How would these houserules to Persistent Spell change game balance?

[Gavinfoxx]

So after a big talk with my DM, talking about Extend Spell, Persistant Spell, Ocular Spell, Reach Spell, Divine Metamagic, Nightsticks, and the many many ways Artificers get in the Persistent Spell game, he was thinking of making some house rules.  He proposed two potential house rules to clear up persistent spell

1.) Touch spells count as fixed range.

or

2.) Any spell that has a definite non-zero duration can be made persistent.   Spells which take hours are a +2 levels.  Spells that last minutes are +5.  Spells that last rounds are +8.  Spells that have durations that are in between or not neatly in those categories are DM's call.

How would these house rules impact minmaxing and game balance?

This is for our 'play around with the rules, Tier 1, do weird crazy stuff, muck about with Faerun, artificer and druid' game, fyi.

Also, I thought it might be best to put this here, rather than the houserules place, since I have spent a few posts the last week or so talking about this game here, and it's definitely a part of an active, high optimization game...

[Widow]

Allowing touch spells to be made persistent is pretty huge if you did not allow it before with other metamagic additions (which I personally dont think works normally).  That is alot more spells you can use persist, which in turn will result in the second biggest effect on the game, the amount of time you are now going to spend finding those spells.

While the modification to the adjustment based on spell duration is interesting, I dont think it will have must impact on the game.  Most spells with an hour/level duration are extended early and cast normally late in the game.  Spells that last rounds per level were made persistent with real spell slots late in the game (level 1-3 spells), but that wont be possible now with the adjustment of +8.  Really though, how many characters actually cast persistent spells without some huge metamagic reducer?  Even the minute per level spells only get their legitimate range increased from 1-3rd level to 1-4th.  I still think the driving power to persist spells will still come from Divine metamagic and other reducing tricks.

This sort of reminds me of a third party feat from the Book of ultimate feats (orginal source Legend and Lairs).  It is called Lasting Spell with a level adjustment of +3 and a feat pre-req of extend spell.  What it did was increase the duration by one step.

Round/ Minute/10 Minutes/ Hour/ Day/ Week/ Month/ Season/ Year/ Decade/ Century

For each additional +1 adjustment it would increase it one additional step, but the extra steps also required an additional spell slot.  For instance:

Divine Power L4 normally Rounds/level
+3 Base to make it minutes/ level would be a 7th level slot
+1 Additional makes it 10 minutes/level for a 7th and 8th level slot
+1 Additional makes it 1 hour/level for a 7th, 8th, and 9th level slot

In some ways I think this feat is a little more balanced than persistent spell as it currently stands.  You could boost any spells duration, but it took alot more slots if you were pushing it up several categories.  Now of course you get into trouble like persistent with metamagic reduces, more so when you get your spells to last weeks per level at a time.  And of course with the standard Cheater of Mystra build, that results in a hell of alot of supernatural abilities that never go away.

[RobbyPants]

While the modification to the adjustment based on spell duration is interesting, I dont think it will have must impact on the game.  Most spells with an hour/level duration are extended early and cast normally late in the game.  Spells that last rounds per level were made persistent with real spell slots late in the game (level 1-3 spells), but that wont be possible now with the adjustment of +8.  Really though, how many characters actually cast persistent spells without some huge metamagic reducer?  Even the minute per level spells only get their legitimate range increased from 1-3rd level to 1-4th.  I still think the driving power to persist spells will still come from Divine metamagic and other reducing tricks.

I pretty much have to agree with this.

At 3rd level, you can use Extend Spell to use a 2nd level slot to extend an hour/level spell to a duration of six hours.  In order to use this version of Persistent Spell, you'd need to use a 3rd level slot.  At this point, Extend Spell could extend the same spell to ten hours with a lower level spell slot.  It doesn't really help.

If you allow metamagic reducers, people will use them.  All the +8 for round-duration fix does is make DMM require nine turn attempts instead of seven.  It's technically an increase, but not in any real meaningful way.  If you ban metamagic reducers or even just DMM, then you can probably leave Persistent Spell alone and let people use Extend Spell for the long-duration stuff.


Another option for this is to simply have Persistent Spell work as a more powerful version of Extend Spell.  A while ago, Veekie suggested a similar fix that would bump durations up to the next highest "unit": rounds -> minutes -> ten minutes -> hours -> 24 hours.  This spell would have a +2 level adjustment.  It's a fairly quick and dirty fix.

You still have stupid crap like Wraith Strike for one minute as a swift action for a 4th level spell, though.

[telehax]

All the pluses in the world don't stop the artificer from infusing Metamagic Spell Trigger. Which i believe is relevant in your campaign.

Or worse, getting himself a minor schema of metamagic spell trigger.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, there's also the clause that ANY spell with a non instantaneous duration can be persisted... touch, personal, just doing stuff so that persistent spell isn't based on the range of the spell, really, but more based on the duration!

[telehax]

Wait, *any*?

Like... Dischargables? Obviously they'd still get discharged... but... Footsteps of the Divine (CC)

[Rebel7284]

Wait, *any*?

Like... Dischargables? Obviously they'd still get discharged... but... Footsteps of the Divine (CC)

Didn't you know? Throwing stuff into the sun is very balanced. 

[Aliment]

Wait, *any*?

Like... Dischargables? Obviously they'd still get discharged... but... Footsteps of the Divine (CC)

Didn't you know? Throwing stuff into the sun is very balanced. 

Yeah the Chuck build proves how silly FotD with Persist is when discharged.  How far around the world did Chuck get that poor target of his?

[Havok4]

Wait, *any*?

Like... Dischargables? Obviously they'd still get discharged... but... Footsteps of the Divine (CC)

Didn't you know? Throwing stuff into the sun is very balanced. 

Yeah the Chuck build proves how silly FotD with Persist is when discharged.  How far around the world did Chuck get that poor target of his?

I think the most optimized version could literally throw people into the sun, or at least the moon. Mind you that was the same version that exceed the speed of light on foot.

[Gavinfoxx]

Okay okay, when I showed him Chuck and did the math for that spell, the DM said that expending that particular spell is capped at +10ft/caster level.

But we ARE going for that Footsteps of the Divine spell as a way to massively increase Tactical and Strategic mobility.  I did the "we had to camp on the road and were waylayed by an enemy" thing once already -- enough! We're going to be flying everywhere from now on... well, at least till we can teleport anywhere we want to go!

[Bozwevial]

Footsteps of the Divine can't be Persisted anymore because of the errata, which makes it a discharged spell.

[skydragonknight]

I think the most optimized version could literally throw people into the sun, or at least the moon. Mind you that was the same version that exceed the speed of light on foot.

It could throw a target 488,950 miles, over double the distance to the moon (238,857 miles).

If momentum existed in D&D, the target would reach the sun (92,955,887 miles away) in about 19 minutes. Though with d&d rules, the target would just randomly stop in space...

As for this topic, I'd rather just allow of something to be extended multiple times (real doublings), or for veekie's unit increase +2 metamagic to be apply-able multiple times...max 24 hours (which you could then extend).