Sorcerers and Energy Substitution

[Shane_Leahy]

I have a player that is making a sorcerer and wants to use the Dragon feats from the Complete Arcane to flesh out his character. He is going to play up his dragon heritage he wants to use Energy Substitution to reinforce it more.

The problem is that if he uses Energy Substitution then all his spells will be full round action which really sucks.

What I am thinking is allowing him to automatically replace all elemental spells with his substituted energy and he can cast them normally as if there wasnt a metamagic feat in place.

However, if he wants to cast the spell normally (the normal energy) then the metamagic feat penalty comes into play and it becomes a full round action.

Sound fair? Or am I missing something?

 

[CRGreathouse]

Yes, more than fair.

 

[BluWolf]

Sounds a very creative and reasonable answer.

 

[Nim]

Which energy type is he picking?

 

[fba827]

What I have been doing is as if the sorcerer had new/unique spells that were 'cold' fireballs, etc. and didn't have the fireball spell known and metamagic feat applied to it. But then if he wanted to cast a fire version, he would need the metamagic feat (fire) since (as far as the sorcerer is concerned) he doesn't know a fire version of the spell, he only knows a cold version.

That is slightly different than what you just said and it's worked fine.

What you proposed seems reasonable as well.

 

[Li Shenron]

Basically you're reversing the Energy Substitution feat.

Instead of turning any energy spell into a fire spell, your feat turns any fire spell into a different energy (always fixed for each spell, but different for different spells).

It sounds fair to me.

 

[Tetsubo]

Fair and reasonable. Plus it adds a nice flavor. Well done.

 

[the Jester]

Sounds fine to me. I am increasingly of the opinion that spontaneous casting being a FRA is a slap to the sorcerer, however, and would predict that 4e will see it dropped.

 

[Blaydsong]

Which energy type is he picking?

Hi... just thought I'd pop in here.

I'm the player for said sorcerer.

The energy type is Electricty (Bronze Dragon).

 

[ThirdWizard]

What I have been doing is as if the sorcerer had new/unique spells that were 'cold' fireballs, etc. and didn't have the fireball spell known and metamagic feat applied to it. But then if he wanted to cast a fire version, he would need the metamagic feat (fire) since (as far as the sorcerer is concerned) he doesn't know a fire version of the spell, he only knows a cold version.

That's what I would do. No feat needed. Just don't take fireball. Take electricball.