Can someone explain to me what exactly this does? Reading the descriptive language for this metamagic feat is like trying to read arcane writings without having prepped Read Magic.
Is it saying if a spell normally does 4d6 damage it actually does 6d6 damage (half again as much)? Or what is it saying?
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This has been changed a few times. Currently, it works exactly like the 3.5 version, (which it should, otherwise it is an overcostly feat). So the total of a random dice roll is Empowered.
So 4d6, 4d6+4, 1d8+2, Empowered would all deal x1.5. A "random variable" is basically the dice roll (including other bonuses such as +1 per caster level. You use the total rolled, the apply the Empowered to that total.
For the 4d6 question, you simply roll the damage, then multiply it by 1.5, or add half of itself to itself.
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Can someone explain to me what exactly this does? Reading the descriptive language for this metamagic feat is like trying to read arcane writings without having prepped Read Magic.
Is it saying if a spell normally does 4d6 damage it actually does 6d6 damage (half again as much)? Or what is it saying?
Correct. And if the spell did 4d6 + 4, it would do 6d6 + 6. The reason they talk about "variable, numeric effects" is so that you can't empower a spell that causes a set amount of damage.
Would Empower Spell increase the size of the Create Demiplane (lesser)?
If not, which metamagic feat would?
Correct. And if the spell did 4d6 + 4, it would do 6d6 + 6. The reason they talk about "variable, numeric effects" is so that you can't empower a spell that causes a set amount of damage.Can someone explain to me what exactly this does? Reading the descriptive language for this metamagic feat is like trying to read arcane writings without having prepped Read Magic.
Is it saying if a spell normally does 4d6 damage it actually does 6d6 damage (half again as much)? Or what is it saying?
This raises another question though: does this basically translate to saying spells that are Maximized cannot also be Empowered?
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Widen Spell might (I haven't really looked at it) make Create Plane bigger.
You can both Empower and Maximize the same spell. In this case, because all Metamagic Feats work by themselves, not off of each other, would be a bt complicated.
Using the 4d6 example above, Maximize would make the original spell deal 24 damage. The you add the Empower. Using the roll aove, it was 14, right. So the Empowered portion is an extra 7 points of damage. 24 (maxed) + 4 (Emp) would mean the spell deals a total of 31 Damage.
Essenetually you are going to roll the 4d6 so that you can get the Empowered number. Once you have that, you just add that Empowred additional damage number to the Maximized Full damage. does that make sense? You DO NOT get to Maximized the Empowered extra damage, too, just the base spell portion.
I think that gets answered in the Maximize description.
An empowered, maximized spell gains the separate benefits of each feat: the maximum result plus half the normally rolled result.
So a 4d6+5 would do (if I did the math correctly which is always questionable) 4*6=24+5=29+(29/2=14)=43. For a total damage of 43, if I'm reading that right.
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The last part, dealing with the Empowred portion is incorrect, (unless they happened to have rolled max damage).
the portion that is (29/2=14). You actually need to roll the 4d6+5, and then your going to take half of that roll and add that to the maximized part of the spell (24+5). You only roll to find out what the Empowered portion is, then discard the roll.
For the record, it does not add dice. 4d6 does NOT become 6d6.
It's 4d6 to (4d6) x 1.5 Doing it the other way is NOT the intended method and may yield to different results.
The aforementioned examples, 4d6+4 and 1d8+2, would become (4d6+4) x 1.5 and (1d8+2) x 1.5, respectively.
If you were to get all average rolls (3.5 for a d6 and 4.5 for a d8) you would end up with (4d6+4) x 1.5 = 27 and (1d8+2) x 1.5 = 9 (you always round down).
Take the fire shield spell as another example. At CL 10th, it deal 1d6+10 fire damage to anyone striking you. That's a variable range of 11-16. When empowered, that range increases to 16-24.
Empower Spell doesn't have to be limited to damage either. It can be applies to things like Cure spells (to increase the amount of healing), Summoning spells (to increase the number of like creatures brought into being), or on Awaken (to increase the variable ability scores of the creature to be awakened).
I hope that helps.
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Think about it like this. The normal spell deals 4d6+5 damage.
The Maximized portion = 29. (no roll needed.)
The Empowered portion deals an extra half of . <16/2 = 8>
(A roll is needed just to find out what the extra half is for the Empowered portion only.)
So you take the extra Empowred 8 and add it to the Maximized normal spell 29, for a total of 37.
Note that because you will always need to roll for the Empowered portion (only), the final total will change. The Maximized 29 + whatever half of the rolled extra Empowered portion.
Beckett has it right. You can use Empower AND MAximize on the same spell, but their effects work independently of one another, off the base spell. Note that this is not necessarily true of other metamagic feats.
For example, Intensified Spell can add as much as 5 dice to a spell, meaning an intensified fireball could potentially deal 15d6 damage. An intensified maximized fireball would deal 90 damage as the two feats actually work off one another quite well.
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Just for the sake of arguement (clarification) let say you added a 3rd metamagc feat the let you cast the spell twice at the same time. Lets say its a ray spell, so the 3rd metamagic Feat would cause you to fire two rays instead of one like normal.
The Maximized AND Empowered Feats would only apply to the first ray (which is the normal version of the spell). All the Feats only affect the original spell by themselves.
So Ray #1 would be the above mentioned total of 37.
Ray #2 would not benefit from either Maximize or Empower, dealing just 4d6+5, (again which would be rolled).
Fortunately, there is no such feat in Pathfinder. However, if there were, then the effects of Maximize and Empower would effect the second version of the spell unless the Duplicated Spell feat said otherwise.
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No worries. That's honestly why I tend to like 3.5 over PF, it seems like 3.5 went more out of the way to explain how things are intended to work and give examples, while PF seems to want to leave things up in the air. Doesn't mean it's bad, just I wish they where much more clear with certain things. :)