Long Range Spells... do you use the extra range?

wolfen · Jan 14, 2004

Many games incorporate a battlemap of some kind that is fairly restrictive. In addition, I just don't find a lot of situations in which the extra range come in that handy.

All my spells occur within 150 ft. Is this odd? What is your experience re: frequency of long range encounters?

wolfen

LordOfBlah · Jan 14, 2004

Last game session I found my self kicking my self because I couldn't thing "outside the battle map" I did a buff spell for my cleric instead of blasting the group of approaching baddies because they where off the battle map and I didn't think to ask the dm on the Exact range. Won't forget that again.

Jolly Giant · Jan 14, 2004

The long range certainly gets used to its full advantage IMC. Landbound enemies get blasted from the air at such a range that even a truely great archer has a hard time of hitting the spellcaster, for example. Most of all, though, they get used to finish of an enemy that tries to escape.

reiella · Jan 14, 2004

Typically, player spells occur in the 'Immediate Vision of Combat Range' for my campaign.

It is somewhat unforunate, but it is more likly an issue of me not describing the situation too often before it reaches the 'Immediate Vision of Combat Range' state. For randoms, it's because they occur at sight, which is quite often, under the 100 ft range, and for fixed, it's usually because the BBEGs try to gain the tactical advantage of not being visible from extended distances.

With that said, NPCs and such, have made good use of Long range spells.

shilsen · Jan 14, 2004

The last campaign I was in (as a player) was a RttToEE one, so there was a lot of dungeon-crawling and next to no opportunities for long-range spellcasting. The current campaign (I'm DM-ing) is much less dungeon-oriented, so I'm spells with long ranges to matter much more here. In the last session, an NPC nailed a PC at about 400 feet range with a fireball, and those wounds ended up causing the PC's death, so the long-ranger has already claimed one victim.

Wormwood · Jan 14, 2004

Whenever I have my villains try to make an escape, the PC's inevitably chuck a long-range blast spell at them just as they clear the next hill.

Sometimes they even wait a round or two just to make it sporting.

alaric · Jan 14, 2004

One thing i've found as that we use the battleboard alot less frequently as the group moved up in level. It really began we it became SOP for everyone to be flying in combat. Now the battle map doesn't handle one aspect of the battlefield, and the movement speed of fly is enough that almost the entire board in a single move. So now removed from the board the usual first question of combat (presuming the PC's are initiating it, or are well prepared) is "when will i be in range for X" where X is the big wizard spell for the level we're at. In fact I ran an epic level one off we had a wizard, a sorcerer, and a psion all in the party fighting a lich. Combat started and stayed at about 1/3 of a mile with both parties flying and exchanging massively destructive spells.