Can you apply the same metamagic feat twice?

[Kilroy]

In the Savage Tide game I'm in, our cleric is soon (and with the DM's permission) going to start using Persistent Mass Lesser Vigor, so he can actually use spells for something other than being the downtime healing monkey and doesn't have to carry a quiver of CLW wands. This will bother us all quite a lot less than his current Persistent Cloud of Knives. So creepy.

Can Persistent and Extend be stacked for 2-day spells?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Examples please.

In 3.0 there was no Scorching Ray, and anyway Polar Ray notoriously isn't really a great spell.

Stacking the same metamagic was a (tiny) problem only in very specific cases of poorly designed supplementary material AFAIK, such as a couple of prestige classes' ability of getting a discount on the level increase (which anyway can be abused even with different mm feats), or the Sanctum Spell feat. Nothing that required a fundamental fix to the general stacking rule.

I'm not using 3.5 spells as examples for 3.0 rules, that would be silly.

3.0 has randomized stat boosting spells, Simulacrum and Awaken. The latter two spells are still present (as the stat-boosting spells have been fixed), and allowing Empower stacking would really break the Awaken spell (more than it is already). You could do silly things to spells like Poison, too.

Things only got worse with broken PrCs that allowed cheaper metamagic; but IMO, breaking spells like the stat-boosting spells was a good reason not to have allowed metamagic stacking in the first place. The PrCs were just extra abuse.

 

[Stalker0]

The metamagic feat that really breaks when you apply it multiple times is Extend.

Take a high level cleric (i.e. 20th). He has +5 armour and shield that last for 120 hours. +5 weapons that last for 100 hours. For the next 3-4 days he still has the benefit of all of those spells without it costing him the spell slots. That's pretty damn impressive.

At 20th level, if you are taking on a full day's worth of encounters, and don't encounter a single dispel magic, something is wrong. I mean sure a wizard could have mage armor on for a week at a time, but that's really no different from using a single 1st level spell to have it on all day every day. And man, if you hit him the one day he had to blow a 9th level spell for +4 armor bonus is the day he's going down.

 

[kk14]

Unless of course you have a smart, think-ahead type of wizard with anti-dispel rings, or who spent one day doing nothing but buffing himself in prep for the next week. Then he lost nothing except in-game time.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Examples please.

I think the doubly empowered enervation (an 8th level spell, very nearly the equivalent to its ninth level buddy, energy drain) was one of the better examples of a spell that just didn't mesh well when you could multiply metamagic spells.

Later
silver

 

[Diirk]

Heck, even a multiple empowered ray of enfeeblement could get nasty pretty quickly.

 

[Li Shenron]

3.0 has randomized stat boosting spells, Simulacrum and Awaken.

Ok on the stat boosts, but Simulacrum cannot be empowered more than once because it's 7th level, and Awaken shouldn't be allowed Empowered even once IMHO. Unfortunately the 3d6 stats technically qualify for empower, but in concept I think they are a different thing.

 

[Legildur]

Dangit, didn't he understand that it's all about the spectacle?

Not much of a spectacle when the mods delete the offending posts

I don't wander into House Rules very often, so I would have missed it without the references to it above.. Still mildly entertaining to watch somone self-destruct like that in so short a time.

Back on thread.... how do the standard metamagic feats and the sudden versions interact? I'd rule that they are one and the same and that only the mechanics of them is different.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Ok on the stat boosts, but Simulacrum cannot be empowered more than once because it's 7th level, and Awaken shouldn't be allowed Empowered even once IMHO. Unfortunately the 3d6 stats technically qualify for empower, but in concept I think they are a different thing.

The stat boosts were a really huge deal in those days. Hours long spells that could boost every aspect of a character. So I think I got 7 for 8 there

Awaken shouldn't qualify, but it does. We are discussing rules, rather than good GMing.

 

[Li Shenron]

The stat boosts were a really huge deal in those days. Hours long spells that could boost every aspect of a character. So I think I got 7 for 8 there

Mmm, I'm still thinking about it actually... not yet convinced that multiple Empowers were that bad

A 3.0 Bull's Strength gives 1d4+1, average 3.5, max +5 bonus to Str (2nd level spell).

Empowered once: average 5.25, max +7 to Str (4th level slot).

Empowered twice: average 7, max +10 to Str (6th level slot).

Empowered three times: average 8.75, max +12 to Str (8th level slot).

+12 is definitely a large bonus, but isn't it possible to get such high bonuses for example from Polymorph?