"Sudden" metamagic feats...am I missing something?

[Umbran]

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[akbearfoot]

metamagic..

I played a druid in a game where we used the metamagic variant from Arcana Unearthed.

Your feat is useable 3/day, does not need to be prepared ahead of time, and does not raise the level of the spell. But it DOES raise the 'virtual level' of the spell to the appropriate spell leve, and if you can't normally cast a spell of that level, then you cant apply the metamagic to it.

IE, a 7th level wizard could use his Empower spell feat on a Scorching ray, spending his 2nd level spell slot and 1 use of the feat. Because he can cast 4th level spells. But he could not empower his fireball spell or his Ice storm spell, because he can't cast 5th or 6th level spells yet.

I only ever took extend spell, and Empower spell, but they were very useful.

My most common tactic was to cast Exended Mass lesser vigor on the party, to do a TON of healing over time. Empower works really well on the spike stones spell. Huge area, and lots of little d8s if they want to get out of the area.

Breaking normal spell casting level limits seems to mess up a lot of peoples games...See metamagic rods and why so many people hate them.

 

[Alchemist]

I played a wizard in our last campaign with the Sudden Maximize and Sudden Empower feats. They worked great, and provided only some discomfort to our DM. I think the best application I put them to was to cast True Strike on the previous round, then to SM and SE my Enervation, smoking the BBG for 4+1d2 negative levels. Only drained 5, IIRC, but that -5 across the board softened him up enough that the fight went from very dangerous to challenging.

As a player, the only complaint I had was that it amplified the Vancian effect; once I had blown my sudden metamagics, I wasn't able to leverage any more of my spells for the rest of the day. As a DM, I'm leaning towards the UA daily used metamagic variant instead of the standard usage; I'm the only person in our group to ever take metamagic feats and I'm certain it's because my group perceives that bumping up a spell isn't as good as a spell of the level it replaces. We'll see if that variant works out for us.

 

[Uulbaan]

On the Druid the sudden metamagic works nicely as well. I took Sudden Maximize and Sudden Widen on my Druid. It works well and it is not too powerful I think. Since it is once a day you have to be careful about the time when to use it.

On the Druid, Sudden Maximise works well with Call Lightning. Once you reach the level to get Flame Strike, the feat give you a nice option between a quick and wild powerful strike with Flame Strike or more over all damages with Call Lightning.

Sudden Widen works well with most Druid spell, especialy with Spike grow which enable you to cover an impressive area. It can also be apply on Call Lightning to cover 4 squares instead of one single 5-ft square.