Empower Spell Question

[Li Shenron]

I've never used this feat before or even considered using it, so I really do not understand its operation.

...

In addition when combined with Maximise Spell, the feat description implies that you have to roll the Empower Feat part of the spell, however I would have assumed that you are maximising the complete spell.

We have always used it the following way:

1) roll the random variable normally, in your case 4d4+4
2) add +50% to the result (i.e. multiply x1.5), round down

The +1 bonus is part of the random variable, and gets multiplies by 1.5 as well.
An empowered cure light wounds (caster level five) would heal (1d8+5)x1.5 .

Random variables usually include anything expressed with dice and which means a quantitative effect (including random durations, although rares, and random number of targets affected), but not chance rolls such caster checks or % chances of success.

Note that in the case of Magic Missile there is a minor quirk. The missiles are independent, so in theory you should count (1d4+1)x1.5 each and sum the result, which is slightly different than (4d4+4)x1.5 due to rounding. Every missile which does an odd amount of damage gets rounded down (if you roll 2+1 in each missile, 3x1.5 is rounded to 4 which totals 16; if you round only at the end you get 18). But usually we still round at the end because it's easier, and most of the times the caster prefers to shoot all missiles at one target.

 

[Warmage-in-Onley]

Variable components of spells and empower metamagic

It might be helpful in the magic missile examples above to remember that the dice are used to produce a range of damage - instead of regarding each magic missile as being comprised of a variable and adding a constant, think of the dice as simply producing a result from 2 to 5 and empower increases the result by 50%.

 

[Warmage-in-Onley]

Empower spell and warmage's edge

How would you rule the damage from a warmage's empowered spells be calculated? Does the extra damage from the edge also get empowered?