Help, need to sanity check an NPC only feat that a PC has taken interest in. Quckly.

OK, so in my Pathfinder game I mentioned to the party that the wizards running a gladiatorial contest were trained in a special kind of meta-magic originally intended to training scenarios. I referred to it as Constrained Magic. It was intended to allow the NPCs to do all kinds of cool and spectator-wowing magic without actually doing more than annoying the gladiators. A PC who is playing a conman Sorcerer/Rouge has taken a real interest in the spell. I think its flavourful and fine for him to learn (he got in good with the areana's owners by uncovering a ticket scam) but I need to make sure it doesn't have any obvious unforeseen abuses. By Saturday.

Constrained Spell [Metamagic]
Effect: A constrained spell is always cast at a caster level equal to the lowest caster level that would grant access to spells of its level. (we've had the "no defined minimum caster level" argument in group recently). In addition all random variables of the spell are automatically considered to have generated the lowest possible result. This does not apply to Caster Level checks for overcoming spell resistance (although the potentially lowered caster level may). The spell does not change its effective level. For example a lightning bolt cast by a 7th level Wizard would have a caster level of 5 and only do 5 damage, reflex save half.

I could see it being used for convincing people that you turned someone immortal.
I could also see that being used to try to make you look like a much lower level caster.

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Originally Posted by noob

I could see it being used for convincing people that you turned someone immortal.
I could also see that being used to try to make you look like a much lower level caster.

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This is fine, the con man con maning is fine. I was more worried about unseen break-the-rules-and-get-lots-of-power situations.

If you lowered the spell slot by applying it, I could see it breaking something with metamagic stacking. As it stands though, it's a straight nerf for practical reasons and doesn't seem to allow for any exploits. "Doing worse" while not getting below the minimum possible result is still not low enough to create weird interactions(like, say, causing a cure spell to cure negative HP by reducing it further). I'd say keep an eye out for any other homebrew rules because those are the harder to predict, such as an effect that reduces the amount of [anything] by a fixed value or by character level without a clear low cap at zero.

I can think of a few exploits for spells with low predictable damage.

Clearing a Web with Burning Hands (which would do 1 damage, plus the 1d6 from the burning web)

Dropping a swarm of Stirges with a Fireball. This does require some metagaming since Stirges have 5HP and a Constrained Fireball does 5 damage. You could drop this on the party and they would take minimal damage whilst ending the encounter.

These are corner cases, but there are likely more.

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Originally Posted by nedz

I can think of a few exploits for spells with low predictable damage.

Clearing a Web with Burning Hands (which would do 1 damage, plus the 1d6 from the burning web)

Dropping a swarm of Stirges with a Fireball. This does require some metagaming since Stirges have 5HP and a Constrained Fireball does 5 damage. You could drop this on the party and they would take minimal damage whilst ending the encounter.

These are corner cases, but there are likely more.

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These seem less like exploits and more like uses - considering that this costs a whole feat getting the uses in question seems pretty reasonable, to the point of this being one of the weaker feats not named Dodge. Or Toughness.

Yeah, I can't think of any way this could be powerful rather than merely having obscure uses, unless there are some spells where lower numbers are better. It would have the usual rules disputes about whether it applies to the rolls for Teleport (always works) or Awaken (make a really stupid tree on purpose), but presumably it shouldn't apply to those in a real game, just like Maximize shouldn't.

You may want to consider how this might work with things like confusion and the prismatic spells. In general it mostly sounds like reverse maximize, which isn't a problem.

Thanks guys. I did also realise this was basically "divination always works", which can be powerful or not in the right game (and mine, unfortunatley, is the right game).

I will re-word it to exclude % chances of success or determining random effects, only applying to damage or random number of effects.

If you cast a zero level spell say daze.

Normally only affects 4th level and below what would be the new affect. A feat almost th always improves a spell.

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Originally Posted by denthor

If you cast a zero level spell say daze.

Normally only affects 4th level and below what would be the new affect. A feat almost th always improves a spell.

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It would be exactly the same. Daze has no traits affected by caster level or results dependent on a die roll ('Whether or not the opponent saves' is not a random variable result of the spell.)

Played less by legalize, and more by RAI, the "Minimize Spell" metamagic (which should be allowed to be used completely independent of modifying caster level IMO btw) is a homebrew I've used/seen on several of my/others' characters. And it's generally really underwhelming, with the occasional edge use of casting Fireball to kill fod, or for a con.

Even when the scope of the feat is extended to allow the caster to manipulate variables completely independently (ie, a 20th level Wizard can cast a fireball for anywhere from 5-10 damage, or 5d6-10d6 damage, independent of how well they penetrate spell resistance or how easy it is to dispel, it still isn't worth a feat for an optimizer¹.

The only time it even pings on an optimizer's radar is when you expand the RAI scope of the feat further, and say that the user of the feat can choose a "lesser effect" for any spell with multiple effects, where sometimes a "lesser effect" on (say) Confusion or Holy Word might actually situationally be useful - again, usually involving catching allies in AoEs, or for a con. EDIT: or allow it to be used as dynamically as lowering caster level; ie, applied for free on the fly. Or when you include a bonus, and allow, say, a 10th level caster to overcome SR as an 11th level caster if they minimize the Fireball damage to 5. Still generally horrible, IME, but at least it doesn't feel like a completely wasted feat.

¹ with the caveat that you explain that things like "cost calculations" are not one of those "independently set variables", and that, in fact, cost is calculated by the highest level used.

Just found a funny use, you can make sure anyone Reincarnated with the spell becomes a Bugbear along with all the benefits(net +8 physical stats, +3 natural armor, +4 Move Silently, Dark Vision and Scent) for the low low price of suffering prejudice everywhere he goes.

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Originally Posted by Knaight

These seem less like exploits and more like uses - considering that this costs a whole feat getting the uses in question seems pretty reasonable, to the point of this being one of the weaker feats not named Dodge. Or Toughness.

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Yeah, you are probably right — though the stirge think is definitely metagaming.