Aiming Fireballs soi they don't hit the party?

[Hannibal King]

The party is in the midst of combat with orcs. Wise tactics have placed the party members shoulder to shoulder with the orcs facing them. The mage in the back row declares he is casting a Fireball centred just far enough to hit some of the orcs but not the party members standing infront of them.

Do you allow this in your game? Have you made up rules to decide if the mage gets the distance just right or do you rule the mage cannot miscalculate?

Hannibal King

 

[Storyteller01]

The party is in the midst of combat with orcs. Wise tactics have placed the party members shoulder to shoulder with the orcs facing them. The mage in the back row declares he is casting a Fireball centred just far enough to hit some of the orcs but not the party members standing infront of them.

Do you allow this in your game? Have you made up rules to decide if the mage gets the distance just right or do you rule the mage cannot miscalculate?

Hannibal King

PLayers Handbook (3.0) has a stipulation in the spell description that if a spell caster is aiming the fireball through a difficult area (such as an arrow slit) they have to make a ranged touch attack or blunder the shot. Otherwise the spell goes off without a hitch, provided nothing gets in the way.

Personally, I'd target just below the ceiling (if it'd the usual 10 foot height). It'll go over the players heads, and probably over the orcs too. If that's the case, assume the fireball detonates on target, per the spell.

 

[Thanee]

Once so far, I made a roll (just an arbitrarily set percentage) to see, whether the fireball hits something before the destination and goes off in advance (as the spell description says). That was when a gnome targeted the fireball behind and with the line of effect straight through a melee.

When aiming spells as you describe, you could simply roll a 50% chance to have the melee opponents in adjacent squares of those within the area affected as well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[apesamongus]

I haven't done this in my game, but I thought of making it a d10 roll (but really any dX would work). Take the line where the spell ends (and is a dividing line between PC/NPCs) and roll the die. On a one, you overshot and it doesn't affect the frontline NPCs. Roll a 10 (or max on the die) and it affects the frontline PCs as well. Change dies size to affect how accurate you want this kind of thing to be.

This way, by trying to cut it close you not only risk hitting your guys, but also missing the baddies.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Do you allow this in your game? Have you made up rules to decide if the mage gets the distance just right or do you rule the mage cannot miscalculate?

Per RAW he cannot miscalculate. He picks the grid intersection of an area effect spell and that's it. I strongly suggest you reconsider houserules to the contrary, though, if you value the party dynamics. Otherwise, you just plain nerf spellcasters into never using area effect spells, or you force intraparty fighting, which is NOT fun.

 

[MichaelH]

And your BBEG spellcasters can do the same.

 

[S'mon]

I use Spellcraft checks for precise placement of area-effect spells to reduce the cheesiness somewhat - if you want to Fireball the orcs in melee with your Fighter and leave the Fighter untouched that's at least DC 25. Sleeping the ogre in melee with him would be easier, DC 10.

 

[kjenks]

There's no chance of mis-targeting an intersection.

That's how the area affected by a spread spell is determined.

SRD
===
Spread: Some effects, notably clouds and fogs, spread out from a point of origin, which must be a grid intersection. The effect can extend around corners and into areas that you can’t see. Figure distance by actual distance traveled, taking into account turns the spell effect takes. When determining distance for spread effects, count around walls, not through them. As with movement, do not trace diagonals across corners. You must designate the point of origin for such an effect, but you need not have line of effect (see below) to all portions of the effect.
===

Aiming a Fireball through melee is nowhere near the same as an "attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit."

 

[dcollins]

Personally, I disallow measuring any distances before actions are declared (which includes movement, ranged attacks, and spell targeting). So, granted there's no chance of missing a particular intersection -- but if a player starts counting squares back on the map to find the perfect intersection, that's disallowed in my game.

 

[D+1]

The party is in the midst of combat with orcs. Wise tactics have placed the party members shoulder to shoulder with the orcs facing them. The mage in the back row declares he is casting a Fireball centred just far enough to hit some of the orcs but not the party members standing infront of them.

Do you allow this in your game? Have you made up rules to decide if the mage gets the distance just right or do you rule the mage cannot miscalculate?

The rules as written do not force any kind of check for the spells targeting in the situation you describe. The spell goes exactly where the caster says it goes - the rules effectively are that he cannot miscalculate. Nothing intervening qualifies as an impassable barrier to the spells placement or effects. As such I do allow this in my game and have not made up rules to single out Fireball as the one spell where such potential miscalculation should be inherent to its function - which would be utterly unlike how all other spells in the game function.

The additional description of Fireball effects about targeting and pre-detonation should not be read as GENERAL rules regarding fireballs but as SPECIFIC rules to be applied when those specific circumstance arise. The described ability of fireballs to detonate if they impact something BEFORE reaching the target has MUCH more to do with UNSEEN barriers than anything else. The rule about targetting a fireball through a very narrow opening is for when you ARE targetting a fireball through a very narrow physical space like an actual arrow slit where there is otherwise a SOLID barrier occupying an ENTIRE space that would block the fireball from reaching a destination. It should not be taken as a general prohibition on targetting a fireball through anything but wide-open spaces.

And this includes the OLDER editions of D&D fireballs too, not just 3.0 and 3.5. These are special case rules for fireballs, not suggestions that the spell description is actually being left incomplete and requires additional house rules regarding targetting.