Make cone effects = step pyramid shape

[Silverblade The Ench]

*Silverblade turns into The Mask!*

Make cone effects = step pyrmaid shape
and bring 'em back in 4th ed, PU-LEASE!!??? !
Pretty please, with cheese on top?

Square blasts make no damned sense, much of the time, because...

a Dragon breathes square fire on you....WTH, quadratic dragons?!
Give me a break, Tiamat breathes quintuple cubes?!
WTH does she fart: dodecahedrons?!

Lines, pretty nice lines, you know, like a blue dragon frying a bunch of nellies stupid enough to stay in the straight corridor leadign to her lair.
I miss LINES in D&D....
---------->BOOM!!

There is nothing wrong with straight lines, Human race has been using 'em for centuries, millenia even!
D&D has up to now, used lines happily!! But nooo not for 4th ed! everything is SQUARE, daddy oh! Squareville!

It's so so simple: if a line or cone even partially intercepts a square, that square is hit,
So, imagine cones working like step pyramids and diagonal lines like a lot of diagonal tiles overlapping.

Easy peasy! Much more sense than square blasts all the damned time....


I know they simplified the game, but this is...silly, k? So I'm dealing with it in a silly manner!

*pulls sledgehammer out of underwear and crits a 3x3 flipping square!!!*

 

[Shroomy]

Ain't going to happen. Also, somebody did create a nice animated graphic detailing how a cone effect works using the squared method. Works for me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Counting 4e squares, a blast /is/ a cone. It's just a square on the battle grid for the same reason bursts, which are circles (spheres, really), are squares on the battlegrid.

 

[erisred]

Do you mean like this:

_______________Angled
__Cone___Blast___Blast

_xxxxx____xxx____xxx_
__xxx_____xxx___xxx__
___x______xxx__xxx___
___c_______c___c_____

Where x is the effect and c is the caster?

 

[Contents May Vary]

Hmm I like those.

At first sight, it looks like the rules for those shapes could be made quite precise and succinct. Not sure what the ramifications of allowing those shapes would be - but it certainly looks interesting.

 

[Jhaelen]

Blasts are waaaaaaaaaay superior to cones. Just have a look at the sorry excuse for cones in DDM2.0 and you'll agree.

 

[Contents May Vary]

For that reason, I would expect spells using cones to be balanced by doing extra damage or effects in comparison to blasts.

I believe that these other shapes would add variety to AoE attacks. (Although I also think that things are fine as they are - but making even better something that's already good is nice.

 

[drachasor]

Hmm I like those.

At first sight, it looks like the rules for those shapes could be made quite precise and succinct. Not sure what the ramifications of allowing those shapes would be - but it certainly looks interesting.

Allowing cones and angled blasts would enable non-friendly fire AoE to be used against a flanked target without hitting your friends. With blasts and bursts that's a huge difference.

 

[Torg Smith]

Just make a house rule and you have it.

 

[Victoly]

Distance on the grid is much more of an abstraction than it was in 3rd edition. Since diagonal squares are each just 1 square apart now, a "square" blast would really be filling a sort of circular area. Just use your imagination a bit and don't think so much about the squares on the grid and you'll be fine!