Cones and Lines

doctorhook · May 23, 2008

Forgive me if someone has already addressed this, but I'm curious: what of 'cones' and 'lines' as effect areas in 4E? I understand bursts and blast, but I haven't heard or read anything about these two staples. (A lightning bolt, for example would seem very strange without lines, for example.)

If indeed cones and lines no longer exist in 4E, could I trouble someone to explain specifically why they were problematic?

Mort_Q · May 23, 2008

I too would think it odd if lines were out, even if they changed the name. Can you do the same thing with other mechanics?

Cones, however, seem to have disappeared, with ~~close burst (iirc)~~ blasts taking their place.

Scipio202 · May 23, 2008

Are "barriers" (straight line through the target square - like for walls) the term for lines now?

doctorhook · May 23, 2008

Mort_Q said:
I too would think it odd if lines were out, even if they changed the name. Can you do the same thing with other mechanics?

Cones, however, seem to have disappeared, with ~~close burst (iirc)~~ blasts taking their place.

Could be. Seems odd, though, that DDM, which is now much more like D&D than it ever was before, does include cones. Small Cone and Large Cone as area templates would be, IMO, all the cone functionality we need anyway.

Scipio202 said:
Are "barriers" (straight line through the target square - like for walls) the term for lines now?

I don't know, but it seems unlikely to me, if only because "barrier" seems like a pretty misleading term for "1-square-wide-straight-line-shaped-area-effect". I imagine "barriers" being something separate.

Here's a litmus test for lines in 4E: Next person who finds a preview copy of the 4E Monster Manual in their FLGS, look up the Blue Dragon. Report back here the shape of its breath weapon.

Majoru Oakheart · May 23, 2008

doctorhook said:
Could be. Seems odd, though, that DDM, which is now much more like D&D than it ever was before, does include cones. Small Cone and Large Cone as area templates would be, IMO, all the cone functionality we need anyway.

I can't remember exactly where this was explained. However, I'm certain the info is out there somewhere. Maybe I overheard it from one of the designers at D&D Experience. Either way, near the end of the development of 4e, they had a debate about whether or not to keep in cones. There were about an equal amount of people in the meeting on each side. The designers of D&D Minis was in the room and he voted against the removal of cones. I believe the removal of cones just barely won, but the designer of D&D Minis said "I don't have to remove them in my game, though..." and so he didn't.

Thus, 4e has no cones, D&D Minis does.

doctorhook · May 23, 2008

Majoru Oakheart said:
I can't remember exactly where this was explained. However, I'm certain the info is out there somewhere. Maybe I overheard it from one of the designers at D&D Experience. Either way, near the end of the development of 4e, they had a debate about whether or not to keep in cones. There were about an equal amount of people in the meeting on each side. The designers of D&D Minis was in the room and he voted against the removal of cones. I believe the removal of cones just barely won, but the designer of D&D Minis said "I don't have to remove them in my game, though..." and so he didn't.

Thus, 4e has no cones, D&D Minis does.

You're a good storyteller! Plausible story, too.

I'm still really curious about lines.

Lanefan · May 23, 2008

I'd hazard a guess that lines are out because they're hard to adjudicate on a grid unless the line happens to go in one of the 8 cardinal directions. But if you're firing a line effect at a target that is 7 squares north of you and 5 squares west, which intervening squares are affected and which aren't? (I'll be interested to see how they handle Lightning Bolt)

If you're not married to the grid, it'd be easy enough to house-rule lines back in. Cones and circles and spheres too, for that matter.

Lanefan

MindWanderer · May 23, 2008

There's not much you can do with a cone that you can't do with a blast. I hated cones ever since the old Pools of Darkness game, and good riddance. Lines might be manageable.

doctorhook · May 23, 2008

Lanefan said:
I'd hazard a guess that lines are out because they're hard to adjudicate on a grid unless the line happens to go in one of the 8 cardinal directions. But if you're firing a line effect at a target that is 7 squares north of you and 5 squares west, which intervening squares are affected and which aren't? (I'll be interested to see how they handle Lightning Bolt)

If you're not married to the grid, it'd be easy enough to house-rule lines back in. Cones and circles and spheres too, for that matter.

Lanefan

If lines are indeed out, I suspect your reasoning is correct, Lanefan. I have to concede that Lines are occassionally a pain to place, and often aren't the most effective area effects. (In 3E, it's fairly rare to have all your foes lined up so neatly.)

Lightning Bolt is the iconic line, even more so than Blue Dragon's Breath.

MindWanderer said:
There's not much you can do with a cone that you can't do with a blast. ...

I tend to agree with you. It's no more of a stretch to my imagination to picture a dragon's breath weapon roughly filling a square-shaped Blast than it is to imagine a dragon's breath weapon filling a 90^o arc.

Lines, though... those are different.

I'm beginning to wonder about Blue Dragon's Breath again. We've heard Blue Dragons are "artillery" monsters, effective at a range. If their breath weapon isn't a line, what could it be? My guess (hidden):

Burst X within Y; it's easy to imagine a line of lightning from the dragon's mouth ("within Y") exploding in a fury of electricity when it hits a crowd of foes ("burst X").

Logan_Bonner · May 23, 2008

Majoru Oakheart said:
I can't remember exactly where this was explained. However, I'm certain the info is out there somewhere. Maybe I overheard it from one of the designers at D&D Experience. Either way, near the end of the development of 4e, they had a debate about whether or not to keep in cones. There were about an equal amount of people in the meeting on each side. The designers of D&D Minis was in the room and he voted against the removal of cones. I believe the removal of cones just barely won, but the designer of D&D Minis said "I don't have to remove them in my game, though..." and so he didn't.

Thus, 4e has no cones, D&D Minis does.

Not actually true. The D&D Minis designers want the minis game to be as close to the RPG as is reasonably possible. Cones were still in the RPG when the minis rules were finalized.

Lines have been replaced. They operate more like 3.5's chain lightning, affecting a series of individual targets.

Cones and Lines

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