Heighten Spell and Other Metamagic Feats

[gniht]

isn't the shield spell sufficient to block magic missiles, regardless of what effective level the magic missile spell is boosted to?

[Ilja]

I do think Heighten Spell is pretty weak as a feat... But so is most other metamagic and feats designed for casters too.

It's kinda... Casters are strong as they come and so their feats are generally mediocre. Meanwhile, most of a melee characters power is in it's feats! Strip a caster of all their feats and they lose like 10% efficiency... Strip a barbarian and they lose like 40%.

But I think Heighten Spell is fully comparable in usefulness to Enlarge, Maximize, and Widen spell from the core, and many others from the splatbooks.

[Fabius Maximus]

Heighten Spell is very useful for spontaneous casters. It improves their versatility by keeping lower level spells viable. Glitterdust has already been mentioned, and Detect Thoughts or Charm Person are others.

[gniht]

Fabius Maximus wrote:

Heighten Spell is very useful for spontaneous casters. It improves their versatility by keeping lower level spells viable. Glitterdust has already been mentioned, and Detect Thoughts or Charm Person are others.

yeah... it still has uses for casters that prepare, but the very fact that it is a pre-req for preferred spell would seem to indicate it was intended more for spontaneous casting.