2 Questions on Cone Spells

[Ughbash]

Cone spells have certain unique qualities about them.

1) they alway orginate at the hand of the caster so while it may have a 15' range, it does not start at that range but instead at teh caster and extends out in a cone shape to that max range.

2) While they cover an area, it is based off the template rather then a radius or square.

So could a Cone spell ,lets use color spray as an example, be modified my the metamagic Reach allowing it to start at Short distance and go out as a cone from a point 25' from the caster?

Could the metamagic Widen be used to change color spray from a 15' cone to a 30' cone despite the fact area is stated as "cone shaped burst" rather then 20' radius spread.

If neihter of these work (and I supsect they do not) SHOULD there be a way of modifying a cone spell?

[RainyDayNinja]

Reach Spell only works on spells with the standard ranges of touch, short, and medium. So it doesn't work on cones.

Widen Spell explicitly works only on bursts, emanations, and spreads. Cones are not included.

Enlarge Spell only works on standard ranges of short, medium, and long.

So as far as I know, there's no Metamagic that increases the size of a cone or line.

[Ughbash]

Color spray says it is a cone shaped burst.

Widen spell works on bursts.

But I THINK due to the fact the 15' is in the range it does not work RAW (though I think it should and would be balanced).

[GinoA]

Color Spray wrote:

Range 15 ft.

Area cone-shaped burst

Widen wrote:

Benefit: You can alter a burst, emanation, or spread-shaped spell to increase its area. Any numeric measurements of the spell's area increase by 100%.

Sounds like this one should work. +3 levels to get a 30' cone doesn't sound excessive.

[RainyDayNinja]

Oops, you're right. I thought cones were just cones, not bursts. So I guess, yeah, that works. But probably not worth it for +3 spell levels.

[Zwordsman]

. Only worth it agianst ahoard of low level doom. but ya'kno.. fireball is a thing... as are other cone attacks.

But I can think of other cone attacks that would love the extra

[Cevah]

An Oracle of the Heavens would like a larger color spray. :-)

/cevah

[Shiroi]

Anyone with the already massive 60' cone of cold (6th lvl spell) would love to see widen in play. Area of a cone gets rather stupid past that point.

Here's a counter argument, would it make it double in length, as most people are assuming? I feel just as valid an option is to double in width, becoming a semicircle instead of a cone. Of course, it definitely can't do both. (120' semicircle of frozen doom? No.)

Doubling by width is exactly double the area. Doubling length keeps getting wider as it goes, so it gets very large very quick. Then again, full circles are worse so I suppose it's somewhat necessary to make it length to keep up. *shrug*

[GinoA]

The angle of a cone is not a "numeric measurements of the spell's area", length is.