Metamagic Help

[The Infinity Sock]

I have never really been good with metamagic i play as a wizard and have all spells so can anybody help me or give me tips on which spells to use with metamagic

[Grifta]

Extend on buffs
Quicken on True Strike
Maximise / Empower on whatever attack spell you've specialised

[Marcos_DS]

What Grifta said. Also, there are metamagic rods that allow you to cast a certain number of spells/day with a metamagic feat applied, without pushing the spell to a higher level slot.

[Balekai]

Just to add to what Gritta said:

Extend on anything you want to extend the duration on. It's most useful on spells that have medium duration (1 minute per class level). It also helps with shorter duration spells that you need more rounds out of. Just remember the spells will take longer to cast than normal (like all metamagic save for Quicken). So it's best to use extended spells before battle or in non emergency situations.

Quicken allows you to cast spells very fast. Use it to get crowd control or essential buffs out in combat when they're needed most.

Empower/Maximize are great for damage, but Empower seems to be more useful overall in my experience. I seem to remember that with certain spells, people have found that empower equals close to or more DPS than maximize after crunching the numbers. I could be wrong on that though (Trying to remembering debates from PnP CRPGs like BG, NWN, NWN2 etc.) :)

Reach makes touch spells have longer range. More importantly it makes melee touch spells basically range touched. If you don't want to be up close and personal but still want to cast a certain touch buff spell or a touch damage spell, this is the meta you use. Does this allow an eldritch archer to treat melee touch attacks as if they were ranged touched? Not sure.

Heighten spell has two uses in this game:

It's main use is to improve the spell level/caster level of spells to overcome saving throw DCs.
This makes many lower crowd control spells more viable at higher levels. You essentially pick a spell in the metamagic window like usual and choose the heighten meta. Then unlike other metamagic, you're able to customize how many added effective spell levels you wish to add to the spell up until spell level 9. This is the only metamagic in the game that improves a spell's actual effective level rather than just taking up a higher spell slot. This is almost a must have for crowd control wizards and sorcerers (Enchantment, Conjuration and some Transmutation spells).

Heighten also allows you to cheese your spell selection, but its more useful for sorcerers in this regard due to spontaneous casting mechanics. Basically you can use heighten metamagic to make multiple copies of spells at many different levels for more utility and versatility.

Don't get every metamagic feat though. Find out what you want to specialize in and pick the appropriate metas for it. For example, if I was going to focus on Evocation (damage), I would only take Empower, Maximize and maybe Quicken/Extend. For a CC wizard I would take Extend, Heighten and Quicken. For a Summoner it would be Extend and maybe Quicken.

Marcus is right that Metamagic feats can be unwieldy at times due to spell slot increases and that rods can be more viable.

[haplok]

He plays as a wizard, so his spells won't take longer to cast when you apply metamagic feats to them. That is a trait of spontaneous casters (Sorcerers, Eldritch Scions).

[Balekai]

Originally posted by haplok:

He plays as a wizard, so his spells won't take longer to cast when you apply metamagic feats to them. That is a trait of spontaneous casters (Sorcerers, Eldritch Scions).

Based on this I feel that the quicken meta feat is much less useful to take as a wizard feat. Then it got me thinking more about meta rods and quicken may be a wasted feat in general if you have good access to quicken rods. I have always sold rods personally and never once tried them out enough to know that they actually recharge with rest.

I decided to test out some metamagic rods in combination with metamagic feats using bag of tricks. I took the Fireball spell on Octavia, leveled her up to take all the metamagic. Then gave her lesser, normal and greater magic rods of quickening.

I made an empowered fireball to see if a lesser quicken rod would work with it. It didn't so it needed a normal quicken rod rather than a lesser one. I was hoping that just because I empowered the spell, it wouldn't disqualify it for lesser rod and that heighten would be the only metamagic to cause this to happen.

Regardless, I think the best way to approach metamagic rods and feats is to possibly ignore the quicken metamagic feat (+4 spell slot levels) and maybe even maximize (+3 slot levels).

Instead for evokers, just acquire quicken and maximize rods then combine one or the other with empowered spells. Once you get to later levels, pick up the maximize feat and more types of rods.


A similar strategy can be applied to summoners and crowd controllers:

Quicken Rod+Extend Feat for emergency extended summoning/CCs.

Quicken Rod+Heighten Feat for quick and powerful CCs.

Extend Rod+Heighten feat for laying down long duration and powerful CCs before combat or to start combat.

[The Infinity Sock]

Ok cool thanks for all of your tips