E6, A Change to Metamagic - Your Thoughts

[Gan The Grey]

Most of you should know what E6 is by now. If not, I have strong faith in your googlefu. My question here is on a change to metamagic and how it may affect gameplay, good and bad.

Metamagic feats can now be applied on the fly to any spell, but each metamagic feat forces the caster to burn a spell whose level is equal to the spell level adjustment required by the metamagic feat. this rule is in addition to the normal metamagic application rules.

Discuss.

[Coidzor]

Well this obviously benefits sorcerers as they have more lower level spells that they can use to fuel metamagic.

It also drives up the cost of metamagic because you're expending two spells rather than using up a higher spell slot, and would exacerbate the 15 minute adventuring day.

So I have to ask, is metamagic really so disruptive in e6 in your experience that you have to nerf casters who want to use it even more?

[Gan The Grey]

Well this obviously benefits sorcerers as they have more lower level spells that they can use to fuel metamagic.

It also drives up the cost of metamagic because you're expending two spells rather than using up a higher spell slot, and would exacerbate the 15 minute adventuring day.

So I have to ask, is metamagic really so disruptive in e6 in your experience that you have to nerf casters who want to use it even more?

Actually, the exact opposite. Because of the limited number of spell levels in E6, metamagic becomes more and more rare. Quicken Spell doesn't even exist, as it is impossible to acquire a 4th level spell slot. Without this variant, the average starting character would only be able to metamagic 0 and 1st level spells for a good amount of their career, and would never be able to metamagic 3rd level spells at all.

To clarify, this rule is in addition to the normal metamagic rules. I have just expanded them in order to give my players a little more versatility and encourage the use of metamagic.

As for the 15 minute adventuring day comment, random encounters are a staple of my setting, and though the chance decreases when they are camping, it is still there. And Rope Trick is a 3rd level spell now.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not a bad solution, but I'm not sure it's a great one... it makes metamagic fairly expensive.

One option I toyed with was to make metamagic cost (25*spell level adjustment)*level of the spell being adjusted per casting, but allowing it to be done on the fly. Want to quicken a shield spell? That will be 100 XP ((25*4 to quicken)*1st level spell). A silent, stilled fireball will cost you 150xp ((25*1 to silent)*3rd level spell + (25*1 to still)*3rd level spell). You'd still use a single, on-level slot in this case.

Of course, you can avoid this by preparing spells as metamagicked and/or using the appropriate slot... a silent, stilled magic missile only takes a 3rd level slot, not a 3rd level slot and 50XP if prepared.

[Godskook]

Nah, don't bother with that. E6 is a feat-heavy game anyway. Allow players access to the metamagic reducer feats. Hell, improved metamagic x3 + arcane thesis, and your casters can start stacking ludicrous amounts of metamagic onto a single spell, since 90% of the metamagics are +4 or less.

On the other hand, allowing easy metamagic(and allowing it to self-stack) instead of improved MM would be less potent, but still allow players to build towards having things like quicken and persist up evetually, but at heavier feat costs that don't allow power levels to spiral out of control quite as fast.