Questions about Sudden feats and item usage/creation

[Greenfield]

Presume a caster has the Sudden Empower feat that allows him/her to Empower a spell once per day without raising the spell slot, and without doing anything special when preparing the spell.

Now presume that they are casting a spell from a scroll.

Can they Sudden Empower that spell?

Going the other way, can they Empower the spell using the feat when creating said scroll?

What about spells from wands and/or staves?

Please include your reasoning.

My own position will follow. (Note that this currently applies to my PC in our campaign.)

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Generally speaking, items function independent of who is using the item (as long as they function at all). The effect generated is precisely defined by the item description.

From this point of view, your wizard does not quite cast a spell from a scroll, but rather helps unleash the power of a spell that is stored on the scroll. Knowing how to cast the arcane spell is the easiest way to accomplish this, but there are other ways (e.g. UMD skill) to do so.

Breaking away from this creates the idea that the spell effect (or other magical effect) is actually being "cast through" the user. Now, that is an interesting and plausible way for magic items to work, but I strongly believe that the letter and spirit of the law in the DMG makes it clear enough that the items in the DMG do not work that way. And other published magic items are generally modelled on what is in the DMG, of course.

This all is clear enough if you carefully consider what caster level means for a magic item. Why can't a 9th level wizard cast 5 magic missiles from a cheap 25 gp scroll? Because the mechanical statistics of the spell effect is defined by the magic item itself, not the wizard using it.

The Sudden feats are already problematic for a number of reasons. To allow your idea of Sudden casting from an item makes it even more so.

 

[Greenfield]

Actually, I agree with your interpretation.

My problem is that, if it's all based on the way the item is made then a caster with a Sudden feat would be able to apply that when creating the item, without raising the spell slot used, and that affects the creation cost, both in Exp and coin. Yet the finished product, say a Sudden Empowered spell scroll, would be functionally indistinguishable from one created with an actual Empower feat.

Now, the creator is burning his/her once-a-day ability when creating the item, but since you can only creatoe one item in a day that isn't really a penalty.

 

[GenghisDon]

Presume a caster has the Sudden Empower feat that allows him/her to Empower a spell once per day without raising the spell slot, and without doing anything special when preparing the spell.

Now presume that they are casting a spell from a scroll.

Can they Sudden Empower that spell?

No

Going the other way, can they Empower the spell using the feat when creating said scroll?

What about spells from wands and/or staves?

Please include your reasoning.

My own position will follow. (Note that this currently applies to my PC in our campaign.)

No, but I'd consider it a good house rule to allow the caster to CRAFT an item as if they had the (standard) empower spell. In fact, items of X with sudden X feat (& craft Z).

Items though, are made with a metamagic effect or they are not. Costs in GP/XP are covered by the caster level & spell level. So, you could make a wand of empowered magic missile L9, but it costs as a L3 spell with CL 9, not SL 1 & CL 9. My suggested house rule would only let someone make the above even though they have sudden empower; ie they would still only get a virtual "empower spell" feat.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Presume a caster has the Sudden Empower feat that allows him/her to Empower a spell once per day without raising the spell slot, and without doing anything special when preparing the spell.

Now presume that they are casting a spell from a scroll.

Can they Sudden Empower that spell?

No, the scroll was not created that way.

Going the other way, can they Empower the spell using the feat when creating said scroll?

What about spells from wands and/or staves?

Please include your reasoning.

My own position will follow. (Note that this currently applies to my PC in our campaign.)

Yes. Though, I cannot find any magic items in the DMG that are empowered. I was hoping that there would be one there that I could look at for a base. Typically the only meta-magic feat used is heightened to raise the spell level. Cost is typically Base Gold x Spell Level x Caster Level.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but, if a fireball is empowered it's still a 3rd level spell for all purposes (saves are unchanged). It just requires a 5th level slot to "use".

As a DM you'd have a couple of options.

1) You could rule that the only metamagic feat that can be applied in item creation is heighten.

2) Apply the spell slot used to the formula instead of actual spell level. For sudden metamagic, you would use the slot that a normal version of the spell would require. For instance, a sudden empowered fireball scroll would be calculated as a 5th level spell.

For wands, I would follow the same suggestion as scrolls.

For staffs, it only mentions that the staff uses your ability score and feats to set the DC. So I would say that you cannot apply metamagic on a spell cast from a staff unless it was prepared that way.

In other words, no you cannot use sudden metamagic to cheat the system and save on gold, xp, and time.

 

[Nezkrul]

I'm with Grogg on these answers.

The Sudden Empower feat acts like Empower with the added caveat of not increasing the spell's slot level. If you were to create a scroll of Sudden Empower Fireball, I would let you use Sudden Empower to create it, but the resulting item would be priced and treated as a Scroll of Empowered Fireball (CL * SL (5th) * 25gp). I don't see a reason to say you can't use sudden empower to make empowered spell trigger/completion items, but I would definitely not allow you to try to "game" the system and say they are cheaper than normal.

Spell completion/trigger items require special class features, feats, or other magic items to add metamagic to their effects when used.

 

[Greenfield]

My one quibble with Grogg: Heighten isn't a Metamagic feat. I have no idea why, but that's how they categorize it.

Other than hat I'm in complete agreement. "Sudden" applies when casting the spell. When placing it onto a scroll or into an item, treat it as the normal meta-magic feat, for purposes of item creation cost and time.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Heighten is labelled as Metamagic in my copy of the PHB and on the SRD. Maybe you have some sort of rare misprint?

 

[Greenfield]

Heighten is labelled as Metamagic in my copy of the PHB and on the SRD. Maybe you have some sort of rare misprint?

You're right, I'm wrong.

Don't know why I thought that it wasn't. Clearly I need to check rules before I try to quote them.

 

[Betrayor]

unless stated differently items use the caster level and dc and all other variables of their creator.
There are some cases that can change that but those are cases of specific trumps general(example when using a staff you can use your own ability score for dc)