Un-breaking Divine Metamagic, any way we can

[Machiavelli]

I've become interested in the concept of divine metamagic, and for the past week have been slogging through the literally hundreds of pages of text that can be found discussing it in just this forum. I've come to 2 important conclusions:

1) I've already spent WAYYY too much time on this misleadingly documented and vaguely defined feat, so screw it all! I'm creating my own version that avoids the pitfalls encountered with the original feat!
2) The primary complaints that Divine Metamagic is a game-breaker (well-argued complaints, at that) center around the Quicken and Persistent feats, while the arguements that it is simply rather overpowered stem from layering too many spell levels on top of too-high-level base spells.

I hereby vainly propose that I may, in fact, have a far better idea than anything I've read this past week; one which penalizes the over-powered uses of the feat and makes game-breaking impossible, without requiring so many caveats as to render it obscure and unused.
I've split the all-encompassing Divine Metamagic feat into multiple feats corresponding to individual existing metamagic feats. They are in an attachment below.

Here are my questions for you:
Do you agree with my conclusions regarding why Divine Metamagic is broken?
Have I adequately addressed the broken-ness?
Would it be possible to write up a single feat that, with less than a half-page of easy to understand rules, reasonably covers a near-unlimited number of possible (by themselves balanced) feats, so that new feats do not need both a standard and a divine version?

 

[Jack Simth]

Oh, it's simpler to fix than that - simply do something similar to what the Sudden Metamagic feats, or the Spell-like metamagic feats do; require an inherent (derived from class levels) caster level X levels over the minimum needed to cast a spell, where X is, say, 2*the spell level adjustment needed to use the base feat.

Thus, you can't Persist Righteous Might until 21st level (minimum caster level 9, Persistant Spell adds +6 to the spell level, so you need to have a caster level at least 12 higher than 9, for 21st). You're simply paying a feat and a bunch of turning attempts to duplicate an effect that you pretty much do anyway, just using the feat to do so spontaneously and with a different pricetag.

 

[Machiavelli]

So, basically, metamagic is inaccessible to low- and mid-level spellcasters even more-so than it already is? Yeesh.

 

[Jack Simth]

So, basically, metamagic is inaccessible to low- and mid-level spellcasters even more-so than it already is? Yeesh.

Nope. It's a simple requirement; so you can't cast, say, a Divine Metamagic (Persistent) Divine Favor until you could cast a Persistent Divine Favor (13th, as it requires a 7th level spell slot), but you're using seven turning attempts and a 1st level spell slot rather than a 7th level spell slot.

As opposed to your fix, which lets a Cleric-1 add an amount to the DC on Command equal to the number of turning attemts he has (to a maximum of +8 DC, as it's a first level spell) with Divine Heighten Spell. How many 1st level appropriet BBEG's can deal with, say, a Wis-16 Cleric with a Charisma score of 14 Heightening a Command to 6th level? That would be a Will save DC of 19; that selfsame Cleric would have a Will save of only +5 (+7, with Iron Will).

 

[Machiavelli]

As opposed to your fix... (etc.)

Perfect! You found an abuse I hadn't thought of, which was the point of posting instead of assuming I'm always right.
Have you any suggestions to fix that single issue, instead of replacing the entire list of suggested feats? One obvious suggestion would be to drop the Divine Heighten Spell feat. I'm ok with that idea, but I'll be trying to think of others, too.

My base intent here is to make some metamagic accessible to low-level casters at the price of using multiple limited resources and risking partial incapacitation. I'm trying to balance the severity of that price (but I'm open to other variant penalties) with the benefits that using metamagic offers in the first place.

 

[ThirdWizard]

See, theoretically, if you just make it so that they can't use it to metamagic spells that they normally wouldn't be able to apply the metamagic feat to, then it becomes balanced for all possible metamagic feats, without the need to check its balance for every conceivable possibility.

In other words, you can't Empower a 1st level spell unless you have 3rd level slots.

 

[griff_goodbeard]

See, theoretically, if you just make it so that they can't use it to metamagic spells that they normally wouldn't be able to apply the metamagic feat to, then it becomes balanced for all possible metamagic feats, without the need to check its balance for every conceivable possibility.

In other words, you can't Empower a 1st level spell unless you have 3rd level slots.

Agreed, applying a metacap is the only sure way to prevent abuse of Divine Metamagic. It seems to work well at my table, I've still had a few clerics use it (DM) to get effect.

I appreciate the intent of what you're trying to do, but IMO it is still pretty abusable. A DC 12-16 Will sv really isn't that big a deal, even for a low level cleric (who has a good will save and a high wisdom). And the fact that you removed the pre-requ's (must have the appropriate MM feat) makes it more accessible (and again IMO more abusable by low level pc's)

 

[Machiavelli]

In the world of houserules, one of the more popular ones is the addition of loads of base feats instead of the usual 1 per 3 levels: 1 every other character level, 2 out of 3 levels, or even a feat every level! When I'm making yet another houserule feat, I try not to use its prerequisites as its primary balancing factors, because houserules usually negate that type of balance. Specifically for these divine metamagic feats it may be a good idea to go with the usual metamagic feats as prerequisites, anyway, but not so much for balance. Moreso because it makes sense that way.

Perhaps the dazing aspect is too laughable, yes. It could instead be DC= 12+ 2 times total turn undead attempts spent.
That puts the DC in the range of 16-24 or so. Those are not meager DC's at that point. Of course, the next question is whether or not the dazing effect itself is too laughable. Usually metamagick'ed spells are in the range of 1st-6th levels, yes? That's 1-6 rounds of no actions (but no AC or save penalties if attacked) after unleashing a particularly nasty spell. The obvious idea then is to use the metamagick'ed spell to end a threat, or when there is no threat present. Does anyone here, speaking as a DM, say that they find this to be too potent for a single feat (or two) and some turn attempts?

 

[Jack Simth]

The Heighten issue was just a for-instance. At 3rd level, a Maximized Inflict Moderate Wounds is liable to one-shot most opponents (19 damage - not all, but most). At 7th, it's not going to be an issue.... but 3rd? Very much so.

 

[comrade raoul]

So, basically, the idea is that divine metamagic works normally, but if you try to stack divine metamagic feats, there's a chance you might get dazed. (But since the DC depends on the levels you add, rather than the level of the spell you enhance, high-level clerics can stack metamagic feats fairly safely.)

I'm totally in favor of the metacap, basically for reasons people already mentioned. I've been in games where characters used metamagic effects (like Heroic Metamagic, in an Eberron game) to cast more powerful spells than characters of that level ought to have been able to (like a 6th level wizard using three action points to maximize a fireball). The character wasn't overpowered, since she used a ton of precious action points to pull off the effect, but it meant that she could--once in a while--make what should've been very difficult encounters much easier, or let the party do things they shouldn't really have been able to do.

And, FWIW, there are other pretty good reasons not to like divine metamagic. It's really a resource only available to clerics, and (of course) they're plenty powerful as it is. I wouldn't want to be in a game where clerics were not only impressive healers, and impressive fighters, but also able to pull off significantly more impressive spell effects than wizards or sorcerers could, too.

Also remember what sort of resource turn attempts are. When they were originally designed--before anybody thought of divine feats--they were there to help the party in specialized circumstances (when undead were around). They weren't a general resource, like spell slots, stunning fist attempts, or uses of rage, that individual characters could use more or less at their discretion to make themselves more effective in given encounters: they provided a way for clerics to protect their friends from the Terrifying Undead Hordes. Often--if you don't really expect to run into undead, and you don't have a lot of different divine feats--you're not diverting a limited resource when you're using divine feats to power spells: you're just making something useful that wasn't, earlier. So using turn attempts to balance something that's useful all or most of the time can be really tricky.

But, hey, if you think clerics need more loving, this is still an improvement over divine metamagic as it was originally implemented.