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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3133932" data-attributes="member: 141">It has worked for me for everything from fireball to horrid wilting to mass cure light wounds.  Check out post 304 for various examples.  Among other things, that's where I decide that fireball has a base kernel cost of 20, not the 18 that a usual 3rd level spell would have.It is true I don't understand how secondary seeds are supposed to work.  I've been taking it as a "+12 factor to incorporate elements of seed2 into seed1".Adding a seed *should be* +24 SP, but by taking the lowest common denominator in redundant factors you gain savings; in fact, when two factors are the same you only need to pay for one of them.  Typically this will involve at least 12 points of SP, and so your resulting spell won't be broken (we hope).Using this method both your spells would become ray spells that do [blast] damage to a target that they also [destroy].  Saving throws are done separately.  I think that Reflex is inappropriate for a ray spell that hits; Fortitude half would be OK.  The kernel analysis is 20 fireball + 8 enhanced + 14 heightened = 42.  You need 18 more factors to make it a proper 10th level spell.  Even the base spell for the current [blast] falls short.  Its kernel value is 20 fireball + 12 one and a half enhanced + 14 heightened +4 flexible = 50, which is 10 points low.So your skepticism has waned since post 319. I'm now thinking that I'd use +16 to double a spell, myself, but YMMV.  It doesn't really matter as long as AMC's effects on seeds is strictly controlled. Here are some equations for the damage that a [blast] will do for a seed specialist and for a metamagic specialist.  I've smoothed out the factors, so this will only be approximately correct.  I'm assuming no feats (AMC or otherwise) for the seed specialist, and all feats are AMC for the metamagic specialist.  (number of AMC = 2/3 N)N = level above 21 (as a measure of available SP for the seed specialist, and to compute the number of AMC for a metamagic specialist) B = base value of the seed.  25d6, 20d6, whatever. D = size of the factor to double empower the seed.  Maybe 12, maybe 16, whatever.If you want to increase the available SP for the seed specialist, just boost N by the appropriate amount in their formula.Seed damage = ((N + D + B)^2) / 4D Metamagic damage = 5/18 * (5N + 3B +30/10)^2So if N = 18 and D = 12 and B = 20, the seed damage would be about 52d6 for the seed specialist, and 90d6 for the metamagic specialist.  (The seed specialist has 18 SP available; he spends 6 SP to increase the base damage to 26d6 and 12 SP to double the result.  The metamagic specialist has 12 AMC; he'll enhance the base spell to 30d6 (+4) and quadruple empower the result.  This triples the damage.)For the seed specialistx = points spent on +1d6 = (N + D - B)/2 y = points spent on empowers = (N - D + B)/2 (x + y = N)For the metamagic specialistp = levels whose AMC feats are spend on enhances = (5N - 3B + 30)/10 q = levels whose AMC feats are spent on empowers =  (5N + 3B - 30)/10 (p + q = N)Without feats, the seed specialist falls far behind.  If he uses lots of AMC, however, then N is replaced by 7/3 of its previous value (2 x AMC over 3 levels with 2 SP worth of mitigation for feat means that where those levels once provided 3 SP, they now provide 7 SP), and examination of the coefficients in these equations shows that no matter what value you set for D, the seed specialist will pull ahead.</blockquote>

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