metamagic is giving me a headache

[Bhaal]

All this is a good reason why, IMC at least, metamagicks should stack fully on each other (after all, the COSTS stack, right?).

Then again, IMC, the metamagicks are all getting revised, sometimes heavily. Empower, for example, no longer is a 50% increase in output. Instead, any and all dice involved are upped by one "Step" (so an empowered Fireball does d8's, not d6's). The cost is much less -- last revision had a slight DC penalty (1 or 2 points), and subdual damage to the spellcaster equal to the spell's level (I dislike level-increase costs for metamagicks *shrug*).

IMO though, most of the metamagicks as presented just don't ... *do* much for me (non-mechanically I mean). Hene my decision to try my hand at rewriting them.

Wow, that's very powerful. So a 5th level wizard can take 12 subdual damage and throw a 5d20 damage fireball. Granted, the DC will have a 4-8 penalty, but who cares if everybody saves? The avg. damage of 5d6 is 17.5, the avg. damage of 5d20 is 52.5 or 26 assuming they make their save. That's close to max damage on a d6 fireball and assuming they DON'T save. That's really powerful. Then a 5th level cleric can cast cure light wounds on the wizard, doing 1d8+5, and double that since it's subdual damage. Which, conveniently, will always get rid of the 12 subdual, even if he rolls a 1.

Oh, so you say rogues and others with evasion will skip free of any damage due to the very easy to beat DC of the fireball? Well, the 5th level wizard can just take 12 more subdual and throw 3 magic missiles at one of them, doing 1d20+1 damage per missile (11.5 average). Keep in mind that this is a super-cheap 1st level spell slot, and lowered DC doesn't even matter in this case!

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I know what the rules are, but I don't like them I'm in the effects the total spell camp. For exmaple a enlarged, twinned fireball. Sorry but one fireball doesn't have double range the other normal range. There are just way too many wierd outcomes with the effect base spell rule, and it doesn't even seem unbalanced when you look at how many spell levels it adds to it and how many feats it costs.

 

[Pax]

Wow, that's very powerful. So a 5th level wizard can take 12 subdual damage and throw a 5d20 damage fireball. Granted, the DC will have a 4-8 penalty, but who cares if everybody saves? The avg. damage of 5d6 is 17.5, the avg. damage of 5d20 is 52.5 or 26 assuming they make their save. That's close to max damage on a d6 fireball and assuming they DON'T save. That's really powerful. Then a 5th level cleric can cast cure light wounds on the wizard, doing 1d8+5, and double that since it's subdual damage. Which, conveniently, will always get rid of the 12 subdual, even if he rolls a 1.

No offense, but ... don't presume I've presetned the whole of the revised system I'm putting together. In actuality, there's a couple other things going on, which I hadn't mentioned before (due to RL time issues). For one, no metamagic can be used twice, on the same spell. So, no multiple empowers. For two, I have beenlooking at various methods of preventing spellcasters from being able to metamagick their highest level spells (one idea so far is, not until you're one level HIGHER than the one at which you can begin casting spells of that level; IOW, a 6th level Wizard could metamagick their fireball, but a 5th level Wizard just learned how to cast Fireball at all ... so cannot "tweak" spell peformance).

Obviously you didn't kow about those two details, but please ... give me more credit than assuming I'd allow infinite stacking of every metamagick, to such ludicrous ends as a 5d20 fireball for only 12 subdual.

Oh, so you say rogues and others with evasion will skip free of any damage due to the very easy to beat DC of the fireball? Well, the 5th level wizard can just take 12 more subdual and throw 3 magic missiles at one of them, doing 1d20+1 damage per missile (11.5 average). Keep in mind that this is a super-cheap 1st level spell slot, and lowered DC doesn't even matter in this case!

See above. a "Empower v2.0" Magic Missile would cost 1 subdual, and each missile would do 1d6+1 ... and that'd be the end of it. Frankly, I don't consider it brokenly powerful (very good yes, but not ludicrouslypowerful). On average, the empoer spell revision I've got gives about +1 damage per die. The smaller the initial die (MM, Fireball), the bigger the perceived benefit. But look at d8 or larger die spells.

Lastly, I take the same approach to upping the die size as with increasint he size of a wepaon. Nothing does 1d20 ... go up form 1d12, you get (IIRC) 2d6. No net gain in damage potential, though your average goes up slightly (from 6.5 to 7.0) per d12.

 

[Bhaal]

I was sort of hoping you just didn't mention other parts of it, and that the feat didn't work as it seemd. Though you must admit earlier in that post you did say that "all metamagics stack fully on eachother" and that certainly gives the impression they stacked on themselves too.

 

[Pax]

I was sort of hoping you just didn't mention other parts of it, and that the feat didn't work as it seemd. Though you must admit earlier in that post you did say that "all metamagics stack fully on eachother" and that certainly gives the impression they stacked on themselves too.

Well, when I said "all metamagicks should stack fully with each other", I was speaking about the prior issue, of how Empower and Maximise do not stack properly by PHB rules.

I apologise if I was unclear WRT the rest of the post; I sort of "jumped tracks" when I commented on my revised version of metamagicks-- which is by no means a completed thing, nor will it be immune to later tweaks; originally my "Empower 2.0" was a gimme, as it had only hte DC cost and no minimum caster level. Now I'm looking at either the subdual damage, and / or a minimum caster level of 3, before it can be taken at all.