How can we confidently say that stacking Reach Spell, Persistent Spell, and Ocular Spell lets you persist almost any spell?

Question

I've recently been reading up on the finer details of The Twice-Betrayer of Shar and found that there exists an objection to whether or not it can Persist the spells that it claims to be able to. This has lead me to read further in to how the build's tricks for persisting spells works.

As I understand it, the central premise of the build is that the correct permutations of Reach Spell, Persistent Spell, and Ocular Spell should let you persist "just about every spell on the books". However, I'm unsure of how such a strong claim can be made. Reach Spell only works on touch spells, Persistent Spell only works on spells with "a fixed or personal range", and Ocular Spell only works on "ray spells and spells with a target other than personal". This game has so many of different descriptors for spells that I find it impossible to believe that these three metamagic feats are enough to let you persist almost anything.

So what have I missed? How can it confidently be said that this combination lets you persist almost anything, when there's so many different types of spell in the game? Have I overlooked some qualifier?

Answer 1

The context constrains the claim, which is hyperbole anyway.

You are reading way too much into the claim being made. The context of the discussion is “buffing.” They’re talking about spells cast as buffs. Buffs typically target one or more creatures through some mechanism or another, and so Reach Spell and Ocular Spell provide mechanisms for massaging those targeting rules into something eligible for Persist Spell.¹

There are loads of spells that cannot be persisted in this manner, particularly those that affect areas or produce “effects” (other than rays) without targeting. But those spells are almost-never buffs (though some area-effect buffs exist), which means they aren’t relevant to the conversation being had.

In short, they aren’t saying what you claim they’re saying. And even the claim that they are making—that this combination covers “nearly any [buff] spell”—is hyperbole. No one has done any analysis on the extant spells in 3.5e edition to determine which ones are and are not covered by this trick, and “nearly any” is not a strict or quantified claim. It’s a lot, it covers the stuff the poster cares about, and that’s good enough.

1. _{Or at least, that is a claim being made—which could be, and has been, debated. This answer doesn’t seem to be the place to host that debate, however. Frankly, the debate is usually pretty dumb, because the entire thing relies on exceptionally under-defined terms, and there is basically endless room for a determined skeptic to raise doubts, and for a determined believer to raise doubts about the skeptic’s doubts.}