Are Line & Cone effects gone, if so, WHY?!

[Silverblade The Ench]

Don't have the books yet, but from what I've seen, Line and Cone effects are gone form D&D...if so: why?!

Square blasts I have no problem with, but for many powers, they are just plain dumb, like dragon breath and many special effects I can think of, like "arcs".

Cones are not that hard to adjudicate versus rectangular patterns, sigh.

And lines are very easy to work out: Lightning Bolt is a LINE or long rectangle, not a square blast, jeesh.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Any area effect that cannot be expressed in whole squares is gone. This includes cones and circles which would cut a diagonal across a square.

 

[TwoSix]

Cones are not that hard to adjudicate versus rectangular patterns, sigh.

Actually, they kinda are. Not saying I can't do it, but on a square grid, they're definitely harder.

 

[phil500]

they could have made line attacks move like a queen in chess.

seems a waste to lose lightning bolt.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Well, for cones: I think a close blast is pretty close to a cone, if you consider that a) the squares are already an abstraction (are you a 5-ft.-square?) and represent approximate battle space, and b) that the cone lasts for some seconds and is more of a sweep (i.e. you move the cone a bit around, hence you get some extra area closer to you).

For the lightning bolt, I remember a comment that it now works more like chain lightning, i.e. hops from one target to another. Which I find pretty neat.

EDIT: Source on that.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Saitou]

There are Wall effects. Basically, it's a line that you can draw. A Wall 6 within 20 is a line of six continuous squares (no corners), and each square must have at least two sides free. So you can wrap it around a character, but not around itself.

 

[Henry]

I'll be honest: In our 3.5 games, we use wire templates for cones and circles because it's a royal pain in the rear to flip open a book, find the pattern, and count them out. Before that, we'd just guesstimate what sqares are affected and which ones aren't because we'd stop playing to try and figure out what the edges looked like. Without the wire templates, I actually refuse to have my characters use any effects that come in cones! I guess they figured they wanted to push their players into using fewer playing aids. You could say that things like "quest cards" and power cards are playing aids, but they really aren't as important to me to use like the templates are.

Why no lines? I really don't know - I never had a problem -- but then, I always cast my line effects as perfectly diagonal or perfect horizontal.

 

[Mort_Q]

Lines that aren't straight up and down, or left and right, or directly diagonal, are annoying to adjudicate... not that hard... just annoying.

Discussed here.

 

[Reaper Steve]

IMHO...
I think that the new bursts and blasts (and absence of lines) are an amazing evolution in game design. I love everything about 4E, but I must say that--being a minis junkie--this is one of my favorite parts.

 

[WhatGravitas]

By the way, for the cone, I've whipped up a small animation, why a cone can cover a square:
[sblock=Cone Sweep]

[/sblock]
In this case, it's for burning hands.

Cheers, LT.