The trait magical lineage is highly desirable for any class such as magus recasting a spell over and over with various metamagic feats. It reduces the metamagic increase by one.
Intensify lets you keep your lower level damage spells relevant into mid/high levels.
Empower adds half again the damage.
These have a +1 spell level and a +2 spell level cost respectively but they also stack.
Energy substitution is handy to make shocking grasp a acid grasp at +1 spell level.
Bear in mind that prepared casters need to do this in advance when they memorise spells.
Quicken is the daddy of action economy at high levels but comes at a hefty +4 spell levels.
Persistant and heighten share a job with persistant normally being better until casing spells like grease at level 17+ which you probably won't be doing too often.
Peircing is a dream for spontaineous castes but not as good as spell penetration and greater for prepared casters.
Echoing is good if your often recasting the same spell but has a high spell level increase.
The status effect metamagic feats can be powerful, toppling and dazing being among the best.
Spell perfection lets you become much more powerful at casting a single spell by applying free metamagic to it, if the spell is 5th level or lower you can cast it quickened free of charge every round if you wish too, a very powerful option for doubling up on damage spells or summoning spells.
So, mainly with magus in kind but any examples will do, can anyone show me any more examples of metamagic'd spells that end up being wirth the increased cost?thanks in advance!
Extend spell basically gets you 2 spells for the price of one higher, at least for those short duration spells (long ones often go too long, or at least longer than needed). This is great for those 1 min/level buffs that you would cast in preparation for a fight.
Selective Spell is incredibly useful. How many times have you had to hold back with a spell because friendlies are in the Area of Effect? Hostage situation? Close quarters fighting? Selective Spell is the solution to many problems.
Here are a few common staples:
Extend spell- Useful for increasing the duration. Primarily for buffs, things with 10min per caster level are much nicer when at Caster level 12 they last for 4 hours instead of 2. Very nice for buffs with a duration of 1hr as past level 12 they last all day, allows you to buff in the morning and never worry about it till the next day.
Quickened Spell - High cost, but fantastic return. At high levels the game becomes rocket launcher tag in so much that pretty killing because quite easy and dying is also easy. Casting two spells in a round becomes worth the cost in lots of situations.
Empower Spell - Not as powerful as Maximize spell but lower cost. Has much more payoff for spells like "1d8 + 1" CL. The 50% bonus contributes to the "+1" making the economy of scale work for it.
Maximize Spell - When playing super powered rocket tag each round is important. Maxing your spell damage in a round where a 2 more rounds is the difference between life and death is quite handy occasionally worth the cost.
Still spell - Sometimes you're grappled or tied up. Being able to cast without Somantic components has it's utility.
Silent spell - Silence spell is a pretty mean shutdown towards casters. This counters that.
Persistent Spell - Some spells do very very very mean things when something fails a saving throw. This doubles your odds.
Piercing-spell - Spell resistance is really nasty. Sometimes it's worth mitigating.
As with most Meta-magic it's not a good idea to apply it to every spell that you prepare, but preparing a few as a trick up your sleeve in case things get dicey is often a good idea especially if you have an idea of what you might face and can plan accordingly.
Meta-magic tends to favor non-prepared spell casters over prepared casters as once they pick up the feat they can apply it on the fly without dedicating spell slots for it. So if a sorcerer finds he needs quickened or maximized spells he can do so at his own discretion.
One of the best things to keep in mind about meta-magic is that Rods are your friend. The spell slot adjustment is a killer, but a rod mitigates the need to have the required feat and doesn't adjust the spell level. Staffs are handy as well as you can charge them with spells with applied meta-magic and use them at your discretion and recharge them in your off time.
For a Magi Spell perfection is where it's at, but if you go the hexcrafter archetype you can pick up the Prehensile Hair hex which allows your hair to manipulate object effectively giving you a 3rd hand to hold a meta-magic rod while still attacking and casting. If monsters as PCs work a Vanara also has a tail it can hold a meta-magic rod in.
Magi also benefits greatly from magical linage lowering meta-magic adjustment by 1 for a specific spell. Spell perfection is just super-fantastic.