I'm trying to understand the benefit of selecting the Arcane Focus Item feat in Dragon 358 page 86. It mentions that a wizard may spontaneously convert any spell per the metamagic guidelines 3 times per day. Cannot a wizard "spontaneously" select any viable spell for a metamagic feat anyway, as long as it meets the guidelines?
Does this mean that the way a metamagic feat works then is that a wizard must select ahead of time during the 8 hours of rest? I'm poring over the SRD, and I can't find anywhere that a wizard must select the spell to be enhanced ahead of time in this way, and I always assumed it can be chosen "spontaneously" during that precise moment, which would make the usefulness of this feat minimal.
I'm trying to understand the benefit of selecting the Arcane Focus Item feat in Dragon 358 page 86. It mentions that a wizard may spontaneously convert any spell per the metamagic guidelines 3 times per day. Cannot a wizard "spontaneously" select any viable spell for a metamagic feat anyway, as long as it meets the guidelines?
Does this mean that the way a metamagic feat works then is that a wizard must select ahead of time during the 8 hours of rest? I'm poring over the SRD, and I can't find anywhere that a wizard must select the spell to be enhanced ahead of time in this way, and I always assumed it can be chosen "spontaneously" during that precise moment, which would make the usefulness of this feat minimal.
Urm, a wizard cannot affect spells spontaneously, they must prepare them WITH the metamagic feats attached ... PHB, page 88:
" Wizards and divine spellcasters (clerics, druids, paladins and rangers) must prepare thier spells in advance. During preparation, the character chooses which spells to prepare with which metamagic feats (and thus which ones take up higher-level spell slots than normal). "
Frankly, the Arcane Focus feat sounds like it permits a wizard to emulate a sorceror's ability (3/day) to spontaneously apply a metamagic feat to a prepared spell. How it does this (as I do not have the issue at hand to reference) without converting a currently prepared spell of an appropriately higher spell level is a bit of rules text that was ... forgotten about it would seem.
Ah, I thought so. Thanks for the answer. I only had the SRD at hand and an oncoming flu.
So, the feat would be useful to a wizard.