Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Alamout Servant 01-04-06, 11:23 AM	hi, so, I see divine metamagic used all the time. generally it's used for persistent spell, which is nice, and makes sense - the +6 adjustment on persistent is hard to eat with a smile unless you can find a way to lower the cost. but i was wondering what some other good uses of divine meta are... advantages to divine meta over regular meta: -obviously, the fact that you can trade turn attempts instead of raising the spell level. this makes things a lot easier, since a cha of 18 will mean you can divine meta on the metamagic feat with the highest adjusted spell level once per day. -being able to do this on the fly, rather than preparing the spell with the metamagic affecting it ahead of time. doesn't even raise casting time, like spontaneous caster's metamagics. -raising spell level to something higher than you could normally cast. persistent righteous might, for instance, is the equivalent of an 11th level spell - no cleric 20 will be casting that normally! so, obviously everyone uses persistent spell because as I said, it's hard to use otherwise - you wouldn't be able to use it on spells higher than 3rd level, and expending a 9th-level spell slot to have a third level spell affect you 24hours is a hard choice to make. what are other ways it can be abused? the fact that it's on-the-fly seems promising, making it a great choice for things like quicken - a quickened spell, at no increase in spell level, on the fly, can be deadly. what else? i was thinking the variable metamagic feats, heighten spell and fortify spell. fortify spell means that every turn attempt you spend ups your check to beat SR by 2 - which is nice when you have a dire need to break a high SR on-the-fly. heighten spell is even nastier - Divine Meta means that you can trade turn attempts for an increase to DC at an even level. this means that with a maximized charisma, we could have an on-the-fly increase to DC of around 13 or so, because of two feats! awesome choice for a divine caster who likes save-or-die type spells, and puts the fatespinner to shame. what are other ways to abuse divine metamagic? and does anyone have any builds that take advantage of non-persistent divine metamagic use? if no one posts one using heighten spell to good advantage, I might make one myself. thoughts are welcome!!
Runeblood7 01-04-06, 11:32 AM	Divine Metamagic: Chain is indispensable for a Cleric with a level of Heirophant (Divine Reach). Chaining Everything makes your job as party buffer phenomenal. Chain Heal, Chain Harm, Chain Ressurection, the possibilities are exciting. If you feel like doing this early and want to spend more feats, you can also get DM: Reach Spell and then avoid the Heirophant.
hogarth 01-04-06, 12:09 PM	For a summoner, DM: Rapid Spell would be quite useful.
Bill Muench 01-04-06, 12:23 PM	Divine Metamagic: Chain is indispensable for a Cleric with a level of Heirophant (Divine Reach). Chaining Everything makes your job as party buffer phenomenal. Chain Heal, Chain Harm, Chain Ressurection, the possibilities are exciting. Yep. Chained True Resurrection is ridiculous, and cheap. I like the idea of Divine MM (Empower) and Divine MM (Maximize) for Radiant Druids of Pelor, along with Divine MM (Energy Admixture [Fire]). Divine MM (Transdimensional Spell) just always seemed thematically appropriate, along with Divine MM (Corrupt Spell) and (Consecrate Spell) paired with Spell Focus (Good/Evil).
PhaedrusXY 01-04-06, 12:29 PM	I can't believe noone has mentioned DM: Quicken. For campaigns that don't often have more than 1 or 2 encounters per game day (pretty common in my experience), it is arguably better than DM: Persistent. You can use DM: Quicken to buff yourself without losing rounds of combat, as with DM: Persistent. But you can also use DM: Quicken for other things, like throwing a Heal on on of your allies while in the middle of combat, without having to lose a round of attacks. Or to cast two offensive spells in the same round, like hitting someone with 2 Harm spells.
Alamout Servant 01-04-06, 12:40 PM	...I mentioned dm (quicken) in the very first post, which is I'm guessing why no one elese brought it up :P but yeah, i do agree that dm (persistent) is overrated, and dm (quicken) is much more versatile! for many of the same reasons that dm (chain) and other things is great... besides, dm (quicken) doesn't fear dispel magic like dm (persistent) does (my biggest reason for preferring it). and it requires one less feat to qualify! but i love the ideas, using it for chain spell, or for druidic builds with energy admixture and the like. thanks to all who replied so far, keep them coming! there's got to be something funky we can do with divine meta that you can't do with regular metamagic feats......
PhaedrusXY 01-04-06, 12:51 PM	...I mentioned dm (quicken) in the very first post, which is I'm guessing why no one elese brought it up :POops! :embarrass Missed that.
lostone 01-04-06, 12:59 PM	There's always metamagics like Maximize and Twin Spell for high level spells.
jpowers22 01-04-06, 01:04 PM	As a party's healer, (A real low-level games cleric), I find Divine Metamagic(Empower Spell), exceedinlgly useful. Coupled with augment healing, its nice to be able to spot heal our primary tank (level 5), from death's door to full strength with 1 spell.
Runeblood7 01-04-06, 02:38 PM	Also, it depends on the spell availability. I haven't even looked through any of the cleric spells from Spell Compendium to know what would be good to Chain or Twin or anything along those lines. And this is a question as well. If you have 2 versions of DM, can you apply both of them to the same spell (can't see why you couldn't, just want to check.) Sure it would cost a lot of turning, but Nightsticks solve that problem.
kaiza 01-04-06, 03:03 PM	Also, it depends on the spell availability. I haven't even looked through any of the cleric spells from Spell Compendium to know what would be good to Chain or Twin or anything along those lines. And this is a question as well. If you have 2 versions of DM, can you apply both of them to the same spell (can't see why you couldn't, just want to check.) Sure it would cost a lot of turning, but Nightsticks solve that problem. Yeah, it follows the normal rules for Metamagic Feats. k.
Bill Muench 01-04-06, 04:11 PM	...I mentioned dm (quicken) in the very first post, which is I'm guessing why no one elese brought it up :P Yep. My cleric makes extensive use of DMM Quicken, and will have DMM Chain next level (18th, when he picks up Hierophant and Reach - what a shocker ;) ). but yeah, i do agree that dm (persistent) is overrated, and dm (quicken) is much more versatile! for many of the same reasons that dm (chain) and other things is great... besides, dm (quicken) doesn't fear dispel magic like dm (persistent) does (my biggest reason for preferring it). and it requires one less feat to qualify! but i love the ideas, using it for chain spell, or for druidic builds with energy admixture and the like. thanks to all who replied so far, keep them coming! there's got to be something funky we can do with divine meta that you can't do with regular metamagic feats...... So are you looking for uses that would normally exceed the 9th-level spell cap? IE, good 8th-level spells that benefit from Twin Spell, etc.? re: Heighten - that's one I thought of a long time ago, but I never bothered with since I think being able to Heighten a spell past 9th pre-epic is a bit ambiguous. If your DM is cool with it, though, have a ball.
Surreal 01-04-06, 04:25 PM	Go with any of the dual caster builds, dip a level in War Weaver, get divine [whatever] for your entire party.
Dolza 01-04-06, 04:39 PM	I'm using a Cleric of Kord with DM Quicken. I played him for the first time last weekend and he's a real peach to play. Like an earlier poster said....if you only have a couple of combats per session you can really get some good use out of this one. I ended up using it twice in one combat which used all my turning attempts for that day but it kept us from being killed by a group of giants. Where can i find the Nightstick someone mentioned? I've already used one feat to take extra turning so i could get the most benefit out of my Quicken, i'd like to not use any more if i could. dolza
Lo77o 01-04-06, 05:19 PM	Nightsticks are from libris mortis... and they are cheap as well :)
Alamout Servant 01-05-06, 02:49 AM	nightsticks are fun, I agree....... I really like the idea of making a divine metamagic caster that uses heighten spell to raise dcs etc., but there's one kind of self-defeating problem with that. in order to raise the dc once, I'd need to pump a stat that doesnt' feed the spell dc. if I just pumped wisdom straight through, then I'd have pretty good dcs to begin with, and I could pump them up a little through divine heighten. if I pumped charisma crazily, I'd have mediocre dcs for the most part, but when I really needed that one important save-or-die spell to just turn into a "die" spell, I could boost the DC by 14 or 15 in one shot, without even using nightsticks. is there any class that uses cha for divine spells, including save dcs? I know favored soul uses wis for dcs and cha for everything else. what about spirit shaman and shugenja? I know next to nothing about those two classes... including whether itd be worth it even if they could. if one of them had a fairly versatile save-or-die spell and uses cha to calculate dcs, I could probably put together a fairly nasty build with heighten/divine meta, I think. or maybe not - after all, there's got to be a reason I don't see or hear anything about them. re: Heighten - that's one I thought of a long time ago, but I never bothered with since I think being able to Heighten a spell past 9th pre-epic is a bit ambiguous. If your DM is cool with it, though, have a ball. eh, I don't really think it's any more ambiguous than using any other metamagic feat to pump a spell beyond ninth level. persistent righteous might is an 11th level spell, after all, and that sees tons of play. as I said, that's one of the best and biggest (ab)uses of divine metamagic, the fact that you can break normal level caps, and apply decent metamagic to spells that don't normally let you do so ecause they're tpp high a lvl.
Save-vs-DM 01-05-06, 03:15 AM	is there any class that uses cha for divine spells, including save dcs? Here is where our friendly neighborhood Dread Necromancer comes into play! They are charisma casters that get rebuke undead (and are arcane casters too boot). And looky, they get a lot of the nice necromancy save or die spells. Phantasmal Killer Slay Living Harm Destruction Finger of Death Greater Harm!! Horrid Wilting (at level 8 no less) Mass Harm Wail of the Banshee Hmm, this might just be the way to go. Cheers, Save vs DM
Alamout Servant 01-05-06, 03:23 AM	wow, that sounds like fun. especially the multi-target ones like wail of the banshee - a single save-or-die that just targetted one creature would be pretty sad if you blew your whole turning wad on it. now, you said that he's an arcane caster to boot. do you mean he's a dual caster, or he's just an arcane one? because obv. the whole idea behind this is divine metamagic, and as that can only apply to divine spells... where is dread necromancer from? I'd guess LM or HoH, neither of which I have, though I've looked through both briefly and can borrow them when needed. this sounds like fun.
Save-vs-DM 01-05-06, 04:25 AM	The Dread Necromancer is from Heroes of Horror. He's a pure arcane caster, but here's the hitch Divine Metamagic doesn't actually state anything about spells being divine only that you have to be able to rebuke or turn undead (I checked before I posted to avoid looking like a doofus). The Dread Necromancer is more or less a Necromancer version of Warmage. They're really good at raising undead and using necromancy spells and they feed really well into the DMM Heighten spell trick. Nearly all of thier attck spells require saves as well, which is good. Stack this with Spell Focus (Necromancy) and Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy) and you have one nasty one trick pony. Oh, and it does work really well. I ran one of these guys with DMM (Heighten) and DMM (Empower). Coupled with Tomb Tainted Soul he could empower his own self heals and drop a Slay Living with a DC of 26. Not too shabby Chaisma Caster + Rebuke Undead + Divine Metamagic = Happy Times. The best thing is that this class gets the best of both the arcane and divine necromancy spells at the best possible level. It's a bit of a one trick pony but darn if it isn't one heckuva trick! Cheers, Save vs DM
White_Phoenix 01-05-06, 04:42 AM	Divine Metamagic doesn't actually state anything about spells being divine only that you have to be able to rebuke or turn undead (I checked before I posted to avoid looking like a doofus). Well doofus, you are wrong ! :D The very first line in the Divine Metamagic description says: You can channel energy into some of your DIVINE spells to make them more powerful. Furthermore to remove all doubt, the Complete Divine errata says: Page 80: Divine Metamagic feat The boldface text needs to be added to the Benefit paragraph of the feat description: When you take this feat, choose a metamagic feat that you have. This feat applies only to that metamagic feat. As a free action, you can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead and use it to apply a metamagic feat to divine spells that you know. . . . Seems clear to me.
Save-vs-DM 01-05-06, 04:48 AM	Well I'll be sucker punched by a witless kobold! Curses, foiled again! Thanks for pointing that out. Cheers, Save vs DM
ed209 01-05-06, 09:52 AM	is there any class that uses cha for divine spells, including save dcs? I know favored soul uses wis for dcs and cha for everything else. what about spirit shaman and shugenja? I know next to nothing about those two classes... including whether itd be worth it even if they could. if one of them had a fairly versatile save-or-die spell and uses cha to calculate dcs, I could probably put together a fairly nasty build with heighten/divine meta, I think. or maybe not - after all, there's got to be a reason I don't see or hear anything about them. ... Divine Bard from UA. I've been contemplating a build that includes Divine Crusader, another divine CHA caster. Just need to find the time to actually write it out...
Faithless the Wonder Boy 01-05-06, 05:29 PM	Divine Bard doesn't really get any good save-or-die spells, making that not so great of a choice. Also, because the Divine Bard's spells cap out at 6th level, you'll have to heighten even the best of them three extra levels to have the equivalent of a 9th-level save-or-die like Wail of the Banshee, and the spell won't even have as good of an effect. I know the Rainbow Servant turns your spells into divine spells eventually, meaning a sorcerer with Sacred Exorcist could do it - but when they become divine spells, does this mean that Wisdom is used to calculate save DCs? It would still be nice in that it would allow you to Divine Meta Heighten some nice and nasty sorc/wiz spells, but it would also mean that you'd run into the same Wisdom/Charisma problem and you'd also take hits to your caster level from the Rainbow Servant levels. I'm a big fan of Divine Metamagic (Twin Spell), to practically double the effectiveness of each spell. Unless you're using Persistent Spell, which consumes quite a few turn attempts, I'm a firm believer in picking metamagic feats for it that can and will be used multiple times. For example, Fell Animate could be neat at most once a day (go into a village and Fell Animate any AoE damage spell to have a horde of zombies in one blow), but overall probably wouldn't be all that great, since it wouldn't be something you could use in almost any situation.
kaiza 01-06-06, 08:41 AM	Unless you're using Persistent Spell, which consumes quite a few turn attempts, I'm a firm believer in picking metamagic feats for it that can and will be used multiple times. For example, Fell Animate could be neat at most once a day (go into a village and Fell Animate any AoE damage spell to have a horde of zombies in one blow), but overall probably wouldn't be all that great, since it wouldn't be something you could use in almost any situation. I agree. And add that if you don't fight that often, you may want to consider all those Sudden X spells which can come in very handy and don't require DM. k.
Tektonik 01-06-06, 09:20 AM	Well doofus, you are wrong ! :D The very first line in the Divine Metamagic description says: You can channel energy into some of your DIVINE spells to make them more powerful. Furthermore to remove all doubt, the Complete Divine errata says: Page 80: Divine Metamagic feat The boldface text needs to be added to the Benefit paragraph of the feat description: When you take this feat, choose a metamagic feat that you have. This feat applies only to that metamagic feat. As a free action, you can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead and use it to apply a metamagic feat to divine spells that you know. . . . Seems clear to me. Thats why you are an Illumian Dread Necro and can use the equivalent of DM on any metamagic feat you know 2 times a day. Not bad. :)
Reinhart 01-06-06, 01:18 PM	I'm disappointed no one mentioned the Improved Counterspell + Divine Metamagic Heighten Spell trick. Shame on you for forgetting the power of counterspell.
karga909 01-06-06, 02:13 PM	As a response to Fortify Spell: it is pretty useless now that there is the 4th level spell Assay Resistance (swift, +10 caster level v. 1 opponent). In fact, SR is pretty useless after that spell. Quicken is the best, hands down, for cost and versatility. In a dragon magazine is the feat Easy Metamagic, which reduces the cost of ONE of your metamagic feats by one. This helps big on getting more quickens a day with DM. And someone already mentioned nightstick from LM. With a bunch of extra turnings, a 12th level character is quickening like 5 spells a day spontaneously! I like this kind of build with a human cleric/radiant servant. You already have the feat prereq, and the rest is gravy (maximized empowered healing, greater turnings, saving throw bonuses to allies!)