I've seen some old posts about this feat, but looking at the d20 feat it really does nothing as far as game mechanics (just fills in the text). This is fine if I'm not memorizing any metamagic feats with the spell in question but otherwise it is useless.
As a reminder here is Arcane Thesis:
Prerequisite: Knowledge (arcana) 9 ranks; ability to cast arcane spells.
Benefits:
Choose one arcane spell that you can cast to be your thesis spell.
When casting that spell, you do so at +2 caster level. W
hen you apply any metamagic feats other than Heighten Spell to that spell,
the enhanced spell uses up a spell slot one level lower than normal. Thus if you were to prepare an empowered maximized magic missile (assuming magic missile is the spell you choose for your Arcane Thesis), it would be prepared as a 4th level spell (+1 level for empowered, down from +2; and +2 levels for maximized, down from +3).
A spell cannot be reduced to below its original level with the use of this feat.
Special: Can be taken more than once, but you apply it to a new spell.
I'm not really sure where to start with this mostly because I'm not super savvy with a lot of PrC abilities that may mimic this feat. If anyone has done the
Easy Metamagic feat then that would give me a head start.