I interpret the books rules this way too.

Now here's the part that still gets me going.

Page. 88 PHB: Wiazrds and Divine Spellcasters: Wizards and divine casters(clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers) must prepare their spells in advance. During preparation, the character chooses which spells to prepare with metamagic feats (and thus which ones take up higher-level spell slots than normal).

If the rods are supposed to act just like the regular feat itself then a wizard would have no choice but to apply the rods feat to the spell of choice at the time of preparation. The rod of Quicken would not work even for the wizard if he were trying to apply the feat only at the time of casting.

So if the logic behind the rods is that their feats are in fact being applied to the spells at the time of casting then the rod of Quicken , at the very least, would then have to work for the sorcerer in the same way it does for the Wizard.

My gut tells me that the rules intend for the Sorcerer to not be able to use a Quickened spell under any circumstances but the rules seem to be contradicting themselves a bit if the Wizard doesn't have to apply the rods feat to his spells at the time of memorization.


I don't mind your house ruling, but I think if I were to house rule on it I would just assume that  only the rod of Quicken is acting like a sudden metamagic feat. That's the one that would appear to need to function that way. Cause if the rods can be applied at the time of casting then they already seem to be acting as an exception to the rule anyways, but the quicken one is really the only one I'm having a problem with.

I've always kinda felt that the sorcerer was a little bit over costed in comparison to the wizard.

Sorcerer gets to  cast spontaneously, but gets far fewer spells to choose from. That's a fair trade.

 

He gets more slots per day, but has to wait an extra level of advancement before he gets them. This is close to a fair trade, in my opinion he may be getting just a smidge more than he deserves out of this one though.

His meta magic feats end up costing him a full round action....this makes up for that little smidge I just talked about.

Then you get to the part where he gets no bonus feats for his class. Now that's huge! What exactly is he getting in return here for balance. It's definitely overkill if it's being done to justify the extra slots per day.

In the end I still prefer the sorcerer for his extra slots per day and because I just don't like the time it takes to choose spells each day when the selection is so much more vaste for a wizard.

But something just doesn't seem fair to me when you start looking at the meta magic rods and all of a sudden the wizard becomes able to apply those feats on a whim but not the sorcerer, something just doesnt' jive for me there.