Sculpt Spell Metamagic Feat

[Egill]

For an increase of one spell level, I can modify an area of effect spell in a variety of ways; one of those options is to create 4 10x10' blocks. While there is nothing in the feat that says I cannot overlap these areas, it seems awfully cheesy to try to use the feat in this way.

What do you guys think?

[Stam]

My DM rewrote it to depend greatly on the size of the original spell. A 10' cone length equaled a single 10x10 square, or a 30' line, etc.

As WotC wrote it? Yeah, it's easily cheesable. You can use it to turn Burning Hands into a 2nd-level, 5d4 Fireball. Color Spray into a battlefield-wide (4 10x10 squares) Stun effect. Etcetera.

[Egill]

My DM rewrote it to depend greatly on the size of the original spell. A 10' cone length equaled a single 10x10 square, or a 30' line, etc.

As WotC wrote it? Yeah, it's easily cheesable. You can use it to turn Burning Hands into a 2nd-level, 5d4 Fireball. Color Spray into a battlefield-wide (4 10x10 squares) Stun effect. Etcetera.

I was looking to roll a dream dwarf diviner, and I was looking at ways to still fulfill my fellow players expectations of wizardy cheese.

I was thinking that a sculpted hail of stones doing 16d4 damage at level 3, 20d4 at level 4 would be a way to carry my low-level weight.

[tyckspoon]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. Not that you can't overlap the areas, it just won't have any additional effect. The basic idea is that one creature can only be affected by one spell once; changing the shape of the spell doesn't change the fact that you're only casting it once.

[Egill]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. Not that you can't overlap the areas, it just won't have any additional effect. The basic idea is that one creature can only be affected by one spell once; changing the shape of the spell doesn't change the fact that you're only casting it once.

I was thinking something meteor storm style.

[Dode]

As WotC wrote it? Yeah, it's easily cheesable. You can use it to turn Burning Hands into a 2nd-level, 5d4 Fireball. Color Spray into a battlefield-wide (4 10x10 squares) Stun effect. Etcetera.

Flaming Sphere into Flaming Wave or Flaming Supersphere....

[OzymandiasVolt]

So you can turn Burning Hands into a spell that is one level lower than, and still vastly inferior to, an actual Fireball?

[tyckspoon]

A Sculpted Burning Hands is no worse than the other 2nd level AoE attack spells. This doesn't stop it from sucking because, you know, AoE attack spell, but it's not an especially weak spell compared to other spells of that type and level. The real value is in taking limited spells like Color Spray and Grease and turning them into big AoE's- four ten foot cubes is a fairly large chunk of battlemat.

To Egill:

The sculpted spell works normally in all respects except for its shape.

Changing the area of Hail of Stones would not change the fact that its effect is to hit once.

[Jacob Orlove]

Note also that while Sculpt will change the area of your spell, it will not change the *range*. That means your Burning Hands fireball won't even hit anyone more than 15' away from you (and you'll have to be careful to keep yourself out of the AoE--four 10' squares will probably be your best bet).

[Stam]

The DM hit that nail, too. Any spell emanating from the caster gained a range equal to twice the spell's normal reach.

So, by the DM's rewrite, Color Spray became a 10x10 area spell with a 30' range.

A Widened Sculpted Color Spray, on the other hand, would be placeable in 3 10x10 squares, anywhere within 60'.