Metamagic

[Jim Butler]

I'm not a big fan of the current metamagic system and all its painful record-keeping requirements. Trying to record my hero's third-level spell as a sixth-level spell and my magic missile spell at its maximized, quickened, and empowered levels is enough to make the saint of a church utter a series of unholy epithets.

So what's an overworked spellcaster to do? Read this week's column by clicking here.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Couldn't agree more. We switched early to just using several spells of the same level to feul them. So a norm metamagic feat requiring +1 lvl, simply became burning using two spells of the same level.

Now having Monte Cook's Arcana unearthed , he has a very similar and usable system which is referred to as laden spells. We use that now

Excellent.

Connors

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Jim, thanks for posting that! I thought that there were some nifty ideas that I'm going to steal for my 3.5 game. I use Monte's ladening method in AU, but I still have a 3.5 game going where this may help a lot. If my players like it a lot, they may all go in.

I particularly liked your fix for Persistent Spell.

 

[Psion]

For every 5 known metamagic feats, the number of uses per day increases by an additional +1 per feat.

The beginning of the sentence says 1 time every 5 feats, but the end says it's every 1.

The example makes it obvious that the latter was your intention. It sounds like the every 5 part needs to be stricken.

Okay, question time: it's not too clear to me from the article, but do you mean to allow wizards (and other prepared casters) to spontaneously metamagic their spells? If so, that sounds like the final insult to the already week sorcerer, as it removes their one advantage. But from your announcement on ENworld, it sounds like you mean to remove tracking of which spells are prepared metamagic, so that seems to be the jist I am getting.

Or is it just that you don't dig putting spells in the wrong slots but you still have to choose what you metamagic when you prepare?

 

[Jim Butler]

Originally posted by Psion

For every 5 known metamagic feats, the number of uses per day increases by an additional +1 per feat.

The beginning of the sentence says 1 time every 5 feats, but the end says it's every 1.

What this means is that you get a +1 bonus for every known metamgic feat. For every 5 known metamagic feats, this bonus increases by +1 (to +2 for every feat known).

Playtesters wanted to see a benefit to those casters that really specialized in metamagic use, hence the increased bonuses for those casters that spend lots of their feats in that area.

Okay, question time: it's not too clear to me from the article, but do you mean to allow wizards (and other prepared casters) to spontaneously metamagic their spells? If so, that sounds like the final insult to the already week sorcerer, as it removes their one advantage. But from your announcement on ENworld, it sounds like you mean to remove tracking of which spells are prepared metamagic, so that seems to be the jist I am getting.

Or is it just that you don't dig putting spells in the wrong slots but you still have to choose what you metamagic when you prepare?

It's the former: Wizards (and all other classes) can spontaneously cast their spells without prior preparation. It simply counts as a single use for that day.

A sorcerer's true benefit is that he gets to cast any known spells as many times per day as he's allowed to, where a wizard has to memorize whatever spells he thinks he'll need that day and after he's cast them he's done.

For instance, let's compare the 3rd-level wizard and the 3rd-level sorcerer. The wizards knows the spells: magic missile, shield, shocking grasp, feather fall, and mage armor. The sorcerer knows only three spells: magic missile, shocking grasp, and feather fall.

The wizard chooses to memorize magic missile and mage armor). He only gets those two spells today (and under my metamagic system, he could apply whatever metamagic feats he wanted to, assuming he was high enough level to cast the modified spell). If both the wizard and the sorcerer find themselves in a big fight, the wizard is done after his first magic missile, while the sorcerer gets to cast five magic missiles. That seems to be a really good advantage to me...

 

[Psion]

As I mentioned on Mortality, I feel that the ability of the sorcerer to spontaneously metamagic is an advantage too, and I would feel inclined to make the sorcerer better at it than the wizard, frex, by making the wizard take extra time to add metamagic to a spell instead of a sorcerer. The wizard has enough advantages over the sorcerer.