HeapThaumaturgist said:
Actually it does have a minimum of +1 increase to the spell level.
Maybe I'm missing the boat on metamagic, I've never before played anybody that used it. All the Wizards I've played, I took item creation feats instead of metamagic. It always seemed like you could get the same umph for a lower price ... for instance, Empowered Fireball is about the same as a 15 dice fireball ... but that's a 5th level slot and there are many similar AoE spells with a 15 dice cap which are 4th level spells.
I'm currently torn between Sculpt and Practical Metamagic.
--fje
Some metamagic feats are better than others. Heighten Spell is a great one to take around level 12 or so for a sorcerer, because suddenly you're getting all this extra mileage out of your low-level spells known because you can ramp them up using higher level spell slots. Sculpt is the bomb at low- to mid-levels. I like to use it on spells like glitterdust and web, which otherwise have areas that are annoying to place. Empower and maximize generally work better with spells that don't have saving throws, since the DCs don't increase even though the spell slots do.
Chain spell is a weird one. It only works well if you have a lot of (target: one creature) spells already, but if you do it's a good candidate for Practical Metamagic. Energy Substitution and Admixture don't seem to fit your character concept, and that's probably a good thing, because they're terrible. Substitution is barely worth a feat, and Admixture really suffers from low DCs due to the +4 spell slot cost. It's a pretty good BBEG feat, though, especially when combined with Greater Spell Focus. Quicken is golden, of course, especially if you lower its cost later.
I think that the issue with Empower is this: Take your empowered fireball, which does the equivalent of 15d6 damage. Compare that to a cone of cold, which has a 15d6 cap. You're saying you know about 4th level spells that have 15d6 caps, and I can't think of any, so let's say, for the sake of argument, that CoC is 4th level. Assume you're a high enough level sorcerer to cast an empowered fireball: 10th. You do 10d6 damage with a normal fireball, and 10d6 damage with a CoC. You do 15d6 damage with the empowered fireball. There's the difference. Normally, you'd have to be 15th level to do 15d6 damage. Once you're 14th level, you'll be able to empower your 4th level spells, so you'll do about 21d6 damage with them. If you're willing to burn high-level slots, you'll be doing more damage than someone your level has any right to be able to do. If we think of CoC as being a 5th level spell, the advantage of an empowered fireball is even more impressive. You can do 10d6 with the unempowered CoC, or 15d6 with the empowered fireball. If you can also sculpt, you can wait until 12th level and blast off cone-sculpted 15d6 fireballs or do 12d6 CoCs.
Metamagic is sorcerer love, especially if you're using the option to ditch your familiar for quick metamagic.
Where's Thanee to proselytize about sorcerer metamagic?
