Exploiter Wizard and MetaMixing

[Ballistic101]

What would be the effect of an Exploiter Wizard taking MetaMixing?

My read through says it's essentially useless, as a wizard can't just use a higher level spell slot.

Metamixing (Su):

The arcanist can expend 1 point from her arcane reservoir to add a metamagic feat that she knows to a spell as she casts it without affecting the casting time (though using a higher-level spell slot as normal). She can use this ability to add a metamagic feat to a spell that she prepared using a metamagic feat, although she cannot add the same metamagic feat to a given spell more than once.

Go to Exploiter Wizard.

Go to Metamixing.

[Kaouse]

I'd say that if you had an empty higher level spell slot, you could use Metamixing to apply metamagic to a spell spontaneously as long as the final spell level was equal to (or lower) than the open unprepared slot.

If so, you'd expend the higher level open slot, but also expend your prepared spell, leaving a lower level open slot instead.

EXAMPLE: Wizard Kate has the following spell slots:

LEVEL 3 spell slots:
--> <UNPREPARED>
LEVEL 2
--> Frigid Touch
LEVEL 1
--> Frostbite

She can use Metamixing to apply Rime Spell (+1 Spell level) to Frigid Touch, casting it as a 3rd level spell, in which case she'd be left with the following:

LEVEL 3 spell slots:
--> XXXX (CAST: Rime Frigid Touch)
LEVEL 2
--> <UNPREPARED>
LEVEL 1
--> Frostbite

She could then apply Rime Spell to Frostbite spontaneously, leaving her with an empty level 2 slot and an unprepared level 1 slot.

LEVEL 3 spell slots:
--> XXXX (CAST: Rime Frigid Touch)
LEVEL 2
--> XXXX (CAST: Rime Frostbite)
LEVEL 1
--> <UNPREPARED>

Alternatively, if she didn't want to cast Frigid Touch or already used it earlier, she could directly spend her level 3 unprepared spell slot to cast a Rime Frostbite (still a level 2 spell) in her level 3 spell slot. Effectively, she would go from this:

LEVEL 3 spell slots:
--> <UNPREPARED>
LEVEL 2
--> XXXX
LEVEL 1
--> Frostbite

To this:

LEVEL 3 spell slots:
--> XXXX (CAST: Rime Frostbite)
LEVEL 2
--> XXXX
LEVEL 1
--> <UNPREPARED>

Kind of a waste, but better than nothing. Either way, this seems to me to be the most logical way of running things.

[Scavion]

Prepared Spells is different in meaning to the Arcanist and Wizard.

An Arcanist prepares their spells known and uses their spell slots to draw from those spells known. A Wizard prepares the spell and spell slot as one.

So a wizard wouldnt really benefit from it.

[Thedmstrikes]

It is too bad no one went through and updated the exploits for wizard use, such as using metamixing to change a memorized metamagic spell into something else of the same level increase. Thematically, it would work as all it changes is the cost in reservoir point and changes the metamagic on the fly, something a wiz cannot do now.

[Sandslice]

Ballistic101 wrote:

What would be the effect of an Exploiter Wizard taking MetaMixing?

My read through says it's essentially useless, as a wizard can't just use a higher level spell slot.

** spoiler omitted **

Go to Exploiter Wizard.

Go to Metamixing.

So in general, it would not work for a wizard, because Metamixing interacts with spontaneous casting.

HOWEVER...

Spontaneous substitution (eg, from the Preferred Spell feat, or the Spontaneous Spell Mastery feature of the Magaambyan arcanist PrC) uses the rules for spontaneous casting with regard to metamagic. Such spells COULD be affected by Metamixing - but note that you only negate the extra cast time from the metamagic, not from any applied by the ability.

[Ballistic101]

I appreciate everyone weighing in, especially Sandslice. I'm adjusting my previous stance of "it's useless" to "it's useless unless you take the correct selection of feats to make it not useless"