Can Horizon Thunder Sphere be Widened?

[BloodandDust]

Spell text
"Two Rounds: If you spend 3 actions Casting the Spell, ... , the ball of lightning explodes, dealing 2d6 electricity damage to all other creatures in a 10-foot *emanation* around the target"

Emanation language used here, which means Widen mete-magic would not apply.

Later
"Heightened (+1) The initial damage on a hit, as well as the *burst damage* for two-round casting time, ..."

Burst language used here, which means meta-magic would apply.

Am I missing something? Consensus on which way this goes? Tending towards allowing the player to use Widen since it would be a) fun and b) difficult to actually pull off, given the extraordinary casting time, so it's not likely to become a spamming issue.

[The Raven Black]

It does not work because the spell has a single Target, not an area of a burst, cone, or line.

[BloodandDust]

Ok, so although the long-cast version includes a burst/emanation effect, it still has a single Target and therefore does not qualify.

Thanks for the assist!

[SuperBidi]

And the spell asks for 3 actions so you can't use the Metamagic feat anyway. And even if duration is not stated, it's hard to consider it a spell without a duration. So 3 reasons for no.

[_benno]

SuperBidi wrote:

And the spell asks for 3 actions so you can't use the Metamagic feat anyway. And even if duration is not stated, it's hard to consider it a spell without a duration. So 3 reasons for no.

There are feats like quickend spell or Metamagic Mastery.

[breithauptclan]

_benno wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

And the spell asks for 3 actions so you can't use the Metamagic feat anyway. And even if duration is not stated, it's hard to consider it a spell without a duration. So 3 reasons for no.

There are feats like quickend spell or Metamagic Mastery.

The typical understanding of how Metamagic works is that you can only apply one of them to a spell because of the restrictions written into metamagic. Since the metamagic is itself an action - even if it is a free action - then you can't chain two of them together to both act on the same spell later in the turn. The restriction is that the next action is Cast a Spell. If instead the next action is another metamagic action, then the first metamagic action is invalid because a metamagic action is not Cast a Spell.

[_benno]

breithauptclan wrote:

_benno wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

And the spell asks for 3 actions so you can't use the Metamagic feat anyway. And even if duration is not stated, it's hard to consider it a spell without a duration. So 3 reasons for no.

There are feats like quickend spell or Metamagic Mastery.

The typical understanding of how Metamagic works is that you can only apply one of them to a spell because of the restrictions written into metamagic. Since the metamagic is itself an action - even if it is a free action - then you can't chain two of them together to both act on the same spell later in the turn. The restriction is that the next action is Cast a Spell. If instead the next action is another metamagic action, then the first metamagic action is invalid because a metamagic action is not Cast a Spell.

Can't say I like that rule but you seem to be right. Even free actions are not allowed. But Metamagic Mastery should still work.

[breithauptclan]

_benno wrote:

Can't say I like that rule but you seem to be right.

You are definitely not alone in that.