Burning hands

Burning hands was a spell of the Alteration  or Evocation  school of magic.

Effects
Learned by some wizards of relatively low experience, burning hands momentarily engulfed the wizard's hands in a burst of magical flames and then expelled them rapidly into an adjacent area of roughly twenty-five feet in diameter. Earlier versions projected a cone of flame from the fingertips of the caster's outstretched hands, thumbs touching. These flames did no harm to the wizard but could scorch the flesh of others caught nearby during the fiery blast. The effect was instantaneous but damaging and the wizard required only a short, momentary rest to refocus himself in order to cast the spell again.

The post Sundering version cast flames in a 15 feet cone and had the older spell casting method of having ones thumbs to geather with out stretched hands. This set aflame any flammable object that wasn't worn or carried.

Components
This spell required only verbal and somatic components to cast.

History
Before the Spellplague, burning hands was also used by sorcerers and could only be cast a number of times equal to how many times the wizard had prepared the spell  or the sorcerer had energy for. After the Spellplague burning hands became easier to access, though as a consequence it no longer grew in power with its caster.