Metamagic: Twinned spell aoe with one primary target?

Question

Twinned spell states "When you cast a spell that targets only one creature."

Since some spells, such as ice shard, target one creature, but afterwards do damage to nearby creatures, can you still use twinned spell?

To give some feedback on the downvotes here, a quick search on this site of twinned spell related questions should have easily resolved this question for you. We have numerous questions about twinned spell that all have the same answer - “To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level.” — Thomas Markov, May 12 '23 at 08:55

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 12 '23 at 03:59

5

This is answered in the next paragraph

If you continue reading, the feature says:

To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level.

Since ice shard is capable of targeting more than one creature (with the AOE), it is not eligible for Twinned Spell Metamagic.

answered May 12 '23 at 03:59

David Coffron

1

But, as it says: "You create a shard of ice and fling it at one creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against THE target" implying that it is only a single target. "THE target and each creature within 5 feet of the point where the ice exploded must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 cold damage." so, twice it says that it is a single target. – dndndndndnndndndnd May 12 '23 at 13:37
@dndndndndnndndndnd Victims of AoE spells are rather unambiguously referred to a targets numerous times throughout the rules. – Thomas Markov May 12 '23 at 13:49
You can read the discourse on this question for more details on what a target is: What counts as a target for a spell? – David Coffron May 12 '23 at 14:06