Actually, as my math above shows, Deadly Aim never comes online for a Soldier. The -2 penalty reduces your accuracy by 10%, thus reducing your damage output by 10%. To make the trade worthwhile, you need to increase your damage by more than 10%.
The bonus is half your BAB, but using a weapon you're specialised in gives a higher bonus. Coupled with Str bonuses, Deadly Aim is only good if half your BAB is more than 10% of your expected damage.
Since any Soldier should do far more than 10×their level in damage, Deadly Aim is a wasted feat for them.
Eh, your math assumes a 60% miss chance, though. Depending on how the system plays out at higher levels given monster AC, that may not actually be true. In Pathfinder, a properly built fighter had almost no real miss chance once they got a few minor enhancements. If you consider that we also have EAC to contend with and with relatively minor losses to damage output, deadly aim starts looking really fantastic on energy wepaons.
Also, never underestimate the value of swing damage. Consistency is not important if you decapitate the dragon on round 1. That matters a lot.
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I don't see character level given on my events. Considering Yvex's spire is a level 12 dungeon I think that may end up a fatal problem for that event, since I was hoping people would show up with characters.
A couple of one shots I'd like to playtest away from my players, and an offering of character assistance from the CCW guy!
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Title: The Long Road Home - Jolumar Catacombs
System: Pathfinder
Short Description: You've shipwrecked at the bottom of a bay, and the only way up the sheer cliffs was through an underwater passage leading to extensive caves. Now your only way to the surface is through the ruins of a flooded city! Can you work your way out?!
Number of Players (Min/Max): 3-5
Character Level: 2
Pregens Provided (yes/no): No. Build with 16/15/14/13/12/11, standard wealth by level. Surprise me.
Maturity Rating (Everyone (6+)/Teen (13+)/Mature (18+)): Teen (13+), but I enforce good gamer etiquette.
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Title: The Long Road Home - Spires of Yvex
System: Pathfinder
Short Description: A lot of people don't respect white dragons and think they are pushovers. I'm here to prove them wrong. Bring your A-game because Research takes the gloves off to defend an iconic monster of D&D.
Number of Players (Min/Max): 3-5. Nonplayer observers wishing to watch a dragon encounter allowed if they are civil and do not interrupt.
Character Level: 12
Pregens Provided (yes/no): No. Build with 16/15/14/13/12/11, standard wealth by level. Surprise me.
Maturity Rating (Everyone (6+)/Teen (13+)/Mature (18+)): Teen (13+), but I enforce good gamer etiquette.
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Title: The Long Road Home - Shadowmere Spire
System: Pathfinder
Short Description: Are you afraid of the dark? You will be when I'm done with you!
Number of Players (Min/Max): 3-5
Character Level: 5
Pregens Provided (yes/no):No. Build with 16/15/14/13/12/11, standard wealth by level. Surprise me.
Maturity Rating (Everyone (6+)/Teen (13+)/Mature (18+)): Teen (13+), but I enforce good gamer etiquette.
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Here's hoping I'm not shooting myself in the foot with this one:
Title: Character Concept Workshop with DM Research
System: Pathfinder
Short Description: I get a small amount of requests to help with individual characters from the Chronicles listeners every once in a while. I like to help but it's far easier when we're face to face. Here's your chance to tell someone about your character, and recieve feedback!
Number of Players (Min/Max): As many as I have time for before I run off to my next game.
Character Level: Anything below 10.
Pregens Provided (Yes/No): No.
Maturity Rating (Everyone (6+)/Teen (13+)/Mature (18+)): Everyone (6+)
I'm in the process of making a general plan for my next PFS character. I'm doing some pretty heavy multiclassing and I need to know whether I need to fit a fighter level into the build to use the sash of the war champion (APG 309).
Armor training is pretty critical to the concept as I need access to full movement in mithral full plate. (Starting with Cavalier)
I'm not so certain. The Word Burning feat mentions both spells and spell slots.
Quote:
Benefit: Each day, when you prepare your words of power
spells or regain your spell slots, you can choose to expend any
one spell slot you possess. You gain a number of points from
that slot equal to its total word cost (see Table 1–1). You can
apply the points from that spell slot to any other spell that you
prepare or cast that day, increasing the total word cost limit.
You can split these points up among any number of other spell
slots, but none of the spell slots can have a level equal to or
higher than the expended spell slot. This does not increase
the maximum word level of these slots, but it does allow more
expensive words to be combined in lower-level spell slots.
The wording actually says it both ways, and I'm inclined to take the more restrictive wording as what's actually supposed to happen.
When applying word burning you apply it to a slot, correct? Say you burned a 9th level slot and applied it entirely to an 8th level slot. If you then took a 4th level spell and added +4 levels of metamagic feats and put it in the word burned slot, you would have 13+32 points, so a 45 point spell with a 4th level word cap, correct?
The other possible interperetation is you apply it to the spell in question, meaning you could apply a 9th level spell to a 4th level spell and get 45 points and then shift the slot up as needed via metamagic?
The first has options for abuse but is much more restrictive. It means that you can't metamagic a 4th level spell with 8th level slots more than +3 levels (As the burning means that the metamagic feats can only bring it up to 7th level before you go above the slots allowed to have 8th level burns applied to them).
If you use the second interperetation, then you could burn a 4th level slot and apply to a 3rd level spell then metamagic a spell well into the 8th and 9th level slots if you found a reason to do so. This one I could abuse blindfolded.
That seems like a sensible way to fix the problem.
It does fix many of them, but unfortunately Research's Lesser Hellball] is built using that restriction. And in all honesty that spell utterly terrifies me.
Considering the investment it requires, I'm not that scared of it.
The thing is I'm pretty sure the caster can do that and still pull off several other spells. It's just the first ridiculously broken spell of many. Consider that instead of maximizing the spell he could instead go for a dazing rod and just stunlock an encounter down. Medium level +3 rods are nothing to a level 17+.
I'm working on some more ridiculous options at the moment, but that was just the first WTF-I-can't-believe-this-works spell I found.
That seems like a sensible way to fix the problem.
It does fix many of them, but unfortunately Research's Lesser Hellball is built using that restriction. And in all honesty that spell utterly terrifies me.
I think you could still do this at level 7. Word burn a level 4 slot. Put the points into a level 3 slot to create the word of power spell. Then add Intensify on top, which keeps it a 3rd level spell, but makes it fill a second 4th level slot, assuming you have one. And then I think leaves you with a normal, unfilled 3rd level slot in its place? (I mean, thats how normal metamagic works. It seems counterintuitive to me for some reason that the wordburned slot gets moved up and 'replaced', but thats how normal metamagic works so...)
Word Burning and Metamagic Feats have some strange interactions. I think, from looking at it and doing some quick and dirty math, that its balanced, its just a bit hard to get your head around.
I am fairly certain that you have to word burn to the slot the final, metamagiced spell will take up. IE if you're going to metamagic a 4th level spell up to 8th level, you can only word burn a 9th level spell and apply it to the 8th level slot, and then when the 4th level's metamagic'ed form gets there you can add the points from the 4th level slot and the 9th level slot together.
Just to prove word burning + metamagic feats = broken spells, I present to you Research's Lesser Hellball:
Word burning to add a 9th level's points to an 8th level spell slot. Take a 4th level spell and apply empower, intensify, Elemental spell (Fire) to it. 13+32 points of spell. Consider while casting this spell you can apply a rod of maximize or quicken or whatever else you want to do to it because for all intents and purposes it's a 4th level spell, and that's well within a spellcaster's reach.
So we now have an Empowered, Intensified, Elemental (Fire), Maximized 45 point spell with a level 4 word cap.
So let's make it a mass spell, because multiple targets with no chance of friendly fire is always fun. (For some reason mass costs less than small burst. I do not understand why. You can hit far more targets with it after level 10.)
So a Mass (2), Acid Wave (9), Ice Blast (12), Lightning Blast (9) costs a total of 32 word points. At level 15, this spell will do 45d6 reflex half when intensified. When empowered/maximized, this spell does 405 damage on a failed reflex save to 15 targets. And I can do this several more times per day. That's not even using the 13 points from my actual 4th level slot, so I could even go so far as to change this to a medium burst or medium cone and be 10 points under cap which I can freely distribute to my other spells. And I can hold drop my metamagic rod of maximize as a free, pull my quicken rod and do it again as a swift action to clean up the rest. At medium range.
This isn't even the scary part. 405 reflex half is somewhat terrifying, but you might have asked, why the elemental (fire) metamagic? Because Elemental Focus feats stack with respect to multi-descriptor spells, last I checked my APG. So if you decided to make an elementalist who wanted to was super specialized, you could easily spend 8 feats on greater elemental focus (everything) and only turn half this damage to fire and now have an acid/cold/lightning/fire spell at a +8 to its DC, making it DC 22+relevant casting modifier. A sorcerer need only pick up one bloodline feat of Empower spell to to be able to get these feats by 20th level, and a wizard can do it by 15th.
Additionally, if I really wanted to be a jerk to my DM, I could switch out Acid Wave for Terror, lower the damage output of the spell by 15d6, and make it a will negates at a -2 DC. (By the way terror should be Will Partial, as it still sticks a shaken on a failed save.) The problem being that part of the rules say that a save applies to the spell as a whole (Page 3, effect words), and another part says that saves apply to each word (Page 6, saving throw). I assume that page 6's wording being more thorough applies. So now we have again, a 32 point 4th level spell being word burned, it will deal 30d6 of empowered/maximized damage (roughly 270 damage) , and cause the frightened condition. Will partial (downgrading frightened to shaken), and will half for the damage. (135 damage, evasion what?) Oh, and the duration is now instantaneous so the frightened/shaken doesn't go away. (Or never occurs? Not sure.) And of course I can in fact drop my metamagic rod as a free action, pull my quicken rod as a standard, and quicken this spell to do it twice in a round and effectively destroy up to 17 of every single monster that comes directly to mind I've ever encountered.
Yes this takes a ridiculous amount of specialization on the wizard/sorcerer's part. However, the spellcasting DC system has never and will never encourage a spellcaster to do anything BUT specialize, because spell DCs never change except via ability score bonuses and feats. Which is of course the underlying mechanical problem with the entire DC system.
It is important to note that this interaction only occurs when word burning and metamagic spells mix together, and it's a real problem.
My group has a lawful neutral inquisitor of Asmodeus who picked up the blade after an excellent bit of roleplay with the caged devil. Given that he got the devil to sign a contract with him (A very asmodean act), I decided to let the negative level slide. He's on his way to lawful evil anyway, and Anvengen's edge is all the happier to be in the hands of a devout asmodeus worshiper. If it can shift him fully lawful evil? More's the better.
Now I'm just trying to think of ways to "Unlock" the power of the glaive, to keep it relevant as time passes.
Pick 1 spell for of each level you may cast. You may spontaneously cast these spells by sacrificing slots of equal or higher level. Whenever you gain access to a new level of spells, you immediately choose a new spell of that level for spell conversion.
This arcana allows a magus to choose his primary combat spells and spontaneously cast them, freeing a his spell preparation to utility and buff spells which can supplement the wizard's utility spells.
And he can with the magus?!? I'm sorry, but the magus needs to spend 3 rounds to buff up before wading into combat at that level too. Or do the smart thing and be a REALLY gimped wizard and cast BC spells. Which is what makes playing the magus and EK build so bloody frustrating. Your basically a gimped wizard till around level 8. Except the EK is less gimped.
My playtesting says otherwise. Then again, the guy playing this magus actually knows what he's doing when building melee casters.
So will your player continue to play the Magus or change back to Fighter/Mage?
Definitely sticking with the Magus. It currently functions far better than the Fighter 1 / Wizard 3 multiclass did. He's not missing entire combats anymore without rolling because he spent 3 rounds buffing before being capable of wading into melee.
I really really like where the Magus is going. I like its spell list for the most part, and I like its various abilities. I think the math itself needs tweaking, and spellstrike needs to land touch spells on touch AC even if a melee attack misses. There's some minor other issues with the arcana.
HOWEVER, the core concept of the class is solid gold and it plays damn well with a few tweaks in the CoT game I'm GMing. The fighter/mage player just converted to magus and is loving it.
The one free hand to cast thing actually does some very interesting things mechanically:
You can't really wear a shield. This is good, because it keeps you slightly behind fighter AC.
You can always choose to not cast and put a second hand on that weapon. Two handed combat is really really good to be able to do on demand, and makes power attack really attractive for this class.
Right now the primary problem with the class is spell combat's -4 is just too much and spellstrike is too inflexible. -2 would probably fix a horde of the class's problems.
Secondary issues are the distinct lack of awesome in the Magus Arcana, but even Jason is asking for more arcana ideas at this point.
Tertiary issue is that the capstone "True Magus" ability is lackluster.
I am opposed to this by virtue of "Bookkeeping sucks".
Magus is already a prepared spellcaster, and by virtue of that they've got a hefty amount of stuff to track as is. I think most of the arcana concepts are fine, they just need a few uses per day tracks.
As it stands, I would much rather keep the Rogue talent feel of the Magus Arcana, rather than a ki-pool feel. Monk ki-pool works because they don't have a spells prepared list to track, and thus the player doesn't have to continually shuffle through papers and keep active totals.
GM Perspective: Council of Thieves: The Sixfold Trial
Party: Dwarf Inquisitor 4 (Asmodean worshipper, Fire domain), Human Wizard 4 (Generalist), Halfling Cleric 4 (Irori, Knowledge/Rune Domains), Human Magus 4 (Converted from Fighter 1 / Wizard 3)
One of my Council of Thieves players has converted his Fighter/Mage into a magus at level 4. He took Combat Casting, Arcane Strike, and Power Attack. (Human, 1st, and 3rd level feats)
He's currently wielding a +1 Bastard sword. I'm granting him the proficiency since he had been using a greatsword until this point. In the end it's an effective +1 damage from the longsword a magus has default proficiency with.
Character was actually rolled, so his stats are admittedly higher than most. The relevant ones being an 18 strength and a 15 (possibly 16 after leveling to 4) intelligence. I will get a character sheet copy from him sometime in the next few days. He has fairly high stats in con/dex as well (+2/+3), but that shouldn't effect how the class plays round to round but rather whether it can take a hit. Many of my players rolled fairly well in this game.
Series of Summaries of Battles
SPOILER ALERT for Council of Thieves:
We had ended the previous session after the party jumped into the cell block after room B5 in the Asmodean Knot. The inquisitor did a bang-up job of roleplaying his character and managed to completely outmaneuver the devil in the cell block, and I rewarded him with a rather fun weapon that many GM's of the series should agree belongs in the hands of an Asmodean Inquisitor!
They quickly continued on to the pool room with the magus in front. They opened the door and did not enter the room. (Cautious players. They know I tend to bump CR's up to keep them on their toes.) Cleric decides to throw a stone into the water, initiating combat with 3 lacedons and a lacedon ghast.
The magus is currently at the choke point, and the inquisitor is 5ft behind him with his shiny new reach weapon. The cleric is behind the inquisitor, and the wizard behind all of them. This being 5 ft corridors, the magus is plugging the gap. The magus immediately is paralyzed by a lucky shot from the ghast for two rounds. (This becomes a theme. I thoroughly beat the Magus down all day. Player loved the attention.) The Inquisitor, Cleric, and Wizard manage to decimate half the encounter in two rounds with his shiny new intelligent weapon that outright loves him and isn't forcing ego checks at all. (Match made in Avernus, I tell you.) The magus unparalyzes with a ghast still standing and two hand chops it into dust.
The players then manage to work their way down the slippery tunnel after the pool room via some quick use of knotted ropes, and end up doing the various "Phobia" rooms. Most of this is taken care of by the wizard and magus's store of burning hands scrolls (Considering we still had a wizard in the party I allowed him to keep scrolls he had made prior to conversion to keep conversion simple.) It's good to know what happens when a wizard and magus work together. And what happens is charred spider swarms, several burned snakes (Inquisitor with a reach weapon helped quite a bit there too), a decent amount of fried stirge, and several elementals cleaved in half by two handed bastard sword swings. Then again, the phobia chamber isn't exactly difficult.
They get their commune questions for beating the trials, and I give them the 5 word long answer version because yes/no questions suck and it's a storyline reward. They find out that "The outcast king" is the strongest monster in the knot, and that the outcast king guards the vault.
They then backtrack to the chain sphere floating over the infernal pit fiend engine room. Magus gets clipped by the chain sphere and grappled, and the party commences beating the sphere down. I made this more aggressive than it should have been because I want them to feel a little guilty come book 4. Anyway, the Inquisitor critically sundered it with the intelligent glaive, breaking the grapple, and the magus managed to get a shocking grasp/broadsword strike off on the thing, which more or less slagged it. A second shot from the inquisitor ended the fight.
The players then entered the heart of the knot. I run the heart of the knot a little differently, and this is relevant to how the Magus did his thing. I run the knot as a 16 story spiral staircase that loops back upon itself. IE, you can actually see floor 15 under floor 16, and floor 16 under floor 1. The catch is the spiral stairs never let you climb between levels. You end up back where you started. Hooray for the labyrinth physics of the asmodean knot. You have to jump between levels or use the doors on the level (which follow the layout of the map). Whenever anyone moves between levels, I roll for doors opening and closing.
So as you might imagine, this room is built to split the party between different floors. Imagine the scooby doo scenes where the party is running into and out of doors at varying places in a hallway and none of them make sense. This is what we're channeling. Eventually, the magus is carrying the halfling on his back to keep the healer near him, and the inquisitor and wizard who have been forcibly separated from the party are attempting to get back to their friends.
Which is when the tiefling assassin who has been plotting their demise strikes. She's invisible, and I've changed her feats a little and given her greater trip progression because I want to see if I can knock the halfling off the edge for fun. (He gets saves to hit the lip each level and the gravity doesn't accelerate nearly as fast as normal. I'm not trying to kill him, just split them up a bit because an assassin shadowdancer WOULD.) Anyway, she trips the magus and then opportunity attacks him. He's flatfooted so she gets a sneak attack in, punching a kidney for nearly half his HP in damage. The Cleric manages to catch the lip of the stairwell. Everyone rolls initiative.
The assassin wins intitiative, and stabs the magus in the other kidney. Oh, and he's failed his poison save and takes some strength damage. He's now sitting at 2 HP and is taking strength damage. However, the wizard and inquisitor know there's a fight on, as they're in the same room just 5 floors up (roughly 100 feet up). Inquisitor fires a crossbow at her and hits her (She's not expecting fire from that direction and is flat footed against it) The wizard looks at me, smiles, and says "I cast Blindness on her!" and I roll a 2. Wizard gets massive accolades from the entire table, and shouts at the assassin "If you're really nice, lady, I MIGHT dismiss that."
Magus stands up, as does cleric, smiles at me and says "I just got stabbed in both kidneys. Screw neutral good, I'm neutral PISSED-OFF. I spell combat a shocking grasp and slash her!" She's blind, so he naturally hits her low low AC after flat footedness, taking her from 10 damage to less than half of her 71 HP. Assassin takes attacks of opportunity from everyone as she chugs a gaseous form potion, and a round of combat later she's at 60 something damage. She manages to escape under the stairs, but the neutral pissed off magus walks across the floor and hard casts a scorching ray into her, which knocks her unconscious and sends her falling for 2d6 points of damage to the next floor and brings her to EXACTLY negative constitution. Cleric manages to stabilize her, and they spend an hour making sure she won't die and clapping her in manacles of cooperation. Unconscious target can have fun with no saving throw.
I say that in the hour they've managed to explore the crazy room enough to get a feel for it and just lay it out because there's no longer any reason to bog gameplay down with it since the encounter is clear. They then head to the waste pit with the water elemental. They almost fall down the stairs, but the wizard and magus prepared feather fall that morning. (I love having good players.)
The wizard uses the levitate wand he found earlier to levitate the inquisitor, who carries the cleric over the water. The Magus has boots of spider climbing and walks horizontally along the edge of the pool. The Wizard wisely stays at the mouth of the room far far away from danger. The water elemental strikes the inquisitor and cleric as they float towards the island with the symbol on it, and drags them into the filthy water. The Magus gets initiative and takes a flying two handed sword strike into the water from above, and does a fair bit of damage to the elemental since it's still above the water. The elemental activates a vortex and sucks down everyone except the Magus who reflex saves out. The Magus manages to swim to the island and unleash a scorching ray which the water elemental fails to drench. The cleric commands the elemental to "fall" more or less ending the whirlpool effect and the wizard finishes levitates both of them out of the water. A few more attacks go by, the Magus misses most of his, and the water elemental tries to knock them all back into the water. The wizard ends this one by hitting the pool with a shocking grasp once everyone is clear of the water.
The party decides to bunker down in the phobia room with the fairly friendly Imp, and takes a full night's rest. They know there's an alternate exit down here somewhere (and I had denied them the ability to retreat through the main doors because they'd had it too easy in the play. Like I said, they're good players. Gotta up the ante sometimes.)
They bypass the mummy encounter because the inquisitor is holding the glaive bearing its master's spirit. They coup de gras it to release the thing and finally head in to deal with the outcast king.
I heavily modified the outcast king, giving it the grab special ability with its tentacles and upgrading its longswords to bastard swords (Because my magus player is using bastard swords and no one is using longswords, and damned if the Inquisitor gets an intelligent weapon and the magus doesn't get squat.)
Anyway, the outcast king fight goes fairly well but it's here that I realize something is wrong with the Magus spellstrike ability. The wizard casts invisibility and enlarge person on the Magus (they know which room the outcast king is in from some very well worded communing with the imp). The magus opens the door but is invisible and manages to win initiative and get inside along with the Inquisitor (who it appears opened the door) before the mobs get to react. The mobs blast out of the water and assault the Inquisitor. My players being badasses, they think ahead and most of my attacks are turned aside by armor and protection from evil deflection bonuses. Over the course of this fight, which was rather involved, the Magus was going to run into a problem. He could not land a hit with spell combat. I realized this when he rolled a 12 and wouldn't have landed his attack by 4 or 5. Considering he's already having to defensive cast most turns to charge the strike, I was not happy with this. Until this point it hadn't been a real problem but the touch AC on this thing was 10. Shocking grasp is one of the spells that is designed to wreck this thing.
So I immediately houseruled that spellstrike will discharge the touch spell if the melee attack lands on touch, even if the weapon doesn't make it through. This immediately solved every major flow problem with the magus we'd been experiencing. Suddenly the magus consistently started putting out 12-25 damage per round depending on whether the spell landed, the melee weapon landed but the spell fizzled, or whether the spell and melee landed, or whether the spell and melee fizzle/missed or whether the entire thing crit and dear god something got liquified. (That poor lemure). The Inquisitor managed to killshot the thing with the intelligent weapon and I gave it an appropriately cinematic death, and then watched my players drool over the various awesome loot. Session ends.
So, 8 total combat encounters.
Ghasts: Magus got paralyzed early, but came back to do a decent bit of work at the end. They're ghasts, this happens. Other players get to shine.
Pyro/hemato/ophidio/arachnophobia: Magus does his thing and cuts things to shreds. Burns a bunch of scrolls of burning hands (CL4) but hey that's why the wizard made them.
The Assassin: Magus gets dropped from full HP (39) to 2 HP over the course of the surprise round and being beaten on initiative. However, once the Wizard blinds the assassin, the Magus gets his chance for GLORIOUS RETRIBUTION, temporarily shifts to Neutral-Pissed-Off, and drops the assassin all the way to exactly negative con from 60+hp in 3 rounds.
The Water Elemental: Magus gets an early hit in, and manages to spell combat a spell, but takes a few rounds to land a hit to deliver it. The rest of the party does a good amount of heavy lifting.
The Outcast King: With the entire party having more or less fully recovered minus some extreme ability damage, the outcast king presented a fairly rounded challenge to the party (6 attacks a round 3 of which are grab attacks will do that). All kinds of entertaining, and everyone definitely contributes to victory in this one. Magus would have been severely reduced in efficacy had I not spot-houseruled spellstrike as I did, though. He could not hit the outcast king's AC after spell combat. At least not reliably. Between spell resistance, a fair AC, and having to defensive cast, the Magus was not in for a fun fight by RAW.
Final Analysis, Thoughts, and Suggestions
I was surprised by how effective spell combat was on the casting side, but initially very unhappy with the performance of the melee side.
The player is not a new player and knows he could lose a spell or two during combat. Through more or less the entire Asmodean Knot the player lost very few (possibly none? I can't recall.) spells to defensively casting. He consciously chose to use only 1st level spells during defensive casting periods, to minimize the chance of failure. As a GM, I find this in line with what I expect from this class. The mechanics currently encourage you to only use spell combat with lower level spells such as shocking grasp. This is a good thing, and should stick around.
However, the -4 penalty to melee attacks definitely cramped the melee side of the character. At several points in the knot the character would cast a shocking grasp, channel through the weapon, hit touch AC but miss actual AC. Spellstrike is very clear that this would not trigger the resolution of the touch spell. I quickly came to the conclusion that this is a foundation level problem with the class.
I instituted a house rule shortly afterward that allowed the magus player to connect with a touch spell provided an attack cleared the target's touch AC. If the attack does not also clear the target's actual AC, the weapon portion of the damage does not resolve. This improved the flow of play significantly, normalizing the damage dealt to opponents, while allowing for fairly impressive "Spellstrike soft criticals" with some significant damage output. Both the player and I agreed that this improved the feel of the class significantly.
As far as flow of play, the one handed/open hand combat works extremely well when the player knows to shift to a two handed stance with power attack and has the strength to back it up on the damage front. Arcane bond significantly assists with relevant damage output at level four, as well. The ability to slap keen onto a weapon that is typically toting a touch spell around is downright terrifying. Power attacking, arcane striking, two handed shocking grasp imbued bastard sword critical hits end combats. Skip Puree, go straight to liquefy. The damage potential this class has on single targets is staggering.
The player expressed a fairly low opinion of the level 3 arcana choices, which I echo. The low level Magus does not have enough spell slots to use the arcane accuracy or spell shield arcana. Pretty much ever. Both of these arcana are awful and were awful when we saw their precursors in 3.5 in the form of feats. Silent and still magic do not have scaling uses per day which make them unattractive compared to the rogue talents and rage powers these seem intended to match. Broad study only appears relevant to characters that are either ridiculous or completely useless. (Casters do not multiclass well. Never have in 3.x and never will.) Concentrate is one use per day, which is pathetic, but having heard the horror stories of failed spell combat the player took it. Maneuver mastery seems to be the most versatile of the low level arcana and is the only one I currently think is worth taking, as it is a static bonus that doesn't require the expenditure of resources and does not have limited uses per day. Familiar could be worthwhile for roleplaying reasons or if someone really wants the alertness and skill focus aspects.
Current suggestions:
1) Combat casting is a feat tax for this class and one they must address. This feat should be included in the class in the same way that monks get Improved Unarmed Strike. Power attack and Arcane strike are also very feat tax-ish, but the class can function without them, where it absolutely breaks down without combat casting.
2) Spellstrike with touch spells rarely resolves when combined with spell combat due to the removal of touch AC from the touch based spell. Allowing touch based spells to resolve so long as the roll beats touch AC, and then adding the damage from weapon strike if the roll beats actual AC completely smooths magus damage output as far as our group is able to tell.
3) Spell combat's -4 penalty to melee is extremely debilitating. Spell combat should consider spells as a light weapon and begin with a -2 penalty to the attack rolls with the weapon in hand. Most combat based misses were very near misses, and this reduction puts magus attack rolls in line with two-weapon fighting rogues, and drives them to seek flanking positions to counter the penalty.
4) 3rd level arcana options are mostly terrible. Broad study is irrelevant to a pure magus. All of the metamagic options are terrible. Arcane Accuracy and Spell Shield exacerbate the magus's extremely limited casting due to bard progression. Concentrate is bad. Familiar and Maneuver Mastery appear useful on paper, but I haven't been able to test them. Adding a Combat Casting arcana in the same vein as the rogue's "Finesse Rogue" talent can solve the primary issue of the feat tax on this class and give a viable option for a 3rd level arcana. I have posted most of my suggestions for solutions to the Arcana issues in the Stickied arcana thread.
Spell combat simply needs to go from -4/-2 to -2/-2. Most of the misses I'm seeing when GMing are very slight misses. Make it 0/-2 at 8th, and 0/0 at 14th.
Basically I think the concentration penalty is fine where it is. I'm not seeing the level 4 magus in my game having any problem making his concentration checks with a +3 int modifier. It's attacks that are suffering. You can intentionally cast down a couple levels so that the concentration DC's go down. You cannot lower the enemy's ac very easily. The magus is missing a significant number of his attacks right now. -4 is just too much penalty on a character who already is on 3/4 BAB.
Facts: My attacks missed often, but my concentrations were at 100%. I did make poor spell choices for my list, but I also didn't know what I'd be facing at the start of the game day. Acid Arrow is great against casters and Magic Missile is good at distance. If I had the ability to convert spells into say, Shocking Grasp I would've done so almost every time. If I had medium armor then the shield spell would've been more than enough. With a low AC I felt encouraged to buff up, and it was unnecessary.
This is exactly what I've been seeing with the magus I'm GMing for as well. Smart play can completely mitigate the concentration problem. There is nothing that can be done about the -4 to attacks with spell combat, as modifying opponent AC is rather difficult as a magus.
My suggestions from the GM side are twofold:
First, reduce the melee attack penalty of spell combat to -2 as if the spell were a light off hand weapon during two-weapon fighting. Perhaps only for touch range spells.
Second, I've temporarily houseruled spellstrike and it's done absolute wonders for the flow of play for the magus. When spellstriking, I allow any hit that breaks touch ac to resolve the touch portion of the attack. This seems to normalize damage output to just under what I typically expect from a fighter on most rounds. Generally, the magus either succeeds on his concentration check but grazes touch ac with his sword, or fails concentration and lands his melee attack. Sometimes both will land, sometimes both will fail, but these are rare. Additionally, every once in a while the sword will crit while delivering a shocking grasp and everyone at the table will all gather round with baited breath to see how horribly the target is going to get liquified.
All in all, I think the class is spot on concept, and the math just needs tweaking along with some small changes.
I don't think the arcana system needs to change. Right now it is simple and functions much like the beautiful rogue talent system. Magus does not need a more complex bookkeeping system in addition to being a prepared spellcaster.
The top end ability is mathematically irrelevant though, which should be addressed before release.
I think the intent is to give access to an eldritch knight style of character from level 1 all the way through to level 20 without forcing a multiclass.
The class is certainly built for it, but right now the numbers don't work out very well. Spell combat needs its melee penalty reduced and spellstrike needs to allow touch spells to deliver even if it only hits touch AC with the weapon attack.
One new option, and some ideas on fixing some of the current ones:
Combat Concentration
Grants the magus Combat Casting as a bonus feat.
This is an analogue of the rogue talent "Finesse Rogue". It would delay effective spell combat by one level in exchange for a significant reduction in the feat taxes upon a level 1 magus, opening Arcane strike to all magi at level 1, rather than only to human magi.
Suggested modifications to current arcana:
Arcane Accuracy
The magus may sacrifice a spell as a free action to gain its intelligence modifier as a bonus to attack rolls for rounds equal to the level of the spell sacrificed. Attacks made while this effect is active are considered magical. Sacrificing cantrips in this way has no effect.
Spell Shield
The magus may sacrifice a spell as a immediate, free action to grant himself a shield bonus to AC equal to his intelligence modifier for a number of rounds equal to the level of the spell sacrificed. Sacrificing cantrips in this way has no effect.
These changes to Arcane Accuracy and spell shield allow them to perform their function without severely draining low level magi. They also give higher level magi a use for their lower level spells. Chaining the bonus to intelligence modifier alleviates the multi-ability-score dependancy of the class slightly by focusing on intelligence and making extremely high strength scores less necessary. Free action use also allows these abilities to see use in conjunction with arcane strike, where they otherwise would become a "One or the other" problem.
Concentrate
The magus automatically rerolls all failed concentration checks. A magus must be at least level 12 to select this arcana.
Concentrate does not alleviate the early level concentration problem at all with a single use per day. I think it'd be much better as a slippery mind analogue at level 12.
Silent Magic, Still Magic, Quickened Magic, Maximized Magic, Empowered Magic
Increase the number of uses per day for these arcana to once per day plus an additional use per day for every three magus levels above the minimum level the arcana is available for selection.
These arcana are terrible currently because they can only be used once per session. In kingmaker that might work well, in games like council of thieves it would put the magus into a 15 minute adventuring day. With this modification, a level 20 magus can spontaneously still/silent 6 spells per day, empower 5 spells per day, Maximize 3 spells per day, and quicken 2 spells per day. These do not seem out of line power wise. (In fact... They seem like really good ways for the metamagic system to work in general.)
One of my Council of Thieves players has converted his Fighter/Mage into a magus at level 4. He took Combat Casting, Arcane Strike, and Power Attack. (Human, 1st, and 3rd level feats)
He's currently wielding a +1 Bastard sword (I'm granting him the proficiency since he had been using a greatsword until this point. In the end it's an effective +1 damage from the longsword a magus defaults to proficiency in. This should not effect attack/casting rolls as compared to say, a longsword.)
Character was actually rolled, so his stats are admittedly higher than most. The relevant ones being an 18 strength and a 15 (possibly 16 after leveling to 4) intelligence.
I was surprised by how effective spell combat was on the casting side, but initially very unhappy with the performance of the melee side.
The player is not a new player, however, and knows he could lose a spell or two during combat. Through more or less the entire Asmodean Knot the player lost very few (possibly none?) spells to defensively casting. However, he consciously chose to use only 1st level spells during defensive casting periods, to minimize the chance of failure. As a GM, I find this in line with what I expect from this class. The mechanics currently encourage you to only use spell combat with lower level spells such as shocking grasp.
However, the -4 penalty to melee attacks definitely cramped the melee side of the character. At several points in the knot the character would cast a shocking grasp, channel through the weapon, hit touch AC but miss actual AC. Spellstrike is very clear that this would not trigger the resolution of the touch spell. I quickly came to the conclusion that this is a primary problem with the class.
I instituted a house rule shortly afterward that allowed the magus player to connect with a touch spell provided an attack cleared the target's touch AC. If the attack does not also clear the target's actual AC, the weapon portion of the damage does not resolve. This improved the flow of play significantly, normalizing the damage dealt to opponents, while allowing for fairly impressive "Spellstrike soft criticals" with some significant damage output. Both the player and I agreed that this improved the feel of the class significantly.
As far as flow of play, the one handed/open hand combat works extremely well when the player knows to shift to a two handed stance with power attack and has the strength to back it up on the damage front. Arcane bond significantly assists with relevant damage output at level four, as well. The ability to slap keen onto a weapon that is typically toting a touch spell around is downright terrifying. Power attacking, arcane striking, two handed shocking grasp imbued bastard sword critical hits end combats.
The player expressed a fairly low opinion of the level 3 arcana choices, which I echo. The low level Magus does not have enough spell slots to use the arcane accuracy or spell shield arcana. Pretty much ever. Both of these arcana are awful and were awful when we saw their precursors in 3.5 in the form of feats. Silent and still magic do not have scaling uses per day which make them unattractive compared to the rogue talents and rage powers these seem intended to match. Broad study only appears relevant to characters that are either ridiculous or completely useless. (Casters do not multiclass well. Never have in 3.x and never will.) Concentrate is one use per day, which is pathetic, but having heard the horror stories of failed spell combat the player took it. Maneuver mastery seems to be the most versatile of the low level arcana and is the only one I currently think is worth taking, as it is a static bonus that doesn't require the expenditure of resources and does not have limited uses per day. Familiar could be worthwhile for roleplaying reasons or if someone really wants the alertness and skill focus aspects.
Current suggestions:
1) Combat casting is a feat tax for this class and one they must address. This feat should be included in the class in the same way that monks get Improved Unarmed Strike. Power attack and Arcane strike are also very feat tax-ish, but the class can function without them, where it absolutely breaks down without combat casting.
2) Spellstrike with touch spells rarely resolves when combined with spell combat due to the removal of touch AC from the touch based spell. Allowing touch based spells to resolve so long as the roll beats touch AC, and then adding the damage from weapon strike if the roll beats actual AC completely smooths magus damage output as far as our group is able to tell.
3) Spell combat's -4 penalty to melee is extremely debilitating. Spell combat should consider spells as a light weapon and begin with a -2 penalty to the attack rolls with the weapon in hand. Most combat based misses were very near misses, and this reduction puts magus attack rolls in line with two-weapon fighting rogues, and drives them to seek flanking positions to counter the penalty.
4) 3rd level arcana options are mostly terrible. Broad study is irrelevant to a pure magus. All of the metamagic options are terrible. Arcane Accuracy and Spell Shield exacerbate the magus's extremely limited casting due to bard progression. Concentrate is bad. Familiar and Maneuver Mastery appear useful on paper, but I haven't been able to test them. Adding a Combat Casting arcana in the same vein as the rogue's "Finesse Rogue" talent can solve the primary issue of the feat tax on this class and give a viable option for a 3rd level arcana. I will address the issues with arcana in general in another thread.
Ah well that's too bad. Hope everything calms down for you man.
If we're not doing AoW tomorrow it would be good for me to know. I have friends in town and I would probably duck out and spend time with them. I should be cutting back on my gaming regardless, as I'm simply stretched far too thin at the moment between 3 campaigns, PFS, and the podcast productions.
Honestly, none of those spells seem too strong at all. Silence, like AMF, does not affect the person. It affects the sound they create, and so this basicly does nothing. Its not a spell that prevents someone from hearing. Its a spell that prevents the sonic waves from moving. You can make someone immune. It doesn't mean their sound is immune. Exactly the same as AMF with spells.
I would say wrong on both counts.
A PC in a silence area cannot cast. A PC immune to the silence can cast.
A party of PCs traveling in a selective silence is far too strong for a 3rd level spell.
And selective AMF is just beyond broken for any level of spell.
-James
You guys aren't even trying to break this. Consider the implications of selective sleet storm:
40 radius, 20 ft tall cylinder.
Within this cylinder, all creatures lose all sight (Including darkvision).
They are also balancing on the icy floor at a DC 10 acrobatics check. Failing by 5 or more knocks them prone. Unlike grease, they don't get a reflex save.
And since they're actively balancing, they are denied their dexterity modifiers. Unlike grease, the spell does not include the wording that removes the flat-footed modifier when standing still.
The best part? No saving throw, No spell resistance. This happens for rounds/level.
But you have a lesser selective metamagic rod on you, so four of your party members are immune to these effects.
So at level 5/6 you can easily grant total concealment to your allies and make all enemies flat-footed and require them to make acrobatics checks if they take damage with no adverse effects for up to four members of your party. All for the price of 3,000 GP.
Granted, this is a pure RAW interperetation. (Sleet storm is an Area spell, not a target/effect, it's actually an Area.) I'd never allow this to happen in my own house games... but as of right now this is a legal pathfinder society combination and quite easy to obtain.
On the selective spell / antimagic field subject... one interpretation is that the protection from the spell only applies to your allies, not the equipment they carry or spells active on them. So they themselves would be immune to the effects but none of their equipment and spells would be. If anything I would interpret this that they could still cast spells on themselves that had a duration of instantaneous (such as a cure spell or a paladin's lay on hands).
The other interpretation I would find of this is that a metamagic feat is a type of magical effect, therefore negated by the antimagic field. Though it makes sense for a metamagic effect to be considered magical it is actually not stated.
I think how it should work is much like immunity to magic works, and effect of the spell that allows for spell resistance they are immune to. Spell effects that do not allow spell resistance are typically physical effects that are simply propelled or instigated by magic.
My understanding is the antimagic field doesn't exist for the selected targets. (They're immune to the spell.)
Gear is generally considered part of the character for any effect that doesn't otherwise specify, so their gear is also unaffected.
However, this also means that if you cast fireball into the antimagic field, the people "immune" to the antimagic field are all capable of taking damage from it. Antimagic field only suppresses, it does not dispel, nor does it block line of effect. The fireball is still there, it just didn't have any effect within the antimagic field. The antimagic field is not in effect on the selected targets so as long as they're withing the radius of the fireball from the selected point on the map, they're getting hit.
This also means that selectively immune targets within an antimagic field are legal targets for every single spell in the book.
Does selective antimagic make a lot of monsters less scary? Yeah. But if you throw a mage at that party they're going to find out it's not an end all solution.
If I selective spell a sleet storm, do the people I make immune become capable of seeing through the sleet storm?
Of the normal vision blocking spells, sleet storm is the only one that actually is an area based spell that I've seen so far.
As far as I can tell the wording should make them treat the spell as if it wasn't there. Which doesn't make a lot of sense but does make sleet storm a REALLY good target for a selective metamagic rod.
You know, in reference to some of the spells that people are talking about, such as the varous cloud spells, the CLOUD is the effect, not what the cloud does to you. THe spell creates a cloud that blocks vision, it is the cloud not the effect of the spell that casues the lack of sight. So selecting somone to not be afected by any of the various cloud spells is useless.
The FIREBALL is the effect, not what the fireball does to you. The spell creates a ball of fire that burns your flesh, so selecting someone to not be affected by the ball of fire is useless.
I'm going to have to agree with this reasoning. Splitting that hair is not something you really should do with the magic system, as that will unleash a pandora's box.
However, cloud spells are emanations around a target and not an "Area of effect" spell. This prevents selective spell from working on them regardless.
Speaking in a strictly Rules-As-Written-(Or-Unwritten)-In-The-Core-Rulebook sense, correct. The only effect of an antimagic field is to suppress magic within its area of effect. It does absolutely nothing to prevent spellcasting within its area of effect, nor does it block line of effect, as long as the spell doesn't have to physically travel through the area of the field. A magic missile would wink out if it touched the field, but you could cast hold person on a target on the opposite side of a field from you just fine.
Or you could just stand in the middle of the field and cast hold person on someone outside the field, since it doesn't interfere with spellcasting.
Yes, that's entirely silly and obviously not Rules As Intended. It is, however, the way the rules are written (or more precisely, how the rules for antimagic in general don't exist, leaving us only the text of antimagic field to base those rules on).
I'm not sure the magic missile would wink out. I imagine it'd pass through and do nothing to anything within the antimagic field, but once the effect leaves the antimagic field it is no longer surpressed.
It specifically states the effects are not dispelled... so that nice green disintegration ray is surpressed within the antimagic field and doesn't interact with anything, but once it leaves the antimagic field it's back at full strength. (Which I like, as it lets you use the antimagic field to bypass cover.)
That also means that anyone who selectively AMF's themselves and their friends has put themselves in perfect fireball formation, as the fireball detonated inside the antimagic field only affects the people within radius that are unaffected by the antimagic field.
Send some mooks in to hold them down and let the artillery rain.
The game works fine either way. The rules as I see them state that Spring Attack and Vital Strike don't work together, but letting them work together is probably better for the game.
For now, though, the original ruling stands. (But I'll certainly be letting Spring Attack and Vital Strike work together in my personal games!)
so officially spring attack and Vital strike dont work together, but its not "the most borke thing evar" to let them work.
as for charging, as long as the extra damage isn't getting multiplied(since its above and beyond a weapons normal damage) its not the most broken tactic either. But RAW doesn't let it work
Actually, just below that quote he corrects himself:
James Jacobs wrote:
#1: You win the internet for today!
#2:Because it's a good tactic. And because when I'm developing an adventure, I go with my gut more often than a microexaminaiton of every single rule... because that's the only way to get APs out on a monthly schedule. And because, as I've mentioned above, letting Spring Attack and Vital Strike work together is cool.
Since you found precedence where the two feats work together in print, LET THAT BE THE LAW!
Vital Strike and Spring Attack were made to be together, after all. :-)
Emphasis mine. You only quoted half his post, where he was correcting himself.
I need to know what interpretation is correct and the only way the GM will be satisfied with any interpretation is if it comes from an official source.
Have you tried the "My interpretation is you're a jerk" and walking "official response"?
Don't take shadowdancer with this GM if you intend to play under this DM. Clearly he doesn't like the class.
Especially if he's making an argument based on being an English major. Hell, if anyone made that kind of argument to me as a DM I would stand up, pack up my stuff, and leave the game. Sometimes DMs need to be reminded that the players can always stop playing.
Also, you might consider responding with "That word, I don't think it means what you think it means...."
Well save DC's are based off of your casting trait. Maybe you'd enjoy the game more if you raised that up.
I'd enjoy the game more if the save DC system were consistent, in the same way that BAB is consistent. The save DC system is the only part of the game that wildly fluctuates and whenever someone brings up that it basically can't pace the save bonus progressions effectively people say "raise your ability scores". Magic items should not patch a flawed mathematical system. Fix the inherent problems in the math.
Wouldn't then, by that same logic, mean that you could get free Empower on a Quickened spell? I mean your paying 4 levels for quicken and Empower is only three levels of increase. Why not piggy back?
No. Empower and quicken specifically state a spell takes up a spell slot of 2 or 4 higher levels respectively. A heightened spell does not specify that one must actually increase the spell level to make a heightened spell. It simply states that for all intents and purposes the spell is treated as its heightened level. This is an important distinction. The other metamagic feats all use the term Levels higher than actual level.
Here we have competing definitions of heightened level.
1)The heightened level is equivalent to 1 effective level increment for each level raised through use of Heighten spell.
2)The spell's heightened level is the resulting level after all modifiers from metamagic or any similar effect is applied, regardless of order.
Option 1 leaves heighten spell rather useless when interacting with the metamagic feat system as a whole. Option 2 basically chains the spell save DC to the spell slot used, rather than the spell itself. It removes the whole concept of increasing the spell level incrementally from heighten spell ONLY, because heighten spell never actually STATES that you must increase the spell level. As written, you could put a "Heightened" acid splash into a 0 level spell slot and you would have no mechanical change.
This opens up an incredibly complex amount of choices to casters, who otherwise have little to no character customization options in the feats department that drastically change how the character plays. It is equivalent in effect on gameplay to Rapid Shot, Two-Weapon fighting, or Vital strike, as it opens up a slew of character customization options to arcane casters who effectively have little to no other way to differentiate themselves mechanically from Another_Wizard_01 besides a couple of "+1" feats in spell focus and spell penetration. The other metamagic feats attempt to accomplish variety in spellcasting, but fail. The lower DCs really make the use of metamagic feats (aside from quicken spell) a typically bad idea.
Even if the developers don't intend for heighten spell to be interpreted in the way option 2 presents, a feat that allows this activity should exist. It fixes the entirely broken metamagic system. Two-weapon fighting suffers similar mechanical penalties until the two-weapon fighting feat is taken. It almost fixes the extremely shaky save DC system. It makes a caster's remaining spell slots in a day consistently describe how many DC X, Y, and Z spells they can still cast before resting. That consistency is key. It allows DMs to more accurately gauge the status of the party's firepower in respect to upcoming encounters. That very much makes the DM's job during play. The consistent DCs also make the player's calculations during their action easier. In general, it speeds up combat by removing a large chunk of complex math from the metamagic calculation, and faster combat is good.
Quote:
Heighten spell is a metamagic that works pretty much exactly like any other metamagic feat. You get a benefit for expending the spell with a spell slot cost increase. The only differences between Heighten and the others is that a heightened spell becomes the level you increase it to for all purposes (which is the whole point of heighten spell) and that the spell slot cost increase is a variable value not static on Heighten.
Well, the bolded part is wrong. It works completely differently from every other metamagic feat. There is no specification anywhere in the feat of a +1 level for a +1 heightened level. You can certainly argue it's implied, but it's never stated. Every other metamagic feat uses a separate paragraph to specifically state the exact manner in which that feat interacts with spell levels. I think it makes just as much logical sense that the heightened level be the level of the spell slot that the spell currently occupies regardless of other modifiers. This should be a clarification errata regardless of which interpretation the devs intended. This interpretation is far more elegant and generates a much simpler rule than the common interpretation. If the devs want to clarify this all they need do is errata in the definition of "heightened level" as either option 1 or option 2. (Or an option 3 I'm not seeing, etc.) I hope that before they do so they play a little with both definitions, and more importantly design encounters under both definitions.
While the second definition is quite a bit more powerful, in my opinion it flat out plays better. Which as far as I'm concerned makes it how I'm going to play it from now on when I'm GMing. If I need to do a little mechanical tweaking to account for it I'll address that as it comes up.
Assuming the second option is not intended, and we're petitioning for an elegant change in the way the system works, I present the following argument: This change doesn't really effect encounters under CR 10, and those are the bulk of the encounters in the Bestiary. Would it affect older modules and adventure content? Yes, but all it's going to do is give a 10-25% higher chance of an arcane caster to be effective in encounters when he has a high level spell slot with a low level customized spell prepared in that slot. They still have to have the spell slots at the appropriate level for the DC, and the real cost of metamagic feats has never been the reduced DC but the fact that you're burning a slot for an empowered fireball that could easily have become a cone of cold if you had spent that feat elsewhere. You're not giving a caster a higher number of super-high DC spells in a day, you're just making sure he always has the same number of high DC spells each day. Consistency makes it easier to gauge a party's ability to deal with challenging fights and makes encounter CR adjustment to fit player skill much less difficult. This strengthens the CR system as a whole, which is good for DMs.
More importantly, it normalizes expected DCs at a given character level. Metamagic without heighten spell makes DCs for a given expenditure of spell slot resources unpredictable. That means that a player who specializes in metamagical alteration of spells can have a drastically different (and almost always lower) amount of high DC spells remaining after a single encounter of an equal CR than a caster who simply uses no metamagic feats. Interpreting heighten spell in the suggested way makes a player's ability to judge their need to rest far less complicated. "How many spells of level X or higher do I have left? If I do not feel I have enough high level spells to affect an even challenge encounter I should rest and recuperate my spells."
A caster who is spending feats to customize their spellcasting should not be forced to penalize themselves for wanting to make their low level spells more interesting. This interpretation does not allow a spell to increase its DC beyond an equivalent level spell, so as far as the monster's concerned there is no difference in the odds to save between the 9th level spell slot used to power a meteor swarm and the 9th level spell slot holding an empowered maximized heightened fireball. The fireball might do slightly more average damage (I think it's something like 11 damage), but they just spent 3 feats to do that. Is that really all that bad for the game?
Quote:
Heighten a level 1 spell to 2 then the cost is one level.
Heighten a level 2 spell to 7 then the cost is 5 levels.
If you heighten any spell to 9th level you cannot add any othe metamagic to the spell. It is a 9th level spell and you don't have spell slots bigger than that in Pathfinder.
This isn't actually the only correct answer. Again, this correct only if you're interpreting "heightened level" as option one. That may well be the intended definition. Option 2 is also currently a valid definition as it also presents a consistant and elegant solution. I also believe it simply makes for better play.
Quote:
Adding on free metamagic slot expenditures would be double dipping and nowhere in D&D Of PfRPG is there any examople of spell level increase cost being usable for two feats at the same time. Using that logic that means that as long as you quicken a spell for 4 level increase you would get stilled and empower for free too if you have them.
This is a misunderstanding of the interpretation that is being presented and I hope that I've cleared up the difference. All other metamagic feats explicitly describe how they alter the spell level of the spell. The heighten spell feat is extremely vauge about the way it effects spell level.
Quote:
Bypassing level dependant defenses and increasing save targets are enough.
In terms of this particular feat in a vacuum? Yes. In terms of system mechanics? No, it isn't. This isn't about whether heighten spell is good on its own. It is. The problem is the entirety of the other metamagic feats are BAD except for quicken spell and perhaps widen spell. Interpreting heighten spell in this way allows for a much smoother integration of the metamagic system into the casting system.
Quote:
Frankly I to answer the quote I would need to know what levels your campaigns usually play at? Heighten can be frighteningly effective at higher levels. (15+)
And the other metamagic feats can be frighteningly ineffective at higher levels. I have played casters at high levels (17+ into epic levels) in 3.5. You were lucky to get a saving throw to roll in your favor. Pathfinder has drastically reduced this problem because Mr. Bulmahn is rather good with his math, but IMO this is an incredible chance to overall normalize the interaction with the spellcasting system and make it far easier to design around in the future, before a second bestiary and the high level sections of another AP are published. This change basically means that all metamagic feats become equally effective on a spell whether it be a save based spell, a ranged touch, a melee touch, a no save spell, etc. It makes some very flavorful level 1 spells relevant at the end of the game.
In my opinion, if this the devs explain that this is not the intended use of the feat, they should add a feat that does accomplish this in some book. It will increase the longevity of the spell DC system by a huge amount, because it will allow you to better predict caster fatigue when designing adventure paths, modules, etc.
