Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lilt 02-16-06, 11:05 AM	Only recently did I discover the Psycarnum Metamagic combo after I borrowed a friends copy of Magic of incarnum and saw some posts making rather extreme claims about what Psycarnum infusion and similar were capable of. I believe the combo does not work due to the wording of the Midnight Metamagic feat. The original post can be found here, entitled Psycarnum Metamagic (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=507714) by DisposableHero_. Lets look at the feats: Midnight Metamagic You can channel Incarnum into your prepared spells. When you cast such a spell, your hands Gleam with a dark blue radiance. Prerequisites: Con 13, ability to cast 1st level spells, any metamagic feat. Benefit: Once per day, you can invest essential into this feat and choose one or more spells that you know (and have prepared, if you prepare spells) to apply the effect of a metamagic feat that you know. Each spell to be affected requires the investment of a number of essential equal to the normal spell level adjustment required by the metamagic feat. The next time you cast that spell, the spell gains the effect of that metamagic feat without any change to its level (or casting time, if you cast spells spontaneously). You can apply the effect of this feat to as many spells as you can afford to invest essentia. You can apply the effect of different metamagic feats to different spells, as long as you know all metamagic feats applied and you have sufficient essential capacity to do so. For example, you could invest 1 point of essentia to enlarge a spell (as Enlarge Spell) and 2 points of essentia to empower a spell (as Empower Spell). As long as you had an essentia capacity (see Table 2-1: Essentia Capacity) of 3 or greater, and knew both the Empower Spell and Enlarge Spell feats. Once essentia is invested in the spell, it remains invested until the spell is cast, at which point the essentia returns to your essentia pool. You gain 1 point of essentia.Psycarnum Infusion You can transform your mental focus into a brief burst of soul energy Prerequisites: Con 13, Concentration 4 rangs Benefit: To use this feat, you must expend your psionic focus. Until the start of your next turn, one of your soul-melds, incarnum feats, class features, or other incarnum recepticles is treated as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity. You don't gain any bonus essentia from this effect. Now the initial combo seems simple, expend psionic focus and treat Midnight Metamagic as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity. Use that investment to power metamagic feats for a round, and repeat. The problem here is the first 3 words of the Midnight Metamagic benefit: "Once per day". Some people may claim that Psycarnum Infusion allows them to ignore that restriction, the Psycarnum Infusion feat says you can do it after-all, but this is not the case. The benefit of the feat, the investment of essentia in order to power metamagic feats, is only useable strictly once per day. You can invest essentia into the feat as many times as you want, but you can't use the free metamagic benefit more than once. The virtual essentia provided by psycarnum infusion thus sits there doing nothing as you can't invest it in anything because you can only invest 1/day. Some people may claim that you put the essentia in at the beginning of the day and simply use Psycarnum Infusion to treat it as being full again. This is also incorrect, for similar reasons to above. Say you used 4 essentia in order to make the next fireball you cast Quickened. You subsequently cast that fireball and use psycarnum infusion to re-fill the feat. The essentia invested does not automatically re-invest itself into the same effects it was in before, it merely sits there doing nothing (like in the previous example) because you can only invest it into spells once per day.
Saulot 02-16-06, 11:24 AM	Lets look at the wording of the feats more closely. (Midnight Metamagic) ...Benefit: Once per day, you can invest essentia... (Psycarnum Infusion) ...Benefit: To use this feat, you must expend your psionic focus. Until the start of your next turn, one of your soul-melds, incarnum feats, class features, or other incarnum recepticles is treated as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity. There is no actual investment of essentia going on, thanks to the "as if" bit of Psycarnum Infusion, thus ignoring the "once a day" bit of Midnight Metamagic. Edit: Isn't copying those feats in your post a CoC violation? I don't think MoI is open-source material...
Todd 02-16-06, 11:26 AM	Lilt I think that you would have done better to post this in the orginal thread rather than just linking to it here. However Saulot's argument is the one that has been proposed & I find it credible RAW even if against likely intent. The trick is to never put any essentia into the feat at all. If you do put even 1 point in at the start of the day then by RAW the trick will not work. However if you leave the feat empty at the start of the day.... I did think of another potential problem the other day, but it will have to wait until I get home and can get at my books again.
Lilt 02-16-06, 11:28 AM	Again, you can treat the feat as if it had essentia invested into it, but you can't invest essentia into the feat and gain an effect from doing so more than once per day. IE: It still doesn't work. Edit: Isn't copying those feats in your post a CoC violation? I don't think MoI is open-source material...I'm not sure exactly. I thought we were allowed to quote bits and pieces, as much as is needed to discuss what we're doing. If it is against the CoC then I'd ask the moderatirs to delete it.
Lilt 02-16-06, 11:35 AM	Lilt I think that you would have done better to post this in the orginal thread rather than just linking to it here.When people read posts, they read the start more often than they read the end. A 10-page discussion on this at the end of the Psycarnum Infusion thread would only result in more people reading the first post then going away and attempring to use this nonfunctioning combo in their builds. As I said in my response to Saulot: Treating the feat as if it has essentia invested in it means that the feat is treated as if it has been used that day. You can't pick and choose what parts of the feat it applies to, it applies to the whole thing.
Encard 02-16-06, 11:50 AM	Treating the feat as if it has essentia invested in it means that the feat is treated as if it has been used that day. You can't pick and choose what parts of the feat it applies to, it applies to the whole thing. It doesn't say that. You treat the feat as if it had essentia invested in it during that round - you don't invest any essentia in it. Look at the last bit of Midnight Metamagic - the essentia remains invested in the feat until the spell is cast. Once cast, you get it back. In other words, when the feat is invested with essentia, the feat is active. Psycarnum Infusion causes the feat to be treated as though it were invested with essentia - there's no provision for limits per day or whatnot, Psycarnum Infusion just does it, without ever actually investing in it.
Todd 02-16-06, 11:59 AM	Lilt let’s step away from Midnight Metamagaic for a second because I think that it is clear that the MoI designers did not consider it’s interaction with Psycarnum Infusion. Is Psycarnum Infusion useable more than once per day? Yes. Does it affect feats each time it is used? Yes. Now let’s take a feat like Midnight Dodge, a feat that works similarly to MM with “once per day” essentia investment. At the start of the day Bob the 12th level Psychic Warrior with Psycarnum Infusion & Midnight Dodge invests his one point of essentia into the MD feat. He now has +1 to his AC via the Midnight Dodge feat and has used his “once per day” investment. Later in the day he expends his focus and uses Psycarnum Infusion. What happens? To me clearly the “once per day” thing is the default rule ... the general case. Psycarnum Infusion is the specific & overrides the default behavior. Bob will have +3 to his AC for one round instead of +1. Once Psycarnum Infusion ends his AC drops back down to +1. There is additional support for this in the rules on losing essentia. First you loose unassigned essentia, then essentia in changeable things like soulmelds, and finally, once all other essentia is gone you start loosing it out of feats where it was assigned. Clearly the essentia invested in a feat can be changed by extraordinary means by RAW yet the feat will still work if it has any essentia invested. For example if Bob had two points of essentia invested in Midnight Dodge and somehow lost one via an essentia draining attack he would still get +1 to AC from the feat. Again the here we see that “once per day” is the default but that some things can override this. Midnight Metamagic is a bit tricky in its wording in that you apply it to a specific spell instead of a general trait like AC. If essentia were invested in Midnight Metamagic at the start of the day then any “boost” to essentia provided by something like Psycarnum Infusion would go towards further enhancing the spell or spells chosen then with additional metamagic. However if no essentia has been invested then the feat is a blank slate when it gets the Psycarnum Infusion. You treat the feat as though it were “full” so you have until the start of your next turn until pick a spell to enhance with a metamagic feat that you know. Again, clearly to me, this works at least once. It’s what happens the second time that Psycarnum Infusion is used that’s a bit unclear. You never actually invested essentia into the feat so the MM default text isn’t going to apply. To make a second Psycarnum Infusion not work you would have to rule that the MM feat has a “memory” of how it was used ... something I don’t see supported in the text. I don’t think that your objections are unreasonable Lilt ... I would probably limit MM myself as a DM. However I don’t see RAW support for it.
RadicalTaoist 02-16-06, 12:16 PM	The problem is that MM has an investment per day limit, not a use per day limit. Even if the 'treat as invested' triggered the once per day limit, the feat is treated thus only for one round. So you can treat Midnight Metamagic as if it had been used up for the day for one round. Next round you're home free. Chasing that argument further may allow you to ban using Midnight Metamagic more than once a round, but I don't see you going farther than that RAW.
Kraydak 02-16-06, 12:28 PM	"Once per day you can ....invest.... AND choose one or more spells ....." The once per day limit applies to BOTH investing essentia (which you might be able to get around with Psycarnum Infusion) and the choosing of the spells (which you can't). -Kraydak
Encard 02-16-06, 12:34 PM	Possible - however, I'm reading that as saying that choosing spells is a direct consequence of the investing of essentia, rather than that you can specifically only choose spells once per day. The normal limit of once per day is only there because of the normal investment limit of once per day. I suppose it depends on how you think the semantics break down.
RadicalTaoist 02-16-06, 12:52 PM	Hmm. I wonder if it could be argued that you can only choose one spell per day, but Psycarnum Metamagic it as often as you want. Limits the Persistent spell abuse, but still allows for great blasting. Scorching Ray gets a lot of mileage.
Kraydak 02-16-06, 12:55 PM	Possible - however, I'm reading that as saying that choosing spells is a direct consequence of the investing of essentia, rather than that you can specifically only choose spells once per day. The normal limit of once per day is only there because of the normal investment limit of once per day. I suppose it depends on how you think the semantics break down. Semantics... indeed. I would say that my reading is "as if it had essentia invested" while yours is "as if it had *had* essentia invested. MM is horribly written, as the essentia not not merely invested in the feat, but also in the spells. Arguably, you first invest essentia in the feat and then in turn take it from the feat and put it into the spells. Which would mean that essentia in the feat does nothing at all. That is a big difference between MM and Midnight Dodge say: it doesn't matter where essentia in MD comes from or how it got there, but MM does not require essentia invested in it to be used. Merely investing essentia in MM is useless. Here is a funny reading of MM: A character has MM, adequate essentia and a capacity of 4. At the start of the day he invests 3 essentia to maximise a spell. Before casting the spell he uses psycarnum infusion. *IF he had invested 4 essentia in MM at the start of the day, he WOULD have quickened the spell*. So the spell is quickened. What happens to the 3 *real* essentia invested in the spell to maximise it? -Kraydak
Lilt 02-16-06, 01:12 PM	Kraydak has the right idea here. You can only perform the "allocate essentia to power metamagic feats" action once per day. It doesn't matter if you can treat the feat as having full essentia invested in it for one round, you have no way to use that essentia if you've already performed the action which the feat only lets you do once per day. @RadicalTaoist: LOL. By an extension of that argument any spells made persistant using Psycarnum Infusion would arguably be persistant, albeit only for one round. It's fully possible for someone to invest essentia into the feat normally and expend it in one round (to cast a quickened spell, for example). In this case the feat has its full essentia capacity invested for one round, yet it does still count against the one per day limit. @Todd: Midnight Dodge does work with the Psycarnum Infusion because the essentia invested in the feat is used as the variable to determine what AC bonus you get. Midnight Metamagic works differently, however, and the amount of essentia invested into the feat doesn't do anything in itself unless you use the 1/day action to allocate it to spells/metamagic. The Midnight Metamagic is treated as if it had essentia invested in it for one turn. As I said above to RadicalTaoist, it's not implicit that they're able to do it all again the next turn. @Encard: Coosing a spell/metamagic is not a direct concequence of investing essentia, it is part of the 1/day use of the feat. If you choose the semantics to break down any differently then you're really taking the other parts out of context and it makes no sense because the later parts of the paragraph reference the earlier parts of the paragraph.
Todd 02-16-06, 10:35 PM	You know what the irony is? I don’t particularly like Psycarnum Metamagic yet I find myself arguing for it. :rolleyes: Kraydak has the right idea here. You can only perform the "allocate essentia to power metamagic feats" action once per day. The “once per day” thing is the default behavior of ALL incarnum feats. See page 34 under “Incarnum Feats” & page 50 under “Essentia”. There are exceptions to this rule, like page 50’s explanation of essentia loss. However, as others have said, Psycarnum Infusion is NOT the same thing as “investing essentia” ... nothing in the RAW supports it acting this way. In fact Psycarnum Infusion goes out of the way in stating “You don’t gain any bonus essentia from this effect” ... instead “...one of your incarnum feats is treated as if it had essentia invested.” It provides effect but no actual essentia. If Psycarnum Infusion DID count as “investing essentia” then it could only be used once a day itself, since EVERY incarnum feat can only have essentia invested once per day. EVERY single other incarnum feat would have to work the same way that you want Midnight Metamagic to. @Todd: Midnight Dodge does work with the Psycarnum Infusion because the essentia invested in the feat is used as the variable to determine what AC bonus you get. Midnight Metamagic works differently, however, and the amount of essentia invested into the feat doesn't do anything in itself unless you use the 1/day action to allocate it to spells/metamagic. Lilt, every single incarnum feat has the 1/day language. Midnight Metamagic is not unique in this. Every incarnum feat has “invest essentia” and gain X type language. I find it interesting that you insist on parsing the wording of Midnight Metamagic but do something completely different for the other feats. @Encard: Coosing a spell/metamagic is not a direct concequence of investing essentia, it is part of the 1/day use of the feat. If you choose the semantics to break down any differently then you're really taking the other parts out of context and it makes no sense because the later parts of the paragraph reference the earlier parts of the paragraph. Disagree. Do you get to choose a spell/metamagic if you DON’T invest essentia or use Psycarnum Infusion? No you do not. Clearly, discounting for the moment Psycarnum Infusion and the like, you cannot choose a spell until the feat has essentia invested into it so the choosing must be a consequence of the investment. Midnight Metamagic normally works in a “invest essentia” then “choose effect” sequence, where choosing the effect involves selecting spells and metamagic. Let’s go back to my Midnight Dodge example. Let’s say that Bob had invested NO essentia into the feat. Would the feat still work after he activated Psycarnum infusion? Yes it would. This is true for Midnight Metamagic as well. As posted a million times above the 1/day thing is part of the default operation of incarnum feats, it is not something special or unique to Midnight Metamagic. As a complete aside let me note that it’s not just Psycarnum Infusion that has an effect that makes feats be treated as if they are full of essentia. The Incarnate has a class ability that does this. There is an Incarnum Domain spell that does so as well. There are also other feats that will behave oddly due to this other than Midnight Metamagic. Sapphire Smite is a great example. It grants extra daily uses of the Smite ability per essentia. Adding “virtual” essentia can result in some interesting conundrums. Do the “virtual” extra uses of smite get used first or not? Azure Talent is another one. You get bonus PP per essentia. Combine with Psycarnum Infusion and you can get a few extra PP each round simply by expending focus.
SwiftFox 02-16-06, 11:18 PM	I agree that midnight metamagic cannot benefit from psycarnum infusion... its also worth noting that midnight metamagic is in no way comparable to divine metamagic because the total essentia that can be invested in spells, total, not per spell, is your essentia capacity... which means to exploit this feat via persistant spell you can only ever persist one spell per 6 points of essentia capacity for midnight metamagic... very limiting, even an illumian can do it better than this. My point is, midnight metamagic is pretty hard to exploit... Id have to say it looks like WOTC has caught onto the Divine metamagic Persistant Spell exploit and made sure the same thing couldnt be done with incarnum.
RadicalTaoist 02-16-06, 11:44 PM	@RadicalTaoist: LOL. By an extension of that argument any spells made persistant using Psycarnum Infusion would arguably be persistant, albeit only for one round. No such luck - by then it's a feature of the spell, not the feat. A non-Psycarnum Midnight Persistent Spell stays Persistent for 24 hours. Psycarnum Metamagic doesn't undo the effects of the feat it augmented once its duration is up. It's fully possible for someone to invest essentia into the feat normally and expend it in one round (to cast a quickened spell, for example). In this case the feat has its full essentia capacity invested for one round, yet it does still count against the one per day limit. Besides the point. Applying the metamagic to the spell is applying the metamagic to the spell, its not applying the limitations in either MM or PI to the feat or the spell. Todd's right. This doesn't trigger the once per day limit on MM. The best you can do is separate the "choose" effect from the invest effect, and argue that MM functions as normally within the duration of PI. That means you can only affect the same spell each day with PI+MM and that you can't use PI+MM twice in a round. That's the best that can be hoped for, RAW.
AlienFromBeyond 02-17-06, 01:28 AM	Now, how about some Psycarnum Soul Manifesting (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20060217a)?
Kraydak 02-17-06, 01:33 AM	Any statement that MM is poorly written will get my agreement. The write-up for MM hints (but does not clearly state) that essentia gets invested (most likely from the feat) into spells. The Once essentia is invested in the spell, it remains invested until the spell is cast, at which point the essentia returns to your essentia pool and You can apply the effect of this feat to as many spells as you can afford to invest with essentia lines suggests that using MM is a two step process: first invest essentia in the feat (1/day) then (mechanics unclear, possibly 1/day, possibly part of investing essentia in the feat) invest it in spells. If this is the case, as PI grants no actual essentia, PI+MM is useless. If that isn't the case, we have other interesting effects. Unlike Midnight Dodge, I am able to (yes, it would be stupid) invest essentia in MM *without applying it to a spell*. Unlike MD, MM can have unused/unusable essentia invested in it. It gets wierder. If, say, I invest 2 essentia in MM to Empower a spell, and later (but before casting the spell), get essentia-drained to 0, the spell is still Empowered. Essentia in MM is not inherently useful, nor needed. The only useful essentia in MM is that in it *when I choose spells*. How do I choose spells? Once per day, you can invest essential into this feat and choose one or more spells that you know (and have prepared, if you prepare spells) to apply the effect of a metamagic feat that you know. I choose spells by taking a combined *invest and choose* action, presumably (but not entirely clearly) part of a normal swift action to invest essentia. It is, however, different than merely investing essentia into MM. There are ways (such as PI) to invest essentia into MM more than 1/day. There are not however (to my knowledge), ways to *invest and choose* more than 1/day. If the line were: Once per day, you can invest essential into this feat. When you invest essentia into this feat, choose one or more spells that you know (and have prepared, if you prepare spells) to apply the effect of a metamagic feat that you know, it would work, of course. -Kraydak
Vaelan 02-17-06, 02:10 AM	Midnight Metamagic normally works in a “invest essentia” then “choose effect” sequence, where choosing the effect involves selecting spells and metamagic. I would say that it does not, in fact, work and I will actually bother to support my idea. Point 1: Psycarnum Infusion does not invest essentia within the receptacle. At no point does the feat claim that it does this. Point 2: Midnight Metamagic associates the essentia with a spell and metamagic effect. Here are a few portions from Midnight Metamagic's description that show the astute reader that this is true. For example, you could invest 1 point of essentia to enlarge a spell (as Enlarge Spell) and 2 points of essentia to empower a spell (as Empower Spell). Once essentia is invested in the spell, it remains invested until the spell is cast, at which point the essentia returns to your essentia pool. Both of these quotes clearly show that essentia is associated with the spell and metamagic effect. Point 3: The essentia is associated with a spell and metamagic effect as it is invested. Once per day, you can invest essentia into this feat and choose one or more spells that you know (and have prepared, if you prepare spells) to apply the effect of a metamagic feat that you know. As you can see from this sentence, essentia is associated with a spell and metamagic effect as it is invested. Conclusion... Psycarnum Infusion does not invest essentia in the feat (Point 1). Since essentia is associated with a spell and metamagic effect (Point 2) when it is invested (Point 3), the essentia that Psycarnum Infusion makes you act as though Midnight Metamagic had does not allow you to alter a spell with a metamagic effect. This is a result of poor writing. Psycarnum Infusion does not take into account the fact that simply having essentia invested does absolutely nothing for Midnight Metamagic as the essentia must be associated with a spell and metamagic effect. I find it quite humorous that when a poorly-written feat precludes an abusive combination so many people try to rationalize it as legal while poorly-written feats that allow abusive combinations are not rationalized as illegal. It seems rather inconsistent.
Lilt 02-17-06, 07:43 AM	@Todd and RadicalTaoist: Once per day is the default behaviour of all of the incarnum feats, that I agree with you on. The difference is that the different feats are worded differently, and the missing link in the case of MM is that having X essentia invested in MM does nothing. My argument is not that you can't dump energy from Psycarnum Infusion into an incarnum feat that has already been used. In the case of Midnight Dodge the 1/day action is merely that of investing X essentia. There are separate mechanics that state that the character gains a dodge bonus equal to X against a designated opponent. If the feat is treated as full (at capacity Y) for one round using Psycarnum Infusion, then X changes to the character's capacity Y even if X was already set using the 1/day action, and the character gains a dodge bonus of Y for one round. Midnight Metamagic doesn't work like that though. As an incarnum feat, it is able to have essentia invested in it according to the text on P34. The problem is that you can only use the action which allows you to do anything with that essentia once per day. Once per day, you can invest essentia into this feat and choose one or more spells...Returning to the algebraic language from before: Once per day you can invest X essentia and allocate it to a number of other variables (A1...AX). In this case resetting X to Y (capacity) after you've used the 1/day action does nothing because you can't allocate it to the other variables. Attempting to invest essentia more than once would normally fail due to the wording on P34, which states that a character an only invest incarnum in incarnum feats once per day. I agree that Psycarnum Infusion allows you to bypass the 1/day limit on the [incarnum] feat type, but not that it lets you allocate metamagic feats to spells. Only once per day can you both Invest incarnum and have it allocated to spells. Attempting to invest essentia into this feat more than once per day, even if you get around the limit on the [incarnum] feat type, just results in shooting Psycarnum blanks because there is a second 1/day limitation. Psycarnum Infusion treats the feat as if it had the maximum essentia invested for one round. IE the feat is treated as if it had essentia invested into it. How is this not the same as investing essentia? You argue that the feat returns to its previous state the next round thus it can have essentia invested in it again? This is not the case. The feat is treated as if it had maximum essentia invested in it for one round. Although it's not part of the regular working of feats for the essentia to leave it after one round, there is nothing to say that the feat recieves a complete reset. It is treated as if it had essentia invested in it for one round. If the feat had essentia invested in it, then the 1/day use is gone. You claim that it returns after a round, but the feat just doesn't say that. As I pointed-out before: It's possible for essentia to be invested in the feat for one round (or even less if it's all expended on a quickened spell) but that in no way un-uses-up the 1/day use of the feat. The wording of Psycarnum Infusion would need to say something like: Until the start of your next turn, one of your soul-melds, incarnum feats, class features, or other incarnum recepticles is treated as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity. After one round the incarnum recepticle used reverts to its previous state and can be used again with any daily uses restoredI repeat that restoration of the 1/day use is not implicit in the statement that something is treated as if it has incarnum invested in it for one round. As for the other feats: Azure Talent would grant bonus PP if Psycarnum Infusioned, but if those power points were spent then they'd not return if Psycarnum Infusion was used again any more than a cleric can get infinite uses of turning a day by donning and removing a charisma bonus item between each use. The same thing goes for Sapphire Smite. IE: It can give bonus uses per day but if you spend them then no application/re-application gets them back infinitely. @Kraydak: I think your first interpretation of the second paragraph is correct, as this is a continuation/clarification of the first paragraph. You can apply the effect of this feat to as many spells as you can afford to invest with essentiaIt is generally incomplete without the mechanics of the first paragraph (that you must spend an amount of essentia equal to the spell level adjustment of the metamagic) etc. @Valean: That's another interesting argument.
Todd 02-18-06, 02:32 PM	I suspect that this is beating a dead horse but I just want to note that this is the core of our disagreement. I agree that Psycarnum Infusion allows you to bypass the 1/day limit on the [incarnum] feat type, but not that it lets you allocate metamagic feats to spells. The only way for it to work as you describe would be if, at the start of the day when you shape soulmelds and whatnot, you had to declare a spell and metamagic even if you did not invest essentia in the Midnight Metamagic feat. This is where your argument fails for me. If I invest no essentia I don’t have to pick a spell. If I had to pick a spell even if there were no essentia investment in the feat then I would agree with you 100% but that’s not the way the feat works. Psycarnum Infusion treats the feat as if it had the maximum essentia invested for one round. IE the feat is treated as if it had essentia invested into it. How is this not the same as investing essentia? The key thing here is the final sentence of Psycarnum Infusion: “You don’t gain any bonus essentia from this effect.” It is clear to me that even though you treat the soulmeld, feat, or whatever “as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity” that there is not actually essentia in the target. Thus you do not actually invest essentia into the target, you just treat it as though you had. I think of it as “virtual” essentia. As for the other feats: Azure Talent would grant bonus PP if Psycarnum Infusioned, but if those power points were spent then they'd not return if Psycarnum Infusion was used again any more than a cleric can get infinite uses of turning a day by donning and removing a charisma bonus item between each use. The difference being that the Cleric has to rest to gain any bonus granted by a stat boosting item. That’s not the way Azure Talent works. After you have already rested and have your PP for the day, if you choose to invest essentia in Azure Talent, you get a few more “bonus” power points. What normally keeps this in check is the 1/day activation limit. With Psycarnum Infusion you get bonus PP but only have until your next turn to spend them. After that they are gone whether you used them or not.
Lilt 02-18-06, 04:27 PM	The only way for it to work as you describe would be if, at the start of the day when you shape soulmelds and whatnot, you had to declare a spell and metamagic even if you did not invest essentia in the Midnight Metamagic feat. This is where your argument fails for me. If I invest no essentia I don’t have to pick a spell. If I had to pick a spell even if there were no essentia investment in the feat then I would agree with you 100% but that’s not the way the feat works.I don't quite understand your argument here. When does the start of the day come into this? The feat can be used at any point during the day, but only once. To clarify my point: You can only use the feat once per day for two reasons: type feats can only have essentia invested in them once per day. This is part of the wording on P34, and for this discussion to even be taking place it has to be assumed that Psycarnum Infusion bypasses this limit. The MM feat's benefit is a once per day action to invest essentia and split it between spells granting them free metamagic feats. Even if essentia is invested using Psycarnum Metamagic, that doesn't let you re-take the 1/day action to split it between spells and allocate it to metamagic feats. The key thing here is the final sentence of Psycarnum Infusion: “[i]You don’t gain any bonus essentia from this effect.” It is clear to me that even though you treat the soulmeld, feat, or whatever “as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity” that there is not actually essentia in the target. Thus you do not actually invest essentia into the target, you just treat it as though you had. I think of it as “virtual” essentia.You're picking and choosing what you apply the wording to and what not to. That is both incorrectly following the wording of Psycarnum Infusion *and* would lead to further problems with your argument. According to the wording of Psycarnum Infusion: The subject feat, the whole feat with no 'if's and 'but's, is treated as if essentia is invested into it. This mean that you can't choose to say that essentia was invested for some purposes and not for others. Claiming that the essentia is not real leads to problems: This "Virtual" essentia *must* be as real as any other essentia for the purposes of the feat to work, as otherwise Vaelan's argument comes into play. To sum-up his argument: The feat requires you to sub-invest essentia, which you can't do if you don't have essentia. The difference being that the Cleric has to rest to gain any bonus granted by a stat boosting item. That’s not the way Azure Talent works. After you have already rested and have your PP for the day, if you choose to invest essentia in Azure Talent, you get a few more “bonus” power points. What normally keeps this in check is the 1/day activation limit. With Psycarnum Infusion you get bonus PP but only have until your next turn to spend them. After that they are gone whether you used them or not.Tell me, where is it stated that a cleric has to rest to gain an extra use per day of turn undead from a high charisma score? How does what you're suggesting with Azure Talent differ all that much from a cleric buying two Nightsticks, using them to persist a spell with, putting them down, picking them back up, and persisting another spell with them again? Either you keep track of the used turn-attempts/power points and deduct the total spent from the maximum available, or you open-up a world of infinite loops that no sane DM would allow.
RadicalTaoist 02-18-06, 04:34 PM	According to the wording of Psycarnum Infusion: The subject feat, the whole feat with no 'if's and 'but's, is treated as if essentia is invested into it. This mean that you can't choose to say that essentia was invested for some purposes and not for others. For one round only. Next round, it's as if it were never invested at all. That's the 'pro' argument as far as I can tell.
Lilt 02-18-06, 05:25 PM	For one round only. Next round, it's as if it were never invested at all. That's the 'pro' argument as far as I can tell."For one round" and "For one round only" are two different things. Psycarnum Infusion says the following: Until the start of your next turn, one of your soul-melds, incarnum feats, class features, or other incarnum recepticles is treated as if it had essentia invested in it equal to its maximum essentia capacity. You don't gain any bonus essentia from this effect.It is treated as if it had essentia invested in it for one round. That means that you can use the 1/day action. If you use the 1/day action, there's nothing to say that you get it back. The fact that the 1/day action requires the investment of essentia plays no part in this.
catharz 02-19-06, 10:34 PM	"For one round" and "For one round only" are two different things. Psycarnum Infusion says the following: It is treated as if it had essentia invested in it for one round. That means that you can use the 1/day action. If you use the 1/day action, there's nothing to say that you get it back. The fact that the 1/day action requires the investment of essentia plays no part in this. When you invest essentia into Midnight MM, you actually invest it until you regain your essentia, right? Imagine what it means if the feat isn't poorly written: You invest the essentia in, and use the feat, and the essentia stays 'tied up' in the feat until the next day. The reason you can't invest essentia in the feat is that it's already full-up. Psycarnum Infusion 'tricks' the feat, just enough to get it to power the spell. Because there isn't any essentia invested in the feat, you can invest again (whereupon the feat it 'full') or 'trick' it again. For the record, I'm not for or against this exploit, and I'm not too familiar with it.
Lilt 02-20-06, 12:00 PM	Imagine what it means if the feat isn't poorly written: You invest the essentia in, and use the feat, and the essentia stays 'tied up' in the feat until the next day. The reason you can't invest essentia in the feat is that it's already full-up. Psycarnum Infusion 'tricks' the feat, just enough to get it to power the spell. Because there isn't any essentia invested in the feat, you can invest again (whereupon the feat it 'full') or 'trick' it again.I'm not sure exactly what you mean. MM is somewhat unique amongst incarnum feats in that it actually returns essentia to your pool after it is used, yet the workings of the feat still forbid using it to power free metamagic again.
catharz 02-20-06, 07:12 PM	I'm not sure exactly what you mean. MM is somewhat unique amongst incarnum feats in that it actually returns essentia to your pool after it is used, yet the workings of the feat still forbid using it to power free metamagic again. Ah, in that case I was misunderstanding the feat and you seem to be right.
Kraydak 02-20-06, 07:31 PM	I'm not sure exactly what you mean. MM is somewhat unique amongst incarnum feats in that it actually returns essentia to your pool after it is used, yet the workings of the feat still forbid using it to power free metamagic again. Note that its not entirely clear that essentia is actually returned to your pool, as its not entirely clear (at least to me) that essentia is actually ever envested into a spell... I can see several legitimate reading of MM: 1) Anytime you invest essentia into MM, you get to choose spells (at the same time). PI might work, but your spells/metamagic feats may have been determined by a prior investment... 2) After investing essentia, you get to choose spells (1/day), at some later point (action time undefined). PI won't work. As the action time is undefined, I strongly dislike this option. 3) At the same time as you invest essentia into MM, you get to choose spells, but the choosing action is also subject to the 1/day limitation in the sentence. PI won't work. Also: 1) All the stuff about investing essentia into spells is irrelevant. No essentia is ever invested in a spell and stays invested in the feat. 2) Contrary to the usual limitations on Incarnum feats, essentia invested in the feat is subsequently invested into spells (and so is no longer invested in the feat). Errata, not mere clarification, is needed... -Kraydak
Todd 02-20-06, 07:54 PM	Bottom line for me is that the first 10 words of MM are exactly the same as every other Incarnum Feat. Every other Incarnum Feat is limited by the P34 & 50 activation rules. The 1/day wording in them is reference to this. I just can't see MM working differently than they do. You choose spells & invest essentia at the same time. Normally this is a once per day thing. However there are feats & spells that will either let you get essentia into an Incarnum Feat or make it "act as full" more than once per day. Saying that MM doesn't work the same as the other feats is fine ... but not RAW IMHO. You can't parse the wording of "choose spells" ... it's part of the same 1/day thing they all use. Choosing spells & putting essentia, whether real or not, into the feat is a single thing not two seperate actionable things. I understand not wanting this to work. I would be happy to see errata. However, as it stands, if you seperate the choosing of the spells from the insertion of essenia then bad stuff (TM) happens. ;) That's it for me. I don't see any minds being changed. I tried to think of counter arguments when PMM was first proposed and failed. After looking even more closely this time I'm even more convinced than ever that it's RAW. It's RAW I don't like, but there it stands. Best of luck & happy gaming! :D
fnord 02-20-06, 08:06 PM	You choose spells & invest essentia at the same time. Normally this is a once per day thing. However there are feats & spells that will either let you get essentia into an Incarnum Feat or make it "act as full" more than once per day. The point, I think, is that PI lets you get around the 1/day limitation on investing essentia, but not the 1/day limit on the combined action *invest essentia and choose spells*. PI fills MM with essentia, but you can't DO anything with it, because you can't choose spells.
RadicalTaoist 02-20-06, 10:00 PM	The point, I think, is that PI lets you get around the 1/day limitation on investing essentia, but not the 1/day limit on the combined action *invest essentia and choose spells*. PI fills MM with essentia, but you can't DO anything with it, because you can't choose spells. That only means you can't choose different spells. If you interpret the choose spell and invest essentia as different, that means you could use PI+MM trick on the same spell multiple times a day. That's good for blasters. One can get a lot of mileage out of that Scorching Ray.
Kraydak 02-20-06, 10:17 PM	That only means you can't choose different spells. If you interpret the choose spell and invest essentia as different, that means you could use PI+MM trick on the same spell multiple times a day. That's good for blasters. One can get a lot of mileage out of that Scorching Ray. Not if you need to choose again. A *past* choice might not (and I'd say wouln't) apply to a new investment. If you looks at "choice" as "investing into spells" then it might become clear. I personally think you can make completely valid arguments for 4 options: 1) MM+PI no worky. 2) MM+PI works. 3) MM+PI works, but you can only repeat past spell+metamagic combinations 4) MM+PI works, but unless the amount invested with PI is different than prior investments, you must repeat a past combination. Of these, (1) is the most balanced but (3) is probably playable. Without *real* effort, you can only get essentia capacity for MM up to 5 and that only at lvl 18. -Kraydak
Lilt 02-21-06, 11:53 AM	Note that its not entirely clear that essentia is actually returned to your pool, as its not entirely clear (at least to me) that essentia is actually ever envested into a spell... <snip> 1) All the stuff about investing essentia into spells is irrelevant. No essentia is ever invested in a spell and stays invested in the feat. 2) Contrary to the usual limitations on Incarnum feats, essentia invested in the feat is subsequently invested into spells (and so is no longer invested in the feat). Errata, not mere clarification, is needed...IMHO the spells themselves are invested with esentia:You can apply the effect of this feat to as many spells as you can afford to invest with essentia.Once essentia is invested in the spell, it remains invested until the spell is cast, at which point the essentia returns to your essentia pool.Yes, you could theoretically read it another way as it is not explicitly stated where the essentia is invested (spells require an investment, but it doesn't say where to). In doing so much of the feat becomes non-sensical. Note that this claim implies a fair bit of stupidity on the writer's part. It'd need to include the claim that the writers wrote the first sentence of the second paragraph and the whole of the third paragraph for no particular reason as they'd become completely meaningless. This is also completely meaningless to the main argument. It says that essentia must be invested as part of the 1/day action. Even if you could invest that essentia into a soulmeld or whatever, that still doesn't change the fact that you can only do it once per day to get any effect from it. In my example before, if you did choose to invest the essentia into the spells then you would get it back thus the argument stands. Bottom line for me is that the first 10 words of MM are exactly the same as every other Incarnum Feat.Bottom line as far as the RAW is concerned is that the sentence is 30 words long (excluding parentheses) and is expanded upon in the rest of the paragraph. Taking just the first 10 words takes them completely out of context which makes any claim based on it non-RAW. If you interpret the choose spell and invest essentia as different,The word and between them denies such interpretation, however. :rolleyes: @Kraydak: Interpretation 1 is correct. It is clear that the 1/day action is what allows the spells to be cast with the metamagic feat applied:The next time you cast that spell, the spell gains the effect of that metamagic feat without any change to its levelCast that spell? Cast what spell? Oh yes, it references the previous two sentences! I feel like a detective:Each spell to be affected requires the investment of a number of essentia equal to the normal spell level adjustment required by the metamagic feat.Each spell to be affected by what? What metamagic feat?Once per day, you can invest essentia into this feat and choose one or more spells that you know (and have prepared, if you prepare spells) to apply the effect of a metamagic feat that you know.Now we're onto something. Once per day I can choose a some spells I know/have prepared and a metamagic that I know. Going back down the chain, I discover that I need to invest essentia to make it work, that doing all of this allows me to apply the metamagic feat to it with no level adjustments. This action, this whole action including the fact that the metamagic feat is applied to it, is useable only once per day. Let me put it another way: You can only apply metamagic effects to spells once per day because the effect that causes it is part of a 1/day action.
KirinDave 03-05-06, 02:44 PM	To me, the most bizzare part of this trick is that all these individual feats really are not that good. Midnight Metamagic is mediocre at best due to max essentia investment. Psycarnum Infusion is very limited use outside of this specific trick, and divine soultouch is also rather so-so. It's frustrating to see the MoI mediocrity ground further into our collective faces than by seeing Yet Another Clever Dip Strategy vastly outperform what someone playing to the intent of, say, a Soulcaster or more pure Incarnum build that matches the intent of the book.