## Piercing Cold (Metamagic) *Your cold spells tap into primal cold energy, and can damage creatures normally resistant or immune to cold.* **Benefit:** You can only apply this metamagic feat to spells that deal cold damage. Piercing cold spells are so horribly cold that they are capable of damaging creatures normally unharmed by or resistant to cold. Piercing cold spells completely ignore any resistance to cold a creature possesses, bypassing this resistance and dealing damage to the target as if it did not possess any resistance to cold at all. They are still entitled to whatever other defenses the attack allows (such as saving throws and spell resistance). Creatures normally immune to cold can be damaged by piercing cold spells as well. Piercing cold spells deal half damage to these creatures. Creatures immune to cold by way of a _protection from energy_ spell take half damage, but their protection is reduced by 150% of the damage dealt. Thus a piercing cold spell that deals 20 points of cold damage would deal 10 points of damage to the affected creature, and remove 30 from their _protection from energy_ spell. Creatures with the fire subtype who are damaged by a piercing cold spell take double normal damage instead of the usual +50%. A piercing cold spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.