Burning hands decays even more?

[Fallen Seraph]

Well the point is for it to be short and sweet, so you the player together with the DM decide such things. This edition is about the players and DM working together tale adventures and stories, so if the DM thinks its neat then its a go.

Oh and the actual fluff text is: A fierce burst of flame erupts from your hands and scorches nearby foes.

And a high-level Wizard Spell:

Meteor Swarm: Fiery orbs rain down from above, shrieking loudly as they fall. They smash into your foes, obliterating them in a storm of fire and scorching the ground.

Elemental Maw: You call up a spinning vortex of elemental energy that inexorably draws everything around it toward seeming destruction.

 

[Mort_Q]

There are powers at higher levels (or is it a feat) that allow you to not hit select squares. What happens in combat is fairly regimented. How they / you describe it isn't.

 

[Ten]

I prefer it short and terse. I've always subscribed to the literary school of "More description does not make better prose. The readers have a perfectly functioning imagination, they don't need simple stuff forced on them like some sort of 5 year old".

Hemingway > FaulkBore

 

[Zalgarde]

hmm, so maybe my friend paraphrased it a little more than I thought. And I guess since they're still talking about origins and directions and things in the higher level "fluff" text, thats not too bad.

I think maybe I just played the game waaay differently than is typical. For us the flavor text tended to carry a greater rules weight than the actual stat block. Oh like that fist of stone spell or something from some bizarre supplement. We almost scared another gamer off, because the spell mechanics gave a bonus to strength and a slam attack, but the dm ruled that the str bonus didn't apply to a jump check cause it was just his arm that got stronger based on the flavor text (completely NOT what the dry stats said though). Well something like that, I can't remember the specifics.

edit: lots of typos. probably s till some.

 

[theNater]

I have some memories about burning hands of my own. I seem to recall the description mentioning an "arc of fire" coming from your hands. So we had one player saying he should be able to arc it over the minotaur and strike the dwarf on the other side. We fanned out our fingers and showed him, and he said "right, and then that arc of flame arcs over the minotaur". We wrangled about this for about 3-4 minutes before the DM stepped in and ruled that he could not fire burning hands around corners in this fashion.

Now everybody was grumpy because we'd been arguing. The caster was especially grumpy because he felt he'd been cheated out of one of his basic powers by the DM's lack of imagination.

So, yeah, I prefer power mechanics to be as unambiguous as possible.

 

[Zalgarde]

Now everybody was grumpy because we'd been arguing. The caster was especially grumpy because he felt he'd been cheated out of one of his basic powers by the DM's lack of imagination.

So, yeah, I prefer power mechanics to be as unambiguous as possible.

Yea, that definitely occured more than once with our group, but, it never really lasted, and we'd also gotten in gigantic fights over axis and allies, and other simple and straightforward boardgames where theres not any flavor text to be had, so we just figured it was symptoms of our group and not symptoms of the game.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I had a 3.0 sorcerer whose main attack was burning hands, and it worked brilliantly with extend spell. Didn't do much damage, but it was a brilliant area.

Then 3.5 changed the way cones worked and it became much more boring and useless.

4e is a brilliant mechanical upgrade for the spell - it now does significantly more damage over a much larger area. Furthermore, it is a kind of spell which can be cast safely even when in melee (a "close blast"), which is a real winner.

Cheers

 

[functionciccio]

Anyway, I haven't SEEN the whole wizards spells or powers or what not, but my friend did tell me that yea, burning hands is in there

That guy has lots of friends.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think some of you don´t understand whats the OP feels. I felt the same pain when 3.5 erased the fluff 3.0 took over from 2nd edition.

It has nothing to do with power of spells, but with versatility:

in ADnD or 3.0 you had a fan of fire in a semicircle. Need to hit a single monster? just turn your hands 90°

Standardization has its merits, but versatilty is lost in that progress.

 

[Zalgarde]

That guy has lots of friends.

Well, its not for any moral reasons, I can say that. It would've been ME and myself, but my router constantly resets itself and closes all ports. I'm super curious about 4e now, but we both work mornings and he has the sense to go to bed rather than stay up pondering this stuff, so I can't bug him for any more material.