Metamagic Feats - Alternate Rules

[Wolffenjugend]

I'm considering changing metamagic feats to be usable a set # of times per day without increasing a spell's level. IMC, metamagic feats are rarely used so this new system would potentially mean that the feats would be used on a daily basis.

The more levels that a metamagic feat would normally incur, the fewer times per day it could be used. Or maybe just have a 1x/day limit (and metamagic feats could be taken more than once to increase this). No particular spell would have to be specified - caster could choose whichever spell at the time of casting.

Comments?

 

[Crothian]

That's not a bad idea. I'd do silent and still spell at 4/day, and quicken at once a day.

 

[Limper]

Would 4 Divided by (Set Level Increase)/Day work?

 

[Scion]

Might be taking a little away from the sorcerer with that. Perhaps if you gave spontaneous casters one extra use per day? or something similar? otherwise I love the idea

 

[Wolffenjugend]

I like the 4/extra level cost idea. For us, sorcerers aren't a problem b/c we don't use them much. I'm gunna run it by my group and see what they think.

 

[Scion]

I know you said 4/level adjustment but would 5 - (level adjustment) be better? As there are some that are 0 and 3 this would make those a bit easier to calculate Possibly even 6 - (LA). Are you allowing people to take the feat more than once? what happens?

 

[Ferret]

I like the idea, I think the 5-(extras) is the best.
5-4=1
5-3=2
5-2=3
5-1=4

Opposed to

4/4=1
4/3=1.3
4/2=2
4/1=4

 

[Spatzimaus]

The key here is the designers seemed to feel that metamagics should have an ongoing cost. It's not just "I have the Feat, I'm now more powerful than before" like Spell Focus. If you want to change it to a flat X/day that's fine, but then you run into the problem where if I only have one big fight per day I can metamagick the heck out of everything I cast. If I can Empower three times per day, the first three damage spells of The Big Fight will be empowered. The very first spell out of my mouth will probably be a Empowered, Maximized, Quickened, Chained, Twinned Meteor Swarm.

In the homebrew we're working on, we have a X-Men mutant style of "innate" spellcasting, where they can use an ability as often as they want. For that, we changed metamagic to work like this:
If the metamagic is +N, you can't use the base ability until 1dN rounds later. So, if you want to Quicken a power, roll 1d4. You might end up without access to that power for 4 rounds if you roll badly, so it's a risk.
If you put multiple metamagics on the same power, add the levels. So, a Still, Silent power rolls 1d2.

You could do a similar thing for spellcasters, separating by spell level. If a Sorcerer empowers a 5th-level spell, he loses access to his 5th-level spells for 1d2 rounds. At high levels this may not seem like a big deal since you can just cast a 6th-level spell instead, but that's part of the point.
Maybe instead of 1dN, it's just a flat N rounds. Quicken a spell, and lose access for 4 rounds. Still worth it in some cases.
Maybe instead of spell level, you separate it by spell school. Empower an evocation spell, and run the risk of losing your Evocations for a round or two. Instead of simply more spells per day, the advantage of specialist wizards could be that metamagics in their school are 1dN-1 rounds instead of 1dN.
There's all sorts of ways to do this.

 

[Destil]

Yes, but some designers have also commented that they feel the double cost (requires a feat and level increase) of meta-magic is possibly too steep.

Personaly I've been leaning towards something half-way between this and the default rules, myself:

Casters gain virtual meta-magic levels dependent on their caster level.
Bards, Wizards, Clerics, Druids : 1 / 4 class levels
Sorcerers : 1 / 3 class levels
Paladins, Rangers: 1 / 5 class levels

Each time a spell-caster selects a new meta-magic feat they gain a number of virtual spell levels equal to the feats level increase. Special: heighten spell grants 3 virtual meta-magic levels.

A spellcaster may allocate any number of virtual meta-magic levels per day to provied the level increase needed for a metamagic feat without rasing the spell level.

Example
Rorc is an 9th level wizard with the feats quicken spell and extend spell. He thus has a total of 7 [2 (class level) + 4 (quicken spell) +1 (extend spell)] virtual meta-magic spell levels per day. Each day he could prepair 7 extended spells without increasing their level, or 1 quickened spell and 3 extended spells, or 1 quickened spell, 1 extended spell and 1 double-extended spell et cetera.

Special: You can not use virtual meta-magic levels to cast a spell that would normaly be a higher level than the spells you could usualy cast. You do not need to fully power a meta-magic feat with virtual spell levels, so you could use 2 to prepair a quickened spell only two levels higher, for instance.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Yes, but some designers have also commented that they feel the double cost (requires a feat and level increase) of meta-magic is possibly too steep.

Well, yes, it IS a bit steep, but removing one cost entirely would make it too cheap IMO. I personally think metamagic effects are worth more than a standard Feat, so how do you price them then? There has to be some other sort of drawback simply to balance cost versus reward, so from one perspective you end up double-charging.
All of the concepts suggested here keep the Feat cost and remove the +level cost, but what about going the other direction? Let's say that every character got every metamagic for free, no cost in Feats, but they still had to add the spell levels. So, anyone could Quicken a spell, but they'd still have to use a slot 4 levels higher. Would that be balanced? Assuming there were no +0 metamagic Feats like Element Substitution or the old Eschew Materials available, that is. Personally, I'd say it was too cheap for the effect, so we're back where we started, trying to come up with a suitable offsetting cost.

But, your suggestion about virtual metamagic levels gave me an idea. What if you removed all the specific metamagic Feats and made a more general Feat chain? Something like this (I'm making this up off the top of my head, so bear with me on balance):

BASIC METAMAGIC:
Each day, a spellcaster gets a number of Metamagic Points (MP) equal to his caster level. Unspent points from the previous day are lost.
Pick two metamagic forms with a "level" of +1 or less. Each form can be applied to your cast spells, with the following costs:
1> Each form costs a number of MP equal to its level.
2> Using each form disables that form for a number of rounds equal to its level.
3> The casting time for all metamagicked spells increases to at least a full-round action, except for metamagic forms that specifically adjust casting time (i.e., Quicken)

(That is, a 15th-level Wizard could have Still and Silent, both +1 forms. He can metamagic 15 spells per day split between the two, and if he uses Still one round he can't use it again until 2 rounds later since it's disabled for 1.).

IMPROVED METAMAGIC:
Pick two additional metamagic forms. This Feat may be taken multiple times; each time the level cap for new forms increases by 1.
(The first time lets you pick ones with a cost of +2 or less, the second +3 or less, the third +4 or less, and so on. There's already a downside to using the bigger ones, so it's not too powerful. Having a ton of forms is great, but you'll run out of MP really quickly. A Quicken uses 4 MP per use, so with ~20 MP total you can't do it often, and it sucks off the same pool as your other metamagics.)

EXTRA METAMAGIC:
Gain an additional number of MPs each day equal to your primary spellcasting statistic modifier. This Feat may be taken multiple times; the effects stack.
(INT 20 means +5 MP, for a Wizard. At low levels this'd be a huge boost.)

FAST METAMAGIC:
Instead of delaying N rounds before using that metamagic form again, the delay is reduced to (1dN) rounds.
Also, the full-round-action minimum threshold is removed.

Wizards can choose one of two paths at level 1: either they get Scribe Scroll as a bonus Feat, in which case all future bonus Feats must be item creation ones, or they take Basic Metamagic as a bonus Feat, in which case all future bonus Feats must be one of the other metamagic Feats. It'd be nice if the item creation Feats were worked into a chain, too, but that won't happen soon.

You'd have to add in all the exotic metamagics from other sources; in addition to Empower (+50% for 2 levels), you'd also have the metapsionic Fortify (+25% for 1 level) and Overpower (+100% for 4 levels). As for Heighten, you'd split it into Heighten +1, Heighten +2, and so on. The nice part of this is, the big-level ones like Quicken, Chain, Persistent, and Twin will be rare (too many Feats to reach), powerful, and only usable rarely.

I wonder, could this work?