A new take on metamagic

[Khuxan]

Monte Cook mentioned a different way of doing metamagic in his latest blog, and I think it's good idea. Basically, instead of a spell being adjusted upwards by x levels, you have to burn up x spell levels to cast the metamagicked spell, where x is the level adjustment.

Unless you and I are reading a different blog, Monte said:

metamagic probably should have involved combining spell slots of the same level rather than utilizing higher level slots, to cut down on the number of lower level spells to keep track of

(emphasis mine)

This is pretty different to the method you suggested, and is much closer to the Arcana Evolved' 'laden spell' form of metamagic. I don't know if this would change Nifft's assessment (it's still nova-ing, after all), but I think it's worth mentioning.

 

[Asurya]

From the OP, one could understand it's a brand new concept... except it's so "old", it already is under OGL : http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spontaneousMetamagic.htm#extraSpellSlots
I wonder how it could have escaped everyone's notice so far.

with what Khuxan just said, it appears this MonteCook new thing is in fact the exact same rule as UA (from the OP, it seems like the thing, only better (burn a total a spell level equal to the metamagic listed cost, instead of burning a total of additional spell slot of the metamagic-ed spell equal to the metamagic cost)

@Khuxan: From the novaing effect of it, it is obviously far more limited because you will have only a few of your higher slots. It's still better than std metamagic though as you can now apply metamagic on your highest level slot where before you couldn't : a silent <9th spell> is equivalent of 10th spell and nobody has a slot for that (barring gods)

@Nifft(about psionic): absolutely! let's get rid of this sick uber-brokness that vancian spell casting is, horray for XPH (and a big meh for CPsi)
On a more serious note, it's worth pointing out that you can at most add 2 metapsionic effect on a power because they cost you focus on top of PP (and there is no way in all the splats to have more than 2 foci at the ready, and several study on the psionic boards showed that no matter how fast you could refocus in apparent time (using resources to grant you an extra move action for example), you cannot exeed this limit)

 

[Kerrick]

Unless you and I are reading a different blog, Monte said:

Ah, you're right - I misread it. As Surya's already pointed out, it's in UA also.

with what Khuxan just said, it appears this MonteCook new thing is in fact the exact same rule as UA (from the OP, it seems like the thing, only better (burn a total a spell level equal to the metamagic listed cost, instead of burning a total of additional spell slot of the metamagic-ed spell equal to the metamagic cost)

Yeah. It's more a case of me misreading his post than anything, as I said. We use this rule for rituals, but those are so few and far between that it's not a big deal.

@Khuxan: From the novaing effect of it, it is obviously far more limited because you will have only a few of your higher slots. It's still better than std metamagic though as you can now apply metamagic on your highest level slot where before you couldn't : a silent <9th spell> is equivalent of 10th spell and nobody has a slot for that (barring gods)

Not unless you take Improved Spell Capacity at epic.