Winter witch and fire spells

[NS Bill]

I have a winter witch that just turned third level. If I take Elemental Spell (cold), can I learn burning hands with the an ice modifier or is i9t still forbidden because it is at base a fire spell? I'm torn between taking combat casting and elemental spell metamagic feats.

[Sundakan]

Burning Hands is still a [Fire] spell regardless of what metamagic you apply to it.

Regardless, even if you did apply it...you couldn't learn it to apply the metamagic anyway.

[Murdock Mudeater]

NS Bill wrote:

I have a winter witch that just turned third level. If I take Elemental Spell (cold), can I learn burning hands with the an ice modifier or is i9t still forbidden because it is at base a fire spell? I'm torn between taking combat casting and elemental spell metamagic feats.

Assuming Winter Witch the archetype (as opposed to the prestige class of the same name).

Quote:

Ice Magic: When a winter witch casts a spell with the cold descriptor, the save DC of the spell increases by 1. A winter witch cannot learn or cast spells with the fire descriptor at all.

Seems pretty clear cut, you can't learn the spell at all.

You could still use the metamagic feat to change a spell into a Cold spell, but it couldn't start as a fire spell. So Acid Arrow, could become a cold version, but burning hands can't be learned so can't be affected.

The exception here would be if you had access to a permanently modified burning hands spell which only functioned as a cold spell, like the burning hands spell gained by a Sorcerer of the Elemental Bloodline (Water).

[Jeff Merola]

Murdock Mudeater wrote:

You could still use the metamagic feat to change a spell into a Cold spell, but it couldn't start as a fire spell. So Acid Arrow, could become a cold version, but burning hands can't be learned so can't be affected.

Nope. Elemental Spell changes the damage type, not the descriptor. A Cold Acid Arrow is still an Acid spell, not a Cold spell. You'd need to use something like the Admixture Wizard school power to change the descriptor (and that only works on evocation spells, so it wouldn't actually work on Acid Arrow).

[Murdock Mudeater]

Jeff Merola wrote:

Murdock Mudeater wrote:

You could still use the metamagic feat to change a spell into a Cold spell, but it couldn't start as a fire spell. So Acid Arrow, could become a cold version, but burning hands can't be learned so can't be affected.

Nope. Elemental Spell changes the damage type, not the descriptor. A Cold Acid Arrow is still an Acid spell, not a Cold spell. You'd need to use something like the Admixture Wizard school power to change the descriptor (and that only works on evocation spells, so it wouldn't actually work on Acid Arrow).

Ah, good catch. Yeah, Elemental spell doesn't change the descriptors.

[Claxon]

You could ask you GM if you could learn a cold based equivalent to burning hands.

Though considering the bonus you get to cold spells and that you're supposed to be restricted form fire spells, as a GM I wouldn't be inclined to allow it.