Minamagic

[sethgripton]

Minamagic feats are used to lower a spell's level at the price of an additional negative effect on the caster or benefits for the enemies and are pretty much the opposite of metamagic spells. A Minamagic feat can not lower a spell level below a 1st level spell slot. These feats cannot be applied to 0 level spells.

Chaotic spell

Spoiler:

Impediment; When a spell is cast using this minamagic feat roll a d8 to determine which way the spell fires using your target direction as 1 and rotate clockwise to determine which way the spell targets.

Spell Requirements; This can be applied only to a spell that does not have a range of touch or personal.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 1 level (to a minimum of 1)

Condense spell

Spoiler:

Your spells just can’t seem to be able to last very long.
Impediment; When a spell is cast using this minamagic feat it last half as long as it normally would (rounded down).

Spell Requirements; This spell can only be applied to any spell with a duration longer than instantaneous.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 1 level (to a minimum of 1)

Compress spell

Spoiler:

Your spells area doesn’t seem to be as big as it should be.
Impediment; When a spell is cast using the minamagic feat, the spell's area of effect is a quarter of its normal size, minimum 5ft (eg. A fireball would be a 5ft radius, burning hands would be 5ft cone)

Spell requirements; This feat can only be applied to a spell with an area of effect.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 2 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Confusing spell

Spoiler:

You're not quite sure about how this spell actually works.
Impediment; When the caster cast a spell with the minamagic feat applied to it, the caster is confused (no save) for a number of rounds equal to the spells old level.

Spell requirements; This feat can be applied to any spell.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 4 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Diminished spell

Spoiler:

Your spell don’t seem to be as powerful as they should be.
Impediment; When a spell is cast using this minamagic feat it is cast as if it was 5 levels lower for the purpose of damage.

Spell requirements; This minamagic feat can only be applied to spells that inflict damage reliant on caster levels (eg fireball)

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 2 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Energising spell

Spoiler:

Your electric elemental spells seem to speed the enemy up.
Impediment; When you cast a spell that inflicts damage based to the lightning descriptor, any creature damaged by the spell is also energised as if they had the spell haste cast upon them. This effect lasts for rounds equal to the spells old level.

Spell requirements; This feat can only be applied to a spell that deals lightning damage.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 2 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Enhancing spell

Spoiler:

Your spells seem to help and aid the targets.
Impediment; Enemies damaged by a spell with this minamagic feat get a +2 bonus to all ability scores for 1 round/old spell level

Spell requirements; This feat can only be applied to spells that deal damage.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 1 level (to a minimum of 1)

Lessen spell

Spoiler:

Your spell seem less than what it should be.
Impediment; When a spell is cast using this minamagic feat the DC of the spell is reduced by 2 for every spell level it is reduced by. (eg a 1st level fireball’s minimum DC would be 7 [10 + 1 {minimum 13 to cast 3rd level spells}-4] )

Spell requirements; This feat can be applied to any spell

Spell level; The spell’s level can be adjusted to the caster wishes but for every level reduced the DC is reduced by 2

Minimise spell

Spoiler:

Your spell seems pathetic to what it once was
Impediment; All variable, numeric effects of a spell modified by this feat are minimised. Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor are spells without random variables.

Spell requirements; The spell must have a variable effect in it.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 3 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Raging spell

Spoiler:

Your spells seem to make people angry.
Impediment; An enemy that is targeted by a spell with this minamagic feat applied to it gets a +4 rage bonus to strength and constitution as well as a +2 bonus on will saves. The target also receives a -2 unnamed penalty to their armor class. This last for rounds equal to the spells original level.

Spell requirements; This spell can only be applied to a spell that does hitpoint damage.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 1 level (to a minimum of 1)

Reflecting spell

Spoiler:

Prerequisites; Spellcraft 10 ranks (DM’s permission)

Your spell doesn’t seem as effective at piercing spell resistance as others.
Impediment; A spell cast with this minamagic feat is treated at being 5 caster levels lower for piercing spell resistance.

Spell requirements; This feat can be applied to any spell

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 2 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Reversing spell

Spoiler:

Prerequisites; Reflecting spell (DM’s permission)

Your spell seems to want to punish you for failing to break through a creatures spell resistance.
Impediment; If a spell with this minamagic feat applied to it fails against piercing spell resistance the spells effects are reflected back against the wearer using all the variables, such as damage and roll to hit.

Spell requirements; This feat can be applied to any spell

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 3 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Shorten spell

Spoiler:

Your spell doesn’t stretch as far as it normally would.
Impediment; A spell with this minamagic feat applied to it has its range halved.

Spell requirements; This spell can only be applied to a spell that has a range of short or longer (not personal or touch).

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 1 level (to a minimum of 1)

Weaken spell

Spoiler:

Your spell seems weaker than it normally would.
Impediment; A spell with this minamagic feat applied to it has all its variables halved (rounded down). (eg a 10th level fireball would deal 5d6 fire damage)

Spell requirements; The spell must have a variable effect in it.

Spell level; The spell level is reduced by 2 levels (to a minimum of 1)

Please tell me any minamagic spell you can think of or problems with these ones.

[Ethereal Gears]

Firstly, this should probably be moved to the homebrew section.

Secondly, I find this very terminologically confusing. Metamagic feats aren't called that because they make spells better or raise their effective spell level. They're called that because they are meta-magical. They're "magic about magic", so to speak. They alter the very fundamental parameters of magic, and a single metamagic feat can be applied to a vast swathe of different spells.

My point is, these feats you've created are every bit as much "metamagic feats" as pre-existing metamagic feats, and so you don't need to invent a new term for them. This system is drowning in excessive terminology as it is.

[GeneticDrift]

Many of these are way to good, fake drawbacks. Some should be +0 or +1 instead of -x.

[lemeres]

And there is of course an inherent problem with giving casters more metamagic economy. Even those overpowered traits only work on a single kind of spell.

Minamagic could easily turn into minmaxamagic. At some point, it will be like an oracle's curse- a problem, but one you can deal with. Like someone that grabs deaf curse so they don't have to deal with verbal components. Sure, some initiative problems, but feats can balance that out.

[Squiggit]

Compress spell is potentially very beneficial in order to lay the hurt on enemies without a ton of collateral damage for AoEs.

Diminished Spell is never a GOOD thing, but it's potentially not a bad thing for spells that have strong riders that are more important than the damage. Ditto for Minimized and Weakened.

Lessen has the same issue as Diminishing in reverse.

Reflecting spell too. Identify an enemy as having no or trivial SR and you get two free levels worth of metamagic. Same with reversing.

Shorten's effect on its face isn't that bad, but especially by midgame you just aren't often going to be playing at ranges where that's relevant.

You should think about how this house rule interacts with metamagic, especially for Lessen.

If my level 5 wizard is fighting in a typical dungeon encounter against say, orcs. Pretty common enemy. A reflecting reversing shortened fireball is absolutely nothing and gives two, five or six levels of metamagic depending on how you interpret stacking. At the very least I'm throwing fireballs out of first level spell slots for nothing which is great even if you completely block metamagic shenanigans.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Chaotic: Needs a lot more work. Most spells don't have a "direction". They target a specific creature/object, nothing "travels" out from the caster. How would changing the "direction" work, force them to choose a new target on the new direction? How's it work with things like Scorching Ray that require a target? If Scorching Ray misses you don't keep rolling attacks against stuff behind the target. In addition, you should use d26 or d8+d9 to cover all the possible up and down directions as well. Finally, any player who willingly uses this is actively sabotaging the party and deserves to be slapped upside the head by the rest of the players. Anyone who enables a player to do this deserves to have large heavy books thrown at them.
Condense: Free spell level reduction when you're higher level! Mostly for minute/level, but probably also rounds/level.
Compress: Free spell level reduction and you won't hit your allies! Wooooo!
Confusing: Free quickened first level spells and no downside (since the confusion ends before your next turn). Otherwise see Chaotic for what should be done to players.
Diminished: Free spell levels when you're already past the damage cap!
Energizing: Free spell levels with dazing! They won't be able to act before the haste expires. Or free haste on the party with a low level spell (remember, you can always lower caster level).
Enhancing: Power up your party and get spell levels back! Same as Energizing.
Lessen: Spell level 1 Shapechange. Oh no, the DC it doesn't have goes down by 16. Oh woe is me. (Technically it does have one, you just aren't using it for that usually.)
Minimize: Free spell levels for Summon Monster! Just never use the one that uses a roll.
Raging: Again, free spell levels to buff your party. If you include the whole "no spells or things that require concentration" then it should be metamagic because that's a debuff to most things. Even without that, some things don't use strength so the only effect is +4 Con -2 AC (which may be a buff or a debuff, depending). Also, Rage is a Morale bonus usually.
Reflecting: Free spell levels to use the better spells. Go SR: No!
Reversing: Already using Reflecting in a way that doesn't hurt you? Have 3 more free levels of spell!
Shorten: Free spell levels for Long spells! Seriously, they start at 440 feet, no combat starts that far because of the -44 to perception checks.
Weaken: Like minimize, Summon Monster.

There's really no way to make these usable. The only reason someone would take them is because they knew they could game the system and either ignore the downside or gain a greater benefit from them. Or because they're a monster who wants to ruin their game (still looking at you Chaotic). The closest is Energizing but even then you can just target someone who can't full attack within the time limit and nullify like, 80% of the benefit of haste.

[Kahel Stormbender]

Compress doesn't seem like it gives ANY downsides. The fireball, for example, would still have the exact same damage. But now you can use it with more precision since it's radius is smaller. If these were in a campaign I'm playing a sorcerer in, I'd always be applying it to my fireballs. I mean, why the hell not? A five foot radius means it's single target for full fireball damage. And as spammable as magic missile for a sorcerer.

Don't dare use burning hands on the BBEG cause your party would be hit? Maximize and Compress it. It's now a 1st level single target spell that does the maximum possible damage. Rinse and repeat as often as you can cast level 1 spells.

[Ricardo Bolas]

Kahel Stormbender wrote:

A five foot radius means it's single target for full fireball damage.

A 5' radius would be 2x2 squares in gridded combat, no?

[Kahel Stormbender]

Pretty sure, no. Might be wrong though. One sec while I double check

EDIT: Huh, guess you're right. Still FAR less likely to hit other players. And I can't imagine someone NOT using it with Entangle to avoid catching the party in the excessively large area of effect.

[Kahel Stormbender]

Either way, still doesn't change that the concept in the OP is interesting, but execution is poorly thought out.

For example, a chaos spell would be better having a random chance to do various things that weren't intended, but helpful and not. One Chaotic Fireball might go off normally, the next time it's a smaller radius, the third time maybe it erupts in a spray of water instead of fire. Yet another time it might explode harmlessly as a large number of butterflies. Or change the color of everything caught in it to hot pink...

This would be interesting, have some potentially useful benefits, but have equally useless benefits. Yet still also have the chance to work exactly as you intended. If the chart looked something like

1-30%: works as intended
31-60%: unintended useful effect
61-90%: unintended useless effect
91-100%: unintended detrimental effect

then the GM would be able to decide what the effect is, within the limit of it being helpful to the party, doing nothing useful or bad, or doing something bad. Maybe the chaotic fireball healed the orcs instead of roasting them. Or mayhap it froze them in blocks of ice (reflex save to avoid being caged instead of damage). Or maybe it just caused pink tutus to appear on the orcs hit by the fireball spell instead of hurting them. Doesn't hinder them at all, they're still wearing their armor and holding their weapons. But now they're also wearing tutus.

[Wolin]

I've often wondered about trying to do this as well. Thing is, as you've probably seen, actually getting it to work is tricky. I'd certainly shy away from making anything more than one level lower on principle, because sometimes there are spells that you haven't thought about that would be able to be altered with a metamagic you hadn't considered. You also need to keep your bases covered so that you're never giving any spell levels away for free, and that you're not potentially giving people early access to spells. A little bit like "You cannot cast spells modified by these metamagics without being able to cast a vanilla version of the spell" would be helpful. Also, just a general thing saying that you can never reduce the level of a spell below 1 is better than saying it for each one.

That said, there are some good ideas that I hadn't considered that you've given me ideas for, which I might as well drop here now. Note that these are intentionally harsh, because any spell level drop is very, very good. Also because there aren't any official ones to compare them to.

Roulette Spell:

Benefit: The spell's range changes to long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level) or uses its original range, whichever is larger. The spell affects one random valid target within range, including yourself, regardless of its normal area of effect or target.
Special There must be at least 10 valid targets within the range of a Roulette spell for it to function. A spell that does not target a creature cannot be modified by this metamagic.
Level Adjustment -1 (A spell modified by this spell takes up a spell slot 1 lower than the spell's actual level)

Note: This is still generous, and probably needs to be harsher. It has the odd benefit of allowing personal only spells to affect other creatures, which is the most likely thing to make this too good. Also if you're hugely outnumbered this is very good.

Instant Spell:

Benefit: An instant spell's duration decreases to 1 round.
Special: Only spells with a duration of at least 10 minutes can be modified by this metamagic.
Level Adjustment -1 (A spell modified by this spell takes up a spell slot 1 lower than the spell's actual level)

Minimal Spell:

You make a spell fantastically weak in exchange for easier casting
Prerequisites: Caster level 11th
Benefit: A spell modified by this feat functions at caster level 1, has the minimum DC for a spell of its modified level and all variable numeric effects are treated as if the lowest possible result had been rolled.
Special: Only non-harmless spells with level dependant effects, a save DC and variable numeric effects can be modified by this metamagic.
Level Adjustment -1 (A spell modified by this spell takes up a spell slot 1 lower than the spell's actual level)

Confusing Spell:

I liked this idea, but you were really, really generous with it. Have this version instead.
You drop mental safeguards when you cast a spell in exchange for easier casting
Benefit: When you cast a spell modified by this metamagic, you are immediately confused for 1 minute per unmodified level of the spell. Any effect that would prevent you from becoming confused functions, but inflicts 2 permanent negative levels for each minute of confusion it prevents. If you are immune to the negative effects of negative levels or confusion, the spell fails and has no effect, wasting the slot.
Level Adjustment -1 (A spell modified by this spell takes up a spell slot 1 lower than the spell's actual level)

Disintegrating Spell:

And as a follow on from the last one...
You make it easier to cast a spell by fuelling it with your body
Benefit: When you cast a spell modified by this metamagic, you are subjected to a disintegrate spell that functions at your highest caster level with no save. If you are immune to the disintegrate effect, unable to be destroyed by the effect or would otherwise receive some form of beneficial effect from the disintegrate, the spell fails, wasting the slot.
Level Adjustment -1 (A spell modified by this spell takes up a spell slot 1 lower than the spell's actual level)