Need help with homebrew metamagic

[Lightlawbliss]

I am considering a home-brew metamagic feat, primarily to encourage blasting builds.


LIMITLESS METAMAGIC

Prereqs: heighten spell(?)

effect: This metamagic removes hard limits on the effected spell. EX: 1d6/cl (max 5d6) becomes just 1d6/cl.

cost: +3(?)

I have three requests:
1. What prereqs do you think it should have?
2. Is there anything I should reword, limit, or clarify?
3. What cost do you think is appropriate?

Feel free to have multiple sets of answers reflecting different possibilities you see.
Thanks in advance to all of you for you kind and thought out responses.

[Amechra]

The issue here is that there are already a couple of feats that do this.

First, you have Enhance Spell; it increases the damage cap by 10 dice if the spell is 1dx/level, and by 5 dice if the spell is 1dx/2 levels. This is a +4 [Epic] Metamagic; maybe a little weak, but maybe a model.

Second, you have Reserves of Strength, which under a certain reading uncaps your spells entirely. This is not a good thing, not a good thing at all.

So, you have a few choices; the first is strictly limiting what you can use it on. Alternatively (and my preferred choice) is to make it a scaling metamagic, a la Heighten Spell, where every +2 (say) levels increases the spell caster level cap by 5.

[Lightlawbliss]

ok, any other opinions

Also, I am of the opinion that the options out there are not good enough or brokenly abusive.

[Amechra]

Completely uncapped spells can get you bonuses in the thousands.

Sure, uncapping Fireball is harmless to game balance... but uncapping stuff like Polymorph or Planar Calling? A terrible idea.

Caster level bonuses are a bit too easily available for magic to all be uncapped.

[ezkajii]

How about, have Enhance Spell as a prerequisite, change it so it completely removes the damage dice cap instead of just increasing it, make it a +5? Maybe houserule Enhance down to a +3 as well.

Or, toward the heighten idea Amechra was suggesting, something like:

Unbound Spell [metamagic]
Prerequisite: None
Benefit: You can remove the limits of power of a spell that you cast. First, the required spell slot for preparing or spontaneously casting the spell is increased by 1. Beyond this, you may elect to increase the effective level of the spell, just as if it were affected by Heighten Spell. For every two levels you Heighten the spell, any maximum number of dice referred to in the spell description or statistics block (such as maximum damage dealt, maximum amount of material conjured, maximum HD of a creature called, etc.) is increased by 5. A fireball unbound to 9th level therefore would deal 1d6 damage per caster level to a maximum of 20d6, and would be treated as an 8th level spell in all respects, including save DC calculations and bypassing a globe of invulnerability. If prepared by an epic character with Improved Spell Capacity, the fireball could be further unbound to 10th level, raising its damage cap to 25d6, and so on.

You could even have a minimum caster level as the prerequisite for the feat, if you prefer.

[Lightlawbliss]

How about, have Enhance Spell as a prerequisite, change it so it completely removes the damage dice cap instead of just increasing it, make it a +5? Maybe houserule Enhance down to a +3 as well.

Unless I'm mistaken, epic feats require you have over 20 HD to take them. Requiring an epic feat would result in this feat being epic level, which prevents the goal of encouraging blasting based casters.



Or, toward the heighten idea Amechra was suggesting, something like:

Unbound Spell [metamagic]
Prerequisite: None
Benefit: You can remove the limits of power of a spell that you cast. First, the required spell slot for preparing or spontaneously casting the spell is increased by 1. Beyond this, you may elect to increase the effective level of the spell, just as if it were affected by Heighten Spell. For every two levels you Heighten the spell, any maximum number of dice referred to in the spell description or statistics block (such as maximum damage dealt, maximum amount of material conjured, maximum HD of a creature called, etc.) is increased by 5. A fireball unbound to 9th level therefore would deal 1d6 damage per caster level to a maximum of 20d6, and would be treated as an 8th level spell in all respects, including save DC calculations and bypassing a globe of invulnerability. If prepared by an epic character with Improved Spell Capacity, the fireball could be further unbound to 10th level, raising its damage cap to 25d6, and so on.

You could even have a minimum caster level as the prerequisite for the feat, if you prefer.

It may just be the wording, but it sounds like this is a better version of heighten spell. If I went this route I would probably just modify heighten rather then make a better heighten. (modifying being directly to heighten or a feat modifying heighten)

[Amechra]

Feats modifying Heighten is kinda my favorite way to do metamagic, so... I suggest that route.

[Zaydos]

Honestly you could throw in on Heighten Spell that single target damage dice cap is increased by 5 dice/2 levels and it would be balanced; all blasting spells pretty much scale that way and the good ones are the ones that offer some other benefits compared to their lower level versions.

If all it's doing is uncapping damage dice I'd probably say something like "damage scaled to caster level (such as 1d6/caster level, 1d6/2 caster levels, or 1d6+Caster level) is uncapped" and +2 Spell levels. At CL 10 it's better than Maximize on 1st level spells, at CL 20 it's better on 2nd level and 3rd level spells. It's strictly worse beyond that. This is assuming you aren't going to be coupling it with stuff like Arcane Thesis and Incanatrix which already make blasting a potentially overpowered option and don't need any help.

[ezkajii]

Unless I'm mistaken, epic feats require you have over 20 HD to take them. Requiring an epic feat would result in this feat being epic level, which prevents the goal of encouraging blasting based casters.

Right you are. I was AFB when I made that post and had forgotten that Enhance was an [epic] feat.

[gr8artist]

For reference, PF has Intensified Spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/intensified-spell-metamagic)

+5 levels to damage dice cap (ie 1d6/CL max 5d6 becomes max 10d6). It's a +1 MM, but only works on damage spells.