Hi. I'm DMing an evil campaign in October (the gorgeus Way of the Wicked, by the way)
For several reasons, I want to make available a feat for Hellfire. Mainly because it fits themathically, but also because the antagonist is the church of the Sun and Holy Fire and all that jazz, and there are quite a lot fire-inmune enemies around.
So I was wondering how could I make Hellfire into a metamagic feat.
Hellfire is a fire that burns with unholy power. It does 1/2 fire damage and 1/2 unholy damage, which does double damage to good outsiders (the unholy part). It's described in Book of the Damned, and so far, there's only one way to obtain it, the Diabolist Prestige Class.
The Diabolist can use it once per Charisma modifier per day, as a free action. So the question is how to use it, without steping too much on the Diabolists feet.
My first impresion is to make it a +2 caster level metamagic feat. That puts it in the same league than "empower", which is close imho. If you use a Hellfire Fireball or an empowered fireball against a non-fire resistant outsider, you do x1.5 damage. The empowered fireball would do 1.5 damage to non-outsiders as well, but it more or less balance with the fact that Hellfire fireball would damage fire inmune creatures, such as a fire elemental.
But I'm not sure yet. Maybe other option is to mimic Diabolist, and make the feat usable once, twice or three times per day, without paying extra levels... Anyone here has a better suggestion? Any idea?
I think a +2 works.
There is one other way to obtain hellfire, beyond being a Diabolist:
The hellfire ray spell on page 46 of the same book is a 6th level [evil] cleric/sorcerer/wizard spell that deals 1d6/level (up to 15d6) hellfire damage.