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With all due respect to everyone, the rules do not cover this issue well. Like many others, our group has had this discussion, and we've basically come to the following conclusion:

There is a small class of metamagic feats that apply to the base spell, and alter it's fundamental nature. This includes:

Heighten Spell
Energy Substitution
a few others... it's really a balance issue.

Then there are the others, including anything that increases any of the basic spell parameters: duration, damage, area of effect, range. In line with Tiburon's principle, a doubled doubling is a tripling... These feats are each applied to the base spell (after the former feats have been applied), and they _do not interact_ with each other.

Allow me to explain our fundamental logic: A spell to which a metamagic feat has been applied should not be too much better than existing spells of the equivalent _modified_ level.

Thus, a Twinned Fireball should be about the same damage as a Delayed Blast Fireball. Which it is.

The reason that we set a class of feats aside that affect the base spell is because if these feats do not affect the fundamental nature of the spell, then a spell to which a metamagic feat has been applied is often much worse than a spell of the equivalent _modified_ level. For instance:

If you heighten a 1rst level spell to a 5th level spell, and Twin it, shouldn't both elements of the twinned spell have the same spell DC? In other words, shouldn't this spell be the same DC for both halves as a twinned 5th level spell?

Of course, the language for Heighten is kind of unique. "Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies. All effects that depend on spell level, including saving throws and ability to penetrate a Globe of Invulnerability, are calculated according to the heightened level." In our game, we interpreted this as also increasing the damage cap, largely because our DM doesn't care to have us re-invent a higher level version of every useful low level spell just to get DC's and damage caps together. Heighten effectively lets you use a 9th level Cone of Cold without having to research the spell. But if a player without Heighten wanted, there is no reason why a 9th level Cone of Cold couldn't be researched. Indeed, it would probably have some other effect than pure damage that would make it better than a heightened cone of cold (compare Meteor Swarm to a 9th level heightened fireball).

But generally speaking, note that MOST metamagic feats effectively allow PCs to modify low level spells into spells of a higher level that don't exist that COULD exist... the primary purpose of metamagic feats is not power per se, but flexibility.

BTW, the next version of the rules BEG for this issue to be clarified. It's obvious that some feats should apply before others, and be modified by others (a ring of fire around a sphere of cold that results from a widened energy substituted fireball really is rather nonsensical - it would look cool, but it's totally impossible to rationalize). Other feats should never be allowed to stack (twin, split ray, maximize, empower...)

Marshall writes:

"And by doing so you CREATE the "a ring of fire around a sphere of cold" problem. Now you have to make special rules for how feat A works with feat B(Go ahead and explain how Enlarge works with Twin) Does an Empowered Extended Acid Arrow have different damages depending on how long its been going? Even worse, you create a rule without ANY effect on game balance."

It is quite clear the writer did not read my entry, but only one part of it, and then twisted that text to make a point. I would appreciate a more considerate debate.

First, I made it clear that energy substitution is one of the classes of feats that affects the base spell directly. Since obviously this was not clear to some, let me state it more simply:

Some feats stack, some don't. Heighten, energy substitution, and a few others always stack. Most others do not. Thus, no donut problem.

As to the other "problems" mentioned, let me offer some examples since abstract concepts seem to be causing problems:

If you twinned a spell, then applied the widen feat, you'd have one spell take effect to the base area, and one to the enhanced area.

If you widened and energy substituted, you'd have the energy substituted spell out to the full area.

If you widened and maximized, you'd have the maximized spell in the original area, and the base spell to the enhanced area.

If you twinned and enlarged a spell, one half would have enhanced range one would not. However, the target would be the same, so if the un-enlarged portion failed to reach the target, that's just too bad.

If you empowered and maximized, then both effects are applied to the base spell. An empowered maximized fireball cast by a 15th level caster would do 60 + 5d6 points of damage, an average of 77.5. This compares favorably to a Horrid Wilting spell, which would do 15d6 (an average of 52.5) if cast at 15th level, and still compares well to a Horrid Wilting cast at 20th level (20d6, an average of 70). It compares less favorably to a maximized Cone of Cold (15*6 = 90 damage).


If you actually run the numbers, allowing "stacking" isn't really a problem at SUB-20 levels. Note, for instance, than a maximized empowered fireball (if you allowed stacking) would do 15*6 = 90 points of damage, the same that a maximized Cone of Cold does. That's not really unbalanced.

The PROBLEM is at epic levels (and is well illustrated by a twinned split disintegrate, which is a 12th level spell). Consider the following:

If you begin with a 6th level single target spell (max damage 20d6), and you empower it, you add 10d6 damage for a 2 level bump. Alternatively, you could cast an 8th level spell with a cap of 25d6 (but which also requires a higher caster level). Now empower is worth twice as much as heighten. If you extend the heighten rules and the damage caps linearly, you might have the following problem.

You heighten a base spell to 10th level, it now has a damage cap of 30d6. You twin it (for 4 levels you get 30d6 more damage - a bargain). Then you empower it (for 2 levels, if the feats stack, you get ANOTHER 30d6 - which is more than a bargain, it's stupid).

The problem is, that by the time the characters are 40th level, if you permit feats to stack, you have characters casting spells with effective levels of 22 or higher. The combos become excessive. You can start with a 9th level spell that does 25d6 in an area (I use this base example to avoid the issue of whether Heighten should increase damage caps, which I believe it should). You twin it, energy admixture it (4 levels each), empower it, and maximize it. Now you're at 25*2*2*1.5 = 150d6, maximized, to 900 damage. Throw in a rod of Quicken, plus a handful of other feats, items, and such, and you can do this multiple times in a round. Add in some class abilities (auto-metamagic that the Incantatrix has, or the "on-the-fly" abilities that some prestige class have) and the multipliers keep going. It's quite possible to take the damage up to nearly 2,000 points or so per spell. (Consider a single target Polar Ray, converted to sonic damage and hieghtened to 12th level (35d6 cap), with split ray, twin, empower, maximize applied... then energy admixture as a freebie due to some class ability). We're at 35*2*2*2*1.5, maxed... or 420*6 = 2,520 damage. As the character gains further levels, the DM has an increasingly difficult time balancing his campaign because spellcasting power increases exponentially, not linearly. This is somewhat true for the abilities of other classes (sneak attack, fighter damage, and so forth), but far far more so with spellcasting if metamagic feats stack. It is game breaking.

From the perspective of Customer Service, I wouldn't have expected them to consider this. My experience with them is that they are useful at breaking ties when a gaming group has disagreements, but that their advice NEVER extends well into epic play.

All of that said, let me add this point: there is absolutely NO GUIDANCE in the books on this issue either way. It's a rather significant oversight, but give the designers a break - they did fix a fair few things in 3.5. The issue, in my mind, is therefore purely one of balance. Since we play much of our campaign at epic levels (it's a 14 year campaign, and even the dozens of secondary and tertiary characters are now mid to high level), we have all concurred that only a handful of metamagic feats should be allowed to stack. Prior to this, we had casters dealing out over 5000 damage in a round.

If you play short term campaigns at low to middle levels, stacking probably won't be an issue. Even at "high" levels, 15 to 20 for instance, it's only an issue if you have one or more powerful metamagic rods (at which point the split twin disintegrate becomes a possibility). In that case, for instance, you might memorize a split disintegrate at 8th level, which would require a Twin Rod at 7-9th level to twin - 170,000 GP and useful 3/day. If you twinned the spell first and memorized it in a 9th level slot somehow (for instance, with the Incantatrix ability), you could get it cheaper - a rod of a 2-level metamagic feat for 7th to 9th level spells is much less. All of this makes magic for characters near 20th level very deadly, but does not approach the insanity of allowing stacking in epic level play.