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At 2nd level, an arcane archer gains the ability to place an area spell upon an arrow. When the arrow is fired, the spell’s area is centered where the arrow lands, even if the spell could normally be centered only on the caster. This ability allows the archer to use the bow’s range rather than the spell’s range. A spell cast in this way uses its standard casting time and the arcane archer can fire the arrow as part of the casting. The arrow must be fired during the round that the casting is completed or the spell is wasted. If the arrow misses, the spell is wasted.
Any spell the mentions the word "area" under effect or in it's description AND has a center. sleep, grease, create pit, fireball, etc.
Spells without a "center" like burning hand, lightening bolt, etc. which have a point of origin, typically a corner of your square, don't have a "center," so I would rule those out.
You can cast your spells so that they occupy a larger space.
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%.
Level Increase: +3 (a widened spell uses up a spell slot three levels higher than the spell’s actual level.)
Spells that do not have an area of one of these four sorts are not affected by this feat.
These spells have to be specific, mentions three types of areas, but says there's four. Weird. (Maybe it's meant to include shapeable spells too.. another thread topic maybe) Anyhow, create pit is out. Fireball, sleep, burnings hands, lightening bolt, etc. are good. As long as under "effect" it's one of those listed types, the "Cone, Cylinder, Line, or Sphere: Most spells that affect an area have a particular shape."<--- double that.
Sculpt Spell from 3.x was overkill. You could turn a burning hands into a 2nd level 5d4 fireball. Sleep into a 2nd level 120ft line.
Glad Paizo decided not to include it.
I'm wondering from the point of arcane archer's Imbue arrow ability or the metamagic widen ability which spells count as area spells. It seems obvious to me that any spell that is defined by area such as "Area: 15 ft cone burst" would count, but would spells such as "Create Pit" count? It creates a 10 ft square pit which is an area but doesn't appear to be defined by an are as "Burning Hands" or the like. How do you best judge what are area spells?
I'd say that, as for "area", they're meaning the Area aiming descriptor, not the "area" word appearing somewhere in the spell page.
There are three spell targeting descriptors: Target, Area and Effect. You can use imbue arrow on any spell that has the Area targeting descriptor (on the spell descriptors, usually found under Range). Simply look at the bold word, if it's Area, then you can use it.
If the arrow hits (so the spell activates) and since Area targeting ALWAYS must target a square intersection, pick a square intersection where the target was found as the POI and create the corresponding area shape from the chosen point.