| 5 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Question unclear. |
I think this has been asked before, since when I did search I found several posts that said it was asked & ruled upon, but I could not find the ruling:
1. Magical Lineage + 1st level spell + Merciful Spell = 0 level spell.
1a. 0 level spells are not expended when cast.
1b. A Merciful (Magical Lineage)1st level damaging spell does nonlethal damage, is a 0 level spell and is not expended when cast
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And people have made valid arguments saying that no, you can't put Magic Missle in cantrip slot since cantrips are special spell area. I can't really give you quote from rules since it requires lots of digging, but that seemed valid enough to me.
People would be spamming that build constantly otherwise.
its treated as having a spell level of 0. that is only for the purposes of determining DC or spell level related effects.
magical lineage does not change the spell slot where the spell is written or suddenly make all level 1 spells cantrips. you cast a level one spell as if it was of spell level 0, then it is expended from your level one spells. period.
That doesn't make any sense. Metamagic doesn't increase the DC's of spells (except Heighten Spell), it doesn't make sense to decrease the DC even if it's Merciful (even for balance...)
To me, it sounds like what your saying is I could do Quicken Spell in a level 1 slot and still use it as such.
A level one spell with meta magic is always at least level one.
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I don't believe it was intended that the slot a spell consumes when it is cast/expended (whether enhanced by meta or not) can be any lower than the level at which that spell is normally cast. The goal of magical lineage, IMHO, is to reduce the level penalty that the meta enhancement of a spell incurs when being cast. i.e. - a maximized spell only burns a spell slot of 2 levels higher than 3.
Or a quickened (+4) magic missle would only burn a 4th level spell instead of a 5th.
magical lineage should only be applied when the spell level modifier of the meta'd spell is +1 or higher. using it cheese on the few special case meta feats and the ones that are +0 and effectively drop the spell level be 1 is not the purpose behind the trait and should be errata'd to include that specification.
deleted earlier post as it didn't make sense and didn't relay my point.
| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
The goal of magical lineage, IMHO, would be to reduce the level penalty that the meta enhancement of a spell incurs when being cast.
I agree.
Instead of saying "treat its actual level as 1 lower" they should have said "reduce the spell slot adjustment by 1 (minimum 0)" or "treat its actual level as 1 lower, to a minimum of the spells original level."
People would be spamming that build constantly otherwise.
Not really. It'd be nice at level 1, but by mid-levels the action economy comes into play. I don't care if I can do it all day, most turns I'll want to do something stronger with my spellcasting action than do 1d4+1 nonlethal, up to 5x, depending on CL.
Definitely hitting FAQ on this thread, though.
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Aren't the Cantrips and Orisons their own separate mechanic, since there are no "zero level spell slots" you can't reduce a spell below 1st level?