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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 4953243" data-attributes="member: 51942">Ah - so you may choose to take secondary attacks, but must make primary attacks?   And these primary attacks must not target empty squares?  And the effect line which "occurs when you use a power, whether or not you hit" won't occur when you don't attack?All three of these assumptions are far from obvious.  If you can choose to forgo a secondary attack, why can't choose to forgo the primary?  There's a specific rule permitting targeting empty squares, why does that not apply (particularly, what in-game rationalization do you have for that)?  The effect that occurs when you use a power, regardless of whether you hit or miss - why does this not occur when you use the power out-of-combat (and consider other attack powers that don't even have an attack roll...)During a game, a DM needs to make a quick call, and all DM's make occasional mistakes.  I wouldn't blame a DM for making a wrong in an unclear situation.  That's why it's useful to have these discussions elsewhere - say, here.That's most certainly not what page 272 says.  The relevant paragraph is quoted in its entirety in an earlier post.  The preceding paragraph talks of targeting enemies directly.  In short, the first paragraph says that in order to use a power against an enemy you must be able to target them.  The second paragraph says that you may choose to target a square instead of an enemy, and that this is useful when you need to guess the location of invisible opponents.Notably, the choice of whether or not to target an empty square is left entirely up to the player; the text merely notes that targeting a square is useful for attacking invisible creatures - not language which indicates that you may only target a creature.And later paragraphs are pretty consistent about it.  The range segment talks of the "nearest creature or square", Line of effect says "You can target a creature or a square if there's an unblocked path...".To the crux of the matter:Right.  I use my exceptional training in arcane swordplay to transposition myself across the chasm.  I go through the same disciplined motions as always, and cross the chasm in a blink of an eye. Now, let's see what a DM is saying to say no to that....A DM can ban technically rule what he will.  But the above hypothetical player has a power with an effect that lets him do - without precondition - whatever's on the Effect: line; teleportation, here.  If a DM wishes to encourage bag-of-rats+ruleslawyer style gameplay, he can say NO- and claim a target is required, but there's no DMG suggestion to do so.  Requiring a target inevitably leads to the very unfun discussion of targeting an empty square, an action explicitly permitted in the PHB.  'course, a DM can say NO- and claim it's ludicrous, that's not a legitimate target.  Again, the DMG doesn't actually suggest he do this - the section about legitimate targets speaks of hitting or killing, and with reason: permitting trivial targets would make the hitting or killing restriction trivial.  On the other hand, no such restriction exists for Effect lines, so the reasoning behind legitimate targets there makes a lot less sense.  OK, says the player, I'll take a run action and not use a weapon, and then target my paladin buddy over there who's doing total defense.  Whoops, I rolled a twenty (lame) and deal 1d4-1 damage... can I teleport? To which our naysaying DM says NO- since after all this action is even less "heroic".  At this point, it's completely unclear in-game why this wouldn't work, but it's obviously not behaviour you'd expect from heroes - which should be a hint that an earlier ruling is problematic: you have a situation that's nonsense out-of-game, but in-game it's not clear why it wouldn't work.  Let's say though, that this player isn't out to pick at the DM's weird rulings, so he tries to make it sound less crazy, so instead of targeting an ally, they use a captive.  From the perspective of the player this is crazy - but from the perspective of the character it's a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.Let's take a step back.  An in-game character has the ability to teleport across the chasm.  He does this kind of stuff all the time - several times a day, as part of his arcane combat style.  He can perform this teleportation regardless of the outcame sword thrust which is part of the arcane spell; normally, the thrust is a valuable part of the spell, hurting his opponents, and the teleportation merely a means to foil the retaliatory strike - and since he can only master a few spells, he picked one which has this handy combination.  Now, the spell's second effect (teleportation) isn't normally affected by the first (a melee attack).  In fact, even when the swordmage attacks an empty square by accident or a hallucinatory opponent, the teleportation works.  In fact, there's no in-game dependency between the first and the second effect.  Now, this in-game swordmage is confronted by a chasm that he can cross using this spell of his.  It just so happens that the first effect is useless.In-game, it's entirely reasonable for said swordmage not only to try crossing the chasm via the teleportation spell, and even for him to choose said spell because of its flexibility (and thereby avoid the need to a utility spell with only that function).Some powers have out-of-combat utility.  This is rare, but happens.  When it does, you might have the bad luck that the power was poorly written and usage out-of-combat is disruptive.  Usually, that's not the case, and the OP's teleportation power falls in that category: Crossing a chasm via teleportation is a perfectly reasonable strategy.  Perhaps the DM didn't expect it, as is typical (the DM's best laid plans tend to shatter upon impact with an actual party), but it's more fun all around if the DM goes along with such ideas - if it seems like a good idea out-of-character, then why wouldn't the (far more expert) PC think of it?Perhaps for a specific power, you can think of some in-game connection to the enemy you need to have.  But that in-game connection is going to need to be different for each power, and it makes a fishy general rule (which is notably absent from the rulebooks).  And you don't need it to be a general rule - you can fix up powers as needed when needed (i.e. almost never), and when you need to, the power is probably going to need bigger fixes anyhow (just like Vorpal Doom) to avoid the unwanted effect.</blockquote>

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