You are correct.
Intensify spell increases the effect level cap of a spell. So, using your example of Snowball, its normal cap is 1d6 per level (maximum 5d6). An intensified Snowball is 1d6 per level (maximum 10d6).
Let's say you're powerful enough to cast a 7th level spell for your empowered, intensified, maximised snowball. That makes you a 13th level wizard.
You'll end up with the following:
Intensified: 10d6 damage.
Maximised: 60 points of damage.
Empowered: +5d6 damage.
IIRC, empowered is not maximised by maximise, so you have a 7th level spell that does 60+5d6 damage.
Another example, just to complete the story: intensified, empowered, maximised fireball (9th level spell slot), cast by a 17th level wizard.
Intensified: 15d6 damage.
Maximised: 90 points of damage.
Empowered: +7d6 damage.
So, you have a spell that does 90+7d6 damage, takes a 9th level spell slot, and has a save DC of a 3rd level spell.
Maximize spell is a stronger version of empower spell. It overrides the lesser feat, not stacks with it, so at best, you're stacking on pointless level tax to your spell.
Do you have a source for that, Shadowmage? I can't find anything in the feat descriptions that suggests they can't both be applied.
In fact:
An empowered, maximized spell gains the separate benefits of each feat: the maximum result plus half the normally rolled result.
It's not explicitly written anywhere, but there's an implied order of operations for these metamagic feats, which you get from knowing that maximise and empower both function, with empower tagged on after the spell is maximised.
So, you're maximising the spell. This causes the dice rolled to have their maximum result. You're rolling the dice for an intensified spell. So the maximised, intensified snowball does 60 (max of 10d6).
Thanks to the feat description of maximise spell, we know that empowered, maximised spells are both maximised and then empowered. Empowered on 10d6 is +5d6. Which leads me to the result of 60+5d6.
Innocent question from the side line:
The 'empower' part does +50% damage. If the spell damage is rolled in the first place, IIRC you don't roll 50% more dice, you just add 50% to the spell total. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please; I think Empower was clarified that way, including empowering non-variable damage).
In case of an maximized empowered Fireball, the empowered section will have to be rolled separately, for 50% of the expected damage.
Would those be (10/2) d6)?, like Chemlak stated?
Or, shouldn't it be (10d6) /2, instead?
weapon focus(ranged touch spell), or
weapon focus(touch spell)
weapon focus(ray), or
point-blank shot
although, the first two I don't have PF sources on...
Would those be (10/2) d6)?, like Chemlak stated?
Or, shouldn't it be (10d6) /2, instead?
I think it's technically (10d6)/2
but most(many? some? I?) just use 5d6 to limit the math.
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I'm pretty sure that you can take 'Weapon Focus (rays)' to add +1 to ranged touch spells that have 'ray' in their description, such as scorching ray or enervation, but bear in mind that a lot of ranged touch spells, like acid arrow and snowball, are pretty much arbitrarily not 'rays' despite functioning exactly like them mechanically, so, as far as I know, there is no way to increase the accuracy of those spells except by increasing your ranged touch attack by raising Dexterity, BAB or wearing bracers of falcon's aim or something.
Although a rod that worked like an atlatl and gave a +2 attack bonus for throwing spell projectiles like snowballs and acid arrows could be a fun custom item, I suppose. Or one that added a 'homing' property to a thrown spell 'projectile' of that sort, so that if it missed, the missile swooped around and made one more attack the following round at the same attack roll, before dissipating.
Edit: Also Point-Blank Shot, as mentioned above (and, in the end, Precise Shot tends to become a necessity, eventually). Good catch!
would weapon focus (ray really help work? snowball and fireball are not rays and where can i get the top two wepon focus
Fireball has no attack roll under normal circumstances. And yesno; weapon focus(ray) would only work for rays.
WF(touch spell) and WF(ranged touch spell) were mentioned in 3.5 complete arcane or complete mage(not sure which). I allow them in my games.
Point blank shot works with all ranged attacks and stacks with weapon focus. Weapon focus would not stack with it self(eg. WF(ray)+WF(ranged touch spell) would still only give +1)
You can increase the power of your spells, causing them to deal more damage.
Benefit: All variable, numeric effects of an empowered spell are increased by half, including bonuses to those dice rolls.
Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor are spells without random variables. An empowered spell uses up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell’s actual level.
Your spells can go beyond several normal limitations.
Benefit: An intensified spell increases the maximum number of damage dice by 5 levels. You must actually have sufficient caster levels to surpass the maximum in order to benefit from this feat. No other variables of the spell are affected, and spells that inflict damage that is not modified by caster level are not affected by this feat. An intensified spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Your spells have the maximum possible effect.
Benefit: All variable, numeric effects of a spell modified by this feat are maximized. Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor are spells without random variables. A maximized spell uses up a spell slot three levels higher than the spell's actual level.
An empowered, maximized spell gains the separate benefits of each feat: the maximum result plus half the normally rolled result.
All Intensified does is increase the dice cap of a spell's damage.
Empower adds 50% to whatever dice the spell rolls.Maximise maximises the roll, but does not maximise the empowered element.
Effectively, you are still rolling the dice for a maximised spell, but the result is ignored and the maximum possible roll is used. If the spell is also empowered, the result of the roll is increased by 50%, and the difference between that and the actual amount rolled is added.
This makes for some truly horrible expressions.
Our Snowball does:
10d6x1.5 - (the result of the 10d6) + 60. Short handing that becomes 60+10d6/2. Many people will just roll 60+5d6 for simplicity.
The fireball is far worse:
15d6x1.5 - (the result of the 15d6) + 90. Shorthand, that becomes 90+15d6/2. You could roll 90+7d6+1d3 for simplicity, although this increases the minimum damage from 97 (which it should be) to 98.
Thank you, everyone, for pointing out the flaws I'd made earlier.
I would have thought that an empowered, maximized, intensified, snowball would get you:
5d6 of base damage, which is then maximized, so 30 points.
5d6 of extra damage from intensified spell.
5d6/2 of extra damage from empowered spell.
This.
Each metamagic operates on the base spell, not the metamagic'd spell. Maximize on 5d6 is 30. Empower adds 50% of 5d6. Intensify adds 5d6 more (crazy strong feat there - this used to be a +4 Epic metamagic).
30 + 5d6 + 5d6/2
or
30 + 1.5 * 5d6 (technically not the same 5d6, but you could roll those once and multiply by 1.5)
I would have thought that an empowered, maximized, intensified, snowball would get you:
5d6 of base damage, which is then maximized, so 30 points.
5d6 of extra damage from intensified spell.
5d6/2 of extra damage from empowered spell.
This.
Each metamagic operates on the base spell, not the metamagic'd spell. Maximize on 5d6 is 30. Empower adds 50% of 5d6. Intensify adds 5d6 more (crazy strong feat there - this used to be a +4 Epic metamagic).
30 + 5d6 + 5d6/2
or
30 + 1.5 * 5d6 (technically not the same 5d6, but you could roll those once and mrultiply by 1.5)
I don't think. Intensify spell increase the level based limit of damage by 5 levels. So it would be 10d6x0.5+60.
I don't think. Intensify spell increase the level based limit of damage by 5 levels. So it would be 10d6x0.5+60.30 + 5d6 + 5d6/2
or
30 + 1.5 * 5d6 (technically not the same 5d6, but you could roll those once and multiply by 1.5)
I don't agree, but whether the language on empower + maximize should be generalized for all damage dealing metamagics from non-Core books is a decade-long debate.
Intensify is simply too good. The worst possible benefit (improving a 15-dice spell to 20-dice) is still a 33% improvement for a single spell level increase. That's a third (33%) more efficient than empower spell. With a 5-dice spell, it's 300% more efficient than empower spell.
Maximize and Empower are not new feats to the D&D world. This exact dilemma has been discussed and FAQ'd many times.
I may go searching for the posts in which they were answered, but I can verify that Chemlak's interpretation is the accepted one.
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At 10th level an intensified Snowball is 10d6
A Maximized Snowball is 60 damage
A Maximized Empowered Snowball is 60 + 5d6
Intensify is adjusting the maximum base damage of the spell, not adding bonus dice the way Empower does.
That would mean that Intensifing the Max. Emp. spell increases your damage by 38 on average, compared with an increase of 13-14 if you Intensify a standard version.
Yeah something tells me that you can't triple the power of the feat this way. The precedent set by Empower and Maximize most likely holds true here. Applying all three feats most likely gets you 30 +5d6 + 0.5(5d6)
Maximize calls out Empower, it does not call out Intensify.
To apply all three feats to a 1st level spell, your using a 7th level spell slot. Not only is it not overpowered, your doing significantly less damage than you would with disintegrate, a 6th level spell.
I don't agree, but whether the language on empower + maximize should be generalized for all damage dealing metamagics from non-Core books is a decade-long debate.
Sure, but it's pretty specific to those two. So I'm simply saying that unless stated otherwise you apply in the best possible order. I thought that there was a rule about it, I didn't found, maybe a memory of 3.x?
Intensify is simply too good. The worst possible benefit (improving a 15-dice spell to 20-dice) is still a 33% improvement for a single spell level increase. That's a third (33%) more efficient than empower spell. With a 5-dice spell, it's 300% more efficient than empower spell.
Sorry, but I think I can't follow you. Intensify from 15 to 20 dice add a 25% to damage, while an empowered add 7.5 dice, 50%. For a 5 dice spell, Intensify add 100%, while empower add 50%, making Intensify 25% better than empower with 5 dice spells, but 25% worse in 15 dice spells. Intensify is really powerful and good, but it affect only damage, empower raise ANY variable effect. 1 slot of difference for higher versatility.
Guys, i'm bolding this becouse i think is important that people realize this
The only metamagic feats that explicitly don't interact between them are maximized and empowered. Every other combination works
This is evident since maximize spell calls out this specific interaction with empower, where everything else does not.
Guys, i'm bolding this becouse i think is important that people realize this
The only metamagic feats that explicitly don't interact between them are maximized and empowered. Every other combination works
This is evident since maximize spell calls out this specific interaction with empower, where everything else does not.
But isn't empower spell the only CRB feat that increases variable values, and thereby could interact with maximize spell. It doesn't seem fair to expect a CRB feat to mention (all) feats from other (future) books.
It could just as well set a precedence for what is maximized: ie. only the variable values from the un-metamagicked spell.
The CRB are on many occasions very specific to CRB material, where a more general principle behind the ruling could help future questions, but doing so is a balancing between incomprehensible (but perhaps technically very clear) legal texts and a game's rules, which is supposed to be readable by normal people of varying ages.
At least that is how I see RAI.
At my table: I allow them to combine, but then again I also allow empowered deep slumber to affect up to 15 hd, and an empovered empovered fireball to deal double the damage dice (+50% +50% = +100%).
So far it isn't causing any trouble. But I probably wouldn't allow it for all spells, eg. simulacrum.
Your math doesn't reflect what is actually happening. Going from 15 to 20 is a 33% increase, not 25. At worst, Int. is a 33% increase, while Emp. is a 50% That's ok.
Sorry, you're right. I don't know why I did those calcs. Maybe I'm a bit tired, so my mind trick me. :)
But that's at worst. For Snowball, Intensify is a 100% increase, while Empower is a 50% increase. For a lower cost. That's not 25% better, that's twice as good, for a lower cost. If spell levels are equal to damage increases, it's four times as good.
Still, Intensify add only to damage, empower add to any dice dependant effect. Seems fair: empower has a bit more versatility.