Psion vs. magic and Enhance Spell (Epic Feat)

[Drowbane]

I TOTALLY forgot about the psionic focus requirement when using metapsionic feats. This makes a huge difference, thank youfor reminding me.

You are quite welcome, sir!

In short, Psions make things go boom easier, but Wizards who focus on it do it far better (to the point of "borken"). When I make a boomstick, I go Psion. I can hit my mark without too much fuss, and avoid the temptation to go "too far" by doing it Arcane Thesis and other shenanigans.

 

[Belzbet]

. without raising the slot much at all, with some interpretatins of Arcane Thesis, this could be throw as a cantrip. Average dmg: 232.5 (averaged Empower's boost) x2 (twinned = two fireballs going off, for those who don't know).
.

I do not think that you can actually LOWER the spell level of a spell, arcane thesis only applies to ONE SPELL and it does not stack. So, at most you could apply ANY metamagic feat, besides Heighten spell, for NO cost if you have the right amount of improved metamagic feat (you could never get below the said level,so you could never cast fireball as a 2nd level spell, I dont think there is any way to read arcane thesis this way, but I am open to suggestions). I do not think you could apply enhance spell more than 6 times with no increase to spell level [unless you had about 23 counts of epic improved metamagic and arcane thesis] (divine metamagic, and item rod/staff manipulation aside).

But yeah psionic focus requirement really pings a psion, there should be an epic feat that relaxes that requirement.

 

[Drowbane]

I do not think that you can actually LOWER the spell level of a spell, arcane thesis only applies to ONE SPELL and it does not stack. So, at most you could apply ANY metamagic feat, besides Heighten spell, for NO cost if you have the right amount of improved metamagic feat (you could never get below the said level,so you could never cast fireball as a 2nd level spell, I dont think there is any way to read arcane thesis this way, but I am open to suggestions). I do not think you could apply enhance spell more than 6 times with no increase to spell level, maybe two times (divine metamagic, and item rod/staff manipulation aside).

But yeah psionic focus requirement really pings a psion, there should be an epic feat that relaxes that requirement.

Well, if you can apply *all* your metafeats for 0 (AT + enough Epic Improved Metamagics), you do not really need more than 1 direct damage spell. For simplicity, I used Fireball. Need another energy type change it to Sonics or whatever else seems handy. Heck, you can easily have enough prepped to cover all the elements. With the right metafeat (searing spell?) you won't need to change it anyways (might be a different feat, don't recall atm).

The relevant part of AT that can be so read: "... the enhanced spell ses up a spell slot one level lower than normal.". It is oddly worded, as is could be said that Metas and AT add to or subtract from the base spell slot. AT one a +0 Meta would in theory reduce the slot by 1.

I don't allow that in *my* games, but I have seen it done and "justified" to the DM at the time.

 

[Belzbet]

Maybe doing some of these things I have been saying makes the Psion and the wizard mechanically the same but I think the main differences between the two are more flavor oriented than rules-oriented anyway.

 

[Belzbet]

Well, if you can apply *all* your metafeats for 0 (AT + enough Epic Improved Metamagics), you do not really need more than 1 direct damage spell.

Yeah I guess that is true. If you could do this but the number of feats you would need to keep improved metamagic at the same level as enhanced spell is staggering. If I have 6 counts of enhance spell I would need 23 counts of improved metamagic thats 29 feats. At level 80 a regular wizard has 52 feats, 41 epic feats. If 35 of the epic feats were the above you would only have 6 epic feats to spread around. You would not have enough feats to gain barely any spell slots so that you could heighten your spell so why even get any improved spell slots and improived heighten spell, you would want at least 1 count of multispell, and you would want intensify spell, you will want epic spellcasting, now you have 3 you could choose 3 more spells with arcane thesis (or 3 more counts of multispell, since arcane theiss is not epic you will probably use a nonepic feat slot for extra arcane thesis). So,I guess this would be viable but you would have no way to improve the DC of your spells (if you did get improved heighten spell then you would need to sink points into improved spell capacity so that you could actually heighten your spells higher than 9th level) and you would have either very low versatility (only a few spells could be cast to ill effect, your other spells are going to be weak, epic spells excluded). It seems that a wizard that focuses on multispell would be able to do more damage, since mutlispell and automatic quicken spell are so damn powerful.

 

[Drowbane]

True that. And it should be noted somewhere on this thread that Wizards who focus that hard on Direct Damage have failed wizard-school.

Let the non-mages do the damage, mages have better things to do.