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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sepulchrave II" data-source="post: 3123755" data-attributes="member: 4303">Re-read some of my arguments, which appear self-contradictory, Evidently, I'm having trouble articulating myself. There are different levels of generalism and specialization happening here, and I'm conflating them.1. First, a conventional caster who takes only AMC and IM feats is not a generalist, but a metamagic specialist. He has no item creation feats. No Great Intelligence. No Spell Opportunity or Spell Stowaway. No Master Staff or Master Wand. No IMC or Epic Leadership etc. etc. If our core assumption is that all wizards will be metamagic specialists - because AMC and IM give by far the greatest returns - then they must, by definition, be broken feats.2. The metamagic specialist has sweeping discretionary powers when he casts a spell. His combat-effectiveness is very high if his pre-epic feats include Quicken, Empower and Maximize; if he has non-core pre-epic feats (Chain, Twin, Repeat) then things get even worse, because he can sacrifice some IMs for more AMCs. He is still limited by metamagic, however. His dbf can't do force damage. His disintegrate still can't penetrate a prismatic sphere. His greater dispel magic (even his chain dispel or reaving dispel, if you go noncore) isn't working anymore. His finger of death still bounces off of a death ward. His greater planar binding still takes 10 minutes to cast, and he can't summon infernals.3. With 11 doses of AMC, the metamagic specialist's non-damage dealing spells are prompting saves of 30+ relevant modifier through Heighten Spell: this is comparable to the jacobean, who can routinely add +20 factors to a seed to crank up the DC of a spell by this level - maybe he has the Horny and Bad-Tempered feat as well  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> .I don't know exactly where this is going, except to say that we're measuring versatility on a number of very different levels here. The metamagic specialist can be reflexive, tailoring the specific modification to his spells to meet his immediate needs; the jacobean can devise a spell to meet *very* specific requirements. The only real area where the metamagic specialist shines is in direct-damage dealing spells: you are proposing that the jacobean be on a level playing field in this area; I am proposing that he be intrinsically weaker, but that epic feats can make him stronger.</blockquote>

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