Bursts and Blasts 3d?

[Virindi]

I can't seem to find anything in the PHB about how high is a blast or burst? I looked in the DMG read about aerial and aquatic combat. I didn't find anything really helpful.

1. Are blasts and bursts cubes?

2. Are blasts and bursts only 1 square/5-ft. tall?

3. Would a ranged (insert arbitrary number here) blast 2 effect on the ground be 4x4x1 squares, or a range 10 blast 2 effect on the ground be 4x4x3 squares?

4. Would a ranged (insert arbitrary number here) blast 2 effect in the air/water be 4x4x1 squares, or 4x4x4 squares?

Any insight on this would be most welcome.

 

[James McMurray]

Hopefully someone will come along with search capabilities and time, and combine the two to dredge up the old threads.

General consensus seems to be that bursts are 3-D as they say "in all directions." Blasts are definitely up to the DM.

In our games we make them all into cubes.

 

[Virindi]

Hopefully someone will come along with search capabilities and time, and combine the two to dredge up the old threads.

General consensus seems to be that bursts are 3-D as they say "in all directions." Blasts are definitely up to the DM.

In our games we make them all into cubes.

I do apologize in advance if this topic was covered, I suck at searching on these forums.
Yeah It's definitely what I was thinking, (cubes) but wanted to make sure I didn't skip over an area that sorted this out a little more clearly.

 

[James McMurray]

Unfortunately no. The closest we've got is "A burst starts in an origin square and extends in all directions to a specified number of squares from the origin square." and "A blast fills an area adjacent to you that is a specified number of squares on a side. For example, the wizard power thunderwave is a blast 3, which means the power affects a 3-square-by-3-square area
adjacent to you." (phb 272)

The first definitely indicates that bursts go out in all directions (including up), though its possible they didn't intend for it to include vertical, given their almost complete neglect of the third dimension in the PHB. The second pretty clearly says that a blast 3 is 3x3 (not 3x3x3) but again they could have just been stuck in 2-d mode when writing and not even considered the implications of their example.

 

[James McMurray]

And to muddy the waters even more, there's an infamous customer service response that effectively said "don't worry about height, just let it reach" which some have taken to mean that areas are infinitely tall.

 

[Milambus]

3. Would a ranged (insert arbitrary number here) blast 2 effect on the ground be 4x4x1 squares, or a range 10 blast 2 effect on the ground be 4x4x3 squares?

Regardless of the third dimension, a Blast 2 is only 2x2. For a total of 4 squares. It may have just been a brain/keyboard thing but I wanted to make sure =)

 

[borg286]

Dragon breath

I agree with the blast thing being only 1 square vertically, and a burst being in all directions, sadly not in the time dimension. That would be awesome if we could interpret it that way.
As support for the blast 3 = 3x3x1, the dragon breath is blast, I would assume that a dragonborn would concentrate his breath on his foes, and not try to cover a cube to the best of his abilies. And the wizard's fiery burst sounds more like an explotion with a center, and if you're in it's blast radius you get hit.

 

[-Avalon-]

Ok, I just have this weird thought of a massive dragon breathing a gout of flame on his foes... and it is only 5 feet tall...

just odd, plain odd...

I think the game was intended to be very 3-D. So fireball goes up, dragonborn breath goes up, Turn Undead goes up also.

 

[GamerRay]

While we haven't encountered this yet in my group, I would agree that a burst creates an even sphere. And it would make sense that a blast would just go a straight 5 feet.

However, if an ability seems like it should or shouldn't use the 3rd dimension, then just fix the rules to say so.

If your burst would just be an outstretching wave of force, don't allow it to hit creatures more than 5 ft above the ground.

If a blast would make an ever-increasing cone, I would find a way to make it so that in a blast 3, the 1st 3 squares would be 5, the next 10, etc.

So a blast 3 would look like this:

5 10 15 -or- 5 5 10
5 10 15 -or- 5 10 15
5 10 15 -or- 10 15 15 (forgive the 2 extra "or"s, the post kept mushing the 2 blasts together without a separator).

 

[eamon]

I'd say all areas (like, say, two-dimensional squares....) including both blasts and bursts are best interpreted as equally tall in the third dimension as it is wide in the other two.

Frankly, that's also the direction that infamous customer service rep was pointing, if unfortunately phrased. Given the fact that the PHB text is obviously written without much regard (if any!) for the third dimension, it's unreasonable to put any weight into wording which possible could imply treatment of the third dimension.

Concretely, just because blasts speak of area's, doesn't mean a blast has no height. Literal interpretation is full of contradictions here - a 3x3 area isn't the same thing as a 3x3x1 volume - if anything, it's a 3x3x0 plane, which is clearly nonsense. Also, the blast text speaks of a blast 3 being 3 squares on a side - not necessarily excluding vertical sides. In other words, the default D&D response throughout previous editions looks like it holds in 4e too - anything specified in 2 dimensions is extended equally in the third.

I really don't see any reason sufficient to motivate jumping "gotchas" on players that happen to have blasts rather than bursts in those extremely rare cases that the distinction between 3x3x1 and 3x3x3 matters. It's obviously not a balance factor, it doesn't have much believability relevance, so I'd go with the least surprising interpretation and avoid making distinctions between the two.