Sendric, Thank you so much!

Well there is a straightforward way that is very prone to breaking should any of the tags change. The chosen pick will have the correct feat tag, e.g., fChainSpl, field. One can then code another huge if-statement block that goes through and if the chosen matches a particular one then set a string for the metamagic item.

Pseudo code example:
var str1 as string
var str2 as string
str1=field[fChosen].chosen.idstring

if (str1="fHeightenSpl") then
str2="mmHeighten"
elseif (str1="fQuickenSpl") then
str2="mmQuicken"
elseif...
...
endif

Problem is (1) this feat will not function for a new metamagic feat unless it is added and (2) it will be a HUGE script.

Right. Here's another option. Use this feat to assign a tag to the spell. Then in the editor, go to each metamagic item and write a script to reduce the level adjustment by 1 if the tag exists. It would be a little tedious, but it should do the trick.

That's something I would be willing to add for the next community set (as well as the change to Arcane Thesis).

I just did something similar, can you tell I'm avoiding work? I added a User.metaitem tag to mmQuicken. Then the pull down menu can be User.metaitem instead of the feats.

Each way is a pain in the butt...

What if one were to standardize that each metamagic feat was named like fQuicken and each metamagic gizmo thingy was named mmQuicken. could you strip off the f in hero lab? Something like

str="fQuicken"
str=str(1-end) ~starting index at 0
str="mm"&str

Wait, that is the problem! starting from fQuickenSpl (what is chosen) how can I look at spells (sCustomSpl) to tell if they have mmQuicken on them?

What's work?

Yes, you could do that, but I'm not sure how that's necessarily easier/better than what I suggested.

I don't know. Let me work something up real quick.

The difference is then you shoot for the same naming convention between the feats and the mm items and then this is done with a few string manipulations rather that a giant and breakable if elseif statement.

Ok, here's an idea. I'm attaching a file for you that includes the Easy Metamagic feat and a new version of the Quicken Spell metamagic item. I threw in a test to see if you could read the mmLevel value (which you can). You should be able to use this as a starting point. I think it will be easier, though of course we'd still have to modify all of the metamagic items. That's something I can do, though. Let me know what you think.

Sendric, I like this. I'll implement this on my side in my custom feats file. Look forward to seeing it in distro and I'll let you know if I hit a speed bump.

Cool. If you can post the final eval script you use to reduce the sLevel, that would be helpful. I'll start working on the metamagic items so that they are all tagged correctly.