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.
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.