Automatic Heighten Spell: Maximise, Empower, and Quicken

[Sun Wukong]

I am suggesting new Automatic Metamagic Spells feats.

Automatic Heighten Spell (Maximise), the DC of any of your Maximised Spells are raised to the level of the spell slot used. For example a Maximised Fireball would be cast with +3 DC, and with +2 DC if cast with the Improved Maximised Spell feat.

Automatic Heighten Spell (Empower), the DC of any of your Empowered Spells are raised to the level of the spell slot used. For example a Empowered Fireball would be cast with +2 DC, and with +1 DC if cast with the Improved Empower Spell feat.

Automatic Heighten Spell (Quicken), the DC of any of your Quickened Spells are raised to the level of the spell slot used. For example a Quickened Fireball would be cast with +4 DC, and with +3 DC if cast with the Improved Quicken Spell feat.



Any thoughts, could this be feasible?

[Aspect of Sorrow]

It is but I worry on the power implication.

[Sun Wukong]

Those could require you to be an Epic Character, and possibly that they need to be taken in the order of AHS: Empower, AHS: Maximise, and AHS: Quicken. Not to mentiont that you would also have to get the standard Empower, Maximise, and Quicken Spell feats to get the appropriate Automatic Height Spell feat.

Now, the Arcane Scholar PRC would be a good PRC to meet the requirements, but that will reduce the number of Epic feats you get. Even if the Archmage (or Hierophant for the divines) would allow you to grab AHS feats, going for AHS will reduce your over all spell DCs. You will simply have less feats to grab Epic Focus or Great Ability feats.

But on the otherside, you will have easier time being an 'elementalist' - since currently we only have offensive Fire and Cold spells at about each level.

[chad878262]

The issue I see is the empowerment of DC casters. ASOC would allow Transmuter to have a 9th level Flesh to Stone, for example. Would also give Illusionists more use from using Empower/Maximized Phantasmal Killer so they have way more slots of high DC save or die spells. Same with Necromancy...

The weakness of Wizards is limiting their spell slots so they can't cast save or X spells ad infinitum, they can already utilize metamagic to fill extra slots with whatever school they favor, gaining up to +3 DCs vs. other schools (for example, empowered Phatasmal Killer at level 6 vs. Flesh to Stone when illusion focused would be 1 DC more with epic SF: Illusion).

In general I am against further empowering DC mages.

[Sun Wukong]

The issue I see is the empowerment of DC casters. ASOC would allow Transmuter to have a 9th level Flesh to Stone, for example. Would also give Illusionists more use from using Empower/Maximized Phantasmal Killer so they have way more slots of high DC save or die spells. Same with Necromancy...

And in the above cases you already have AoE save or die spells that hit all enemies in the area of effect, while the lower level spells only target a single target.

Now, if you make it so that AHS: (Quicken) requires you to have the previous AHS spell feats, you have just spent three epic feats to get that quickened 'Level 9' Flesh to Stone. This alone drops your spell DC by 1 or 2 points depending on your starting Intelligence or Charisma.

As for build wise, the ten levels of Arcane Scholar are going to limit what PRCs you can have. For example a Wizard 10/Red Wizard 10/Blood Magus 6/Archmage 4 could have the caster level of 38+ for a +6 epic caster bonus with the transmutation spell DCs. While the Arcane Scholar with AHS: (Quicken) could only really go for Wizard 6/Arcane Scholar 10/Red Wizard 10/Bloodmagus 4 for the caster level of 36, which is a +5 Epic Caster Bonus with transmutation spells.

So let us assume that both builds have starting intelligence of 18, +7 from level up, +4 from an item, and +2 from Spellcasting Prodigy, thus both of these builds would sit at '31' intelligence before Great Intelligence feats are factored in.

The build with AHS could have a total of 6 Epic feats. Three of which go to AHS. One goes for Epic Spell Focus, which leaves only two for Great Intelligence. Hence the AHS wizard could sit at Intelligence of 33, at modifier of 11. Most likely you would just take one Great Intelligence feat and then grab some Epic Spell.

The build without AHS could have a total of 8 Epic feats, which means that all five standard epic feats could be spent on Great Intellingce to reach 36 intelligence, a modifier of 13. I do not recall from the top of my head if those Wizard/Red Wizard bonus feats could be spent on Great Intelligence or not.

Therefore, going for AHS (Quicken) would actually drop your generic spell DCs by 3 points at the bare minimum, while raising it by 3 with your quickened spells such as the previously mentioned Flesh to Stone. You can argue that the AHS (Quicken) build has the advantage when it comes to casting those quickened Flesh to Stone spells. But the moment you make use of your Empower or Maximise spell metamagic feats, you are only getting that +1 or +2 to your spell DCs, hence you are at -2 or -1 spell DC when compared to the other DC based build.

You can have your preference, but to me it depends on the situation to decide which of these DC builds is superior.

As for Illusionists and Necromancers have more DC spells, the large HP bulk of the mobs have made it so that direct damage spells are less useful. Thus you could be a 'blaster' mage and spam those save or die spells at slight higher spell DC from +1 to +4. (Depending on your build and feats.)

[chad878262]

Meanwhile a W10/SA4/BM10/AM6 could have strong DCs for enchantment, necromancy and illusion spells while using auto heighten to fill basically every slot with save or die DC spells from those schools. Who cares about dropping a few DCs if you can have higher DCs on the spells that matter? The point is that with AHS you are allowing further diversification of the spellbook with more save or x spells available and higher DCs. This is power creep. Sure, you spend three epic feats so perhaps you have 2 less INT and miss out on an epic spell, but you gain more spell levels to use on your save or x spells which is where a DC wizard gets their power. DC spells are currently broken up by not having them for every school on every level, this removes one of those issues and is thus a power up.

[Sun Wukong]

You can already use metamagic to memorise spells at different levels. The suggestion only grants the spells +1, +2, +3, or +4 DC depending on the form of metamagic used, from +5% to +20% chance for the target to fail.

Heighten Spell metamagic feat is a form metamagic that was not added to NWN2 by Obsidian. It was not added even though it is a bread and butter metamagic feat for any DC based caster, and for the exact reason you mentioned above. There are not enough spells of X school for every spell level, hence the Heighten Spell metamagic allows casters to fill their spell books with spells they excell at casting or wish to focus on.

Now, I am under the impression that it is impossible to add new types of metamagic. Hence, I have suggested this roundabout way of implementing it and tying Heighten Spell to other forms of metamagic.

[dedude]

I don't see any immediate power creep issues with this. In most cases I can think of you would be replacing a strong spell with a slightly weaker one, but let them have the same DC. Mainly this will be good for blasters that like to keep a "theme" to their spell slots, like filling all slots with fireballs.

A spell like Flesh to Stone wouldn't apply as it's a level 6 spell, so would be quickened to a level 10 spell. And even if it could, no one would argue that it is as powerful as a Wail anyways.

It would need a lot of scenarios thought through though, but off the top of my head I can't think of any combination that would invalidate this suggestion. I'm sure the QC guys will give it their best shot though

[Sun Wukong]

Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep gets Improved Quicken spell feat at level 10, it lets you cast Quickened spells three spell levels higher rather than four.

Arcane Scholar could cast a Improved Maximized 'level 9' Delayed Blast Fireball for 162 points of damage. Meteor Swarm is a level 9 spell and it deals 40d6, so 140~ on avarage. There are ups and downs to both spells.