more damage boost against a broader type, yeah it should probably cost more.


Let's look at the Fell feats. Fell Drain is probably balanced as written, plus or minus some confusion with whether a single creature can be affected multiple times by a single FD spell. Fell Frighten is slightly overpriced (+1 is better) if you let the fear stop at shaken and probably balanced if you make fear-stacking a regular feature. Fell Weaken is probably overpriced and isn't awful at +0, but it's probably semi-acceptable at +1 as written. Fell Animate is something that I've been led to believe looks better than it is, given that it's nontrivial to ensure that the FA'd spell is the killing blow on something you care about animating; it can save you some GP on onyx compared to just casting Animate Dead normally, but the combination of the feat cost and the finickiness make me think that +3 is too much and +2 or even +1 might be better. Probably +2 just to prevent it from being put on everything.
Fell Drain is ridiculous, what spells below 4th even give negative levels? And Fell Drain gives full negative levels, not temporary like the actual standard spell. Should be +3 at the absolute least. Frighten adds a rider effect, that's +2 levels. Weaken adds a no-save rider effect, which should also be +2 levels. Animate enables/encourages theorycrafting shenanigans, removes component costs, and creates spells that wouldn't exist- what damage+free animation spells even exist? A couple single targets at higher levels and that's about it. Fell Animate gets the axe.

[Cosi]

+1 for each is a perfectly fine price.

I don't buy that negating Verbal or Somantic components is somehow better than negating Material components. If Eschew Materials isn't +1, neither of these should be.


"+100%" damage= "+100%" area,

Only if there are twice as many enemies for you to hit with your extra area. I don't think that's something you can reasonably expect. Most fights are versus a single enemy, where area doesn't matter at all (in fact, more is worse as it might make it harder to not hit allies). Even against groups, the circumstances where you get much by doubling area are few and far between.


Sculpt not only area changes but often the area increases, making many 1st and 2nd level spells once again superior to their higher level counterparts at only +1. It should be +2, possibly even +3 with an (incorrect) reading that lets prepared casters choose the area spontaneously.

I think Sculpt Spell falls into exactly the target of "used, but not considered mandatory" as is. I cannot imagine reasonably nerfing it.


Transdimensional Spell is insanely powerful, the only thing capable of striking extradimensional spaces, capable of striking creatures on the etheral and even shadow plane when they're completely incapable of retaliaion. Having a niche use does not make those any less powerful, and the niche becomes a lot larger once people start assuming Rope Tricks all over the place. Is this something you want on people's most powerful spells for free? I'd think not.

It's not free, it's for a feat. Of which you get seven. I think "I hit things in other dimensions" is totally on par with other good feats like Natural Spell or Greenbound Summoning.


What other chain-able spells concern you besides dispeling? They printed a Chain Dispel, and most Mass versions of spells are at around +3 levels- with the popular examples of course being those that cost less than that.

Chain greater magic weapon is neat. Honestly, I feel like War Weaver probably does most of what Chain wants to do, albeit at a different cost.


BoTT needs the correct "lose your next turn" rather than cheesable status conditions

It's a (minor, but AoE) save-or-lose that takes two feats worth of investment, and more if you don't want to lose actions. It's honestly fine.


Twin allows multiple instances which might not stack, while flat doubling the dice on a single instance can be superior, while Admixture also lacks any bars on Empower/Maximize combinations (same as twin). Allowing multiple energy types is actually a boom in a world where free Searing/Piercing isn't a thing, so +4 remains appropriate.

It's a buff to blasting. Blasting is sufficiently ass that it should get things that might be OP in other contexts.


Correct, Persist Spell is not balanced (or properly written for use) at any price. 24 hour spells aren't balanced in the first place, so a feat that creates them obviously won't be.

Wat. A spell that last 24 hours is just a weird class feature. That's potentially broken, sure, but I think you're going to have to do more than just assert "that's definitely broken" to convince people of this.

[Mordaedil]

My proposed balance to quicken spell is that it doubles the spell level of the spell you are attempting to quicken (before adding other metamagic), so a 1st level spell is 2nd level, 2nd level is 4th, 3rd level is 6th and 4th level is 8th and you need to be epic with a 10th level spell slot to quicken a 5th level spell.

[Crake]

If you ask me, I would say use a spell point system, and tie metamagic into that. Spell levels aren't granular enough to be able to properly handle things like still and silent, which I think together would be worth 1 spell level, but individually are most certainly not. Use a spell point system, and put a limit on how many spell points can be spent on metamagic to prevent over-stacking.

[AvatarVecna]

Black Lore Of Moil (Complete Arcane)
It doesn't cost spell levels, it costs gold, and all it does is add a few dice of damage; you'd need to alter this spell further than this scenario allows for to really balance it as a metamagic feat proper. Figuring out the amount of damage this should add for SL+0 is weird (where the "cost" is the feat expenditure), but honestly if I'm wanting cheap extra damage, I'll go for Empower Spell.

Enhance Spell (Complete Arcane)
Enhanced Fireball is dealing 200% damage (worth +2 with what I've got set up). Enhanced Burning Hands is dealing 300% damage (worth around +3 with what I have set up). Enhanced Delayed Blast Fireball is dealing 150% damage (worth +1). Enhanced Cone Of cold is dealing 166% damage (worth a bit more than +1). What I'm saying is that there's a lot of variance on how this affects your spell, based purely on where the nearly-arbitrary cap was to begin with. I would probably lower this to +3, maybe even +2, but that variance is problematic for assigning a direct cost.

Fell Animate (Libris Mortis)
Basically, this metamagic feat gives you a free casting of Animate Dead (in that it doesn't cost you additional actions, additional spell slots, or additional gp) for every person you kill with your spell. Getting spells without spending slots or actions is weird to balance, and I'm having trouble even imagining a process for determining if this is balanced to a particular price.

Reaping Spell (Champions Of Ruin)
Deals no extra damage, doesn't change the damage type to a more difficult to resist type (even partially), doesn't give a debuff to living opponents, it only serves to be a **** to somebody you're already murdering anyway. This is certainly too useful to be a +0, in a world like D&D, but it doesn't seem worth +3 by a long shot. I'm not really sure how to balance it, and would appreciate others thoughts on it.

Sanctum Spell (Complete Arcane)
Too abusable. Would need to be changed to "+1 DC in your sanctum and -1 DC outside your sanctum for this spell", at which point I'd consider it a high +0. But that's only with such an adjustment; as of now, this is too tied up in shenanigans.

Split Ray (Complete Arcane)
"Why is this Unsure? It's basically Twin Spell for rays." Sure, as long as the spell only has one ray to begin with. If this just doubled the number of rays you got, I'd stick it right in +2 and be done with it, but it only adds one, and that means it's worse than Twin for ray spells with more than one ray by default - like the classic Scorching Ray.Blistering Spell (Player's Handbook II)
Damage is much worse than Empower for the vast majority of spells it can apply to, and is nice as a damage bump where the only cost is spending a feat on it. Nice little debuff too.

Born Of Three Thunders (Complete Arcane)
Splits damage between two types (but doesn't increase damage). Attaches a 1 round save vs stun to targets, and a save vs prone to stunned targets. Yeah, that's a nice boost for just the cost of a feat.

Coercive Spell (Drow Of The Underdark)
the Will save penalty doesn't directly require a save, but it comes as a rider on damage, so it's only a guarantee for spells that deal damage on a miss/successful save. That said...there's a lot of spells like that, and three rounds of an irresistible penalty to arguably the most important saving throw is pretty killer. It's a mediocre +1 as-is, so I'm knocking it down to +0 so the only real cost is the feat slot.

Cooperative Spell (Complete Arcane)
This is already a mediocre +0, I agree that spending a feat is more than enough cost for this.

Deafening Spell (Drow Of The Underdark)
Target you deal damage to is deafened for one round, no save. It also makes me question some of the thoughts behind Metamagic And You. 1 round of 20% spell failure chance, no save, is a great deal of a +1 adjustment, but 1 round of 100% spell failure chance if the caster fails a Fort save is a mediocre +0? It's possible I'm missing something - maybe using a deafening spell in the surprise round will screw with people's initiatives enough and often enough to be worth it, or maybe deafened is a surprisingly difficult condition to become immune to, or maybe saves are expected to be super-high in balanced play so a 'no save just suck' tack-on is too good for +0, but this is where I'm putting it. It can probably be abused, and could easily be made a low +1, if you wanted.

Deceptive Spell (Cityscape)
It doesn't surprise people. It doesn't get around cover the way Bend Spell does. All it really does is disguise that the spell is coming from you - a niche it shares with metamagics like Invisible Spell, Silent Spell, and Still Spell. Thus, it shares a category with those. Once again, this spell is lauded in MAY, and I'm not entirely sure why. :smallconfused: I will say this: if I had to pick one of these four "it wasn't me!" metamagics, this would be my second choice after Invisible Spell.

Delay Spell (Complete Arcane)
Earthbound turns a spell into a trap lasting up to 1 hour with some restrictions on placement, and MAY considers it a garbage +2. Delay Spell turns a spell into a trap lasting up to 30 seconds, and MAY considers it an average +3. This feat is awful, and barely deserves to be a +0, and even that's only because it has good synergy with Time Stop.

Earthbound Spell (Player's Handbook II)
Turning a spell into a 1-hour trap is fine as a "just a feat" cost.

Energy Substitution (Complete Arcane)
IMO, this is the definition of a +0 metamagic, where the only cost is the feat: I spend one feat to have the option to turn a bunch of blasting spells into blasting spells of my chosen element. Thematic, useful, but not powerful enough to justify a level increase (looking at you, Pathfinder).

Enlarge Spell (Player's Handbook)
Spend a feat, double the range of your close/medium/long range spells. Seems fine to me, no need to increase the spell level over something so insignificant.

Fell Energy (Libris Mortis)
Augment Summoning automatically gives summons +4 to Str and Con. I don't mind asking for just a feat for the ability to increase undead buffs by +2.

Fiery Spell (Sandstorm)
Most damage dice tend to be d6s, so that'll be our assumption; changing 1d6 into 1d6+1 changes the average from 3.5 to 4.5, which is +28% or so. This isn't nearly as good as Empower for most cases, and it only affects fire spells anyway, so I figure a feat is plenty of investment to get this bonus.

Flash Frost Spell (Player's Handbook II)
The cold version of Blistering Spell, and just about as good.

Imbued Healing (Complete Champion)
Already a fairly standard +0 feat, and I don't see it being good enough to increase to +1.

Invisible Spell (Cityscape)
Perfectly fine where it is.

Lingering Spell (Champions Of Ruin)
+1d6 damage is far too lame for a +1. It's honestly almost too lame for a +0, which is kinda sad, but there ya go. Blistering gives you more than this in average extra damage for any fire spell 2nd or higher, on top of giving a debuff, and Flash Frost does similar for cold spells; this is just lame in comparison.

Nonlethal Substitution (Complete Arcane)
This is becoming +0 because A) its more on par with Energy Substitution than City Spell, and B) I don't wanna punish people for not wanting to kill people with all their magic blasting.

Reach Spell (Complete Divine)
Pretty comparable to Enlarge Spell, and the synergy with Persistent is balanced better by Persistent being Variable. Plus, it doesn't have the action economy advantage that Ocular Spell had.

Sculpt Spell (Complete Arcane)
This does for area what Energy Substitution did for damage type: let you spend a feat to have more variety at your fingertips, without any individual option being universally superior. I'm fine having this as +0, and just costing a feat.

Selective Spell (Shining South)
Excluding one ally from AoEs by default seems like a fine use for a feat.

Silent Spell (Player's Handbook)
Get rid of verbal components forever with one feat seems like a fair enough trade. This is a mediocre +1 by default, so +0 seems fine.

Smiting Spell (Player's Handbook II)
This punishes gishes for trying to do something cool, and gives no action economy advantage. The only real benefit of this feat is getting to tie your spell's attack roll into a weapon attack roll, which means it's almost universally a downgrade from targeting Touch AC to regular AC, which is slightly offset by having a better BAB and possibly bonuses to hit with the weapon being used. Plus, it's cool as heck. Sure, you can do this without paying extra spell levels for limited benefit.

Song Of The Dead (Dragon Compendium)
If this just added intelligent undead to the list of valid targets, it'd be +1. As it stands, this just means you can choose between targeting living foes or undead ones, not both, and there's enough multi-target/AoE mindscrew spells that this is a problem.

Still Spell (Player's Handbook)
Same as Silent Spell. The only possible reason to bump this up to +1 is if you really really don't want armored mages.

Umbral Spell (Drow Of The Underdark)
This makes it so your spell can potentially auto-dispel light spell effects, but...yeah, that's kinda lame even when it happens. Worth a feat, but not higher level slots.

Wounding Spell (Lost Empires of Faerun)
This garbage metamagic feat doesn't feel worth the feat cost even if it doesn't increase your spell level at all. This is only really good on large area damage powers like Fireball, where the 1 bleed damage per round is at least adding up over multiple targets, and they're probably lame enough that 1 HP/round is significant bleed to them if there's enough of them to make a Wounding Fireball worth casting.Bend Spell (Dragon Compendium)
Tempted to make this +0, but didn't wanna make bypassing cover completely free for all spells with just one feat, so instead it's one of the worse +1s.

City Spell (Cityscape)
Energy Substitution lets you change from one basic energy to another. I feel that changing half your damage to a ridiculously-harder-to-resist damage type is worth a +1 even without increasing your actual damage.

Consecrate Spell (Complete Divine)
This spell functions pretty similarly to City Spell, in that it changes half your damage to a ridiculously-harder-to-resist damage type. This was already one of the better +1s, so leaving it here is fine.

Corrupt Spell (Complete Divine)
Same as Consecrate, just opposite alignment.

Disrupting Spell (Fiendish Codex II)
{Spell Level} rounds of -2 to spell/spell-like/supernatural save DCs, with no chance to resist as long as you were affected by the spell it's attached to? Oof, that hits hard. This is a high +1, to be sure, but it's not really good enough to compete with the +2s.

Echoing Spell (Secrets of Xen'drik)
Repeat Spell gives you two full CL versions of the attached spell, one round after another. Echoing Spell puts them an hour apart and gradually reduces the CL. Both of these seems fine as +1s to Twin's +2.

Empower Spell (Player's Handbook)
MAY puts this as a great +2 metamagic option, but...no. Empowered Burning Hands should be just as good an option as Fireball for 3rd lvl spells at the levels where CL increases still affect damage, but nope! Empowered Burning Hands at CL 5 deals {1.5*5d4 rounded down} fire damage (which averages to 18.5 per target) over a grid area of ~176 sq ft. Fireball, meanwhile, deals 5d6 fire damage (which averages to 17.5 per target) over a grid area of ~1256 sq ft. Sure, Empowered Burning Hands deals an extra point of damage per target, but it has less than 1/7th of Fireballs area, and the damage difference is so small that even a single extra target gives Fireball the clear edge...and, of course, you should more generally expect Fireball to hit 7 times as many targets, rather than merely 1. And this is at the single wizard level where Burning Hands is still getting more damage than Fireball; if you take that over to a sorcerer, they're comparing 1.5*5d4 to 6d6, which tips the damage back into Fireball's favor. Assuming you get 7 Fireball targets for every EBH target, you're looking at 122.5 Fireball damage for every 18.5 points of EBH damage. It becomes even more obvious if you compare Cure spells to their Empowered supposed-equals. This is one of the best +1s, but I still think it definitely belongs here.

Energize Spell (Libris Mortis)
50% extra damage to undead gives this a similar damage boost to Empower, but also deals less damage to non-undead enemies. However, that downside is more balanced out by your spells being slightly friendlier to your living allies, so it's a wash, making this Empower's equal in my eyes, more or less.

Enervate Spell (Libris Mortis)
The equal-but-opposite of Energize Spell, and it's +1 for the same reasons as above.

Entangling Spell (Champions Of Ruin)
Entangled is a nasty condition, for casters and noncasters alike. Attaching it without a save or check to directly resist to a blasting spell is prett ridiculous. That being said, it's only for a single round, as opposed to Disrupting Spell's {spell level} rounds, so I think ultimately it's pretty comparable.

Explosive Spell (Complete Arcane)
Born Of Three Thunders has a tertiary "if they were damaged, and if they were stunned, they can save vs prone" effect. This has an auto-prone, no save rider, on top of dealing a bit of extra damage on a failed save. This will be abusable with larger area spells, but eh.

Extend Spell (Player's Handbook)
As others have said, a nicely fitting +1 metamagic feat.

Fell Frighten (Libris Mortis)
This is similar to Coercive Spell in theory, but applies a specific condition that gives the -2 penalty to a whole bunch of stuff, and the debuff lasts for a minute instead of a round. That said, auto-shaken for 1 minute vs auto-deafened for 1 round feels fair because Shaken is a fear condition, which is super-easy to get bonuses or even flat-out immunity to even in the early parts of the game.

Fell Weaken (Libris Mortis)
Already one of the better +1s out there, but not enough of a debuff to increase to +2, so it stays where it is.

Imbued Summoning (Player's Handbook II)
It's a fairly decent +1 metamagic, and there's probably some neat ways to abuse this. Probably fine.

Lord Of The Uttercold (Complete Arcane)
This was one of the really good +0s, and it's clear why: it changes half the damage of a cold spell to a harder-to-resist damage type. That said, negative energy is easier to resist than divine damage or city damage, so this isn't as good as City Spell or Corrupt Spell or the like, but it's still too good IMO to be +0. This is the second feat to have its cost increased (since I'm doing these alphabetically).

Piercing Cold (Frostburn)
+50% damage to cold immune targets, and ignores cold resistance. Not quite as good as Empower, but useful enough to still be a great +1.

Purify Spell (Book Of Exalted Deeds
The damage boost against evil creatures isn't as good as Empower, but no damage to good allies, and only half to neutral, makes this far friendlier than Empowering the same spell, so it's pretty comparable.

Rapid Spell (Complete Divine)
Too good to automatically apply to all spells just for a feat, but not good enough for +2. This action economy advantage is a nice +1.

Repeat Spell (Complete Arcane)
150% damage this turn, or 100% this turn and 100% next turn with an extra chance of failure? Yeah, this is fitting for a +1. Plus, it's too objectively worse than Twin Spell to deserve being a +2.

Retributive Spell (Complete Mage)
Ocular lets you store two spells to cast both as a full round action. This lets you store one spell to cast as an immediate action. This seems far worse than Ocular, but still plenty useful, so...high +1.

Searing Spell (Sandstorm)
The fire version of Piercing Cold, and just as good. Theoretically better, actually, since fire resistance/immunity is more common than that of cold, but that's a minor difference.

Transdimensional Spell (Complete Arcane)
+100% effectiveness against a small subset of targets isn't nearly as good as +50% effective against everything not in that small subset, but I think it's a bit too good to be +0. I could certainly see something arguing for it, though.Energy Admixture (Complete Arcane)
If +1 is a good fit for +50%, then +2 is a good fit for +100%. Additionally, this compares well with Maximize on spell where the damage is just dice (the maximum on XdY is usually around half the average, or thereabout, so maximizing is gonna be close to doubling usually).

Fell Drain (Libris Mortis)
A negative level isn't a fun condition, and tacking it on with no save of its own is gonna screw up basically anybody's day...but it doesn't last long enough to be permanent, leaving it as a temporary debuff. Of course, where the other no-save-just-suck spells have short durations, this one lasts for hours, so it's too good to be in the +1 category. It's already decently balanced at +2, so we'll just leave it there.

Maximize Spell (Player's Handbook)
With Empowered at +1, this is a good benchmark for +2s, and serves as the basis for my placing of a number of other feats.

Ocular Spell (Lords Of Madness)
Most comparable to Quicken, except the range is reduced for the vast majority of applicable spells. Add in how it enables Persistent Spell, and +2 is a good fit for this.

Twin Spell (Complete Arcane)
Works similarly to Energy Admixture. Where EA could have the "split damage" bonus, though, Twin Spell has two separate effects which must each be saved against to avoid being complete effected. I'm fine putting this in the +2 category.

Widen Spell (Player's Handbook)
This doubles the area covered by lines and walls, and quadruples the area covered by most other area spells. That being said, you're not necessarily guaranteed to get that same multiplication to the number of targets you affect with these spells, but overall I think it's safe to say that Widening spells like Fireball will give you double your normal targets often enough to be worth a +2. It's a low +2 though.

Chain Spell (Complete Arcane)
This is a high +3, and should maybe be increased to a +4, just based on how much damage it can put out (in comparison to other damage-increasing metamagics, this is probably stepping on Intensify's toes). That said, blasting could use the assistance, and +4 seems too much for Chaining buffs onto allies, so this stays at +3. If anything, this probably supports the argument that Intensify should be +4 instead of +5 (the two I was waffling between).

Quicken Spell (Player's Handbook)
Twin Spell lets you spend one slot of level (X+4) to get two effects of level (X) in one round. Quicken Spell lets you spend one slot of level (X+4) and one slot of level (X) to get two effects of level (X) in one round. That being said, Quicken could also let you use two spells that aren't the same spell in the same round - or even the same level. Casting an 8th level spell and a quickened 1st lvl spell can be a good use of slots for time efficiency. Ultimately, I feel that +4 is a bit too much for this, making this a solid +3.Guided Spell (Dragon Compendium)
Thus far in my write-up (since I'm doing these in alphabetical order), this is the first metamagic feat to have its cost increased. Here, it's for good reason because this spell is some broken BS. On top of the "ignoring cover" aspect that's basically Bend Spell, this gives you extra chances to land a ranged touch attack, where the number of extra chances scales with your level. Part of the balance of spells that require attack rolls is the possibility that they will miss completely and do nothing, and this metamagic feat takes a great deal of that uncertainty out of the equation. This was a must-have spell. If you're high enough level to have afforded the +3 cost this previously had, and you slapped it on a cantrip, that cantrip would get two chances to hit, which is effectively like the spell getting automatically cast if you missed the first time (costing you neither an action nor a slot to do so), and it only gets worse from there. A Guided Disintegrate in the normal system will get 7 chances to land a Touch AC hit, which is basically a guarantee, leaving only the saving throw between you and the damage. Guided Spell essentially takes the ranged touch attack out of the equation for whatever spell it's applied to, on top of ignoring all be full cover.

Intensify Spell (Epic Level Handbook)
Twice as much as a Maximize Spell in terms of how it affects your damage. Competitive with Chain Spell at its best, which is too fitting as a +3. This is a solid +4, almost good enough for +5...but nowhere near good enough to justify +7 geez.

Fortify Spell (Complete Spell)
Mediocre at the current exchange rate of "+2 CL for penetration per +1 spell level", and you can't make that +0 because it's self-stacking. Sure, +0 is fitting for one iteration of this feat, but that feat is called "Spell Penetration". If we wanted to make this a bit better, up the bonus to +3 and it'll be worth taking at a +1 per +3.

Heighten Spell (Player's Handbook)
I think DCs should be attached to the slot rather than the spell level, or that all spells should have equal DCs based on the spellcaster's proficiency in casting (the way it works in 5e), but this is...fine? As is?

Persistent Spell
Applying Persistent Spell to a 10min/lvl duration spell is +2. Applying Persistent spell to a min/lvl duration spell is +4. Applying Persistent Spell to a round/lvl duration spell is +6. Honestly given where Extend Spell is, I feel all of these are too low, but they're a good compromise.

[RoboEmperor]

If you ask me, I would say use a spell point system, and tie metamagic into that. Spell levels aren't granular enough to be able to properly handle things like still and silent, which I think together would be worth 1 spell level, but individually are most certainly not. Use a spell point system, and put a limit on how many spell points can be spent on metamagic to prevent over-stacking.

Isn't this Divine Metamagic?

Also Still and Silent Spell should be at least +1.

Still Spell lets arcane casters cast in armor if it's +0 so that's a definite no.

Silent Spell lets spellcasters be immune to silence, on top of other stealthy castings to wreak havoc in a noncombat setting, which is why that's also a definite no.

[ericgrau]

Isn't this Divine Metamagic?

Also Still and Silent Spell should be at least +1.

Still Spell lets arcane casters cast in armor if it's +0 so that's a definite no.

Silent Spell lets spellcasters be immune to silence, on top of other stealthy castings to wreak havoc in a noncombat setting, which is why that's also a definite no.

Somehow I completely forgot about casting in armor, so I'm going to edit cross out my comment on still spell. Silent spell I'm still not convinced. Silence is a great anti-caster spell, but stopping a single good spell is not a powerful ability when there are hundreds of other spells & abilities. Which is why most casters still won't take silent spell and silence will still be a good anti caster spell. It's confusing only when you think in absolutes. Never think in absolutes. Think in partiallies. The stealth aspects make it barely worth a feat at +0. Maybe silent+still can make you a temporary problem in a social situation, but even that is limited. Especially among wandering murder hobos.

The problem with casting in armor with still is that it's all or nothing. Once you wear armor you need to still all your spells. And that's pretty sucky at +1. There needs to be some kind of middle ground, which is tough. Perhaps +0 but first you get a pre-req feat that lets you cast in light armor (and bards already qualify without that feat). That's still a little strong, especially if you start loading up on melee touch / short range / etc. spells. Still not the greatest answer. The other direction would be +1 but give something more.

[Cosi]

Aren't there already feats that let you cast in armor (or do those just scale up the "cast in armor" ability of Warmage-type casters?). I don't think those see use, so something better is probably justified.

[ericgrau]

It's hard. Often it takes a dip and a lost caster level. Or 2-3 lost caster levels. That's why people generally don't do it. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?112738-D-amp-D-3-5-Armored-Casting-Wizard

[Blu]

Also Still and Silent Spell should be at least +1.

Still Spell lets arcane casters cast in armor if it's +0 so that's a definite no.

Casting in armor is a neat benefit but i would argue that a +1 and a feat for It is too much since there are other ways to negate ASF.


Silent Spell lets spellcasters be immune to silence, on top of other stealthy castings to wreak havoc in a noncombat setting, which is why that's also a definite no.

The answer to this might be how often silence comes up as a way to deal with spellcasters. Normally i dont see It in use and at most It is a one round inconvenience. Making this use of silent spell to situational. Its value increases on noncombat situations but the alternative(conceal spellcasting skill trick is cheaper) making It too expensive for a +1 and a feat and too cheap for +0.

How about just rolling Eschew materials, Silent and Still into one feat. The feat always grants you one of the benefits for free(Eschew, Silent or Still) and you can pay +1 to get the other two?

[ericgrau]

That still gives you still (and casting in armor) for +0.

Maybe it's +1 but the lack of movement also reduces the concentration required to casting the spell from nearby obstacles: It no longer provokes an attack of opportunity, and doesn't require a concentration check when grappled or entangled. You still need a concentration check from damage or violent movement, but you get a +4 bonus. Something a melee caster can use without hurting fluff too badly. Nor removing a weakness without a price.

Combine that with getting silent still for +1 (from silent at +0), and casting spells that are difficult or impossible to spellcraft is a nice optional benefit too. So you lose a spell level on nearly all your spells but you get some nice perks for the related build.

[RoboEmperor]

Casting in armor is a neat benefit but i would argue that a +1 and a feat for It is too much since there are other ways to negate ASF.

And making still spell +0 will negate all the other ways to negate ASF.

So by spending 1 feat, arcane gishes can cast spells with a heavy shield and a weapon in hand wearing heavy armor while having superior spells to divine casters and Spellsword and Twilight stuff are now worthless class features/magic properties meaning they will never be used.

[Blu]

That still gives you still (and casting in armor) for +0.

And there are other ways to negate ASF that are better than expending a feat on It. If I remember correctly you can reduce even a full plate to 0% dirt cheap(with a +1 enchant and a couple of flat bonuses).
The point in joining the three feats was to make something that people would consider taking.

[RoboEmperor]

And there are other ways to negate ASF that are better than expending a feat on It. If I remember correctly you can reduce even a full plate to 0% dirt cheap(with a +1 enchant and a couple of flat bonuses).
The point in joining the three feats was to make something that people would consider taking.

The "couple" of flat bonuses are prestige class dips that also have feat taxes of their own and a minimum BAB requirement. You are going to end up burning every feat you have and spending all your wealth to reduce a full plate's ASF to 0.

[Zaq]

Don’t forget that the folks who can’t cast in armor without Still aren’t usually proficient with armor. So they either have to dip for it or spend feats on armor proficiency in addition to spending a feat on Still. Using nonproficient armor kinda sucks for a mage because you take the ACP on attack rolls (which some mages care about) and to initiative (which ALL mages care about).

[Blu]

And making still spell +0 will negate all the other ways to negate ASF.

More like trading a resource for another. You are essentially trading an resource you have a lot for one is far more scarce. The way i see It is a fair trade.

[Blu]

The "couple" of flat bonuses are prestige class dips that also have feat taxes of their own and a minimum BAB requirement. You are going to end up burning every feat you have and spending all your wealth to reduce a full plate's ASF to 0.

Of the top of my head.
-Mitral is -10%
- Githcraft and feycraft are both -5%
- The elven thingy from races of the wild is -5%
- Twilight is a +1 bonus for another -10%.
That for a total of -30% ASF without any dips and not much of a cost. 35% If you are capable of using gith and fey craft.

I'm pretty sure there are more, but i am away from my books atm

[AvatarVecna]

The "couple" of flat bonuses are prestige class dips that also have feat taxes of their own and a minimum BAB requirement. You are going to end up burning every feat you have and spending all your wealth to reduce a full plate's ASF to 0.

+1 Twilight Feycraft Githcraft Mithril Fullplate costs 15600 gp. It has a +9 armor bonus to AC, a max Dex of +3, 5% ASF, and -3 ACP. This becomes affordable around lvl 7 (although more likely lvl 9). Alternatively, you could buy +1 Twilight Feycraft Githcraft Mithril Chainmail for 9250gp (affordable at lvl 6, though realistically at lvl 8); it has +6 armor to AC, max Dex of +4, 0% ASF, and -2 ACP. Of course, if you're wanting something a bit sooner than that, or you tend towards a mix of armor and Dex, a Feycraft Githcraft Mithril Chain Shirt has +4 armor, max Dex +6, 0% ASF, and -0 ACP, and costs 2200 gp (affordable by lvl 3, although more realistically around lvl 5).

Anyway, "+1 Twilight Feycraft Githcraft Mithril" is 30% reduction for a maximum of 14100gp. And I've probably missed some stuff.

[RoboEmperor]

Of the top of my head.
-Mitral is -10%
- Githcraft and feycraft are both -5%
- The elven thingy from races of the wild is -5%
- Twilight is a +1 bonus for another -10%.
That for a total of -30% ASF without any dips and not much of a cost. 35% If you are capable of using gith and fey craft.

A mithral full plate is 10,500gp
A +1 twilight to that is +4,000gp for 14,500gp
Feycraft is another 500gp for a 15,000gp
Githcraft is another 600gp (dubious whether you can stack it with feycraft), but if you can it's 15,600gp.
Thistledown Suit is 250gp for a grand total of 15,850gp.

You need to sink virtually all of your wealth at level 7 to buy this full plate, meaning levels 1-6 you have to deal with ASF, or buy a cheaper armor in which case delays this full plate even later.

If Githcraft and Feycraft can't stack you need to buy a Blended Quartz armor from AE&G which costs 1,000 more than mithral for a total of 15,750gp. (you don't need feycraft or githcraft, and thistledown is cheaper than both so you keep that)

Compare that with still spell at +0 you can grab at first level, letting you cast in full plate from level 1 on top of needing no hands free.

[AvatarVecna]

Don’t forget that the folks who can’t cast in armor without Still aren’t usually proficient with armor. So they either have to dip for it or spend feats on armor proficiency in addition to spending a feat on Still. Using nonproficient armor kinda sucks for a mage because you take the ACP on attack rolls (which some mages care about) and to initiative (which ALL mages care about).

Yeah, this is the big thing. Getting one or the other all the way down is great, but you realistically need to get both down, and that's a bit more of an investment...but not an impossible one to deal with. Honestly, though, this kinda thing ceases being a problem for wizards once they hit double digits; they can afford the really good caster-armor, and they have better spells for buffing their defenses as an alternative. Still Spell only has a +1 because they didn't want a Fighter 1/Wizard 1 to be able to walk around in full plate without a care in the world.

Of course, you can also see how much they considered this a problem when you see that they gave bards armor-casting, warmages armor-casting, beguilers armor-casting, and even sorcerers an armor-casting option (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#sorcererVariantBattleS orcerer).

[Crake]

Isn't this Divine Metamagic?

Also Still and Silent Spell should be at least +1.

Still Spell lets arcane casters cast in armor if it's +0 so that's a definite no.

Silent Spell lets spellcasters be immune to silence, on top of other stealthy castings to wreak havoc in a noncombat setting, which is why that's also a definite no.

I don't quite see how it's similar to divine metamagic. For divine metamagic you spend a separate pool of resources on attaining the metamagic, but using spellpoints you're still using the same pool as you do to cast spells, so by using metamagic, you're reducing the amount that you can cast for the remainder of the day. I don't quite agree with the way psionics did it, where using metamagic cuts into the "intensity" of the spell (since you need to augment most spells to keep up with spellcasting that scales without extra resources, but metamagic cuts down your ability to augment to full capacity). I would instead say there's a certain amount that you can spend on metamagic, probably half your caster level? That way, at level 20 you'd have 10 points that you can spend on metamagic per spell, which equates to roughly 5 spell levels. Because you're using spell points instead of spell levels, you have more room for granularity, so while still and silent may be arguable as to whether they're worth a whole spell level, with this method, you could instead assign them 1 spell point, so the two combined would cost what would essentially be 1 spell level, but individually they still aren't free.

Of course, psionics gives still, silent and eschew materials away for free entirely, so.... take all that with a grain of salt.

[RoboEmperor]

Yeah, this is the big thing. Getting one or the other all the way down is great, but you realistically need to get both down, and that's a bit more of an investment...but not an impossible one to deal with. Honestly, though, this kinda thing ceases being a problem for wizards once they hit double digits; they can afford the really good caster-armor, and they have better spells for buffing their defenses as an alternative. Still Spell only has a +1 because they didn't want a Fighter 1/Wizard 1 to be able to walk around in full plate without a care in the world.

Of course, you can also see how much they considered this a problem when you see that they gave bards armor-casting, warmages armor-casting, beguilers armor-casting, and even sorcerers an armor-casting option (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#sorcererVariantBattleS orcerer).

I use nonproficient tower shield on my cleric at low levels. Not getting hit to cast those really powerful 1 round casting time spells is more important than going first. After all, what's the point of going first when you are invincible?

But yeah, later levels (5? 6? 7?) you want to get that proficiency or ditch armor altogether.


I don't quite see how it's similar to divine metamagic. For divine metamagic you spend a separate pool of resources on attaining the metamagic, but using spellpoints you're still using the same pool as you do to cast spells, so by using metamagic, you're reducing the amount that you can cast for the remainder of the day. I don't quite agree with the way psionics did it, where using metamagic cuts into the "intensity" of the spell (since you need to augment most spells to keep up with spellcasting that scales without extra resources, but metamagic cuts down your ability to augment to full capacity). I would instead say there's a certain amount that you can spend on metamagic, probably half your caster level? That way, at level 20 you'd have 10 points that you can spend on metamagic per spell, which equates to roughly 5 spell levels. Because you're using spell points instead of spell levels, you have more room for granularity, so while still and silent may be arguable as to whether they're worth a whole spell level, with this method, you could instead assign them 1 spell point, so the two combined would cost what would essentially be 1 spell level, but individually they still aren't free.

Of course, psionics gives still, silent and eschew materials away for free entirely, so.... take all that with a grain of salt.

My bad, i thought you were making a new pool of resources called spell points instead of using the variant system.

[Cosi]

Maybe the solution is to make Still Spell +1 at low levels, but +0 at higher levels?

[AvatarVecna]

Maybe the solution is to make Still Spell +1 at low levels, but +0 at higher levels?

I mean, part of one of my later posts is more that I don't think it's a big deal to be able to cast in armor, based on who's allowed to do it. Even if you ignore that armor doesn't hinder the somatic components of divine spells in the slightest (...sure, why not), the arcane side of things is similarly unrestricted:

Bard (light)
Beguiler (light)
Dread Necromancer (light)
Duskblade (light/medium/heavy)
Hexblade (light)
Spellthief (light)
Warlock (light)
Warmage (light/medium/heavy)

Death Master (can use some blood as a material component to ignore armor's ASF, with no armor type restriction)
Factotum (casts spell-like abilities instead of spells directly, and SLAs don't have somatic components)

Jester*
Savant*
Sha'ir
Sorcerer*
Wizard
Wu Jen

Of the 16 arcane casters I found, 6 of them don't have some inherent way to avoid ASF, and three of them have minor exceptions: Jesters, despite being alternate bards with light armor proficiency, don't seem to have the bard's light armor exception to ASF; I'm assuming this is a mistake. The savant, meanwhile, has light armor proficiency but also no such exception for wearing it. Finally, the sorcerer can take the Battle Sorcerer ACF to cast freely in light armor. Since all the ones that can ignore light armor can spend two feats to ignore heavy, that leaves four classes that are affected by ASF: Savant, Sha'ir, Wizard, and Wu Jen. The other 12 arcane casters I found don't have an issue with it. The divine casters don't have an issue with it. And even weirder, I can't tell why it needs to be a problem for these four. I can't think of any mechanical balance reason to say "wizards shouldn't be able to cast in armor" that doesn't then lead to "so neither should sorcerers".

[VisitingDaGulag]

You've gone too far. You don't ban all MM reducers because a few are broken (cough cough incantatrix). You'll spend more time walking yourself back. Save yourself the time and don't go that far out.

Just like you don't ban persist because people don't understand that metamagic is applied simultaneously (see maximze MM stacking), and that even if you could, it still refers to the spell as it is stated rather than the spell as its cast (sorry occular spell).

Yes there are broken spells. Just start reading SC and you'll see arcane matrix (spelling?). But you don't ban them all, only the problem ones.

The truth is the round 2 writing of MM is about right (see psionics), even with non-free MM reducers, and even with persist spell as written, if you take care of the problem spells. Of course, since spells are where all the power is, you'll spend a lot of time with the scalpel on them. But you should be doing that anyway if you don't want spells to bend your campaign over. For instance Ice Assassin is TO without any MM or reducers.

[Gullintanni]

I always thought still, silent and eschew were overcosted, but not by much.

If I was designing a system like this, I'd roll them all into one feat:

Resourceful Spellcasting. A spellcaster taking the feat would be able to use any combination of Still, Silent or Eschew on any spell they have. Using one of the three would be a +0, two would be +1 and all three would be +2.

One feat for a set of flexible situational benefits, none of which are game breaking. I also don't think armored casting is a big deal. One feat sounds like an adequate cost. But if you're worried about it, the a variant of the feat could be used:

Resourceful Spellcasting:
A spellcaster taking this feat gains a resource pool equal to three plus their Spellcasting ability score modifier. The spellcaster may spend points from this pool in order to sponatneous eschew any combination of inexpensive material, verbal or somatic components. Each component so eschewed requires one point from the resource pool.

Example: A Wizard with a +5 intelligence modifier would have an eight point resource pool, and could spend three points to cast a fireball spell with no material, somatic or verbal components.

This feat replaces Still/Silent/Eschew materials.

For the record, I think a metamagic resource pool makes metamagic more usable in general in a world without reducers. But...YMMV.

[ericgrau]

Don’t forget that the folks who can’t cast in armor without Still aren’t usually proficient with armor. So they either have to dip for it or spend feats on armor proficiency in addition to spending a feat on Still. Using nonproficient armor kinda sucks for a mage because you take the ACP on attack rolls (which some mages care about) and to initiative (which ALL mages care about).

I never noticed the initiative thing before... and now I see why. I looked up the rule and found "dex based ability checks". Sigh, once again 3.5 fails to explain its rules and makes the reader figure it out.

Yeah, just spend feats on it or dip if you aren't already a gish. I tried to Google a solution and one person mentioned that there's an optional rule where you can get certain feats including armor proficiency using downtime and gold. Cleric might be a nice dip option for all the domain tricks. Though simply taking fighter for the BAB and feat isn't bad either (besides the lost level). Using mithril will save 1 feat at least if you go that route, since the armor goes down a category. At low level even light armor helps because mage armor isn't online 24 hours a day yet, and then you can progress upward into medium armor as you get close to level 10. Then finally mithral full plate. As a bonus you can utilize a 16 dex. Carry a mithril buckler for a shield (no non-proficiency penalty). Upgrade armor to only +1, or beg for magic vestment, or switch to greater mage armor temporarily during transitional levels, or etc. Full plate around level 3-5 would be better but it's +2 AC if you have a good dex. Significant but not critical. Maybe 4 points otherwise, but a good dex has other uses and if you do have <=12 dex you might be forced to dip.

[Endarire]

Having read the thread so far, these points haven't yet been amply emphasized:

-Each metamagic feat costs a feat slot. Sometimes, you get these as bonus feats due to class, race, plot, etc. These feats are in competition with other feats obtainable in the same slot.

-Most metamagic feats increase the slot level required. This means that many or most metamagic feats with spiffy effects can't be used right away/at low levels due to metamagic mostly being a high-level trick. There are ways to reduce metamagic costs by various means, but most or all the low-level ones require feats to reduce/negate the slot level costs (Easy Metamagic, Divine Metamagic, etc.) or items to replace the cost (Metamagic Rods).

-Many (most?) casters who can use metamagic are, by default, prepared casters. This means deciding in advance (at the start of the game day) how many spells you want Empowered, Maximized, Quickened, Silent, Stilled, Widened, Black Lore of Moiled, etc. This is in contrast to, say, Power Attack which only requires declaring at the start of the round you use it.

-By default, spontaneously applying metamagic feats costs extra time. By default, Sorcerers benefit the most from metamagic (at least among the core classes) but also get no bonus feats to use on metamagic.

-Metamagic is potentially powerful, but variable. Even with a 'static' cost (like +1 spell slot level), that spell slot level means different things to different characters at different points in their characters' careers. It also means different effects and impacts for varying spells in varying contexts. Empower might be worth +2 spell slot levels as-is if every caster with the feat could spontaneously apply it to all their spells with no cast time increase.

My experience with metamagic feats has been that, for them to be useful for me, they must be spontaneous or they must be free. (Being both is better, however.) Otherwise, they're unused parts of my character aside from prereqs or forced choices.

Finally for now, we're talking about a theoretical aspect of the game with differing baselines and assumptions for what constitutes 'balance' or a desired outcome. Let's establish our desired outcomes first.

[Anthrowhale]

Just like you don't ban persist because people don't understand that metamagic is applied simultaneously (see maximze MM stacking)...
This seems to be directly contradicted by the FAQ.

[Goaty14]

this seems to be directly contradicted by the faq.

faq =/= raw...

[RoboEmperor]

Just like you don't ban persist because people don't understand that metamagic is applied simultaneously (see maximze MM stacking), and that even if you could, it still refers to the spell as it is stated rather than the spell as its cast (sorry occular spell).

Could you give me a source on that? I can't find it atm.

[VisitingDaGulag]

This seems to be directly contradicted by the FAQ."This" what? I didn't state the which interpretation (the incorrect one or the RAW one).


Could you give me a source on that? I can't find it atm.A real response. Sure thing! Complete Arcane p81 says "empowered maximized scorched ray would deal 24 points of damage plus one-half of 4d6 points of damage." The effect happens "separately" because the MM has no ordering (and is thus simultaneous). If MM did have ordering, then you could chose its order. And no one would chose the above, inefficient order.

Disproving ocular spell with the above knowledge is left as an exercise to the reader.

[Cosi]

A real response. Sure thing! Complete Arcane p81 says "empowered maximized scorched ray would deal 24 points of damage plus one-half of 4d6 points of damage." The effect happens "separately" because the MM has no ordering (and is thus simultaneous). If MM did have ordering, then you could chose its order. And no one would chose the above, inefficient order.

Disproving ocular spell with the above knowledge is left as an exercise to the reader.

That does not even remotely constitute proof. At best it implies that either there exists at least one person stupid enough to order things wrong, or there is no ordering. Other coherent rulings include "something specific of to Maximize and Empower causes them to work that way" or "things that modify the same characteristic happen simultaneously". It doesn't even do anything to stop the Incantatrix, who applies metamagic to existing spells (implying a definite ordering).

To claim that the rules say something, you need an actual rule that says that thing, not an example that kinda suggests maybe that it's unlikely that the rules work in one of the other ways.

[RoboEmperor]

That does not even remotely constitute proof. At best it implies that either there exists at least one person stupid enough to order things wrong, or there is no ordering. Other coherent rulings include "something specific of to Maximize and Empower causes them to work that way" or "things that modify the same characteristic happen simultaneously". It doesn't even do anything to stop the Incantatrix, who applies metamagic to existing spells (implying a definite ordering).

To claim that the rules say something, you need an actual rule that says that thing, not an example that kinda suggests maybe that it's unlikely that the rules work in one of the other ways.

If there is no ordering then he wins. You can't use ocular spell to persist normally unpersistable spells if there was no ordering. That was his point.

Though I think I remember there being a rule saying you have to order metamagic in a way that is most beneficial to the player. Can't find this rule either atm.

[Anthrowhale]

"This" what? I didn't state the which interpretation (the incorrect one or the RAW one).
The faq states that you can cast a Twin Maximized Energy Admixed Scorching Ray and do 3(rays)*24(maximized)*2(Admixed)*2(Twin) = 288 points of damage. This is inconsistent with 'all metamagic is simultaneous' as I understand it.

The interaction of Maximize and Empower look like special cases explicitly called out as such to me.

[Goaty14]

Metamagic is simultaneous, and applies separately.


An empowered, maximized spell gains the separate benefits of each feat: the maximum result plus one-half the normally rolled result. An empowered, maximized fireball cast by a 15th-level wizard deals points of damage equal to 60 plus one half of 10d6.

EDIT: Oops, I guess I'm a lil late to proving that. Oh well :smalltongue:

[AvatarVecna]

See, though, I don't really accept that the interaction between Maximize and Empower that's specifically called out as having a particular result is making a general statement on how metamagic is supposed to stack. You're taking a specific example of two particular feats interacting as the general rule, despite not having any other such specification anywhere in the ruleset. And while applying metamagic simultaneously - for better or worse - ends up making Ocular+Persist not work, it also results in a lot of very weird outcomes for other spells, to the point that it makes no freaking sense.

Anything that uses Extend Spell plus something else? Yeah, whatever the "something else" is only applies for the normal duration. Consider a Widened Extended Bless cast by a Cleric 20 (presumably as part of some kind of ground war, to aid his allies); you end up with a spell that gives the Bless benefits to everybody within 50 ft for 40 rounds, and everybody else within 100 ft for 20 rounds. Alternatively, a Wizard 10 could throw down an Ice Storm with Extend Spell and Energy Substitution (fire), and then watch one round of 3d6 bludgeoning+2d6 fire, then one round of 3d6 bludgeoning+2d6 cold. Hope he didn't expect to actually have that spell fully useful against those cold-immune enemies that he took ES (Fire) for. Oh, but wait, we can go stupider by playing with Enlarge Spell, which has the normal effect at double range and the other metamagic effects minus the normal effect at normal range! Have that Wizard 10 combine Enlarge+Widen on a Fireball, then tell your DM with a straight face that the result should be a 20ft radius sphere dealing 10d6 fire within 800 ft, and then a spherical shell of 10d6 fire (inner radius 20ft, outer radius 40ft) somewhere within 400ft. Of course, if that same wizard then slapped Energy Substitution (Cold), Empower Spell, or Maximize Spell on that fireball, it wouldn't do anything at all, because the normal radius is outside the normal range, and all the area within the normal range is beyond the normal radius. Whoops!

But let's say that 3.5 was filled with specific examples like the Maximize+Empower clarification, and it was an objective, clearly-stated general rule that metamagic applies to spells simultaneously. That still wouldn't completely shut down Persistomancy because there are a number of ways in this edition to apply multiple metamagic to a spell that aren't applied at the same time, giving a definite order to how the metamagics are applied, and Ocular+Persist isn't what made Persistomancy bad (merely what made it worse). Metamagic rods, the Sudden {Metamagic} feat line (while not applicable to Persist, a showing of the general principle I'm pointing out), or even the Incantatrix 3 ability that lets you apply a new metamagic to an existing spell, or the Incantatrix 8 ability that does something similar. Sure, you've shut down DMM: Persist Shenanigans for touch spells, but that cleric can still get plenty of personal spells and aura effects stacked up (more so now, since there's no touch spells competing for DMMing), while Incantatrix Wizards are more or less unaffected since they were already applying Persist after Ocular without paying the cost.

EDIT: Additionally, discussed this thread (and this particular point) with an IRL buddy, and his thought on the Maximize/Empower interaction was more because they interact with the same variable, and that things that alter different aspects of a spell should stack together, while those affecting the same variable would need a case-by-case thing. He also thought it was kinda weird people were complaining about making Still Spell +0, and when informed it was because they were worried armored mages would be overpowered, he shrugged and replied "all mages are overpowered by default, who cares?"

[redwizard007]

Oh, great. A thread to make casters better.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?

[AvatarVecna]

Oh, great. A thread to make casters better.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?

FWIW, this thread is about balancing casters vs other casters, and buffing metamagic does more to help blasting and healing magicks than it does to help more optimal strategies. It probably shouldn't surprise you that, with how unbalanced magic tends to be, even magic isn't really all that balanced against magic, and providing some measure of guidance to fix one particular such issue is the point of this thread. Nobody's saying that casters as a whole need the buff more than noncasters do, just that making metamagic more even for general use while pushing out the ways of abusing it via cost mitigation/reduction.

I'm firmly of the opinion that the game as a whole should be closer to "T2-T4" rather than they "T0-T6" way it is now, and the biggest changes you'd need to make to the system to achieve that would be to greatly buff most of the existing noncasters.

[ericgrau]

Maximize+empower really is a special case. It is an example of how the designers don't want things to multiply twice, which comes up frequently elsewhere, however with metamagic there's no way setup in the rules to avoid the multiplication. So they had to state it explicitly because otherwise we'd have no way to know something so convoluted. Likewise when you combo other things, the metamagic system has no way to handle it. I mean, how do you do 3x normal average damage with a twinned maximized ray? Anyhoo the best way to deal with the issue is to leave it alone. Once you're doing metamagic combos without reducers you're looking at around +6 to the spell level anyway, so it gets really hard to break things.


Oh, great. A thread to make casters better.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?
Some of us just play this game to have fun, rather than worry about how so and so can theoretically break the multiverse with XYZ combo when we never attempt that. And some of us don't like options that are too useless to ever see play or too strong to pick anything else.

Also it's a fallacy to bunch together class balance with feat balance. Nerfing metamagic does nothing to help caster balance. Buffing weak options, but not too high, does nothing or close to nothing to make casters stronger. Mostly it adds to fun. Having a greater number of viable feat options adds a hair to strength, but there are already 1,000 options so it doesn't add much.

Normally I'm against rebalance attempts with long pointless discussions and without any thorough playtesting. However individual feats are pretty easy. No one ever uses XYZ metamagic feat because it's way too weak? Ok, take off a spell level if it's still +1 or higher. This metamagic feat always appears in optimization threads? Might want to add a level. It's rarely taken? It seems a little strong but not an automatic choice? Reducing it to +0 might have unexpected exploits? Ok those three are a bit trickier, not sure if you want to mess with them or not.

[redwizard007]

I hadn't looked at this from those perspectives.

Truthfully, at most of the tables I've played at, all the MM reduction shenanigans were dissalowed and most casters still managed to make a couple MM feats work for them, but the bulk were just too expensive to focus on. It led to some interesting choices, often leading to more item creation feats instead. I never saw that as a drawback, just a design choice. Short of Elminster, most wizards shouldn't be packing 6 MM feats into a round of spell casting.

[Zaq]

I hadn't looked at this from those perspectives.

Truthfully, at most of the tables I've played at, all the MM reduction shenanigans were dissalowed and most casters still managed to make a couple MM feats work for them, but the bulk were just too expensive to focus on. It led to some interesting choices, often leading to more item creation feats instead. I never saw that as a drawback, just a design choice. Short of Elminster, most wizards shouldn't be packing 6 MM feats into a round of spell casting.

Under the rules environment we're exploring here, casters still won't be packing 6 MM feats into a round of casting. Every feat costs a feat. You don't get them very fast, you need them to do other things (including, but not limited to, qualifying for PrCs), and every time you take a feat it should represent a noticeable increase in what you can do. But even with many of the lower costs I've suggested, it'll be a rare build where it makes sense to take tons of metamagic to the exclusion of everything else you can do with your feats. Not to mention that the ones that I've suggested to be +0 are very rarely the difference between changing the encounter and not changing the encounter. Take Still and Silent, for example—it actually takes a bit of encounter-design work for a Wizard casting a spell with both of those on it to have meaningfully different choices from a Wizard casting the same spell without those metamagics.

As I said in the opening post, I'd want to know if we end up with anything patently absurd from my proposed ruleset, but I'm also kind of working with the assumption that most folks who are worth sitting down to game with aren't going to be jerks for the sake of being jerks, and it's beyond the scope of this discussion to try to make Wizards be on par with Monks. The goal is to try to figure out what an actual fair cost should be for most or all given metamagic feats when we take mitigation out of the equation. If we accept the premise at all that it is possible to balance "spend a feat for the ability to cast a spell out of a higher-level slot to graft a fancy effect onto that spell," just how much of a slot increase is each proposed fancy effect worth when we don't have to worry about people turning it into a cost-reducer with Arcane Thesis or getting it for free with DMM or whatever? And as you said, there's a lot of metamagic feats that aren't often taken or aren't often used, and it's interesting to see if we can theoretically adjust the parameters so that they seem more competitive, even if we don't want them to be so good that they're mandatory.

I didn't really even go down this particular road, but a side question to consider is whether the concept of metamagic at all is possible to actually balance. (I would argue that it probably is, though I admit that there are some edge cases—like Persist—that seem doomed from the start.) I could see an argument that, for example, the difference between a 2nd level slot and a 4th level slot is very different from the difference between a 5th level slot and a 7th level slot, so trying to generalize a slot increase cost isn't likely to make sense across the board of a hypothetical 20-level career. (Half the point of metamagic, of course, is that it should be a choice, and few, if any, metamagic options with slot increases should be assumed to be something you want to use on every single spell of a given level, so we should be careful about dogmatically taking things to extremes.) I found that particular side question to be a bit less compelling than simply diving in and seeing what changes seem to make sense to the existing paradigm, but I was half expecting someone to raise the question.

Overall, though, the goal isn't necessarily to buff casters. In my experience with live games at the table, I've actually seen vanishingly few casters bother with metamagic at all (there have been exceptions, but they have been relatively limited) simply because the combination of feat cost and slot cost is rarely worth the effort. If you're used to seeing casters actually taking Empower and Widen and Explosive or whatever and then seeing them actually pay the full printed cost for those feats, then yes, this proposed rule environment would represent a buff. I'm not used to seeing that, though, and therefore my suggestions would mostly end up opening up new benefits with new, hopefully fair, costs, rather than the current paradigm of "these things technically exist, but they're so expensive that no one bothers." Kind of like most LA, now that I think about it. My suggestions, when they concerned feats that I've seen in a real game, have mostly been to leave those particular feats as-is or very close to it, because me seeing them be used in a real game indicates to me that they're attractive enough as-is to be left alone. My experiences are not yours, of course, but that's the whole point of having a discussion.

[RoboEmperor]

Just because metamagic happen simultaneously doesn't mean they don't stack.

Extend + Widen Bless would change the spell's variable's simultaneously so it would in fact get increased duration and increased range.
Maximize + Twin would change fireball so that it does max damage, and there's two of them.
Maximize + Empower would change fireball so that it does max damage, and an additional 5d6.
Persistent + Ocular Spell however, Persistent spell needs ocular spell to fully resolve so this doesn't work.

It's an interesting interpretation.

[Cosi]

Simultaneity doesn't necessarily mean Ocular Persist doesn't work. That interaction depends on when you check legality. If you check legality in the same step as you apply effects, Ocular Persist works because you "see" the 60ft range when you check if Persist is legal.

[Anthrowhale]

Just because metamagic happen simultaneously doesn't mean they don't stack.

Extend + Widen Bless would change the spell's variable's simultaneously so it would in fact get increased duration and increased range.


Note that Widen by RAW does nothing to bless because it does not alter the range of blass, and bless affects every ally in range.

[RoboEmperor]

Note that Widen by RAW does nothing to bless because it does not alter the range of blass, and bless affects every ally in range.

I was just using AvatarVecna's example.


Simultaneity doesn't necessarily mean Ocular Persist doesn't work. That interaction depends on when you check legality. If you check legality in the same step as you apply effects, Ocular Persist works because you "see" the 60ft range when you check if Persist is legal.

I can tell your characters rely extremely heavily on ocular persist :)

[Cosi]

I can tell your characters rely extremely heavily on ocular persist :)

Honestly, no. I just hate the (disturbing common on this forum) school of thought that attempts to produce "balance" by twisting RAW until it was never broken to begin with. RAW is broken. It's really, stupidly, enormously broken. But the way to fix that is to just fix that, not to try and twist the rules or the english language itself until the brokenness was never there.

[Fizban]

Oh, great. A thread to make casters better.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?

You might be more interested in my post back on the first page (wall of text in spoiler)- I also don't consider metamagic reduction to be standard, and have rated them against existing spells with commentary on why several can't be evaluated properly due to problems in the base spell system itself.


As for Ocular allowing to to persist things, this is obviously not any part of its intent, and even if I were allowing Persist (which I wouldn't) I still wouldn't be allowing that "combo."

[AvatarVecna]

Just because metamagic happen simultaneously doesn't mean they don't stack.

Extend + Widen Bless would change the spell's variable's simultaneously so it would in fact get increased duration and increased range.
Maximize + Twin would change fireball so that it does max damage, and there's two of them.
Maximize + Empower would change fireball so that it does max damage, and an additional 5d6.
Persistent + Ocular Spell however, Persistent spell needs ocular spell to fully resolve so this doesn't work.

It's an interesting interpretation.

It's a very interesting interpretation, but it's not mine, it's yours, and you're just refusing to acknowledge that the logic behind this "general rule" would screw over a lot of other combos. You claimed that the given example of Maximize + Empower was the general rule, and that was why Ocular + Persistent doesn't work, so I looked at the exact logic of the Maximize + Empower spell and applied that logic to other metamagic combinations. Maximize + Empower explicitly don't interact with each other in the example you gave, but rather you're supposed to take the individual ways they alter the spell and add both. A Fireball deals 10d6 damage, a Maximized Fireball deals 60 damage (change 10d6 to 60), and an Empowered Fireball deals 15d6 damage (+5d6). This combination explicitly makes it a 5d6+60 Fireball, it explicitly states that the Maximize effect doesn't affect the Empowered effect, and vice versa; if they affected each other at all, the effect would deal 90 damage (either "10d6-->E: 15d6-->M: 90" or "10d6-->M: 60-->E: 90"), but they explicitly don't. If you're claiming this is the general rule for metamagic interaction, other metamagic combinations have to follow the same logic, and when you apply that "they don't interact at all" logic to other metamagic combinations, **** gets weird.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You either get to claim that this explicit interaction that doesn't show up anywhere else is a general rule that prevents Ocular+Persistent (and then apply the logic of this "general rule" to all metamagic interactions instead of just the one you personally don't like), or it's a specific rule that doesn't make every other metamagic combo in the game stop making sense.

EDIT: A bit more to the point, this thread isn't supposed to be about debating the legality of a particular metamagic combo widely accepted as working by RAW but probably not RAI, it's about assigning reasonable costs to metamagic. You already have made multiple threads about Persistent Spell in which you can shovel your BS.

[Mordaedil]

Can you add Split Ray to an Orb spell you've made into a Ray with Ocular spell? Can you extend it to lengthen the duration from 8 hours to 16 hours? Or is it non-applicable because the base spell is instantenous and the base spell not a ray?

This might change how I make my frost mage sorcerer.

[RoboEmperor]

It's a very interesting interpretation, but it's not mine, it's yours, and you're just refusing to acknowledge that the logic behind this "general rule" would screw over a lot of other combos. You claimed that the given example of Maximize + Empower was the general rule, and that was why Ocular + Persistent doesn't work, so I looked at the exact logic of the Maximize + Empower spell and applied that logic to other metamagic combinations. Maximize + Empower explicitly don't interact with each other in the example you gave, but rather you're supposed to take the individual ways they alter the spell and add both. A Fireball deals 10d6 damage, a Maximized Fireball deals 60 damage (change 10d6 to 60), and an Empowered Fireball deals 15d6 damage (+5d6). This combination explicitly makes it a 5d6+60 Fireball, it explicitly states that the Maximize effect doesn't affect the Empowered effect, and vice versa; if they affected each other at all, the effect would deal 90 damage (either "10d6-->E: 15d6-->M: 90" or "10d6-->M: 60-->E: 90"), but they explicitly don't. If you're claiming this is the general rule for metamagic interaction, other metamagic combinations have to follow the same logic, and when you apply that "they don't interact at all" logic to other metamagic combinations, **** gets weird.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You either get to claim that this explicit interaction that doesn't show up anywhere else is a general rule that prevents Ocular+Persistent (and then apply the logic of this "general rule" to all metamagic interactions instead of just the one you personally don't like), or it's a specific rule that doesn't make every other metamagic combo in the game stop making sense.

EDIT: A bit more to the point, this thread isn't supposed to be about debating the legality of a particular metamagic combo widely accepted as working by RAW but probably not RAI, it's about assigning reasonable costs to metamagic. You already have made multiple threads about Persistent Spell in which you can shovel your BS.

I never said it was my interpretation. I said it was an interesting interpretation. This is VisitingDaGulag's interpretation, not mine. I made it clear in my other threads that I conceded, which is why they ended.

It is however, very interesting how upset you got over this. As I said before I'm pretty sure there is a stacking rule somewhere that says to order metamagic in a way that is most beneficial to the player which would negate his "simultaneous" argument.

[AvatarVecna]

"This" what? I didn't state the which interpretation (the incorrect one or the RAW one).

A real response. Sure thing! Complete Arcane p81 says "empowered maximized scorched ray would deal 24 points of damage plus one-half of 4d6 points of damage." The effect happens "separately" because the MM has no ordering (and is thus simultaneous). If MM did have ordering, then you could chose its order. And no one would chose the above, inefficient order.

Disproving ocular spell with the above knowledge is left as an exercise to the reader.


I never said it was my interpretation. I said it was an interesting interpretation. This is VisitingDaGulag's interpretation, not mine. I made it clear in my other threads that I conceded, which is why they ended.

It is however, very interesting how upset you got over this. As I said before I'm pretty sure there is a stacking rule somewhere that says to order metamagic in a way that is most beneficial to the player which would negate his "simultaneous" argument.

My apologies, I got confused by you being the one mainly defending it. I got upset because you seemed to be claiming it was a general rule about metamagic-stacking while simultaneously only applying the logic of the rule to the combination you didn't like. It comes across as you arguing in bad faith, or attempting to interpret RAW based on what you think is balanced rather than what is written. I'll try to explain a bit better my position against this stupid interpretation.

So I went back and found their posts, to get an idea of what their argument is, to see if I can explain the issues better, and I think I found the disconnect. In their post above they say "nobody would choose the above inefficient order", and they're partially right about this, but...they're also a bit wrong. At least in regards to this particular metamagic combo (without touching on whether it's a general rule or just a specific one to Max+Emp), the player isn't choosing the order they occur in (which they correctly said), but neither is the game (which they incorrectly said), because there isn't an order. My previous post explained this a bit more, but regardless of whether you maximize and then empower, or empower and then maximize, you should end up with the same "90 damage fireball" result. The explicit interaction they're citing as a general rule about metamagic isn't deciding the order in which the metamagic effects apply, it's explicitly making them simultaneous and forbidding them to interact at all; at least for this particular metamagic interaction (and possibly for others, if you consider it a general rule), if you put Maximize Spell and Empower Spell on a Fireball, the effect is "Fireball+{Maximized Fireball - Fireball}+{Empowered Fireball - Fireball}", with Empower never affecting the Maximize part, and Maximize never affecting the Empower part.

[magicalmagicman]

As I said before I'm pretty sure there is a stacking rule somewhere that says to order metamagic in a way that is most beneficial to the player which would negate his "simultaneous" argument.

It's not a rule, it's an FAQ entry, and it doesn't just encompass metamagic, it encompasses all special effects.


When do “add-on” effects such as poison occur? For example, if an assassin delivers a death attack with a weapon bearing wyvern poison, does the poison take effect first, thus potentially reducing the target’s Fortitude save against the death attack?

As a general guideline, whenever the rules don’t stipulate an order of operations for special effects (such as spells or special abilities), you should apply them in the order that’s most beneficial to the “controller” of the effect.
In this case, the assassin is the “controller” of both the poison and the death attack, so he’d most likely choose for the poison to take effect first, and then the death attack.

In anycase, even if VisitingDaGulag's interpretation is correct, one can simply use divine metamagic to spontaneously persist an ocular spell so the whole argument is pointless.