Non-Lethal Substitution

[Xath]

I have a love-hate relationship with metamagic feats. I love them when I play a spontaneous caster. I hate them when I'm not. I have developed a quasi-love for the Sudden metamagic feats, but they're limited to the main sub-set of metamagic feats. So what's a girl to do when her Wizard becomes too deadly?

I realize that the PHBII put out a strand of spells that are designed to do Non-Lethal damage (the Whelm variety), but they're no good against anything with a will save. So I've been looking at the metamagic feat "Non-Lethal Substitution." And I have to admit, I have some issues.

#1. It's not spontaneous, nor is it offered in a spontaneous variety. A fighter can choose to take a -4 penalty at any time to deal non-lethal damage. A +1 weapon enhancement (mercy) will let you do subdual essentially at will. So why must I wake up in the morning and know whether or not I want to take my limited number of damage-dealing spells and make them lethal or not?

#2. +1 Spell Level. I'm paying more as a caster to do damage that can be wiped out by one Cure Minor Wounds? [And I realize that this is a campaign-specific house rule. In our game, ANY magical curing removes ALL sub-dual damage]

So in this vein, and with non-lethal damage being nerfed in the ay that it is, is it still right for non-lethal substitution of spell damage to cost so much? What would you suggest as an alternative?

 

[Winding Road]

With what you've said about your game, metamagic doesn't seem workable at all for this. How about a Spellcraft check before casting the spell to make it non-lethal? Place the DC at 10 + spell level. Success means you can cast the spell for non-lethal damage; failure means you can't, but you still have the option of not casting it.

 

[Arkhandus]

Wow, 3.5 actually nerfed Subdual Substitution into requiring a higher-level spell slot? That's frickin' absurd. The original feat had no spell level increase.

Still, if you play a wizard, then you just have to deal with the fact that your spells all have to be prepared ahead of time. Unless you expect to fight lots of undead or constructs, may as well make some of your damage spells into nonlethal ones. Or just 1 or 2 spells that you expect to use when someone just needs to be knocked out for a few hours.

But I'd really suggest asking your DM to remove the spell slot level increase for Nonlethal Substitution. I can't believe they changed it from the original Subdual Substitution feat, but that's just another sign of the completely idiotic way the 3.5 revised rules have been handled.