Versatile Caster
You're great at applying metamagic to maximize the use of your weaker spells.
Prerequisite: Caster Level 1+
Benefit: Whenever applying metamagic to a spell that has a spell level lower than one fourth of your character level, up to one metamagic feat may be used as if the slot increase was one less, down to a minimum of zero.
For example, when a 4th level character applies Empower Spell to a 0th or 1st level spell, the spell takes up a slot only one level higher than it would normally. If the caster would apply Silent Spell instead, it would take up the spell slot it normally would.
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This was done for twin reasons: First off, because I like the idea of even low-level spells being useful at higher levels, and secondly because multiclassing spellcasters is generally a very bad idea, something this should somewhat change. Note that it is character level that determines the maximum spell level this can affect - this is intentional. It means that a Rogue 3/Wizard 1 can cast his spells silent, and that a Fighter 3/Wiz 1 gish can use still spell on all his spells. It feels that it COULD be to powerful - but on the other hand, it's still just a 1st level spell. At clevel 4, the most dangerous spells then ought to be something like True Strike, but it still doesn't feel worth it against most opponents.
Versatile Caster
Can you explain how for example your rogue 3 / wizard 1 gained the magical knowledge to do this?
Take for example practised spellcaster, where you get a maximum +3 increase in your effective caster level, making a rog3/wiz1 cast at a wiz4 level. I understand that casting magic each day makes you quite good at it. You take that idea a step further, my low level mage is still using magic AND besides focusing on his roguish skills he also made meta-magic easier for him.
Basically, this is broken. If a mage would take this feat he would be far superior than a mage who did not take this feat. And THAT is bad design.
Can you explain how for example your rogue 3 / wizard 1 gained the magical knowledge to do this?
Take for example practised spellcaster, where you get a maximum +3 increase in your effective caster level, making a rog3/wiz1 cast at a wiz4 level. I understand that casting magic each day makes you quite good at it. You take that idea a step further, my low level mage is still using magic AND besides focusing on his roguish skills he also made meta-magic easier for him. Versatile Caster
Well, that's a possible explanation.
Basically, this is broken. If a mage would take this feat he would be far superior than a mage who did not take this feat. And THAT is bad design.
I'm a bit afraid of that too, but even a 20th level mage can only use this on 5th level spells as the highest. Sure, he could get an empowered cone of cold at the same slot as a disintegrate - but still, most spells that are really powerful in the hands of a pure mage aren't very dependant on metamagic (apart from Extend Spell).
Maybe I should add Skill Focus (Spellcraft) as a prerequisite? It would partly lower its power a bit, and partly make more sense for the multiclasses since they've studied magic more than most multiclasses of the same level.
Well, that's a possible explanation.
I was being a bit sarcastic here, if your spending your days as a rogue you are not studying.
From the PRD:
Metamagic Mastery (Su): At 8th level, you can apply any one metamagic feat that you know to a spell you are about to cast. This does not alter the level of the spell or the casting time. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level and one additional time per day for every two wizard levels you possess beyond 8th. 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. Even though this ability does not modify the spell's actual level, you cannot use this ability to cast a spell whose modified spell level would be above the level of the highest-level spell that you are capable of casting.
I feel you are stepping on the toes of metamagic mastery here, your focus on providing a multi-class solution affects other parts of the system.
Maybe the real question is: why should your feat exist?
Well, that's a possible explanation.I was being a bit sarcastic here, if your spending your days as a rogue you are not studying.
Well, he can still become a better mage in other aspects as his rogue level increases. He can put ranks into spellcraft, take Spell Focus feats and the like.
I feel you are stepping on the toes of metamagic mastery here, your focus on providing a multi-class solution affects other parts of the system.
That however is far stronger since you can use it on higher level spells. Also, it's only available to a single school of a single class. Note that they can be used together too, so the generalist might have an even bigger reason to take the feat.
Maybe the real question is: why should your feat exist?
Because I like the feel of the wizard/rogue turning invisible without having to speak loudly. and for mages I think that the lower-level spells become more and more useless at higher levels. Also, multiclassing casters is right now worthless under most any circumstances.
Maybe the real question is: why should your feat exist?Because I like the feel of the wizard/rogue turning invisible without having to speak loudly. and for mages I think that the lower-level spells become more and more useless at higher levels. Also, multiclassing casters is right now worthless under most any circumstances.
Yes, focus has its benefits and multiclassing has its consequences.
Ofcourse, a rogue/wizard could still do what you propose, casting a silent invisibility, but that would require taking more levels in wizard (5 to be exact).
The utility spells remain effective and useful but the damage dealing spells, yup you are right.
What I am getting from this discussion that your main problem is with the cost of multiclassing and you are looking for ways to upgrade your rog/wiz through abilities / feats. I can understand that, but your proposed feat is not really the solution as it breaks the meta-magic rules. Have you looked into the sudden metamagic feats? Those would allow you to once per day cast a silent spell (quoting from memory here).
Maybe it would be better if you create a chain of related feats that by buying into them allow you for more and more metamagic coolness.
For example: rapid silence (once per day you can apply a silent meta magic to a spell) if you also have 'no hands' you can use both feats twice a day. etc etc.
To add on the feat-tree concept: it is probably best to use the following scheme
1 rapid meta magic feat = 1 use
2 rapid meta magic feats = 2 uses + 1 of player choice (for example another rapid silence or rapid still)
3 rapid meta magic feats = 3 uses + 2
etc etc
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The answer to this conundrum is the Arcane Trickster prestige class. You retain a lot of the things that make you a rogue while still mostly advancing your caster level and allowing you to cast things like silent invisibility without much difficulty. A feat that did something like what the OP described would be horribly overpowered, even for pure wizards. Allowing it to key off your CHARACTER level is just insane.
The answer to this conundrum is the Arcane Trickster prestige class. You retain a lot of the things that make you a rogue while still mostly advancing your caster level and allowing you to cast things like silent invisibility without much difficulty. A feat that did something like what the OP described would be horribly overpowered, even for pure wizards. Allowing it to key off your CHARACTER level is just insane.
That would be the easiest answer.
text in previous post about the fluff
I just got what you meant about how does he become better at spellcasting by training as a rogue - is it correct that your objection was to the "one fourth character level" part? That a character shouldn't automatically become better at spellcasting through non-class levels alone? In that case, you have a good point and I agree with you in that.
That could easily be solved though, by tying it to Spellcraft ranks instead of character level. It makes more sense.
Yes, focus has its benefits and multiclassing has its consequences.
Of course it has. I simply think that multiclassing is worthless for casters, from anything but a fluff perspective.
This also goes for, for example, sorcerer/wizards or wizard/clerics or anything like that.The utility spells remain effective and useful but the damage dealing spells, yup you are right.
I didn't get this sentence at all.
What I am getting from this discussion that your main problem is with the cost of multiclassing and you are looking for ways to upgrade your rog/wiz through abilities / feats. I can understand that, but your proposed feat is not really the solution as it breaks the meta-magic rules. Have you looked into the sudden metamagic feats? Those would allow you to once per day cast a silent spell (quoting from memory here).
What do you mean breaks the rules? It's homebrew, what we're doing is making rules. And I'm not looking for just ways to upgrade my rogue/wizard - that was hypothetical experiment. I want more versatility in spellcasting, and right now, metamagic is an underused resource as they generally are extremely situational. Most metamagic feats are more or less useless, simply because they aren't worth the higher level slots (an obvious exception being Extend Spell, which is really powerful).
Oh, and on Sudden Metamagic - they still can't increase level over maximum castable level. Otherwise they are quite nice.
Maybe it would be better if you create a chain of related feats that by buying into them allow you for more and more metamagic coolness.
For example: rapid silence (once per day you can apply a silent meta magic to a spell) if you also have 'no hands' you can use both feats twice a day. etc etc.
I thought about making it into a feat chain, but my problem with this is that it more or less already is, and the feat cost could easily become to high.
Take a fifth-level wizard. If he wanted the choice between extend spell and widen spell for his first level spells in this fashion, he would need Versatile Caster, Widen Spell, and Extend Spell. If the aforementioned requirement of Focus (Spellcraft) is added, it's four feats.The answer to this conundrum is the Arcane Trickster prestige class. You retain a lot of the things that make you a rogue while still mostly advancing your caster level and allowing you to cast things like silent invisibility without much difficulty. A feat that did something like what the OP described would be horribly overpowered, even for pure wizards. Allowing it to key off your CHARACTER level is just insane.
Yes, but it's a whole class just for addressing a single of the problematic combinations. A barbarian/druid, barbarian/bard, cleric/rogue and sorcerer/monk would all face the same problem of being worthless options and have no suitable PrCs. Also, I as a DM simply do not like PrC's, and neither does my players seem to keen on using them. Also, they come with a lot of powers that are usually very strict.
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What about this revision?
Versatile Caster
You're great at applying metamagic to maximize the use of your weaker spells.
Prerequisite: Caster Level 1+, Skill Focus (Spellcraft)
Benefit: Whenever applying metamagic to a spell that has a spell level lower than one fourth of spellcraft ranks (round down), up to one metamagic feat may be used as if the slot increase was one less, down to a minimum of zero.
For example, when a character with 4 ranks in spellcraft applies Empower Spell to a 0th or 1st level spell, the spell takes up a slot only one level higher than it would normally. If the caster would apply Silent Spell instead, it would take up the spell slot it normally would.
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With or without revision, the feat still contains a critical flaw: Why wouldn't a character take this? A pure wizard with this feat could silence, still, or heighten (by 1 level) any of his 5th level or lower spells absolutely free at 20th level. That's pretty huge and any spellcaster would be stupid not to take this feat, especially if it stacks with the generalist wizard's special ability.
Rule #1 of feat design is that a feat should never be so good as to make it practically guaranteed for a given class.
With or without revision, the feat still contains a critical flaw: Why wouldn't a character take this? A pure wizard with this feat could silence, still, or heighten (by 1 level) any of his 5th level or lower spells absolutely free at 20th level. That's pretty huge and any spellcaster would be stupid not to take this feat, especially if it stacks with the generalist wizard's special ability.
Rule #1 of feat design is that a feat should never be so good as to make it practically guaranteed for a given class.
+1 to the above comment.
I understand what you are trying to do, but your execution is faulty, it is still too good.
I thought about making it into a feat chain, but my problem with this is that it more or less already is, and the feat cost could easily become to high.
Feats are a currency that needs to be spent, so why not on the above?
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I thought about making it into a feat chain, but my problem with this is that it more or less already is, and the feat cost could easily become to high.
Feats are a currency that needs to be spent, so why not on the above?
Feats that are THAT good need to have a "sacrifice" involved. Some sub-optimal feat that must be taken in order to gain access to the "super-awesome" feat.
Skill Focus (Spellcraft) is a good start, but I would probably add "any three metamagic feats" to the requirements as well. You need to prove that you understand the art and practice of metamagic before you can suddenly excel at it. Now you need FIVE feats to acquire this awesome ability (which you probably only wanted in order to use Still Spell and Silent Spell anyway). Wizards would qualify for this easier by dint of getting the bonus feats every 5 levels, but it wouldn't be too difficult for other spellcasting classes either. Half-elves could even get the Skill Focus for free. :)
Rule #1 of feat design is that a feat should never be so good as to make it practically guaranteed for a given class.
Absolutely free? He'd have to spend FIVE feats do this - and the only one who would be high priority else would be Extend Spell. Silent spell is interesting too, but so situational you might as well get it on a rod.
I think the hands-down most useful metamagic feat is extend spell, and at 20th level that would mean that by spending 3 feats you'd get all your spells level 5 and lower extended for free. Still, they're only level 5 spells as the strongest. The most powerful things that would get this is probably Wall of Force, but the number of times where a 4 minute duration will make the day compared to a two minute isn't too often.
On the other hand, wizards do gain a lot of bonus feats towards metamagic and item creation and they have to be spent on something so you might have a good point when it comes to wizards.
And generalist wizards getting an extra boon over other schools isn't so bad, since they are currently not exactly a good choice compared to Illusion, Conjuration or Transmutation.
Maybe change them into two feats - one which affects spell level 3 as the highest (though still 1/4 spellcraft rank - so maxes out at level 12) and one that allows up to 5th level?
I thought about making it into a feat chain, but my problem with this is that it more or less already is, and the feat cost could easily become to high.
Feats are a currency that needs to be spent, so why not on the above?
Because making a subchain to a chain might make it too costly for anyone to even consider. Metamagic isn't powerful as it is, rather it's quite weak.
Feats that are THAT good need to have a "sacrifice" involved. Some sub-optimal feat that must be taken in order to gain access to the "super-awesome" feat.
In your example with silent, still and heighten spell, you spend 3 feats on normally suboptimal choices - still spell and silent spell, as well as skill focus. For what benefit? In most cases, just +1 to the DC of spells that already have crappy DC's.
I think stringburka should just use my little scheme of adding sudden/rapid metamagic feats together, by adding addtional sudden/rapid feats his character shows the commitment required while still limiting the uses per day.
Basically he needs to scrap the work as is and restart.
I thought about making it into a feat chain, but my problem with this is that it more or less already is, and the feat cost could easily become to high.
Feats are a currency that needs to be spent, so why not on the above?
Because making a subchain to a chain might make it too costly for anyone to even consider. Metamagic isn't powerful as it is, rather it's quite weak.
Yet, here you are, trying to make it really powerful. I am suspecting that the 'cost' is what you balk at, you are trying to make is so cheap that everyone 'must' take it.
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Metamagic isn't really as weak as you think it is. I think that might be the issue here. By level 20, the lower spell levels are mostly used for metamagics. For one 5th level slot, a wizard can have an empowered fireball. That's 15d6 damage. Not bad. A 2nd level slot gets him extended mage armor which lasts almost 2 whole days with one casting. A stilled shocking grasp, vampiric touch, or ghoul touch is an AWESOME way to deal with bothersome grapplers. How about extended fire shield? Extended haste? Silent charm person? Stilled dimension door to escape a grapple? Lower level spells do not lose their utility at higher levels, ESPECIALLY when metamagically-augmented.
I think stringburka should just use my little scheme of adding sudden/rapid metamagic feats together, by adding addtional sudden/rapid feats his character shows the commitment required while still limiting the uses per day.
Basically he needs to scrap the work as is and restart.
That might be the case, yes. It's probably better to rework sudden metamagic instead.
Metamagic isn't really as weak as you think it is. I think that might be the issue here. By level 20, the lower spell levels are mostly used for metamagics. For one 5th level slot, a wizard can have an empowered fireball. That's 15d6 damage. Not bad.
Dealing 15d6 with a (quite low-DC) reflex save allowed once per turn at level 20 IS quite bad. Even supposing the area compensates for allowing a reflex for half and being subject to SR and Fire Resistance (which I personally don't think it does), it's less than a good 10th-level fighter deals per turn as seen in the DPR olympics.
(Sure, that's against a CR10 opponent with less AC - but you see my point. At 20th level, 15d6 it's quite crappy).It WOULD be the best blast on a 4th level list - but that's mostly because 4th level doesn't more or less any blasts.
Still, there are many far more useful spells for spell level 4. Tentacles, Wall of Ice, Enervation, Dimension Door are all spells I'd MUCH rather memorize. If I knew I was going up against a lot of weaker buffoons (the only time Fireball would be useful) I'd still much rather take Confusion. Where Fireball is Save DC 13+Int or take 45 damage, Confusion is Save DC 14+Int or Die against large groups. Also, anyone who fail the save will hurt its friends too. Sure, they are circumstantial - but most days you'll want to fill your slots with some of these, and fireball is actually quite circumstantial too (there is ONE CR18+ enemy I'd use a fireball on - the Silver Dragon. And it's got a SR of somewhere around 30).
Now, I think the feat might be MUCH more powerful for spontaneous casters who are much more starved on spells. However, they also don't have as many feats to spare.
Not bad. A 2nd level slot gets him extended mage armor which lasts almost 2 whole days with one casting. A stilled shocking grasp, vampiric touch, or ghoul touch is an AWESOME way to deal with bothersome grapplers.
The difference between 20 hour armor for a first level spell or 40 hour armor for a first level spell is neglible - at level 20, you have the slots to cast that anyway. Yes, stilled touch spells are useful when being grappled (though IIRC they'd still provoke an attack of opportunity) but it's an EXTREMELY circumstantial case where the stilled ghoul touch will save the day. Especially since creatures good at grappling are generally creatures with good fortitude saves. And actually, I don't have a problem with that getting a small boost.
How about extended fire shield? Extended haste? Silent charm person? Stilled dimension door to escape a grapple? Lower level spells do not lose their utility at higher levels, ESPECIALLY when metamagically-augmented.
If we disregard the extended spells (as I've already stated that I agree that extend spell is good), what is left is silent charm person which I don't understand how it would be very powerful (I could see extra utility in a stilled and silent charm, as the person might not realize the guy's casting a spell, but only silent - why?), there is only the case of using the stilled dimension door. Yes, that is extremely useful, but still quite circumstantial. I don't really think that it will make such a big difference at level 16 and up, where this feat will make a difference.
I don't mean to say that it's a weak feat, I just don't think it's as powerful as you make it out to be. I can't see that many spells where it'd make that big a difference, because at high levels, the wizard will always have much more powerful tricks up his sleeve for most situations.