'Widen' a 'Lightning Bolt' doesn't actually do anything?

[Jhyrryl]

The range on lightning bolt is wrong, in my opinion. Range should define the farthest point at which the effect may start. Thus, lightning bolt, since it starts at your fingertips, should really have a range of 0, with an area of a 120' line. Range of 120' implies it can *start* 120 feet away from you, which is directly contradicted by its rules text.

Thus, widening a lightningbolt should make it a 240' line, and enlarge would do absolutely nothing.

-The Souljourner

I agree with this. That said however, I think that widening a line in this fashion is very weak compared to widening a fireball, not to mention that the feat is Widen, not Lengthen. I may house rule that a Widened line generates two lines that run parallel to each other, as follows:

 

[The Souljourner]

I agree that widening a line is not very useful, however, it does double the effective range, which is nice since 120' is pretty close compared to the 400' + 40/level that it used to be.

The thing I don't like about your widen is that it takes away lightning bolt's primary strength - precision. You can do some pretty amazing things with lightning bolt as a line. If you really want to hit a ton of people, use fireball, lightning bolt is for when you want to cast into melee and not hit your friends.

Still, I don't think your widened lightning bolt is over powered either, so *shrug*

-The Souljourner

 

[Pax]

The range on lightning bolt is wrong, in my opinion. Range should define the farthest point at which the effect may start. Thus, lightning bolt, since it starts at your fingertips, should really have a range of 0, with an area of a 120' line. Range of 120' implies it can *start* 120 feet away from you, which is directly contradicted by its rules text.

I agree, 200% ... !

Cones, Lines, and similar "starts at the spellcaster" spells should have a range of 0. The current unneccessary, ambiguopsity-creating redundancy is GOING to be a continual source of rules disputes.

With that said, I also rather like the "twin parallel lines" concept. A lot ... !!!

 

[Pax]

The thing I don't like about your widen is that it takes away lightning bolt's primary strength - precision. You can do some pretty amazing things with lightning bolt as a line. If you really want to hit a ton of people, use fireball, lightning bolt is for when you want to cast into melee and not hit your friends.

No, if youw ant to do that, you want a level of Archmage, and Mastery of Shaping as yoru High Arcana choice.

Or, if your GM permits, youw ant to use Firebrand, from MoF. It's the absolute best for working little bits of fire in and among combatants, nailing LOTS of enemies w/o hitting your allies. Even though, before level 15, it lags behind an Empowered Fireball despite a 15d6 damage cap (1.5 x 10d6 is usually going to be better than 12d6 or even 14d6, and both spells compete for the same 5th level slot) ... IMO, the numerous 5-foot "mini fireball" effects make it much more consistently useable, as you can GUARANTEE, given multiple opponents, being able to tag most or all of them, with few or no cases of (not-so-)friendly fire.

 

[Merlion]

Excuse me, I ment to say either 10 feet wide, or 20 feet wide depending on how you interpret the new line rules.