First of all, I apologize if a similar thread is open elsewhere, but I was not able to find it anywhere. The only one was from Alpha 1 (I wrote there before realizing it, and I don't know if it's a post still active; if still active, I apologize for doubling my post).
My concerns regard the Universal Wizard abilities: specifically, can a Wizard with Metamagic Mastery apply a metamagic effect to a spell whose level would ordinarily be too high to gain the metamagic effect from his metamagic feat? A similar problem arose with the Divine Metamagic feat (from Complete Divine), which gave the possibilty to "burn" Turn Undead attempts to cast a metamagic spell without changing the spell slot, and the official answer from the FAQs was "YES", giving even an example of a 9th level cleric casting an Empowered Flame Strike with the feat - normally an 8th level spell !
This was obviously an horrible broken ability, and I hope this is not the case for Metamagic Mastery too (Universalists already have too many advantages, IMHO...).
Any official anwer ? I truly hope that a Wizard MUST still be able to spend the slot where the metamagic spell would go, but instead of spending it he uses the Metamagic Mastery feature. No 17th level Wizards who can cast Quickened Stilled Silent Time Stop (15th level spell), please !!!
According to the text he can only apply one metamagic feat at a time with this ability.
Hmmm, you have a point. I think you are right, in effect "any one metamagic feat" is a bit different from "any metamagic feat" (as I previously thought it was).
I don't think it is a problem in this case. A wizards must be 20th level and burn all his attempts(CL/2) for the day to apply one metamagic feat to a 9th level spell(1 base +9 lvl).
Well, the text says "any time you use this ability to apply a metamagic feat that increases the spell level by more than 1, you must use an additional daily usage for each level above 1 that THE FEAT ADDS to the spell", so it means (IMHO) that an increase of 1 spell level (such as Silent Spell or Still Spell) uses only one daily usage, an increase of 2 spell levels (such as Empower Spell) uses one extra daily usage (and so, two daily usages), and so forth. That is, a daily usage for every "skipped" spell slot increase, not for the "base" spell level (as in your example).
The problem is that some (splat) feats do the same thing (one for Clerics and Paladins - Divine Metamagic; the other for Bards - Metamagic Song), and the official answers for these feats are discordant at best: the Divine feat (from official FAQs) CAN improve a spell even above the normal spell slot allotments of the character (and so, a 9th level Cleric can Empower or Quicken a Flame Strike, making it a 7th or 9th level spell even without acces to those spell slots at the mentioned level - a truly broken thing, if you ask me...), while the Bardic one (from the description of the feat itself) CANNOT improve it (if you want to Empower a Hideous Laughter - a 1st level spell for a Bard - , you must be at least of 7th level - which is , capable to fill a 3rd level spell slot).
I would truly like to know which is the case for our Universal Wizard.
For game balance, I do truly hope it is the latter case...
I don't think it's going to be as much of an issue as Divine Metamagic, mostly because it'll have far fewer uses.
You get Metamagic Mastery at 8th level, for a total of four uses per day. A 1st level cleric can have more Turn Undead attempts than that.
Sure, you can blow them all on a quickened 4th level spell, being able to cast it as a 4th level spell instead of the regular 8th level, but that's the only time that day that you'll be using the ability.
It's also not as easy to increase your wizard caster level. In fact, it's impossible without leveling. Meanwhile, 3.5 Turn Undead attempts can be increased by taking the Extra Turning feat and by increasing Cha.