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Page 141 in the PHB says that when holding a charge "you can touch one friend as a standard action or up to six friends as a full-round action."
We have a player who wants to use this rule to cast cure light wounds on six of his friends. We tried to tell him that he couldn't do this because the spell only affects a single creature. As such, it would be discharged after you touched the first friend.
Does anyone else have advice or insight into this situation? Also, can anyone think of a spell where the six friend rule would apply? Keep in mind that on page 176 of the PHB it says, "Some touch spell, such as teleport and water walk, allow you to touch multiple targets as part of the spell. You can't hold the charge of such a spell..."
We think that you could use the six friend rule with chill touch because it allows for multiple touches over multiple rounds.
Cure light wounds mass lets you hit multiple targets, cure light wounds is just one. Just tell your friend to stop trying to be a munchkin.
As for the upto six targets, keep in mind that you have to be able to get to all of them in one move (touch them as you move by) and this doesn't make you immune to AoO and such.
You can always point out the difference between the Target entry for cure light wounds and something like Astral Projection. But frankly, it sounds like the player just needs to be slapped upside the head with the PHB and told to stop being annoying.
You've hit a situation where the rules are not as clear as maybe they should be. I suspect that a big part of the problem is that the writers knew what the effect was supposed to be and therefore did not really realize that they were not being clear presuming that your a novice and have never played D&D before.
The rule that says you may not Hold a Charge with a spell that allows you to touch multiple people is a blanket rule. Your never going to find a spell where you can both Hold the Charge and touch multiple friends. There is no such spell. The very act of being allowed to touch multiple friends precludes Holding the Charge with this type of Touch Spell. Thats the intent of the example with windwalk and teleport. The point of the rule is to stop people from using something like teleport over multiple rounds. Hence you can hold the Charge with Touch spells EXCEPTION if the spells allow you to touch multiple friends then you can't Hold the Charge with this spell. The SRD is a little clearer then the PHB in this regard.
The comment that you can touch one enemy or up to six friends in a round depending on the type of action with a touch spell is an important rule. We do need to know how many people one can touch with their touch spell. Its unfortunate that they choose to place this rule under the section Holding a Charge as its obvously causing confusion. The fact that you can touch six friends with a touch spell is true but you'll never be able to do so while actually Holding a Charge since the very act of being allowed to touch multiple friends precludes being allowed to Hold the Charge.
The reason you can't touch multiple people with cure light wounds is becuase the spell lists under 'Target' 'creature touched'. The use of singular in this case is important and you'll find that all spells that can effect more then one creature will explain how that works in the target section of the spell. However, again, the rules are not really explicit on this point. We get rules on what 'Target' means in a spell description but no explicit statements about what 'creature' means as opposed to 'creatures' or 'one creature/level'.
A spell that makes use of of the six friends rule would be hide from undead. You might want to point out to your friend the differences in the 'Target' line between this spell and cure light wounds because only in such comparison is it clear that one spell is designed to effect a single creature while the other is used for touching multiple friendly creatures.
Your spectral hand example is probably flawed. This spell is an attack spell. Your never going to have six friends with the use of this spell outside of an extreme corner case situation which the rules were not actually designed to cover (your 'friends' are undead), at which point the spell is breaking the rule that says you can't touch multiple friends with a touch spell while Holding the Charge and its time for the DM to do their job of making a call on a corner case rule situation. Once your attacking your 'friends' they don't qualify as your friends anymore.