Help with Archmage

[One Step Two]

Hi guys, in my current Dragonlance game, I am playing a Wizard 5/Wizard of High Sorcery 15, using the generalist wizard entry option from Age of mortals source book. I've geared my character towards becoming an Archmage, but I am a little stumped with how the Mastery of Shaping works.

I know that it lets me create holes in spells I cast, making safe spots for allies in any Battlefield control I use and the like which is neat, as well as Changing the shapeable area of spells like Major Image into 5ft. squares instead of 10ft. is that it though? I already have the Sculpt spell Meta-magic already which I intened to trade it out when I get mastery of shaping, but does Mastery of Shaping allow me to do what sculpt spell does? Is it even worth it?

Any help would be truly appreciated!

[holywhippet]

The two aren't the same even remotely. Sculpt spell lets you take a spell with an area and change the nature of that area. So a cone of cold could be shaped like a fireball for example.

The high arcana, master of shaping, lets you take an area spell and deliberately exclude 5 foot areas within the spell so that certain targets won't get hit.

The two can work together, you could make a sculpted spell that doesn't hit your allies which helps when you have an area spell that isn't the right shape and your allies are in melee with their enemies.

Also, the two have different costs. Sculpt spell makes all spells use up one spell slot larger while the high arcana permanently use up a spell slot of a particular level.

[One Step Two]

Okay, so now if we continue with the whole Shapeable being 5ft minimums, does that mean if I use mastery of shaping with a scuplted spell, turning it into 4 10ft cubes, I would have 16 5ft cubes instead? That seems pretty versatile to me, especially with things like Black tentacles which works pretty well against medium humanoid opponents even into high levels.

In either case, I look forwards to using Reverse gravity with mastery of shaping.

[TuggyNE]

Okay, so now if we continue with the whole Shapeable being 5ft minimums, does that mean if I use mastery of shaping with a scuplted spell, turning it into 4 10ft cubes, I would have 16 5ft cubes instead?

That's right.