Can telekinesis be maximized?

[Rogar Stonebow]

What about empower?

[Philo Pharynx]

They don't give you any benefit. The effects of the spell aren't random - you lift/throw x amount of weight. The damage is based on the item hitting, which isn't magical. You can tell that that's not part of the spell because there's no SR.

[Avoron]

I disagree. Look at the spell Snowball; it also does damage by hurling something at your target with no SR allowed, but I haven't heard anyone say that it can't be maximized or empowered. I think either of those feats would work with the Violent Thrust use of telekinesis.

Although I don't think it would have an affect on the damage if you threw a weapon at someone, because in that case you just use the weapon's damage, and the spell has nothing to do with the amount of damage it does.

[Kayerloth]

I'd be fine with Empower, Maximize, etc. working with the violent thrust aspect of Telekinesis.

[CalethosVB]

If you violent thrust a weapon, it deals that weapon's damage. If you violent thrust a +1 weapon, it deals weapon damage +1, has a bonus to the attack roll, and bypasses DR/magic. If you violent thrust a rock, it deals damage appropriate to its size.

Empower does not affect the Violent Thrust portion because you aren't dealing damage with the spell, but with the objects affected by the spell.

Maximize also does not affect Violent Thrust for the same reasons.

Snowball deals damage using the spell itself. You create a damaging snowball. With Telekinesis, objects have to already exist for you to use the spell on them.

[LazarX]

Rogar Stonebow wrote:

What about empower?

The answer to both is yes... unfortunately the metamagics will have no effect as there is no variable dice result to apply it to.

[Quatar]

I would agree that those two metamagics have no effect on the outcome, pretty much for the reasons CalethosVB said.

[Claxon]

Yep no effect because the spell doesn't have random variable to be maximized or empowered.

[Shar Tahl]

The spell does not do damage. All damage produced by the spell is a side effect of the movement produced

[Kayerloth]

Interesting.

I guess one way I can agree with the no random portion to the spell is that the damage described is not scaled to the caster level but size of the object. In other words the same object hurled by casters of differing levels does the same damage. The only change is the higher level caster can potentially hurl a heavier object.