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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 3472550" data-attributes="member: 3424">The discussion on swift actions in the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/SagaPreview4" target="_blank">Star Wars Saga Edition Preview 4</a> sparked off an idea on the bus in to work this morning.For a while now, I've been trying to balance metamagic around an encounter-based format (the basic idea is to allow a spellcaster to use each metamagic feat he has once per encounter). I've considered a number of balances. One was to allow the feats to be only applied to spells of a certain level below the highest level spell the spellcaster has access to, or some function of the spellcaster's character level. However, this method relies on spell levels and level caps to be effective, and other tweaks that I'm planning to make to the spellcasting system will do away with spell levels (beyond the minimum caster level needed to know the spell) and level caps.Another was to reduce the caster level of a metamagic spell. However, this ends up reducing the effectiveness of feats such as Empower Spell and Maximize Spell since the additional damage from the feat has to make up for the loss of damage from the lower caster level before it becomes a benefit.Then, I happened to think of this little passage from the preview:I realized that I could balance metamagic effects by making the spellcaster spend swift actions. This way, a spellcaster could act in each round of combat while building up to one big attack. In fact, an added side benefit is that spellcasters are required to build up to their big attacks. No more Quickened, Empowered, Maximized spells in the first round of combat! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> By adjusting the swift action "cost", I can ensure that Empowered and Maximized spells don't show up until the second or third round of a fight.So, a revised Empower Spell might look something like this:If a spellcaster doesn't move and doesn't spend his swift actions on anything else, he can cast a normal spell in the first round of a fight and then empower a spell on the second round. If he needs to move each round, he can only empower a spell on the fourth round.What do you think?</blockquote>

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