Talk:Infinite Spell (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

	Foxwarrior likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	It's totally crazy and deserving of the Very High tag, but the actual effect is moderated enough by a +4 level increase that it won't break the game too much.

Too Powerful

Considering the number of ways one may ignore metamagic levels this seems like an extremely powerful feat. Look at Innate Spell as an example, it has you permantly lose a spell slot 8 levels higher to be able to cast a spell at will as a spell like ability and requires Quicken, Still and Silent. Granted, spell-like abilities are a bit more powerful, but with Infinite Spell you could still use your other metamagic feats making your chosen spell insanely powerful.

This was built with a few assumptions about the way spells should scale (not that they actually do this). Specifically, that a spell of level X+1 should be about twice as powerful as a spell of level X (which is itself based on CR math, the idea that all non-trivial portions of a wizard's power comes from their spells, and the premise that there is a power relationship between spells of different level), which would suggest that a spell of level X+4 should be about 16x more powerful than a spell of level X. When you factor in the save DC differences, additional action costs, and spell level caps I figured that +4 spell levels was worth throwing it around as many times as you like until you re-prepped. I'll admit that there are some problems with this (long range spells are big offenders since they scale to 'dumb' distance and built in spell scaling makes the power relationship premise difficult to defend in reality) and that the cost might need to be higher, but saying it's too strong 'because innate spell costs more' doesn't sway me much. There's a lot of material on here designed to make up for perceived shortcomings in published material, and innate spell is a sad unfunny joke as far as I'm concerned. You take 4 feats and burn a 9th level slot to be able to cast magic missile or grease or color spray or sleep all day, and you don't even get to swap that around during down time. That's not a reasonable use of a 9th level slot and 4 feats IMO.

By contrast, the question you ask with this feat is "do I want to cast web all day with a 12+X DC or do I want to cast acid fog once with a 16+X DC?". Sure, you can web it up all day, but there are plenty of things at your level that just don't care about web anymore, or glitterdust, or ghoul touch, or whatever. You could grab all day charm person instead, but I don't care about an army of peasants failing DC 11+X saves when you're level 9, nor do I really care about all day knock at 11 instead of a level 6 spell or most other utility or non-combat spells that you could use this on. And while you can boost the effects with other metamagic feats, then the question becomes "do I want to cast widened web all day with a 12+X DC or do I want to cast wail of the banshee once with a 19+X DC?".

I'm pretty ok with those trade offs in a VH game, but it is very inappropriate for games that don't like that sort of power. I admit to not considering the interactions with metamagic reducers, but I don't support there existence (not even in principle) and don't want to design around them. I may add a note that no spell that benefits from this metamagic may have it's overall metamagic cost reduced by any means though, because that can get a bit nuts. And I could see an argument for bumping it to +5 spell levels, but nothing on the order of innate spell. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Cantrips

They could probably be +1. +2 for DMs uneasy with the idea of having an ability all day long. --Aarnott 20:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

A large number of them certainly could, but I don't think all of them work there. +3 sets inf healing via Cure Minor at level 5, any lower is earlier than I think people are really interested in cutting out natural healing and stories where you spend some time wounded between fights because supplies run low. This is also a proof of concept for MisterSinister's TOToM, and his cantrips don't work with only a +1 difference.

Still, it's worth a sidebar. - Tarkisflux 20:07, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Reducer Addendum

Since you don't support reducers at all (understandable) and this is really potentially prone to reducer abuse, could we include an addendum in a Special section that explicitly calls this out? --YouLostMe (talk) 11:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I probably should have done that a while ago. Thanks for reminding me. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:38, 30 May 2013 (UTC)