Diagonal area of spells

[Ancalagon]

Hmmm.

If the bad guy was between two heroes who are in a diagonal, it would be quite possible to do this with the corner of the cube without having to resort to the "point" of a diamond. So it's legitimate imo. On the other hand, it makes it harder to adjucate so it slows down the game. What is more important to you?

 

[Oofta]

I use a grid and approximate circles on the mat for spells that have a radius. Any square that is not almost completely covered the circle is not affected.

A long time ago I purchased templates sqwire - you can buy a pack at http://paizo.com/companies/steelSqwire. Before that I had a clear piece of plastic (from the olden days when we used projectors) that I drew circles on at the various radii.

They had templates in the book for 3.5, you can search for D&D 3.5 radius template for other images, here's one



EDIT: note that you can also count it out. Pick an intersection and count out - every other square on a diagonal counts as two. So if counting squares diagonally you need to alternate between 5 and 10 feet. The first square counts as 5, second costs 10, third costs 5, etc. So going out on a diagonal it's 5, 15, 20.

Hope that helps.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

My vote would be to either disallow it, or start having the enemies play funky with their AOEs as well. Things like having a red dragon breath fire with their cone “above” their small kobold allies, only hitting medium sized opponents. If people want to play that way, that’s fine, but it has to go both ways.

But the other thing is that it kind-of steps on the Evoker's ability to shape their AOE spells. To me, infringing on that ability is a strike against allowing it.

Disclosure: I am a theatre of the mind-style DM.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

In my experience, anytime a player tries to do these kind of "shenanigans" (and I'm not even sure if this qualifies...it really wouldn't bother me THAT much, but it is a slippery slope), I would think about it for a few seconds, probably say "Hmmm...well...ok, but are you sure we want to do spells like this?". It would make the player think about the consequences of his/her actions. I mean, what's good for the goose and all that.

In almost all circumstances where core game 'rules' were, shall we say, "being bent a bit", my players have always erred on the side of "On second thought...naaa. Lets not do that". At least ever since "The Poisoning Event" happened.

That said, I do have one campaign where I let magic-users "manipulate" spells as they are cast if they make a certain roll. This is in my Eisla campaign world for 1e AD&D. Magic-Users are fairly different, casting and knowledge wise. Short version: a MU can try and "swap down to swap up" something in a spell...like lower it's Range but increase it's Area, or reduce it to 1d3 per level from 1d6 per level, but with no save, etc. They can also cast their cantrips all day long as long as they keep making an Int check, -1 per time they already cast that cantrip that day; failure means they can't use that cantrip for the rest of the day, until they have time to "refresh their memory" so to say. But as I said...that's a campagin-world-specific thing.

(PS: "The Poisoning" - one, or was it two?, players wanted to buy poison and use it for their blades (this is 1e AD&D, btw). They tried, and failed to find any for a while. When they did, it was expensive. They "semi-complained" that their PC's should have an easier time finding and buying poison because of their class and/or race (I know one was an assassin). I thought about it, and said "Ok. Are you sure you guys really want to use poison?"..."Yup!", was their answer. About two hours later, every single PC had been killed via poison, as they were going up against a secretive "Iron Ring" type syndicate. After the TPK, I heard "Yeah...maybe having poison be more rare isn't such a bad idea..." (cue trombone sad/fail sound)).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[5ekyu]

A cube has a corner - that is definition.

if i as gm say that for all things in all situations spell effects will aling their cubes with north south directions on one side... so shall it be... then those cubes have corners.

if i as gm say you can choose the alignment of the edges of your cube... they still have corners.

it will still be possible for players to put their characters just outside the corners - regardless of which of those extremes of alignments or in between i use.

Adding a house rule to say "those at the edge but just outside may get burned too" is fantastic... means they can catch more enemies in their cube effects effectively expanding the areas but a extra 5' in each direction with a half save thingy - even if they want to make it an ability check to do so.

of course, that whole ability check to precisely place an area effect might get really fun when the allies at the edge of a befeficial spells dont get in on the fun.

i generally let the things play out and let tactics play out from them.

 

[Ancalagon]

I use a grid and approximate circles on the mat for spells that have a radius. Any square that is not almost completely covered the circle is not affected.

A long time ago I purchased templates sqwire - you can buy a pack at http://paizo.com/companies/steelSqwire. Before that I had a clear piece of plastic (from the olden days when we used projectors) that I drew circles on at the various radii.

They had templates in the book for 3.5, you can search for D&D 3.5 radius template for other images, here's one

View attachment 96292

EDIT: note that you can also count it out. Pick an intersection and count out - every other square on a diagonal counts as two. So if counting squares diagonally you need to alternate between 5 and 10 feet. The first square counts as 5, second costs 10, third costs 5, etc. So going out on a diagonal it's 5, 15, 20.

Hope that helps.

Remember that in 5e diagonals do not have a cost... ie a circle and a square have the same shape

 

[Tony Vargas]

Remember that in 5e diagonals do not have a cost... ie a circle and a square have the same shape

I thought the 'tactical'/grid variant used an alternate counting of diagonals? 2-1-2 or 1-2-1 ... the opposite of what 3e used, I think it was...

Standard 5e doesn't use a grid and everything's in feet, not squares, so you just bust out the Pythagorean theorem if you want to handle diagonals properly.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Remember that in 5e diagonals do not have a cost... ie a circle and a square have the same shape

Remember that, if you are using the optional rules for playing on a grid, then there is also an optional rule to have diagonals count extra. Using a grid and not counting extra for diagonals would be the worst of both worlds.

 

[Oofta]

Remember that in 5e diagonals do not have a cost... ie a circle and a square have the same shape

In 4E it was spelled out that diagonals had no cost, hence the fire balls that were really cubes. Since using a grid is optional, you have to look go to the DMG (starts on page 250) which talks about options of how to implement. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

If you are doing a cube I've always ruled you have to have one edge perpendicular to you.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Remember that, if you are using the optional rules for playing on a grid, then there is also an optional rule to have diagonals count extra. Using a grid and not counting extra for diagonals would be the worst of both worlds.

Two of the better parts of using a grid are position certainty and ease of counting distance, alternate 1-2-1 counting of diagonals loses both of those, since you have an extra step to counting distance and diagonal distances can end up depending on who's counting or what order you move in, and areas can end up too big or small due to what amounts to a rounding error. Changing the orientation of an area can also be a pain in such a system. In 3.5 you ended up with templates to handle areas, including threatened areas, and needed exceptions to those rules to keep certain threatened areas rational (a standard pole-arm broke the diagonal-counting rules, for instance, if it didn't, you could have diagonally moved through it's threatened area without provoking).