Sudden Metamagic Feats Rock!

[JoeGKushner]

The thing I like about Sudden Metamagic Feats from the Complete Arcane is that they allow you to 'push' your magic.

I was playing a Fighter 1/Mage (E) 5 with no familiar but the variant UA ability where my E spells are one level higher and am a Calishite with the Elemental Blood background for my fire spells are one level higher so when I cast a fireball, it's cast as a 7th level caster.

We were fighting a 10th level wizard who had fly and other buff spells going. Most of the group getting wailed on because they're standing too close.

I pull out the Rod of Metamagic Empower and use my own feat, Sudden Maximize and after one failed saving throw, we have a nice and toasted enemy wizard whose unconscious body took another 3d6 from the fall and killed him.

I felt like telling the GM I'm hitting him with the Kama-ma wave but I don't know if anyone would've got the DBZ reference.

 

[philreed]

The thing I like about Sudden Metamagic Feats from the Complete Arcane is that they allow you to 'push' your magic.

Are they a straight reprint of the sudden metamagic feats in the Miniatures Handbook or are there new feats? Or changes of any sort?

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'm pretty sure their straight from the Miniature's Handbook. (Yeah, that book's been mined pretty heavily...)

 

[swrushing]

I was playing a Fighter 1/Mage (E) 5 with...

We were fighting a 10th level wizard who had fly and other buff spells going...

I pull out the Rod of Metamagic Empower and use my own feat, Sudden Maximize and after one failed saving throw, we have a nice and toasted enemy wizard whose unconscious body took another 3d6 from the fall and killed him.

Oddly enough, there are those who would look upon the one-shot kill of a tenth level active and buffed adversary by a 6th level character with a special feat etc as a sign of a problem, instead of a reason for rejoicing.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Oddly enough, there are those who would look upon the one-shot kill of a tenth level active and buffed adversary by a 6th level character with a special feat etc as a sign of a problem, instead of a reason for rejoicing.

Nature of the beast no?

At any time, if he had hit me with a 10th level fireball and rolled average damage and I missed my save, I'd probably be dead too.

If he made his save, even using a limited feat and magic item, he would've lived.

That's a problem of the game system though as with certain spells and damage factors, it's often a save or die thing, even if the spell itself isn't save or die. One reason I'm glad Magisters in AU/AE have d6 hit dice.

There are some who would look upon a CR 10 creature against a party of 6th level characters as a sign of a problem too. Thankfully, we didn't.

I guess that's one reason I like feats like this. Even as a GM, I often allow material that could potentially unbalance standard D&D because it allows me to pull out more stops but does provide the "truimpth or die" issue noted above. In my game, (on haitus), one of the characters has an item familiar (from Unearthed Arcana) that's a +2 Keen Greatsword that he uses power attack on all the time and with his spring attack, is a terrifying monster in melee doing 20-50 points easily in one whack and getting out of range. I figure as long as we're having fun, it's okay.

 

[Li Shenron]

The thing I like about Sudden Metamagic Feats from the Complete Arcane is that they allow you to 'push' your magic.

Mah, my general opinion about Metamagic Rods and Sudden Metamagic Feats is that they change seriously how metamagic used to work in 3.0, which was a very unique advantage of spontaneous casters.

Now, taking a group of feats which used to be good for 2 classes only and attempt to make them useful for other classes as well would have been a good thing of course. But as I try to take a look at the bigger picture, these new options considerably help non-spontaneous casters to get close to spontaneous casters' powers with these tactics, while nothing is being done to help the latter get close to the first in other regards. Perhaps sorcerers were the best class in 3.0 and I didn't notice.

Anyway..... Beside my rants about the "schtik" of different classes, Sudden Metamagic is fine for me. Actually, if metamagic had always been "sudden" since the start of 3ed, it would have been much much better (of course, granted that Sorcerers would have been given other improvements).

I don't instead like the Rods at all, because i seriously prefer these abilities to be given via character features and not equipment which, among other things, is usually too easy to replace or exchange with the others.

I felt like telling the GM I'm hitting him with the Kama-ma wave but I don't know if anyone would've got the DBZ reference.

Probably would have been hard... isn't it "Kamehameha"?

 

[Psion]

I'm pretty sure their straight from the Miniature's Handbook. (Yeah, that book's been mined pretty heavily...)

Probably for the best.

I took the hit on that one, but it would be a shame if more people had to buy this overpriced book just to get at the small selection of interesting tidbits.

 

[Psion]

Oddly enough, there are those who would look upon the one-shot kill of a tenth level active and buffed adversary by a 6th level character with a special feat etc as a sign of a problem, instead of a reason for rejoicing.

True enough. But I think this tends to happen in other venues as well, such as fighters built to maximize their one hit kill potential (the 3.5 power attack makes this worse.)

But again, the game is about empowerment, and if a player gets joy out of their little schtick, good for them. It's our job as a GM to live with it and keep the game challenging anyways (so long as it's not too overpowering... for me, balance is largely a measure of how hard the GM has to work to accomodate the presence of a character.)

 

[Darkness]

An Empowered, Maximized fireball (CL 7) does, what, 42 + 7d6/2. Or an average of 54.25 points, with a save for half. (Save DC 13 + IntMod.) On an area.
That's a pretty nasty attack for a 6th-level character but he can of course only do it 1/day.

Nice.

Before too many people call for a nerf though... Despite such a strong attack, taking out creatures whose CR is (party level +4) is very situation-dependent.
Exhibit A: Another CR 10 creature, the bebilith - Reflex save +9, hp 150.

 

[Voadam]

For the sudden metamagics, is there any reason to take the normal feats instead of the new ones?

My brother got complete arcane and the mini handbook so I've heard second hand about these feats and they just sound better than the normal ones with no prereqs except sudden quicken which is ridiculously hard to get.