To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level.
And Dragon's Breath is certainly capable of targeting more than one creature, unless you want to make the case that you're totally not killing creatures with the spell when you use an action that's only available while the spell's active, that produces an area effect defined by the spell, which then forces a saving throw and inflicts damage that are also defined by the spell. In which case, you should also rule that a Rakshasa isn't immune to the spell.
If a spell like Spiritual Weapon could be cast on other creatures you also wouldn't be able to twin it because it has the potential to smack multiple creatures over its duration.
Polymorph counterexample aside, Dragon's Breath has a casting time of one action. It is fully cast when the caster's turn ends and can't be counterspelled at that point. The creature targeted by it then has to spend an action to create a cone-shaped effect (which might happen 54 seconds after casting Dragon's Breath has ended) that may affect creatures that weren't even eligible targets (for any spell, not just Dragon's Breath) for the caster at the time of casting.
The actual cone of energy is not part of the casting, it doesn't even exist when the spell is cast. That makes it really strange to consider whatever's affected by that energy cone rather than by the casting itself, a target of the spell. Charm Person is twinnable yet both targets of that twinned CP might be able to cast spells that are not twinnable, like Fireball, while charmed. That's because we don't consider the two charmed creatures' actions to be part of the Charm Person spell. Crown of Madness or Suggestion, same considerations. The Dominate spells even more so, because with those spells the caster even decides on the dominated creatures' actions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Let me check in on numbers 1 & 4, to see if I understand how those rules work RAW (obvious RAF all of these are getting homebrewed except #3). Correct me if I'm wrong.
Number 1, Druid is specific that you lose special senses such as darkvision. Definitely wouldn't keep sunlight sensitivity though, since it states you retain all benefits of your race, and I don't see sunlight sensitivity as a "benefit". I can see how someone might see that to mean "all racial traits", but that's makes less sense from a "common words usage" perspective and is a less fun way to interpret it, so I'll side against Jeremy on this one but I do understand that viewpoint.
Relevant text: "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense."
Number 4 is also debatable. The second part of the sentence doesn't say anything about objects, however the first part says "only one creature". So RAW is mostly if you think the "only" emphasis "one creature" or the whole snippet "one creature". I'm more inclined to say Jeremy Crawford is right under RAW (def. not RAF), I do wonder if this is intentional or not, since it hampers a lot of spells.
Relevant text: "When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self... must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level"
Edit: On the Dragon Breath thing, I would like to note that Twinned Spell says that the spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature. It doesn't say anything on the timing. It doesn't say the spell must not be able to target more than one creature when it's cast, no it can't target multiple creatures at once period no matter what. So I'd say no Dragon Breath twinning.
On the Dragon Breath thing, I would like to note that Twinned Spell says that the spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature. It doesn't say anything on the timing. It doesn't say the spell must not be able to target more than one creature when it's cast, no it can't target multiple creatures at once period no matter what. So I'd say no Dragon Breath twinning.
This presumes that creating the cone is still part of the spell. I think that's what the crux of the matter is for those of us (it certainly is for me) who have a problem with the ruling. The fact that Dragon's Breath is a Transmutation spell nominally is telling in that regard, at least to me: this spell is about changing the properties of a creature (bestowing Dragon's Breath on them, not unlike Expeditious Retreat, Barkskin or Enhance Ability) not about manipulating magical energy, which would make it Evocation (like Aganazzar's Scorcher, Chain Lightning, Ice Storm or Vitriolic Sphere).
On the Dragon Breath thing, I would like to note that Twinned Spell says that the spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature. It doesn't say anything on the timing. It doesn't say the spell must not be able to target more than one creature when it's cast, no it can't target multiple creatures at once period no matter what. So I'd say no Dragon Breath twinning.
This presumes that creating the cone is still part of the spell. I think that's what the crux of the matter is for those of us (it certainly is for me) who have a problem with the ruling. The fact that Dragon's Breath is a Transmutation spell nominally is telling in that regard, at least to me: this spell is about changing the properties of a creature (bestowing Dragon's Breath on them, not unlike Expeditious Retreat, Barkskin or Enhance Ability) not about manipulating magical energy, which would make it Evocation (like Aganazzar's Scorcher, Chain Lightning, Ice Storm or Vitriolic Sphere).
Precisely this for me. The spell targets a single creature and enhances that creature. The target is then the one that targets multiple targets with a secondary effect that is a benefit of the spell's enhancement but is not, in fact, the actual spell.
Let me pose this question to the anti-Twinned crowd as I'm not sure if it's been answered in any SAC itself: Does Dragon's Breath benefit from Elemental Affinity?
The Twinned Spell ruling would make more sense if TS said "... must be incapable of EFFECTING more than one creature at the spell’s current level". Then spells like Bane/Bless, Fireball, Magic Missile or indeed Dragons Breath would not work with TS.
And even then we would STILL need rules clarification, because as others have already pointed out, Dragons Breath is cast ON A SINGLE TARGET!
I hadn't heard about the dragon's breath thing.. I'm surprised someone would read it has not being twinnable. The spell's effect is to give an ability to a single target. The ability granted by dragon's breathe is entirely unrelated to what the spell "dragon's breath" can target in my opinion.
Edit: wouldn't haste also be disqualified then? If target of the ability a spell grant is counted towards the number of targets for twinned spell, then haste targets both the hasted character aswell as the character hit by the extra attack granted by haste.
I hadn't heard about the dragon's breath thing.. I'm surprised someone would read it has not being twinnable. The spell's effect is to give an ability to a single target. The ability granted by dragon's breathe is entirely unrelated to what the spell "dragon's breath" can target in my opinion.
Edit: wouldn't haste also be disqualified then? If target of the ability a spell grant is counted towards the number of targets for twinned spell, then haste targets both the hasted character aswell as the character hit by the extra attack granted by haste.
Every sorcerer was surprised by this ruling. Crawford seems to feel that it is similar to ice knife which also can't be twinned because when it shatters it can hurt more people. I'd say it is one of Crawford's worst rulings because as you mentioned, the same could be said of Haste. I think he offered an explanation for why Haste is different but I can't remember it off hand.
I hadn't heard about the dragon's breath thing.. I'm surprised someone would read it has not being twinnable. The spell's effect is to give an ability to a single target. The ability granted by dragon's breathe is entirely unrelated to what the spell "dragon's breath" can target in my opinion.
Edit: wouldn't haste also be disqualified then? If target of the ability a spell grant is counted towards the number of targets for twinned spell, then haste targets both the hasted character aswell as the character hit by the extra attack granted by haste.
Every sorcerer was surprised by this ruling. Crawford seems to feel that it is similar to ice knife which also can't be twinned because when it shatters it can hurt more people. I'd say it is one of Crawford's worst rulings because as you mentioned, the same could be said of Haste. I think he offered an explanation for why Haste is different but I can't remember it off hand.
Interested in the subject, I did a bit of digging... It would seem that the RAI of Twinned spell is very different from RAw... I think the intended restriction of twinned spell is something akin to "The result of the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. hmm.. but no.. Because that would still disqualify haste.. The problem is that Jeremy's justification splits up the dragon's breath into two seperate groups of targets.. which is not at all a defined 5e mechanic and therefore is entirely special treatment as far as I can tell...
This means that he view's haste as being okay because he's splitting the target of haste, and the target of the haste attack into two groups of "single targets"... I Honestly don't know ho he'd work that into a consistent rule.
Edit: maybe " Any seperate effect resulting from the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. Something like that.
I hadn't heard about the dragon's breath thing.. I'm surprised someone would read it has not being twinnable. The spell's effect is to give an ability to a single target. The ability granted by dragon's breathe is entirely unrelated to what the spell "dragon's breath" can target in my opinion.
Edit: wouldn't haste also be disqualified then? If target of the ability a spell grant is counted towards the number of targets for twinned spell, then haste targets both the hasted character aswell as the character hit by the extra attack granted by haste.
Every sorcerer was surprised by this ruling. Crawford seems to feel that it is similar to ice knife which also can't be twinned because when it shatters it can hurt more people. I'd say it is one of Crawford's worst rulings because as you mentioned, the same could be said of Haste. I think he offered an explanation for why Haste is different but I can't remember it off hand.
Interested in the subject, I did a bit of digging... It would seem that the RAI of Twinned spell is very different from RAw... I think the intended restriction of twinned spell is something akin to "The result of the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. hmm.. but no.. Because that would still disqualify haste.. The problem is that Jeremy's justification splits up the dragon's breath into two seperate groups of targets.. which is not at all a defined 5e mechanic and therefore is entirely special treatment as far as I can tell...
This means that he view's haste as being okay because he's splitting the target of haste, and the target of the haste attack into two groups of "single targets"... I Honestly don't know ho he'd work that into a consistent rule.
Edit: maybe " Any seperate effect resulting from the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. Something like that.
The only way the Dragon's Breath ruling makes sense is if the actual cone is considered part of what the caster creates with the spell, but that's a massive stretch if we look at the mechanics involved. I don't like relying purely on the "common sense" argument, but it's pretty darn hard to argue the caster has anything to do with targeting creatures with the cone or even with the cone itself other than bestowing the ability to create one on a creature.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I absolutely agree.. I guess I'm just trying to figure out the actual intended restrictions to twinned spell would actually be.. I kinda take issue with two things here, one being that his ruling appears to contradict RAw, the other being that I can't honestly figure out the actual ruleset we're supposed to apply according to RAI.. It's seems like he's applying a special rule to one specific spell that can't directly be translated to anything else in the rules.
As I mentioned previous, if we go by the lgoic that the target of the ability granted bt the spell are also targets of the spell, the haste can target more than one person because the haste attack action applies an additional possible target to the spell... The way he got around that was inventing the idea of target groups, where haste would have 2 groups of 1 target...
As soon as we start have guessing seperate target groups and stuff like that, it seems pretty clear that he's internal logic is not actually based on the rules either... I don't remember any 5e spell saying anything about target groups.
I absolutely agree.. I guess I'm just trying to figure out the actual intended restrictions to twinned spell would actually be.. I guess I kinda take issue with two things here, one being that his ruling appears to contradict RAw, the other being that I can't honestly figure out the actual ruleset we're supposed to apply according to RAI.. It's seems like he's applying a special rule to one specific spell that can't directly be translated to anything else in the rules.
As I mentioned previous, if we go by the lgoic that the target of the ability granted bt the spell are also targets of the spell, the haste can target more than one person because the haste attack action applies an additional possible target to the spell... The way he got around that was inventing the idea of target groups, where haste would have 2 groups of 1 target...
As soon as we start have guessing seperate target groups and stuff like that, it seems pretty clear that he's internal logic is not actually based on the rules either... I don't remember any 5e spell saying anything about target groups.
My best guess is that - aside from the spells that explicitly say they can target more than one creature - it's about spells that create AoEs, even if only indirectly. I haven't checked every single official spell available to sorcerers, but so far I haven't readily found any that create AoEs indirectly other than Dragon's Breath so far. Maybe there's a beast with an AoE attack, if so that would mean the intention is that Polymorph can't be twinned either (which in turn would mean any new beast that might get created could render Polymorph untwinnable after the fact). It seems pretty silly at this point. With so few offenders on the spell list, just adding "can't be twinned" to those spells directly (or removing them from the sorcerer list outright, which might have been what happened with True Polymorph) would be so much easier than Sage Advice-ing a mechanic the devs can't even phrase in a way that's understandable to the average player.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hmm yea I think adding tags would've been the cleanest way to do it... I can see where you're getting at with AoE, but I dont think an ability as a result of a spell which could target 2 specific targets would fly either.. For the system to work they'd need some way of dividing spells in steps.. or something. Yea It just gets super messy.. If not going with the tags they should've just left dragon's breath alone.. It's not even like it's overly powerful to be twinned anyway as it still costs an action...
I generally like to have these rulings on uncertainties, but in this case I feel like they made an uncertainty out of a clear "yes it can be twinned" situation.
Spell tags would have been a really good idea yeah.
I think that 5e is so DM friendly that you can do what you want but you kinda have to if you want it to make sense.
A lot of these are just bad rules to begin with and the fact they never look at it as a "yeahhh my bad" kinda look makes them look like they don't believe they can make mistakes. Which they do a lot.
Spell tags would have been a really good idea yeah.
I think that 5e is so DM friendly that you can do what you want but you kinda have to if you want it to make sense.
A lot of these are just bad rules to begin with and the fact they never look at it as a "yeahhh my bad" kinda look makes them look like they don't believe they can make mistakes. Which they do a lot.
True. A lot of people would probably think differently if they instead said basically "RAI is you can't Twinned Spell Dragon's Breath for X reason whether or not the wording makes that clear" instead of trying to imply the wording definitively defends that decision with RAW.
On the Twinned Dragons Breath I see the spell as a buff just like Haste which can be twinned but the buffed character can target and hit more then 1 creature in a round. At my table I would allow the twinning of Dragons Breath spell, it is not a world altering spell like wish.
I can see where you're getting at with AoE, but I dont think an ability as a result of a spell which could target 2 specific targets would fly either..
Dominate Monster can let you sic a creature on multiple opponents in one turn. Telekinesis can let you drop a Huge creature on other creatures - multiple ones, given that a Huge creature takes up a 15x15 area.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I have top say it's hysterical to read through 3 pages and really, the only thing that is constant is that he got the Dragon's breath wrong. He got it wrong, period. No further debate, really, and the scrambling and double talk over Haste being similar is simply a guy who can't step back and admit he made a mistake/bad call, which detracts a lot from his reliability. There isn't a bit that supports NOT allowing it, aside from trying to twist the words around to confuse people.
To simplify it, the spell affects ONE target. THAT target MIGHT affect others or multiples, but the SPELL only affects one target. JC needs to eat a couple slices of humble pie, climb of the pedestal and admit to being human and thus sometimes making mistakes. OR rewrite descriptions, so RaW isn't being ignored to support his intent. Silliness and again, a perfect example of why DM rules trump all, because sometimes even those who write the rules can't understand what they've written.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I will say, as a DM, I (a) felt that as written Dragon's Breath could be twinned, and (b) I wouldn't actually allow it.
It's just an opinion, but given the very limited number of spells a sorcerer can even learn I doubt it's a relevant question 99% of the time. There's probably 10-12 other 2nd level spells on the sorcerer list that are so extremely useful in general considering anything else is an edge case to begin with, and DB arguably isn't even among the next best dozen. And later on some of these might get swapped out for higher level ones too. Someone who really likes it thematically might take it, I guess, I just don't see that happening all that often. No reason not to get the rules right, just putting it in perspective a bit, but given how - again, IMO - it's such a subpar spell choice I'd be even more inclined to let it slide.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Dragon's Breath is mostly useful if for some reason you have allies with low value actions, such as familiars, summoned undead, Tiny Servant, etc. As those spells aren't on the sorcerer list, it depends significantly on what your teammates are.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Polymorph counterexample aside, Dragon's Breath has a casting time of one action. It is fully cast when the caster's turn ends and can't be counterspelled at that point. The creature targeted by it then has to spend an action to create a cone-shaped effect (which might happen 54 seconds after casting Dragon's Breath has ended) that may affect creatures that weren't even eligible targets (for any spell, not just Dragon's Breath) for the caster at the time of casting.
The actual cone of energy is not part of the casting, it doesn't even exist when the spell is cast. That makes it really strange to consider whatever's affected by that energy cone rather than by the casting itself, a target of the spell. Charm Person is twinnable yet both targets of that twinned CP might be able to cast spells that are not twinnable, like Fireball, while charmed. That's because we don't consider the two charmed creatures' actions to be part of the Charm Person spell. Crown of Madness or Suggestion, same considerations. The Dominate spells even more so, because with those spells the caster even decides on the dominated creatures' actions.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Let me check in on numbers 1 & 4, to see if I understand how those rules work RAW (obvious RAF all of these are getting homebrewed except #3). Correct me if I'm wrong.
Number 1, Druid is specific that you lose special senses such as darkvision. Definitely wouldn't keep sunlight sensitivity though, since it states you retain all benefits of your race, and I don't see sunlight sensitivity as a "benefit". I can see how someone might see that to mean "all racial traits", but that's makes less sense from a "common words usage" perspective and is a less fun way to interpret it, so I'll side against Jeremy on this one but I do understand that viewpoint.
Relevant text: "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense."
Number 4 is also debatable. The second part of the sentence doesn't say anything about objects, however the first part says "only one creature". So RAW is mostly if you think the "only" emphasis "one creature" or the whole snippet "one creature". I'm more inclined to say Jeremy Crawford is right under RAW (def. not RAF), I do wonder if this is intentional or not, since it hampers a lot of spells.
Relevant text: "When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self... must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level"
Edit: On the Dragon Breath thing, I would like to note that Twinned Spell says that the spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature. It doesn't say anything on the timing. It doesn't say the spell must not be able to target more than one creature when it's cast, no it can't target multiple creatures at once period no matter what. So I'd say no Dragon Breath twinning.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
This presumes that creating the cone is still part of the spell. I think that's what the crux of the matter is for those of us (it certainly is for me) who have a problem with the ruling. The fact that Dragon's Breath is a Transmutation spell nominally is telling in that regard, at least to me: this spell is about changing the properties of a creature (bestowing Dragon's Breath on them, not unlike Expeditious Retreat, Barkskin or Enhance Ability) not about manipulating magical energy, which would make it Evocation (like Aganazzar's Scorcher, Chain Lightning, Ice Storm or Vitriolic Sphere).
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Precisely this for me. The spell targets a single creature and enhances that creature. The target is then the one that targets multiple targets with a secondary effect that is a benefit of the spell's enhancement but is not, in fact, the actual spell.
Let me pose this question to the anti-Twinned crowd as I'm not sure if it's been answered in any SAC itself: Does Dragon's Breath benefit from Elemental Affinity?
The Twinned Spell ruling would make more sense if TS said "... must be incapable of EFFECTING more than one creature at the spell’s current level". Then spells like Bane/Bless, Fireball, Magic Missile or indeed Dragons Breath would not work with TS.
And even then we would STILL need rules clarification, because as others have already pointed out, Dragons Breath is cast ON A SINGLE TARGET!
#OpenDnD
I hadn't heard about the dragon's breath thing.. I'm surprised someone would read it has not being twinnable. The spell's effect is to give an ability to a single target. The ability granted by dragon's breathe is entirely unrelated to what the spell "dragon's breath" can target in my opinion.
Edit: wouldn't haste also be disqualified then? If target of the ability a spell grant is counted towards the number of targets for twinned spell, then haste targets both the hasted character aswell as the character hit by the extra attack granted by haste.
Every sorcerer was surprised by this ruling. Crawford seems to feel that it is similar to ice knife which also can't be twinned because when it shatters it can hurt more people. I'd say it is one of Crawford's worst rulings because as you mentioned, the same could be said of Haste. I think he offered an explanation for why Haste is different but I can't remember it off hand.
Interested in the subject, I did a bit of digging... It would seem that the RAI of Twinned spell is very different from RAw... I think the intended restriction of twinned spell is something akin to "The result of the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. hmm.. but no.. Because that would still disqualify haste.. The problem is that Jeremy's justification splits up the dragon's breath into two seperate groups of targets.. which is not at all a defined 5e mechanic and therefore is entirely special treatment as far as I can tell...
This means that he view's haste as being okay because he's splitting the target of haste, and the target of the haste attack into two groups of "single targets"... I Honestly don't know ho he'd work that into a consistent rule.
Edit: maybe " Any seperate effect resulting from the spell cannot affect more than one target at once".. Something like that.
The only way the Dragon's Breath ruling makes sense is if the actual cone is considered part of what the caster creates with the spell, but that's a massive stretch if we look at the mechanics involved. I don't like relying purely on the "common sense" argument, but it's pretty darn hard to argue the caster has anything to do with targeting creatures with the cone or even with the cone itself other than bestowing the ability to create one on a creature.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I absolutely agree.. I guess I'm just trying to figure out the actual intended restrictions to twinned spell would actually be.. I kinda take issue with two things here, one being that his ruling appears to contradict RAw, the other being that I can't honestly figure out the actual ruleset we're supposed to apply according to RAI.. It's seems like he's applying a special rule to one specific spell that can't directly be translated to anything else in the rules.
As I mentioned previous, if we go by the lgoic that the target of the ability granted bt the spell are also targets of the spell, the haste can target more than one person because the haste attack action applies an additional possible target to the spell... The way he got around that was inventing the idea of target groups, where haste would have 2 groups of 1 target...
As soon as we start have guessing seperate target groups and stuff like that, it seems pretty clear that he's internal logic is not actually based on the rules either... I don't remember any 5e spell saying anything about target groups.
My best guess is that - aside from the spells that explicitly say they can target more than one creature - it's about spells that create AoEs, even if only indirectly. I haven't checked every single official spell available to sorcerers, but so far I haven't readily found any that create AoEs indirectly other than Dragon's Breath so far. Maybe there's a beast with an AoE attack, if so that would mean the intention is that Polymorph can't be twinned either (which in turn would mean any new beast that might get created could render Polymorph untwinnable after the fact). It seems pretty silly at this point. With so few offenders on the spell list, just adding "can't be twinned" to those spells directly (or removing them from the sorcerer list outright, which might have been what happened with True Polymorph) would be so much easier than Sage Advice-ing a mechanic the devs can't even phrase in a way that's understandable to the average player.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hmm yea I think adding tags would've been the cleanest way to do it... I can see where you're getting at with AoE, but I dont think an ability as a result of a spell which could target 2 specific targets would fly either.. For the system to work they'd need some way of dividing spells in steps.. or something. Yea It just gets super messy.. If not going with the tags they should've just left dragon's breath alone.. It's not even like it's overly powerful to be twinned anyway as it still costs an action...
I generally like to have these rulings on uncertainties, but in this case I feel like they made an uncertainty out of a clear "yes it can be twinned" situation.
Spell tags would have been a really good idea yeah.
I think that 5e is so DM friendly that you can do what you want but you kinda have to if you want it to make sense.
A lot of these are just bad rules to begin with and the fact they never look at it as a "yeahhh my bad" kinda look makes them look like they don't believe they can make mistakes. Which they do a lot.
True. A lot of people would probably think differently if they instead said basically "RAI is you can't Twinned Spell Dragon's Breath for X reason whether or not the wording makes that clear" instead of trying to imply the wording definitively defends that decision with RAW.
On the Twinned Dragons Breath I see the spell as a buff just like Haste which can be twinned but the buffed character can target and hit more then 1 creature in a round. At my table I would allow the twinning of Dragons Breath spell, it is not a world altering spell like wish.
Dominate Monster can let you sic a creature on multiple opponents in one turn. Telekinesis can let you drop a Huge creature on other creatures - multiple ones, given that a Huge creature takes up a 15x15 area.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I have top say it's hysterical to read through 3 pages and really, the only thing that is constant is that he got the Dragon's breath wrong. He got it wrong, period. No further debate, really, and the scrambling and double talk over Haste being similar is simply a guy who can't step back and admit he made a mistake/bad call, which detracts a lot from his reliability. There isn't a bit that supports NOT allowing it, aside from trying to twist the words around to confuse people.
To simplify it, the spell affects ONE target. THAT target MIGHT affect others or multiples, but the SPELL only affects one target. JC needs to eat a couple slices of humble pie, climb of the pedestal and admit to being human and thus sometimes making mistakes. OR rewrite descriptions, so RaW isn't being ignored to support his intent. Silliness and again, a perfect example of why DM rules trump all, because sometimes even those who write the rules can't understand what they've written.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I will say, as a DM, I (a) felt that as written Dragon's Breath could be twinned, and (b) I wouldn't actually allow it.
It's just an opinion, but given the very limited number of spells a sorcerer can even learn I doubt it's a relevant question 99% of the time. There's probably 10-12 other 2nd level spells on the sorcerer list that are so extremely useful in general considering anything else is an edge case to begin with, and DB arguably isn't even among the next best dozen. And later on some of these might get swapped out for higher level ones too. Someone who really likes it thematically might take it, I guess, I just don't see that happening all that often. No reason not to get the rules right, just putting it in perspective a bit, but given how - again, IMO - it's such a subpar spell choice I'd be even more inclined to let it slide.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Dragon's Breath is mostly useful if for some reason you have allies with low value actions, such as familiars, summoned undead, Tiny Servant, etc. As those spells aren't on the sorcerer list, it depends significantly on what your teammates are.