Spontaneous Metamagic Variant

[Bladesong]

Yes, Monte Cook's AU is what I was referring to. Quite frankly Thanee, we have not had any problems. We are currently using the D&D spells (though I think we will be changing to the AU spells with the next campaign), but we have not used all of the metamagic feats. Under AU there is one feat "Modify Spell" which includes 5 or 6 feats within it (double range, double duration, silent, still, 1.5 x effect, maybe 1 or 2 others). I do not believe 'persistent' was one of them.
Keep in mind that you do not have to use a metamagic feat if it is "over the top." Contrary to popular belief, not everything in the rules is balanced correctly. If you did want to use a "stronger" feat, I suppose you could use 3 slots instead. In any case it is still easier than having to refer to any rules you may have had to come up with to determine what you need to do.

Bye for now.

 

[Thanee]

Sure, but using that would automatically lead to more changes needed, since then the metamagic feats would be highly unbalanced against each other.

If the cost to learn them, the cost to apply them and the spell base to use them on is the same for every feat, how much better are feats like Twin or Quicken or Maximize or Energy Admixture compared to stuff like Still Spell or Extend Spell or Energy Affinity then!?

Noone is going to learn the weaker feats then (except for flavor reasons), because the more powerful ones could be used instead on the same spells with the same cost.

Sorry, but I really cannot believe that this does work out fine without changing all the metamagic feats as well. I can see plenty huge balance problems there immediately (not just Persistent Spell, which is just the most extreme).



The basic thought behind my idea is to give more advantage to weaker feats in order to create incentive to learn those feats. The UA variant, I based this on, has some of the same problems I described above, since all feats have 3/day uses there (however, the weaker feats can be used on higher level spells at least, because you can only apply a metamagic feat to a spell of a level equal to the highest level you can cast minus the metamagic modifier (I used the same restriction above, too), but I don't think that is enough to make Silent Spell a compareable choice to Quicken Spell for example).

And I really think the above is simple enough still to not pose any problems.



BTW, there is another variant in UA, which is similar to what you describe, where you also use up extra slots instead of paying the level increase, but you have to use up one extra slot (of the level of the spell or higher) for each +1 of level increase then! I don't like this, because it drains way too much resources, however, making metamagic pretty weak feat choices again.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Vrecknidj]

To make the weaker feats more viable, we could arrange the feats in a feat-chain-like progression, and each iterative feat in the chain could, in addition to its own benefit, increase the number of uses per day of the feat "behind" it in the chain.

Dave

 

[Thanee]

Or simply give them more uses to begin with and save the hassle. *rolleyes*



Bye
Thanee