Heighten Spell

[Lounti]

I have been asking around and no one has been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
What does the feat heighten spell actually do?

This one.

[Hviti]

As far as I know, it casts the spell as if you were a higher skill level with it (with the associated higher damage, healing, duration, etc. that comes with that). I don't know exactly what skill level plus it gives; I think it's about 1-2 levels (e.g. you case a spell you're apprentice with w/ the heighten spell feat on, it casts the spell as if you were journeyman or adept). Sorry I don't know the exact level. I also don't know if it works on GMed spells since there isn't a higher level than that. Ack...I guess that's pretty vague; I hope that helps or someone who knows the mechanics better can answer your question.

[Lathlain]

As far as I know, a heightened spell will count as a spell of a higher level - not skill level, but physical caster spell level - for the sake of resistances etc. I couldn't give you a mathematical formula to work with, I'm afraid

[Horace]

It should just increase your spells DC (difficulty class) to match where ever you've decided to heighten your spell to.

Every level you heighten your spell you should effectively making it 5% more likely that who you cast the spell against will fail their saving throw. Now if they have a 150% chance of beating the DC, then regardless of how high you heighten the spell they will only have a 5% chance of failure (assuming we're doing 1's as auto failures and not counting it as -10).

In this game particularly, it's not very useful because no one has augmented saves from magical items. In tabletop items that drastically increase your saving throws are relatively cheap, making such feats as heighten spell useful. Until such items are introduced into the game, heighten spell may be a little overkill - unless you're planning on "over hunting" so to speak.

If you want to min/max your character to be able to always bust saving throws or cast higher than his level, heighten spell is what you're looking for. If you're content with only being able to cast against your level and slightly above, you don't need the feat. As it is now, I don't believe this feat is particularly useful, due to save augmentation items not being in the game (at least readily). But if you want your character to be the best caster he can be, you need this feat...it's a cornerstone metamagic feat and other elitist wizards would call you a loser for not having it.

[Lounti]

I was more asking how it pertains to FK in particular. Tabletop has a few different rules. From what me and a couple others have figured out it should work the same except the skill levels tend to mess with it.

This one.

[Horace]

It was my impression that skill level affected duration/damage - not casting DC