OnlineDM
Adventurer
I'm still getting up to speed with all of the rules involved in 4e, but I'm getting there. A question came up in a game last night that flummoxed the table a little bit, but I ultimately found the answer in the Rules Compendium. We were all a little bit surprised by that answer, so I thought I'd toss it up here for discussion.
First, let me say that I feel pretty good about my understanding of the rules for being hidden. Unless a creature is actually hidden (it successfully makes a Stealth check that beats the opposition's passive Perception - or active Perception if they use an action to search), then everyone on the battlefield knows exactly what square(s) the creature is in. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you don't know where it is (you can hear it and smell it). Got it. It didn't come up in this particular case because no one tried Stealth.
Now here's the actual situation. A wizard cast Stinking Cloud on the battlefield - a 5 by 5 zone that blocks line of sight. What can creatures whose line of sight to one another are blocked by the zone do to each other?
I thought that they could shoot ranged attacks at one another with a -5 penalty due to total concealment. Apparently this is correct.
I also thought that they could not plop an area power down with an origin square that they couldn't see (within the cloud, opposite side of the cloud, etc.). Apparently this is incorrect.
By RAW in the Rules Compendium:
First, let me say that I feel pretty good about my understanding of the rules for being hidden. Unless a creature is actually hidden (it successfully makes a Stealth check that beats the opposition's passive Perception - or active Perception if they use an action to search), then everyone on the battlefield knows exactly what square(s) the creature is in. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you don't know where it is (you can hear it and smell it). Got it. It didn't come up in this particular case because no one tried Stealth.
Now here's the actual situation. A wizard cast Stinking Cloud on the battlefield - a 5 by 5 zone that blocks line of sight. What can creatures whose line of sight to one another are blocked by the zone do to each other?
I thought that they could shoot ranged attacks at one another with a -5 penalty due to total concealment. Apparently this is correct.
I also thought that they could not plop an area power down with an origin square that they couldn't see (within the cloud, opposite side of the cloud, etc.). Apparently this is incorrect.
By RAW in the Rules Compendium:
- Ranged attacks only require line of effect, not line of sight (though concealment / total concealment penalties apply as appropriate)
- Area attacks only require line of effect to the origin square, not line of sight. And naturally there's no penalty to the attack roll as long as the origin square has line of effect to the target - the exploding magic burst doesn't care if it can "see" the target or not
