AOE spells in melee

[Garrison]

Feats aside, archers suffer a -4 penalty to fire into melee because they need to aim carefully to avoid hitting an ally. A wiz/sorc similarly suffers a -4 penalty penalty when firing a ray or missile weapon into melee. These rules make sense to me.

As far as I can tell, however, there is nothing that prevents a wiz/sorc from splitting in-melee characters with an area of effect spell. Thus, for example, if an ally is in melee with a bad guy, a wiz/sorc could ignite a fireball exactly 20 feet behind the bad guy such that it would only hit the desired target.

I appreciate its dangerous to use 'real world' physics when discussing magic, but it would undoubtedly be easier to correctly time your range attack when you can aim directly at the target than it would be when aiming at an invisible point 20 feet behind them. Moreover, it doesn't seem logical that a fireball-like effect would have a sharp boundary on one side of which you take full damage and on the other side of which you take zero damage.

Is this discussed in any of the supplemental materials? I hate to impose restrictions on aoe nukes without some basis in scripture, particularly when they generally suck, but then I also hate loophole abuse.

 

[kreynolds]

Is this discussed in any of the supplemental materials?

No, and please understand that I intend no insult, but any discussion regarding the exact placing of spells and restrictions regarding said placement is purely a house rule. The core rules do not favor any arguments in this matter.

However, in the case of fireball (which is generally the cause of this type of discussion), you might run into a situation where a spellcaster wants to place the fireball detonation in a strategic place, but it might very well be possible that the space he needs to hit is obstructed in such a way that it would be akin to shooting a fireball bead through an arrow slit. Do you see where I'm going with this?

 

[thegreatbuddha]

I require my players to pick the target square for their AOE spells within 2 seconds (real time). If they fail to do so, I roll 1d8 to determine the direction of deviation, and 1d2 to determine the number of squares of deviation.

 

[Shallown]

The whole dead on target placement of spells use to bother me but I just explain t away as Magic is Magical. It does what physics cannot. The spell knows where exactly the mage wants it to land. It also saves the pain it is to worry about it.

It's Magic. A lame but acceptable excuse.

later

 

[mkletch]

The whole dead on target placement of spells use to bother me but I just explain t away as Magic is Magical. It does what physics cannot. The spell knows where exactly the mage wants it to land. It also saves the pain it is to worry about it.

It's Magic. A lame but acceptable excuse.

For once, I agree with the quick and simple method. There are enough other things that are actually worth worrying about.

-Fletch!

 

[Dakhran the Dark]

If exact placement is crucial, I usually have the character fire off a Spellcraft check to accurately judge his spell's AoE to avoid his allies while roasting his foes. If he fails by a few points, he misses anyone close to an ally, if he fails by a large amount, he could conceivably roast party members as well...and they're probably not going to be too pleased with that...

 

[Spatzimaus]

The main reason I never worry about this sort of thing is that there are so many spells that let you pick specific targets. If you start keeping people from placing Fireballs precisely, they'll just use Chain Lightning, Magic Missile, etc. more often. No attack roll needed, never hits the wrong target...

There was this one battle a friend was in, twenty good guys versus forty bad guys, where the heroes were supposed to tilt the balance. A Wizard fires off a half-dozen Chain Lightnings over a few turns, and the good guys win with no deaths even though they were in melee with now-smoking bad guys.

At some point you just have to say "that's what magic does".