Intensified Epic Staffs (something is wrong)

[Anders]

There are either some major error in the Intesify Spell description or in the description of some Epic Staffs.

According to third paragraph on page 61 in ELH under Intensify Spell: "Saving throws...are not affected." Which effectively means that this feat does not affect the spell save DC.

But when flipping over to page 142 in ELH and scanning forward, there are many staffs with intensified spells (such as staff of cosmos and staff of winter) with HUGE spell save DCs.

Take a look at the staff of cosmos. Its intensified chain lightning has a spell save DC of 29(!). According to the Intensify Spell feat, this DC should have been 19, not 29.

Staff DC = 10 + 1.5 * spell level.

Normally the mentioned spell's DC in any kind of staff is DC 19 (= 10 + 1.5 * 6), but the staff on page 142 has DC 29 (= 10 +1.5 * 13).

All this implies that the staffs on page 142 in the ELH with intensified spells have an effective +7 spell level (as they would if the mentioned feat did affect spell save DCs).

So which way is it?

Does the feat raise the effective spell level with +7 levels (as it does according to the mentioned staffs), or doesn't it (as it shouldn't according the feat description).

Clearly, the authors didn't communicate much on this matter.

 

[Kraedin]

It's my belief, judging from various parts of the ELH, that the designers didn't understand how metamagic feats work. I'd just recalculate the staff's DC.

 

[Crothian]

I think they just uped the DCs to make them more epic without explain how it was done. There is a feat in there that allows items to be made with higher DCs, maybe they are assuming the feat was used.

 

[Anders]

Could be. But then some staffs would have been created by more than one wizard and among them they would have had different Int-scores to come up with the variety of DC-differences in any one staff.

That is, if they've used the optional Enhance Item feat to make those staffs.

Still, since that seems silly, I think the authors made a mistake.

 

[mkletch]

I don't have ELH in front of me, but the standard formula for a spell save DC from an item is 1.5 x spell level + 10. This is to reflect the increased intelligence necessary to cast the spell. Metamagic increases do not figure into this calc, except for heighten spell.

-Fletch!