I am playing a Sorcerer with the Arcane bloodline. I am only level 2, but I have realized something. When I turn level 3 I will get a class ability that will give me a small benefit while casting a spell alongside a metamagic feat. I will get one at level 3 if I so choose (which I should so that I can make use of the class ability), I will probably choose Extend Spell, Silent Spell, or Still Spell.
However there is a problem. Sorcerers do not get a second level spell until they are level 4. So, I have to wait yet another level to make use of my feat and class ability. I suppose that I could use a metamagic feat on a 0-level spell, but Sorcerers can cast those as many times as they want so I do not see them being Extended. Silent and Still are not as likely, either.
The solution that I have come up with is to allow metamagic fets to be cast as a second spell at the same time when cast by a Spontaneous caster. The metamagic cost can be tacked on to the "main" spell or they can be cast sort of as a second spell.
The metamagic spell levels can be broken up in any way as long as they are either added to the spell directly or as a second spell.
Examples:
1) Level 1 spell and +1 slot can be cast as a level 2 spell or it can be cast as two level 1 spells.
2) Level 1 spell at +2 slots can be cast as a level 3 spell or it can be a level 1 spell and a level 2 spell. It cannot be three level 1 spells as it can only be “cast” as two spells.
3) Level 3 spell at +1 slot can be cast as a level 4 spell or it can be cast as a level 3 spell and a level 1 spell.
What do you think of this? Is it fair? I think it is, but perhaps people with more experience than I have can share with me.
Uh... You do realize that its perfectly legal to use bonus spell slots at higher levels to cast your lower level spells, including and especially those with metamagic attached, or am I wrong on that?
This is not a fair trade. As a general guideline, you can consider two spell slots of X level to be roughly worth one spell slot of X+1 level. (This isn't perfect, but it's reasonable enough.) Thus, a 4th level spell would be about two 3rd level spells. Your system would let me empower a scorching ray for two 2nd level slots, which is significantly too powerful.
Also, letting casters exceed the normal level cap is just a bad idea in general. Yes, that's a bad bloodline ability at low levels. As ShadowcatX said, there are a lot of bad bloodline abilities. If you want to fix it, change the ability, not the fundamental structure of metamagic.
And SquirmWyrm, what are you talking about? If I am a 3rd level Sorcerer with a 16 Charisma, that doesn't mean I have a 3rd level bonus spell slot for metamagic. That would be crazy.
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You can use your higher level spell slots to cast lower level spells, though you don't actually have bonus spell slots until you can cast spells of the appropriate levels if there was confusion on that.
You can metamagic your 0th level spells up to 1st. Extend works a bit better on a rod then as a feat.
To better facilitate giving out advice why don't you tell us more about your sorcerer? You've got the arcane bloodline but what kind of spells/etc do you enjoy casting a lot? If you take a lot of damage dealing spells Empower is a great meta-magic for a sorcerer but still isn't too useful until you've got 3rd level spell slots to empower things into.
There was something similar for the ultimate magus PrC back in 3.5. As a general rule allowing people to go over their highest spell level/caster level tends to go badly and is horrendously overpowered. At later levels the same character would have plenty of spell slots to burn his metamagic, and even heighten the spells he's already using if he didn't have any particularly useful metamagic at the time.
He has Magic Missile and Silent Image. I was just wondering what to do at level 3. This is my first Pathfinder character, as I just started playing. I played 3rd edition many years ago but I was not a spell caster and our party did not have any characters with metamagic feats.
He also has several 0-level spells. I saw another thread where the actual effects of Ghost Sound was debated. Was any official word ever made on that?
I played 2nd edition for about 10 years before that (since it came out in 1989). I am not new to D&D, but I am new to Pathfinder and I am finding some things seem to be odd at first. For example, the Arcane background for a Sorcerer. It is not a bad choice, but it has some weirdness at low level (abilities that have little value) but I am guessing it will be better later on. Part of me gets irked when characters get seemingly trivial abilities, but again I am understanding that it will be more useful later on.
That is why I bring it here. I do not have the experience that tells me "nuh-uh, this is not a good thing to change", it looked good written as above, but thanks to you I will not break my game by implementing it.
I used to play a lot of Mage/Thief characters, but the multiclassing is very different now. Back then it was, to be blunt, broken. The current method is pretty good, but can be odd. For example, a character that is level 19 in a class, then wants to take one level in a new class. That first level is very expensive indeed even though it is not all that much in comparison. Who cares if I am a level 1 mage now when I was a level 19 fighter?
But that brings up a whole new debate, based on "Class Worth" vs Experience Point Cost. The earlier editions had different classes pay more (or less) XP per level. The XP tables did not have any apparent logic that I could determine, however, as there was weirdness usually around levels 6-9 as the equations seemed to be pulled out of somewhere instead of simple mathematics.
It is probably better overall that the Character Level uses the same XP table, but multiclassing can be kind of messed up by it. There have been many times over the years that I have thought about just giving a percentage of a level instead of actual XP value. In effect, each level is worth 100 more point (with each percent being worth 1 XP).