Talk:Metamana Fuel (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

	Eiji-kun is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	With the addition on a cap on spell-levels, this now works. It is still uncomfortable to me personally, since the spell level limit is a higher cap than a turning attempt limit. I wouldn't do this. But I can see someone else using this if they are comfortable with the higher level.

Divine Metamagic's Greater Brother

So I'm glad that this has pre-reqs, and gets rid of problem 1 I would have had with it. It is now, at least, equal to DMM as far as pre-reqs go. However, there are two other things which end up making this stronger than DMM.

One problem is that DMM (and the bardic version whose name I forgot) has a hidden pre-req of turn undead. This by itself ends up limiting DMM to cleric casting (or at least divine). Getting turning on other classes is generally more trouble than it is worth.For the bardic version, it uses bard song and thus you're limited to the underwhelming bardic casting. Compare to this, and you now have access to any casting.

"But Eiji" you say, "All the best buffs are cleric, and the obvious Persist Spell thus works just fine" and you are right. But how often can you pull it off? One, two, maaaybe three spells if you're lucky before you're out of turning attempts to power Persist Spell (a cost of 7 turns a pop it's 1+spell level). Clerics aren't Charisma based, so it's probably not maxed out. Even if it was maxed out, you need quite a score to do it more than once or twice. You could burn another feat on Extra Turning, but that's another hidden pre-req. You could try Nightsticks, but it requires that A) the DM allows them period, given their reputation and B) he takes the more broken interpretation (that you can stack them all on a single attempt) and C) you can afford them all, at 7500 gp a pop it's not cheap.

DMM abuse is actually a bit overstated because of those three things.

What about the bard? Same issue, but no nightstick abuse to rely on.

What about this feat? Well, how many 6th level spells or higher do you have? Because that's how many things you can persist.

This is before we even get into metamagic abuse of other forms. If you thought that me discouraging high scaling low level feats was bad because you could make Maximized Empowered Twinned Quickened Hyper Super Duper Rainbow Bombshell Burning Hands was bad now that you could pump it to 9th level, imagining powering up your 9th level spells with this. With DMM, you would nova and burn out for the day if you pulled that off, but you have a significantly larger pool to work with right now.

As is, it simply isn't viable. The concept works, but you're going to need to make the cost much costlier. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe by RAW that nightsticks do stack, DMs banning them goes to an Oberoni fallacy ("it's not broken since DMs can ban it"--that's true of this feat too, so it isn't a problem), and 7.5k is a drop in the bucket at higher levels. Plus, you need to burn level 7 spells to persist things with this (level increase + 1). And the example you gave still has a counter. I might consider nerfing this slightly, but it's not necessary IMO to stay at VH, and I wanted to give an example of what a VH feat that casters actually want looks like. Compare this to the other feat. Would you be willing to lose out on this feat to take that feat? Now we have a sense of balance. --Ghostwheel (talk) 08:10, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

7th?

Hmm. I could have sworn it said "as level of metamagic". Very well, what say you about the much greater glut of spell slots over turning? Nightsticks isn't really a RAW thing. The thing is that it doesn't specify if you can use them all on a single attempt or if you can't actually hold NI sticks in hand and limited to buffing your pool by +4 a shot. Mostly, because nightsticks don't assume you'd be using more than a single turn use at a time, so of course it was never addressed. It's bad interpretation, and the alternative (that they stack) is Thought Bottle tier. And if that is how it runs (I hold it doesn't), then yes, the item itself would be broken.

I don't see what counter you're talking about.

Given what you've told me what you think VH is, I wouldn't trust your judgement on what you think VH wizard oriented feats should look like. No offense, but I run a game which is undoubtedly, unavoidably VH tier and I would call shenanigans on this as is. And yes, most of it is the glut of spell slots in comparison to turn attempts. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 08:22, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Energy immunity is a hard counter to the uber-fireball, for example. A soft counter would be oodles of HP. And I would argue that no metamagic spell is VH due to the fact that they require you to spend higher levels of spells, which you don't have for your best spells, and thus aren't anywhere near good enough to be VH. --Ghostwheel (talk) 08:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Changes added: Spell level - 1 for metamagic feats, arcane exclusive. So now to cast a 5th level spell quickened, you can either spend a 9th level slot or two 5th level slots (and must have access to 9th level slots to do so). --Ghostwheel (talk) 23:21, 26 September 2015 (UTC)