That is only for prepared casters, spontaneous casters on the other hand do it for a move action. Aside from increased actions all they have to do to determine whether they can cast it or not is add the base level of the spell and metamagic adjustment to see if it is less or equal to their caster level. It doesn't cost any extra actions if they use metamagic specialist or accelerate metamagic(x). Clerics can burn turn undead attempts to reduce metamagic levels with divine metamagic(x). Even wizards can get in on it through some theurgy classes, Incantatrix, and UMD/staff manipulation. T.
Thank you for the response, I love your username as well I am a graduate student in philosophy at San Francisco State university.
First, I am not really concerned with the extra action that metamagic feats add on to spontaneous casting (rapid metamagic feat is a fix for that).
Second I am mainly concerned with high level epic play and the incantrix class gets pretty obsolete at epic levels (there is an epic feat called improved metamagic that does the same thing as the incantrix's ability of the same name and you can take it multiple times). ALso, being able to use a metamagic feat for free 2/day is sort of underwhelming when you have more than 6 counts of improved metamagic. Anyway at high levels enhance spell simply augments the spell slot to much for incantrix (and even divine metamagic; UMD and staff maniplulation aside) to be as useful as they are at lower levels; at low levels these abilities allow you to cast a quickened and maximized lv. 9th spell at lv. 17!!! At higher levels metamagic is cheap .LEts go through some numbers:
Lets say I am a level 75 wizard/psion or cleric (I dont want to consider PrC's). My Int is 50, my cha is 50, or my wis is 50 (so I have a +20 modifier).
Lets say, when I am a wizard or cleric, that I have 6 counts of Enhance spell and 6 counts of improved metamagic, (and at least 1 count of multispell), 15 counts of improved metamagic, and I have 3 counts of automatic quicken spell (also I have twin spell, repeat spell, energy admixture, intensify spell, improved heightened spell, and the prereqs for all my feats of course, so I am doing alot of damage, actually at higher levels, at least when your CL=HD, regular spells are BETTER than epic spells at doing damage, but epic spells can do all sorts of interesting things that regular spells cannot, in terms of damage though, regular spells are better).
If I want to make a fireball do at max 70d6 damage I must apply all 6 of my enhance feats (4X6=24) minus improved metamagic it would take a level 21 spell slot to enhance fireball so that it does 70d6 damage (I quicken it for free, if I wanted to intensify, twin, repeat, and admixture it then it would take a level 25 spell slot). If I was an incantrix (I would have -1 count of imporved metamagic) and I could apply enhance spell to fireball ONLY TWO TIMES for free (this is arguably though) so we could decrease the spell slot for a fireball that does 70d6 damage by 8 slots ONLY once a day (so in this example the spell would use a level 17 spell slot but ONLY ONCE A DAY). Not that good. Again UMD and staff manipulation aside, since if spellcasters can then manifesters can manipulate items and UPD too.
(I think that divine metamagic is much better. Even at high levels, as long as you have a high cha, or alot of turning attempt, divine metamagic retains its usefulness).
Now to do 70d6 (max) damage with a fireball a regular caster must take at least 6 counts of enhance spell.
On the other hand a psion of level 75 could do 75d6 damage by augmenting his energy burst by 70 points, with no feats needed AND he would get a +35 bonus to DC just for increasing the PP used!!! And with improved manifestation feat, the psion should have plenty of PP at this level.
(you would need to put a spell in a 38 level spell slot to augment a level 3 spell +35 DC with improved heighten spell, if you were a wizard, and that would be applying NO other metamagic, no enhance spell, no twin spell, etc.' at level 75 almost no wizard/cleric/druid will have access to a 38th level spell slot at lv 75, considering they get access to 41 feats normally (25 from HD, and 16 from epic levels; 45 feats if your a wizard, the 4 bonus feats) 7 (or 11) of which must be non-epic; you would have needed to put 29 out of 34 epic feats into improved spell capacity; even if you did have access to a 38th level spell slot if you increased the DC by +35 then you could not apply any other metamagic feat to the spell, so a fireball that is heightened by +35 would take a level 38 spell slot and would do ONLY 10d6 damage, yeah you could use divine metamagic or incantrix abilities but those will not get you very far, if you had a 50 cha you would have 23 uses of turning, you could apply enhance spell 5 times and twin it and intensify this fireball would do 60d6 damage and be twined, etc. but you could do this ONCE a day [I know clerics dont get fireball as a spell but if they did...];
A Psion could spend 70 PP and his energy burst would do 75d6 damage and it would get its DC increased by +35! Also you could twin it and admixture it and intensify it, presumably for more PP (i am sure there are psionic variants of these feats, if there are not then there should be). Although they could probably only do this a few times a day they can do more than a regular casting (that is because PP gets them an increase in damage AND DC, something no regular caster can do by simply increasing the level). Giving regular casters enhance spell every 10 levels as a bonus feat would partially fix this (although a regular caster will still have a hard time doing AS MUCH damage and increasing the DC as much as a psion could; they just wouldnt need to sink so many feats into enhance spell to do it).
If I am starting a level 75 game then the psion is a better choice than the wizard, unless we give the wizard enhacne spell every 10 levels after 20th (I would have at least 6 feats extra and when I grow in level I wouldnt have to worry about sinking more feats into enhance power, and heighten spell is not a worry either).
