Intensified / Empowered Inflict Wounds

[Cyrus007]

Hi,

I just wanted to know if you can use the Intensified Spell and Empowered Spell metamagic feats on inflict wounds spells?

If you could, then what how would an Inflict Moderate Wound spell look like and what level would it be?

Thank you.

[Matthew Downie]

"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."
This wouldn't help with Inflict Moderate Wounds since the bit that's increased by caster level is not the damage dice.

Empower Spell would work - calculate the total damage and then increase by 50%, rounding down.

[ryric]

Matthew is correct about Intensify Spell not working.

Empowered inflict moderate wounds would use a 4th level spell slot to do (2d8+CL(max10))*1.5 damage, with a save DC of 12+caster stat modifier. Unless you were using a metamagic rod, generally you'd be much better off casting inflict critical wounds instead. You'd get more damage and a better save DC.

Compare at CL 7:
Empowered moderate: (2d8+7)*1.5 = average 24 damage
critical: (4d8+7) = average 25 damage, higher save DC.

At CL 10:
empowered mod: (2d8+10)*1.5 = average 27 damage
crit: (4d8+10) = average 28 damage.

After that it just gets worse as moderate has capped but critical gets better.

So you can use Empower on inflict spells, but generally it's not very good. The comparison is even more unfavorable comparing empowered inflict critical wounds to harm.

[Zwordsman]

inflict line doesn't readily keep up with the other damage dealers of a similiar level in most cases sadly.

Maximize is also a thing that should work with it. Though I do not believe it is worth the spell increase.

[Cyrus007]

Thank you for all of your responses. It really helped to clarify the rules.

Have a great week!