Metamagic Feats - Alternate Rules

[Spatzimaus]

Nothing. However, the same holds true for the enemy.

People have used that same logic to explain why things like Harm were okay. Personally, I've never liked it. Something can be unbalanced even if it's available to both sides; if you reach a point where both sides are relying on the One Big Metamagicked Spell to wipe out the other side, there's a problem.

Spells kill people quickly. If you allow these Feats to put far more damage into the first one or two spells without any sort of drawback, you skew D&D even further towards the casters. Whichever spellcaster wins initiative slaughters all of his enemies with two Empowered Maximized (insert damage spell here), one of which is Quickened. He has no reason to hold back, so the fact that he only has one Quicken per day isn't really a drawback.

As for epic rules, it's not an issue for us cuz we don't use 'em.

Neither do I. What I meant was, you're allowing someone to cast a spell that has the effect of an 18th-level spell by putting a bunch of metamagics on a 9th-level spell. This isn't always a good idea. Pre-ELH, there was no way to Quicken a Meteor Swarm because that'd require a higher-level slot than anyone could get. Now, you've introduced a way to not only Quicken it, but to stack half a dozen other metamagics on it at once as well. Not something I think should be done lightly.

Maybe you could say that you can't metamagic a spell to higher "level" than you can cast. Maybe you just say that you can't put multiple metamagics on a single spell. I just think there has to be SOME reason to hold off on using metamagics for balance reasons.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Well, I guess it depends a lot on the type of players in your group. You can never stop game abuses cuz there will always be loopholes. I know our group wouldn't think of stacking metamagic feats and using them to unbalance battles. Maybe players in your game would. But I developed this House Rule for our game - obviously it isn't meant for everyone.

I think the rule will work (IMC). We're going to testgame it and see...

 

[Kerrick]

Okay, after scanning over this thread, I've seen some really good ideas, stuff that (with some work) could be made into a workable system. Our group pretty much uses metamagic on the fly - if you have the feat, you can cast the spell with it without having to memorize it beforehand (yeah, we play a little fast and loose with the rules...).

I like Spat's system, rough as it is. Couple this with the 5-LA system, add in that sorcerers gain metamagic feats as bonus feats (1/5 levels, like they do in our campaign - wizards are restricted to item creation feats) and the "each time you buy the feat, you can use it X more times/day," tweak it a bit, and it could work.

There's also the Epic cap. Pre-ELH, you couldn't have a spell higher than 9th level, including metamagics, which led to a soft cap in capability. Now, there's nothing stopping me from casting an Empowered Twinned Sonic-Admixtured Widened Meteor Swarm at the start of the big fight.

This and similar comments made me think of this: you institute a simple mechanic - a spellcaster cannot add feats that increase the level beyond his spellcasting ability score modifier. That is, Rolf the wizard (Int 18, +4 mod) can't add more than +4 LA to any given spell. This penalizes the less powerful spellcasters and benefits those who are smarter/wiser/more charismatic, you say? Well of COURSE it does! They can cast higher-level spells, and gain bonus spells for high scores, so they should logically be able to cast more metamagick'ed spells with those higher scores as well. It's a simple solution, IMO, which works on an already-existing mechanic, and thus the players can't complain too much about balance (and it relieves headaches for the DM).

Nothing. However, the same holds true for the enemy. Also, we've got a pretty mature and role-playing minded group of players who don't like casting the same thing over and over again (or using the same feats over and over again). Our group is pretty good at self-regulating to prevent game rules abuse b/c they know "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" (whatever that means).

Same here. Our group knows full well that anything we abuse will come back to us in spades from the NPCs. Our DM has told us multiple times that "Anything you use, your enemies can use also," and it works. For one thing it cuts down on rules abuse by orders of magnitude, and forced us to come up with more creative ways of defeating our enemies. We're always thinking up new and different ways to use spells,or coming up with new spells, PrCs, etc.

[Something can be unbalanced even if it's available to both sides; if you reach a point where both sides are relying on the One Big Metamagicked Spell to wipe out the other side, there's a problem.

Yes, it's called "The DM isn't doing his job properly." Our campaign is high-power, high-magic, and it has yet to come to that point - more often it devolves into a slugfest - weapons, spells, brute force, whatever works. If one spell decides the course of a battle, it's more often a fluke than anything. Personally, I don't bother with metamagic - I've got better things to spend my feat slots on, and I usually just forget about them, which kind of tells you how important they are to me. Some of the other players in the group use them, but not very often.

 

[Spatzimaus]

This and similar comments made me think of this: you institute a simple mechanic - a spellcaster cannot add feats that increase the level beyond his spellcasting ability score modifier. That is, Rolf the wizard (Int 18, +4 mod) can't add more than +4 LA to any given spell.

Nice solution. Although, once you get close to level 20 you might see a Wizard with an INT of 30 or so, which still takes you back to the tons-of-metamagic-on-one-spell situation, but it's definitely better than leaving it uncapped. A similar suggestion from one of our players was saying that a 1st-level spell could only take +1 in metamagic, a second limited to +2, and so on until you could put 9 levels on a 9th-level spell.
Maybe, have it depend on a specific stat instead of always using the primary stat. For example, set the cap to 1+(CHA mod, min 0). Doesn't matter if you're a Wizard or a Cleric, it's CHA-based. First off, this makes Sorcerers the masters of metamagic again, and second, it removes a dump stat from the game. If you want to Empower something, you need a CHA of 12. Quicken needs CHA 16. With CHA-enhancing items this isn't too difficult, and it prevents you from sticking tons of large metamagics on one spell.

Maybe have it be some other type of penalty. For example, say that each metamagic applied to a spell beyond the first gives a reduction in effectiveness (-1 DC, -2 caster level, and -1 to any attack rolls). That'd definitely keep people from putting tons of metamagics on one spell.

Maybe you don't want to go that far. How about we make it simpler and say that you can only put one metamagic on any spell, period? And then have one of the Feats (say, the one that gives you more uses per day) also relax this limit by 1?

I'm not saying that my players would immediately start min-maxxing within the new ruleset, but I, as DM would be sorely tempted. I've got a bad guy (let's say he's a Dragon) with several metamagics. He's supposed to be an extremely intelligent, crafty opponent who's lived hundreds of years. Do I pull punches by casting suboptimal spells? Do I refrain from stacking lots of metamagics on my spells solely because the players have agreed to do the same? If I know that I can kill half the party in the surprise round, the system isn't balanced even if I don't choose to do that.

In a perfect world, the game system should be designed so that these sorts of abuses aren't possible. We're not in a perfect world, but would adding something along the lines of Kerrick's suggested limitation really hurt your players? If it mostly removes one of the gross abuses of the game system without penalizing the people who wouldn't have used the abuse anyway, how is it bad?

 

[Scion]

If you are that worried about it (and it seems that you are ) but think that this is too easy then perhaps something else. I'd have to say that metamagics are nice, but personally I would want a spell that is metamagicked to be slightly better than a spell of the equivalent level. After all, I spent at least one feat to try and do that, why shouldnt it?

Perhaps this:

Metamagic SuperCharger (boo ya):

Reduce the cost of metamagics applied by one level after they are totaled together. This feat can be taken multiple times and its effects are cumulative.


I am pretty sure most people have some version of this somehow and it works out fine.. It make a character need more metamagics to get the most benefit, and multiple times with this. So you spend a ton of feats in order to gain the benefit.

Would you be ok with quicken only useing a spell slot one level higher if it took 4 feats to get there? If not then I think we'll have a hard time agreeing on anything related to this topic but no worries, it'll still be fun.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Apparently, the Miniatures Handbook has "Sudden" metamagic feats that do exactly what I was looking for (i.e. allowing 1 spell per day to be metamagicked without preparation). I'll have to check it out...