[PHB II]Sorcerer Metamagic Specialist - Too Much?

[Mistwell]

Well, Incantrix is scary broken, just in going by the number of times it pops up in Character Optimization on the WotC forums.

I think it's unfair for you to condemn the entire class merely based on the number of times it appears on the CO board.

Almost all mentions of that class on that board (which is spelled Incantatrix by the way) also mentioned Persistant Spell for the prestige class. If you don't have that feat however, in my opnion it's a much more reasonable prestige class.

I play an Incantatar, and I find it to be no more or less powerful than a standard wizard. They are much more focused on metamagic, however they tend to be less flexible and have fewer spell slots at any given time. If you are a relatively non-abusive player, I think the class is quite balanced and fun to play.

For the record, the overwhelming majority of my uses of the abilities of the Incantatrix prestige class is to extend 1/hr/lev spells to be 2/hr/lev spells. Nor do I think that is particularly atypical, since most uses of the prestige class only apply to EXISTING spell effects and not instantaneous ones. It's not a class about throwing quickened empowered maximized fireballs around, if that's what you thought it did. It's a lot more subtle in it's abilities for most of the levels of that prestige class.

 

[KarinsDad]

So? And what would you think would happen if a wizard pepares half of his spells as quickened? You have the same result.

No, you would have a different result since he cannot Spontaneously Quicken his spells. He has to prepare ahead of time, hence, is limited. If he prepares the wrong spells to Quicken, he's hosed. Additionally, the Wizard can already do this in the game with one feat and the Sorcerer can already do this in the game with two feats.

Also, if the Wizard Quickens half of his prepared spells, it means that he has used up slots that could have had more utility, situation depending, even if he does not need a Quickened spell all day.


Again, it is not Quicken which is the problem. It is the flexibility of Spontaneous Quicken. If you can Spontaneously Quicken and need half of your high level slots Quickened, you can do it on the fly. If you need none of them Quickened, you can do that too. If you need all of them Quickened, you can do that too.

This is a totally different and much more flexible and potent set of functionality than selecting some spells to Quicken at the beginning of the day.


Note: There have been massive debates on the metamagic rods in the past. However, the one aspect of them that nobody seems to argue about is that the Quickened Metamagic rods are extremely expensive:

35,000 gp (lesser), 75,500 gp (normal), 170,000 gp (greater)

Spontaneously Quickening is a very potent ability. The Variant Sorcerer effectively gets the equivalent of lesser (and eventually normal) Quickened Metamagic Rod (of the appropriate power) with the exception that the level of the spell does get increased (a Con), he can typically do this more times per day than the Rod (a Pro), and he can do it as an ability, so he cannot lose the ability like he could lose the Rod (another Pro).

This is still like trading the familiar and a single feat (Quicken Spell) for 10s of thousands of GP worth of ability. It's practically like giving the very potent Quicken Metamagic Rod to the Variant Sorcerer. Sorry, but that's both unfair to other PCs and broken. The Quicken Spell feat was not intended to be that powerful.

 

[dagger]

I don't think its that big a deal because they will have so few higher level spell slots anyway.

 

[Victim]

Yeah, except the whole point of the rod is that it does not use a higher level slot, thus characters with them can Quicken their highest levels spells.

Wizards do things with preparation, Sorcerers casts their spells spontaneously. I hardly see how applying this paradigm to quickened spells are problematic. Sure, multiple spells per round is really good. However, using quicken, even for a sorcerer, comes with its own rather steep costs. There's really not much point to sorcerers having tons of spells per day if they never get to use them.

 

[Warmage-in-Onley]

Let's check out a potential use of the new Quicken for sorcerers. Let's take a 15th level Sorc and do the following: Quickened Hailstones (uses 7th level slot) for 51 avg damage (assuming you can make 3 ranged touch attacks with your base +7 to hit) and no save, followed by Empowered Moonbow (uses 7th level slot) for 126 avg damage (again assuming you can make 3 ranged touch attacks with your base +7 to hit) and no save. Assuming a touch AC of 12 you will fail to hit with 20% of your rta's, your misses will cost you an average of 35 damage in a round. Net damage from this tactic = 142 pts of damage/round, and the Sorc can do this twice before he's all outta 7th level slots. 2 rounds and 284 points of damage. Simply using Empowered Moonbow with the same miss chances you could do 101 points of damage/round for 4 rounds. Using this example (which is situational) you can see how much damage you give up by Quickening to max attack. The Sorc can do this on the fly, I think you'd really have to plan the Wizard's attack to match this (even with that 8th level spell). Whew, I need a break.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, except the whole point of the rod is that it does not use a higher level slot, thus characters with them can Quicken their highest levels spells.

I do not think that this is the whole point of the rod at all. It is a feature of the rod, but not the intent.

That was a rule that was most likely applied to the rods due to game mechanic problems with the concept if the designers did not make it that way. If they did not add a simple rule like this, they instead would have had to add a rule such as preparation casters have to give up the low level spell (e.g. 2nd level Mirror Image) plus the high level spell (e.g. 6th level Chain Lightning) in order to cast the Quicken lower level spell (e.g. Quicken Mirror Image). Or possibly, preparation casters have to have the low level spell (e.g. 2nd level Mirror Image) available plus cast the high level spell (e.g. 6th level Chain Lightning) in order to cast the Quicken lower level spell (e.g. Quicken Mirror Image). Additionally, if they did not add the rule they did, then the 170K GP Rod probably would not exist.

I suspect that they needed a simple rule and hence, metamagic rods do not increase the spell slot of the base spell. Otherwise, they would have had to write down paragraphs of explanation and examples on how to use the rod.


The whole point of the rod is to give the feat to a caster who does not have the feat. The not increasing the spell level is a secondary (although potent) effect.

But, I doubt the designers sat down and said "Hey, let's make an item to give metamagic to casters who do not have it at a cheaper cost!". I suspect they said "Hey, let's make an item to give metamagic to casters who do not have it!" and the cheaper cost was a result of the difficulties of just effectively giving the feat to casters who prepare spells.


Granted, the 170K Greater Quicken Metamagic Rod does give abilities beyond what the feat alone can do. This is Epic Spell casting level of magic, but not really relevant as to whether Spontaneous Quicken is too potent or not to give to a character with a single feat (e.g. Quicken Spell).

 

[KarinsDad]

Let's check out a potential use of the new Quicken for sorcerers. Let's take a 15th level Sorc and do the following: Quickened Hailstones ...

Quickening an attack spell is a poor example of why a Sorcerer would want to use Quicken.

A Sorcerer would typically use quicken for a low level defensive spell or miscellaneous spell, not an attack spell.

For example:

Round one: Quicken Improved Invisibility, cast an offensive spell, move
Round two: Quicken Fly, cast an offensive spell, fly up and away
Round three: Quicken Protection From Evil so the summoned creature that can see you cannot touch you, cast an offensive spell, fly away

Etc.

This is the power of Spontaneous Quicken.

Sure, you could use it for back to back offensive spells, but it works much better for low level defensive and miscellaneous spells. It also works well for getting multiple defensive spells up in a short period of time. A regular caster can get one defensive spell up and one offensive spell in the first two rounds (shy of immediate spells). A Spontaneous Quicken caster can get up 3 defensive spells and an offensive spell in the same amount of time.

In DND, number of actions is critical to success.

Quicken False Life, Quicken True Strike followed by a 95% chance to hit with the touch spell on the same round, Quicken Bear's Endurance, Quicken Dispel Magic, etc. These are the real potent uses of Quicken and for a Spontaneous Quicken caster, you do not have to prepare these. You can cast whichever ones you want whenever you want. A prepared caster might have Quicken True Strike prepared, but his Empowered Scorching Ray might not do anything against a fire immune creature, so both of these spells are worthless for this encounter (and possibly for the entire day).

 

[Ditch]

Sorc's get Arcane Preparation to mem spells and Wizards get Spell Mastery + Signature Spell to channel spells.

For the record, couldn't a Sorc use a Pearl of Power (7th) to get back a quickened fireball that they prepared with arcane preparation?

 

[Derren]

This is the power of Spontaneous Quicken.

And a wizard can do exactly the same. Oh sure he has to prepare them quickened and the sorcerer can quicken them spontaneously but this is simply the advantage sorcerers have.

Or are you saying that the sorcerer is overpowered because he can spontaneoulsy cast spells and a wizard has to prepare them? Thats exactly the same situation. Quickening just increases the level. You would probably better off disallowing the sorcerer alltogether as you have such a big problem with a caster having the right spells for the right situation.

 

[Staffan]

The point of my question was:

Why is the rules as written fair for Wizards, but not fair for Sorcerers?

Because when Tweet, Cook, and Williams wrote 3e, they didn't want the sorcerer to overshadow the wizard. Thus, they made sure to keep on the conservative side with the sorcerer's power level. Six years of actual playing by millions of people, however, shows that they were probably too conservative, which is why we're seeing things like the Warmage and the ability to spontaneously add metamagic without increasing casting time.