New Meta Magic handling in Dragon

[Paragon]

There was talk of an alternate method for handling meta magic feats in a recent issue of dragon. For those that have it/saw it what isse was it and what were the general opinions of it and the mechanics behind it?
anyone? anyone?
Thanks!

 

[EricNoah]

I don't know about Dragon, but the Minatures Handbook had a new suite of metamagic feats that were once per day but can be applied on the fly. The "sudden quicken" feat had the higest requirements -- a whole slough of feats, but the others didn't have many requirements as I recall.

 

[Thaumaturge]

The mini's handbook 'sudden' feats are essentially the house rule meta magic system in Dragon, except more balance, because there are prereqs for the better feats.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Hmm... Anyone heard whether this system is also going to appear as one of the optional variants in Unearthed Arcana? I'd love to see how they work the details and the prereqs, but I'm not planning to get the Minis Handbook...

 

[Silveras]

The mini's handbook 'sudden' feats are essentially the house rule meta magic system in Dragon, except more balance, because there are prereqs for the better feats.

Thaumaturge.

Actually, that is not true. The two are quite different.

The system presented in Dragon 305 *replaced* the existing feats. You could take each feat more than once, to be able to use it more than once. The article does not mention being able to use the feat "in the old way" as well as in the new.

The MM feats in Dragon worked like this:
By taking a MM feat, once per day you could apply it to a spell as you cast it (no prior preparation or lengthened casting) provided the spell fit under a "cap". The "cap" was basically that the modified spell's effective level still had to be one you could cast. You could apply more than 1 metamagic to the same spell as long as the cumulative modified level was one you could cast. You could even apply the same feat more than once, if the feat allowed it (and, since they had to be taken more than once to be used more than once, *presumably* if you had taken it multiple times).

Quicken Spell, for example, adds 4 levels to the spell. If you can only cast 3rd level spells, you could not Quicken even a cantrip. Silent Spell was only a +1, though, so if you could cast 3rd level spells, you could make a 0, 1, or 2 into a Silent spell. Or, if you had both Silent and Still, you could make a 0 or 1 into a Silent, Still spell.

Also, since the Benefits of the feats were what changed, all of the original Pre-requisites were still in place.

The "Sudden X" series of feats in the Miniatures Handbook, on the other hand, each allows you to apply the effect once per day. You cannot take Sudden Empower more than once, for example, to get 2 uses. Each "Sudden X" also allows you to continue to use its matching, non-Sudden version, normally if you have it.