Question about the Sculpt Spell Metamagic Feat

[Rel]

One of the things that Sculpt Spell lets you do is to alter the area of effect to four 10' cubes. What rules, if any, govern the placement of these cubes? Must they be contiguous? Can they be placed in a "checkerboard pattern"? If they can be placed non-contiguously, how far apart can they be placed?

The only seemingly relevant rules I've located so far is on page 150 of the PHB (top of left hand collumn) where it says "A shaped effect or area can have no dimension smaller than 10 feet. Many effects or areas are given as cubes to make it easy to model irregular shapes." That seems a bit ambiguous.

Are there any additional rules I'm missing? How do you interpret this?

 

[JoeBlank]

My sorcerer has been using sculpt spell for a while now, and I have assumed that the only limitation on placement of the 10' cubes is that they all must be within the spell's range.

I have certainly placed them in non-contiguous, non-pattern-like ways, saying "I'll put one cube here, one over here, and the other two here."

The feat is wonderful for avoiding hitting comrades with blast spells.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

The feat is wonderful for avoiding hitting comrades with blast spells.

It's basically the whole point of the feat.

AR

 

[Shard O'Glase]

It's basically the whole point of the feat.

AR

that and for increasing the area of some spells, oh and for making some spells that effect you to only effect those in front of you. like turn circle vs magic(or whatever they renamed antimagic into)into a cone.

 

[Rel]

My sorcerer has been using sculpt spell for a while now, and I have assumed that the only limitation on placement of the 10' cubes is that they all must be within the spell's range.

I have certainly placed them in non-contiguous, non-pattern-like ways, saying "I'll put one cube here, one over here, and the other two here."

The feat is wonderful for avoiding hitting comrades with blast spells.

This is they way that I've been interpreting it but I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is overpowered. By this interpretation, a Wizard who is flying above a battlefield can hit 4 seperate targets with a single (Fireball) spell and these targets can be over 1300 feet away from each other. In the case of the group I'm running, the party Wizard is blasting virtually every enemy on the battlefield with a single casting of Lightning Bolt (Lightning Cubes in this case). This seems very powerful for a +1 level adjustment.

I'm finding it hard to believe that this is the way this feat is really supposed to work. If it did, I'd expect for there to be a slew of threads decrying how powerful it was.

 

[Rel]

Bump

 

[KarinsDad]

This is they way that I've been interpreting it but I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is overpowered.

Yes, if you take a literal interpretation, the feat is broke.

The problem is that it is more useful than other feats (e.g. Widen Spell) both in it's ability to increase the area of effect of some spells (depending on spell), but also in it's ability to pick and choose targets very efficiently. Also, it only requires one additional level whereas some other area enhancement feats require more levels.

 

[Rel]

Thanks to those who have responded. Let me take a slightly different tack:

With the assumption that the rules on this are a bit hazy, how do you (or how would you) rule in this case?

 

[KarinsDad]

With the assumption that the rules on this are a bit hazy, how do you (or how would you) rule in this case?

In a previous campaign, I made two rulings on this:

1) All cubes / other shapes must touch in some way (e.g. corners must touch or sides must touch for the cubes).

2) If the Shape feat results in a greater area of effect (e.g. 4 10 foot cubes for a 5 foot radius spell), then you only get the number of shapes which correspond to the next slightly larger area. For example, a 5 foot radius spell has an area of about 78 square feet and fits in a 10 foot cube. Hence, you only get one 10 foot cube, not four. A 10 foot radius spell would fit in 4 10 foot cubes (except for height), so you get all 4, etc. In other words, the area increase of the shaped spell increases only slightly.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

I think KarinsDad has the right of it. You can still make the area of effect very flexible for getting around obstacles and hittting lots of bad guys - but it doesn't give you the equivalent of 4 lightning bolts being shot at 4 different targets all over the place.