Heighten Spell

Heighten Spell

• Usage: Active, Toggled Metamagic
• Prerequisite: Must be able to cast 2nd level spells

Description

This Feat makes spells harder for monsters to resist by raising the effective level of the spell to the highest spell level your character can cast, but causes the spell to consume 5 more spell points per level raised.

Example: A Wizard who can cast Level 9 spells could therefore cast a Level 1 spell at the Level 9 Difficulty Class (DC) calculation with Heighten Spell active. Spell DC calculation is: 10 + (spell level) + (pertinent stat modifier). Our example Wizard here uses his Intelligence modifier to determine his DC calculation. So per this example, this Wizard's DC calculation for the Charm Person spell (a Level 1 spell) with Heighten Spell metamagic Feat active would be cast at Level 9. So his DC calculation would be: 10 + 9 (instead of 1) + (INT modifier) and would cost 40 (+8 spell levels times +5 SP for each level) extra Spell Points to cast.

Heighten Spell has no effect on spells without a Saving Throw and does not affect Spell Penetration calculations.

Multiple metamagic Feats may be active simultaneously, but the SP cost is cumulative. Using the Charm Person example above, having both Heighten Spell and Enlarge Spell active will increase the SP cost to (40 + 10) = 50 additional Spell Points.

Advice:

• The Heighten Spell metamagic Feat benefits low-level spells more than higher-level ones, as the amount Heightened is greater from the lower levels (but thus more costly, too). For example, casting a L1 spell at L9 benefits more than a L8 spell being cast at L9. But in all cases, casting your spells at higher levels is usually a very good thing when trying to overcome the Saving Throws of enemies.
• Like all metamagic feats, Heighten Spell can be applied for free to SLAs.
• Artificers, Bards, and Warlocks can only cast up to six (6) spell levels, Heighten Spell metamagic feat can be less important for these classes.
• Paladins and Rangers can only cast up to four (4) and usually don't have many spells that rely on beating enemy saving throws.
• Heighten will increase the DCs of a class's spells based on that particular class's spellcasting ability. This means that a 17/3 Wiz/Drd will heighten Wiz spells up to level 9 spells but will only heighten Drd spells up to level 2 spells (even though that character can cast up to level 9 spells).

Quirk: The way DDO calculates the DC of heightened spells is somewhat flawed if you have effects that increase or decrease your caster level. For example, a level 15 Sorcerer Fire Savant can heighten his Fire spells to level 9, because his caster level for Fire spells is enough to cast level 9 spells. Conversely, when an Air Savant casts Flesh to Stone (Earth spell), Heighten can actually decrease the DC of the spell because of the caster level penalty to Earth spell. DDO Forums Since Update 55, Heighten Spell can no longer lower your spell DCs.

Notes

• Alchemists may select this feat as one of their alchemist bonus feats.
• Artificers may select this feat as one of their artificer bonus feats.
• Wizards may select this feat as one of their wizard bonus feats.