Lord Pendragon said:
Do these numbers take into account the fact that metamagic other than Heighten Spell does not raise a spell's save DC, and therefore a failed save will be less likely with those options that stack more metamagic onto lower-level spells? i.e. the Empowered Repeat Fireball and the Maximized Repeat Fireball only have the DC of a 3rd-level spell, while the Repeat Cone of Cold has the save DC of a 5th-level spell. Meanwhile a Meteor Swarm forces saves against a 9th-level spell.
No, they do not take that into account.
But, that is not as important in the circumstances where you would use these types of spells.
Let's take an example.
You are fighting a group of opponents, most of whom do not appear to be Rogue or Monks or some other quick group with good Reflex saves (i.e. you are fighting Combatant types, Divine types, etc.). If you thought you were fighting high Reflex save opponents or opponents immune to this type of damaging spell or opponents with high spell resistance, you would want to choose a different type of spell instead.
You are 18th level with an ability score of 24 (between items and actual score, this could be higher, but let's assume not). Your opponents appear to be 18th level as well and they have Reflex saves of about +10 (again with ability scores, items, etc.).
The spells listed earlier would average damage to these types of opponents:
10D6 Empowered Maximized Fireball (8th level) does an average of 56 points of damage
15D6 Maximized Cone of Cold (8th level) does an average of 70 points of damage
15D6 Empowered Cone of Cold (7th level) does an average of 60 points of damage
18D6 Empowered Delayed Blast Fireball (9th level) does an average of 78 points of damage
24D6 Meteor Swarm (9th level) does an average of 74 points of damage (but the area of effect is larger)
10D6 Empowered Repeat Fireball (8th level) does an average of 75 points of damage (if your opponents do not move in the meantime)
15D6 Repeat Cone of Cold (8th level) also does an average of 81 points of damage (again, if your opponents do not move in the meantime)
10D6 Maximized Repeat Fireball (9th level) an average of 87 points of damage (again, if your opponents do not move in the meantime)
Although the chances of your opponent saving are higher with the lower level metamagicked spells, they will still take more damage if they fail on some of them (especially the Repeat spells) and they will still take more average damage (i.e. with 5 opponents, you will do more total damage on average).
This assumes that you are using a damaging type spell at an appropriate time and not sending it against a group of Monks or Rogues.
Meteor Swarm is still averaging less damage than several of the other options.
Plus, several of those options are using lower level spell slots. Let's Heighten them to 9th level:
10D6 Empowered Maximized Heightened Fireball (9th level) does an average of 58 points of damage
15D6 Maximized Heightened Cone of Cold (9th level) does an average of 72 points of damage
15D6 Empowered Heightened Heightened Cone of Cold (9th level) does an average of 64 points of damage
10D6 Empowered Repeat Heightened Fireball (9th level) does an average of 78 points of damage (if your opponents do not move in the meantime)
15D6 Repeat Heightened Cone of Cold (9th level) also does an average of 83 points of damage (again, if your opponents do not move in the meantime)
As you can see, Heightening them once or twice only averages about 2 or 4 more points of damage. Hardly worth using the higher level slot for this.
And finally, let's look at our 4 spells straight up and max Heightened.
10D6 Heightened Heightened Heightened Heightened Heightened Heightened Fireball (9th level) does an average of 31 points of damage
15D6 Heightened Heightened Heightened Heightened Cone of Cold (9th level) does an average of 46 points of damage
18D6 Heightened Heightened Delayed Blast Fireball (9th level) does an average of 55 points of damage
24D6 Meteor Swarm (9th level) does an average of 74 points of damage
As can be seen, Heighten Spell doesn't do much of anything for these types of spells.
Heighten Spell is only good for all or nothing type spells (do or die), not damage spells. All it basically does is use up a higher level slot for damage spells. Sure, one opponent in a blue moon (5% or 10% of the time) will take full damage instead of half. But in the larger scheme of things, having the higher level slot still available is generally more important.
Remember. These are Area Effect spells. Having a higher DC matters somewhat, but except for PCs/NPCs who can avoid the damage completely (or have extremely high saves), the extra chance to miss the save is not as important as doing as much damage as possible, regardless of the save (and more damage blows through Fire/Cold Resistance better as well).
The point is to nearly or totally kill SOME of the opponents. If it is 2 dead out of 5 as opposed to 3 seriously wounded out of 5, that is a GOOD thing.
You cannot just make assumptions about DC. You really have to look at the actual math involved.
Meteor Swarm is good. No doubt about it. But, lower level metamagicked combinations (e.g. Cone of Cold specifically) can do about the same amount of average damage for those situations where you can effectively use a damaging spell and that allows the Sorcerer to have more options for picking OTHER spells, especially higher level ones with Fort and Will saves with the higher DCs.
PS. Spells like Scorching Ray and the various Orb spells are good metamagicked against single Rogues or Monks since they have no save. A Quickened True Strike (which the Sorcerer can get with Arcane Preparation) followed by the MetaMagicked spell can do some serious damage to these classes who generally take low damage from damage spells.
