What if Metamagics were free?

[Quertus]

So, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and "3.5" wasn't even a twinkle in Hasbro's purse's eye, I encountered a group that didn't understand that you actually had to pay for metamagics. They thought that all your spells received the metamagic, for free, simply by virtue of having taken the feat.

One of my flaws is that I teach rather than take advantage, so I explained to them the error of their ways, how spells required higher level slots in order to use metamagics.

But what if I hadn't? What if there was a group that had had that misunderstanding, and never learned otherwise? Or had learned otherwise, but kept this houserule as balanced for how OP Monks are. What if you encountered a world where all metamagics were free, and you decided to go with it. What would you run in such a setting?

[Inevitability]

inb4 persistomancy

Maximized Empowered Shivering Touch disables everything not completely immune to it.

Fell Animate means you can play a necromancer from first-level on, so that might be fun in a low-level campaign.

Silent spell would be great for stealthy casters, and Still Spell lets you cast while wielding two weapons or going sword-and-board.

[SimonMoon6]

Quicken Spell would be the crazy threat that 3.0 Haste was until 3.5 came along.

[Fero]

I feel like it is the type of thing that could be a lot of fun with less experienced players and/or very experienced players, but not the middle ground. Given free reign, I would probably try to do crazy things by combining Reach, Ray Coning, Sculpt, Widen, and Enlarge.

[Biggus]

The poor underpowered Incantatrix would finally get something...

[Quertus]

For the record, I think this group had made it to 6th level when I found them. And that might give you some idea how long after the release of 3e this was.


Quicken Spell would be the crazy threat that 3.0 Haste was until 3.5 came along.

That was the best thing I had come up with. (insert "great minds" comment here)


Maximized Empowered Shivering Touch disables everything not completely immune to it.

That sounds appropriately OP.


Fell Animate means you can play a necromancer from first-level on, so that might be fun in a low-level campaign.

Remind me, do you get to control these Undead? If so, I'm jelly I didn't think of it myself. Hard to say I wouldn't want to play such a character in this setup.

There's not any trick that would allow you to apply it to reserve spells, is there? Otherwise, you're looking at... what... Subdual Substitution (or SoL spells), an item to tell you someone's HP, and gently stabbing them almost to death with a dull knife / sharp spoon until you can get the killing shot in with a spell? What's the optimized approach here?


Silent spell would be great for stealthy casters, and Still Spell lets you cast while wielding two weapons or going sword-and-board.

But you can't cast and attack... at least, not without Quicken. A Human with enough feats, or with flaws, could pull it off, even at low level, I suppose.


I feel like it is the type of thing that could be a lot of fun with less experienced players and/or very experienced players, but not the middle ground. Given free reign, I would probably try to do crazy things by combining Reach, Ray Coning, Sculpt, Widen, and Enlarge.

Can you spell out what that would look like? It sounds like taking a touch spell, and turning it into a large, selective AoE - am I close?


The poor underpowered Incantatrix would finally get something...

Great minds again, I was actually thinking about the Incantatrix when I made this post. They would still have the ability to add metamagics onto other casters' spells without the other caster needing to know the metamagic in question, which isn't nothing, but I'm not sure many people would take the class at that point, and it certainly wouldn't be one of the top classes any more.

[tyckspoon]

Persist would need to just ..not exist, I think, or would have a cripplingly high set of prerequisites/just straight out be level locked to select. Quicken would be mandatory for any character with any pretense of being optimized. Still Spell would become 'ignore Arcane Spell Failure for a feat', which honestly is probably what it should be anyways but you may have stronger opinions about whether armored wizards are ok or not. It would definitely make Core material gish builds a lot smoother.

.. actually kind of think anything that is a +1 adjustment already is probably ok to just be an option paid for with the feat choice without also costing a spell slot increase - these feats largely do not significantly increase the spell's power, they mostly make it more flexible or reflect a specialization on the character's part. That's what feats are FOR, it's ok.

[Fero]

Can you spell out what that would look like? It sounds like taking a touch spell, and turning it into a large, selective AoE - am I close?



Hopefully, depending on DM adjudication. I think I would also throw in archmage so I could exclude squares. Use Stone Shape to make small stone fortresses, etc.

[Maat Mons]

Looking in the 3.0 Player’s Handbook, some Metamagic feats that would have been balanced with this houserule are Enlarge Spell, Extend Spell, Heighten Spell, Silent Spell, and Still Spell. Some from Defenders of the Faith are Reach Spell and Sacred Spell. From Tome and Blood there are Cooperative Spell, Delay Spell, Energy Substitution, Eschew Materials, Sanctum Spell, Sculpt Spell, and Widen Spell.

3.5 did decide to change Eschew Materials to no longer be a metamagic feat. So sorcerers no longer have to increase casting time to benefit. That’s something.

I don’t think Heighten Spell should even require a feat. Casting a spell with a higher-level spell slot should just make it count as a higher-level spell. That should happen whether it’s higher-level because of metamagic, or you just were just out of the lower-level spell slots.

[Zanos]

You can do fell animate from level 1 already, you just need to be able to drop the mm cost to +1 and CDG with a cantrip. Practical metamagic, easy metamagic, forceful magic all work. Very powerful to have zombie riding dogs or something similar from level 1.

But yeah, I would expect nearly all casters to take a metamagic feat in nearly every slot. We all know how good free metamagic is, I think.

[Jack_Simth]

Persistent Spell: All buffs last all day. Great for the CoDzilla.
Fell Animate: Anything you slay with a spell becomes your pet zombie.
Twin / Repeat / Empower / Maximize / Energy Admixture (collect them all!): Be One Punch Spell Man. Combines well with Fell Animate.

[Gruftzwerg]

The closest real example would be a Spelldancer + Sheltered Vitality (spell) + Ring of Theurgy as showcased in my Lion-O adaptation.

Add a way to cast touch spells at range to persist em and you are set to break the game.

I have skimmed to all wizard spells (from non dragon sources) and made a list of the most interesting (wizard) spells that you could/should persist.

With the Ring of Theurgy we can use the free metamagic in combat without the delay from spelldancing at the cost of preparing the spell twice. This allows for very broken combos.
Like [Reach Spell] [Chain Spell] and either Shivering Touch (if you wanna go broken) or Vampiric Touch (not as broken, but still gives you a bunch of temp. HP at the start of a fight) as low lvl examples. Note that you can load multiple of these into a Spell Matrix for even more havoc.
Later you can cast things like [Reach Spell] [Chain Spell] [Persistent Spell] Otto's Irresistible Dance. This will end most fight immediately. No save, only SR and 24h duration.
Finally there is [Persistent Spell] Time Stop to give you 24h of preparation time. Enough to rest 8h and to prepare spells again. You can chose to fight further at the end of duration or just leave in the meanwhile..
Be always prepared for any situation that comes up.

[AvatarVecna]

Echoing Spell. Applies to literally everything and just gives you extra casts at lower CL. Broken? Nah. But a significant boost to spells per day, especially if you tend towards versatile frequently-useful spells.

[ericgrau]

I think the character building would get a bit dull as the whole party would just go wizard or whatever gives the most metamagic feats, rank feats from best to worst, and then go down the list. Nobody's ever taking still spell even if you think this system makes it fair; they're taking a number of options greater than the number of feats available before feats like that. Spell selection could be fun though.

[AnonJr]

I think the character building would get a bit dull as the whole party would just go wizard or whatever gives the most metamagic feats, rank feats from best to worst, and then go down the list.

I suspect there's still plenty of people who would still pick something that lets you swing some sharp metal at a fool, or follow Pelor or whatever. Besides, Wizards are still only as good as their preparation and spell availability.

[pabelfly]

The way I build casters is to throw metamagic reductions at them so I can cast one or two preferred spells with few, if any, extra caster levels spent on actual metamagic beyond the normal spell's level. I guess I'd get extra feats out of the deal and not have to specialize with one or two spells, but I'd still try to tune my character to something near the power of what everyone else is playing.