Close Blast 3 question

Okay, so we're in the Tomb of Horrors, next to last room before Acererak. Half our normal group is gone to DragonCon, so we're down to 4 players - 1 cleric, 1 crippled swordmage (he's attuned to 3 keys that take him down on everything -2 for each key), 1 paladin, and my Avenger. So for a group of 4, we're balanced fair. Just some brief background there.

Anyways, we've got this "God-Golem" creature we're fighting. Solo Elite something. Close to 900 hp's and lots of effects. We've got him surrounded and flanked, when he unleashes a close blast 3 that hits all of us, including a crit on the paladin (this guys crits *hurt*). At this time, I've got Divine Castigation up (I'm multiclass'ed cleric). So when he attacks me or an ally I get an OA. I worship Ioun, have Power Of Skill so I've got Overwhelming Strike as a substitute MBA. So on the first hit (me coincidentally), I take the OA, and I shift one square and pull the God-Golem into the square I vacated. Now at this point, his close blast 3 misses 2 of us, including the crit on the Paladin, because the God-Golem is in a different place and my attack, an immediate interrupt, resolves before his close blast 3 does.

The DM argues that the God-Golem might have turned when I shifted him, adjusting his blast so that it still hits 2 out of 3. We, the players argued that we didn't think thats the way the game mechanics work. The DM finally relented, but I felt I better ask the resident experts here. :)

So what is right? Would like to clear it up for sure so I can tell the DM and the group (all of us were curious).

Thanks! :)
 

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You could rule it either way. Divine Castigation is on attack, not on damage, so nobody could have possibly taken damage yet which seems to make it clear that the attack simply hasn't happened yet and could thus be moved around; if someone wanted to get super technical about it, you would have had to declare the OA trigger when the DM declared the attack before any dice were rolled (waiting to find out if it crits anyone means it's too late, as he's no longer "attacking"; you've been hit/crit already), which would have afforded him the chance to reposition the blast targets.

RC envelops "attacks" as the lump transaction from targeting to damage though, so it's unclear.

I generally try to play out the scene in my head; the golem moves to breathe poison on a bunch of people, you come in with a sweeping blow that pulls him away from your allies. The golem is already in the motion of breathing so he wouldn't be able to suddenly spin around and hit other targets with it in the process, so my ruling would be that I would have to draw the blast 3 from the same origin square as I did initially; if this means the attack now misses people, so be it. A single round is a six second span, remember; a lot of what's going on there is happening more or less simultaneously.

More(Most!) importantly, I stand it up to Rule of Cool: Pulling a golem away just as he's about to breathe deadly toxin on your whole party is a pretty badass move in my book. I'm not terribly inclined to deny a player that sort of smart thinking.
 


If he's *flanked* he can't close *blast* all of you - maybe close burst?

My bad, the God-Golem wasn't actually flanked - I was thinking of Combat Advantage which we had, but it came from the fact that I have the Radiant Advantage feat, and I had hit him with a Radiant power the turn before.

But no, it wasn't a close burst 3, it was a close blast 3. Otherwise a single shift wouldn't have made him miss anything.

Thanks.
 

Okay, so we're in the Tomb of Horrors, next to last room before Acererak. Half our normal group is gone to DragonCon, so we're down to 4 players - 1 cleric, 1 crippled swordmage (he's attuned to 3 keys that take him down on everything -2 for each key), 1 paladin, and my Avenger. So for a group of 4, we're balanced fair. Just some brief background there.

Anyways, we've got this "God-Golem" creature we're fighting. Solo Elite something. Close to 900 hp's and lots of effects. We've got him surrounded and flanked, when he unleashes a close blast 3 that hits all of us, including a crit on the paladin (this guys crits *hurt*). At this time, I've got Divine Castigation up (I'm multiclass'ed cleric). So when he attacks me or an ally I get an OA. I worship Ioun, have Power Of Skill so I've got Overwhelming Strike as a substitute MBA. So on the first hit (me coincidentally), I take the OA, and I shift one square and pull the God-Golem into the square I vacated. Now at this point, his close blast 3 misses 2 of us, including the crit on the Paladin, because the God-Golem is in a different place and my attack, an immediate interrupt, resolves before his close blast 3 does.

A few notes:

There is no "attacks first" in a blast. All happen simultaneously.

So, the God-Golem declares its attack. At that point, you use the Immediate Interrupt on your Divine Castigation power and attack it.

Here's where it gets odd - at this point, you've shifted the origin square of the blast, and so the blast area is no longer legal. So, as far as I can gather, the attack is cancelled outright!

Cheers!
 

A few notes:

There is no "attacks first" in a blast. All happen simultaneously.

So, the God-Golem declares its attack. At that point, you use the Immediate Interrupt on your Divine Castigation power and attack it.

Here's where it gets odd - at this point, you've shifted the origin square of the blast, and so the blast area is no longer legal. So, as far as I can gather, the attack is cancelled outright!

Cheers!

AFAICS, if the Interrupt requires you to be hit (not just be attacked) then it can only interrupt the resolution of damage, not the to-hit roll. As the blast is simultaneous on all targets therefore the blast occurs in the designated area and all the attacks do occur before the golem is moved.

I think a good rule of thumb is that interrupts can prevent action resolution but do not rewind time.
 

Strictly speaking, an immediate interrupt effect which triggers on hit, occurs before the hit. If it happens after the hit it would be an immediate reaction effect.

Lets treat this as a breath attack: the target sees the breath coming toward him, realizes it is going to hit him and divine castigation is triggered, the basic attack hits and moves you and the creature. I would rule that moving the creature does not prevent his attack but moves it in the same direction, and for the same distance as this 'god golem'.

Once he has seen this happen once, if he uses a close blast again he might think about where he might be moved to, and use this to optimize his blast placement.:)
 

AFAICS, if the Interrupt requires you to be hit (not just be attacked) then it can only interrupt the resolution of damage, not the to-hit roll. As the blast is simultaneous on all targets therefore the blast occurs in the designated area and all the attacks do occur before the golem is moved.
Well, it's strictly an opportunity attack, which says: "Interrupts Target’s Action: An opportunity action takes place before the target finishes its action. After the opportunity attack, the creature resumes its action. If the target is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer by the opportunity attack, it can’t finish its action because it’s dead or dying."

So, the target attacks (declares the area of effect) and before attack rolls and damage is rolled, the avenger makes his opportunity attack. He must hit, of course, but then slides the victim. I don't see anything about changing the area of effect, so now I would say the victim is in his own area of effect. You have two choices, neither clearly defined:


  1. As Merric says, the victim loses his action outright. IMO, this isn't the intent as that would be seriously strong for a level 1 power.
  2. The victim doesn't lose his action. This therefore has two subchoices.
    1. The original area of effect stays. The effect essentially happened, but the resolution of it awaits the opportunity attack resolution. If you rule this (and I would), then if the victim's attack would injure himself, then he gets to save or not be moved and go prone where he was.
    2. The area slides with him. This might mean that several people are no longer affects by the attack. The fact that one was a crit just means that the DM shouldn't have rolled attack rolls first. The orientation of the blast should also stay the same. The victim already chose the attack (including area of effect) and that's done.
 

AFAICS, if the Interrupt requires you to be hit (not just be attacked) then it can only interrupt the resolution of damage, not the to-hit roll. As the blast is simultaneous on all targets therefore the blast occurs in the designated area and all the attacks do occur before the golem is moved.

I think a good rule of thumb is that interrupts can prevent action resolution but do not rewind time.

Entire actions can be negated. That's the entire point behind interrupts that do things like this.

However, a shift one isn't going to negate the entire blast unless all players were on the far edge of it. The question is, which targets are legal targets now and which are not?

Legal targets will still be targetted, attacks on illegal targets become invalidated.
 

The fact that you knew this was going to be a crit before committing to your maneuver highlights why I *always* pause after announcing who is going to be attacked, and no longer allow damage dice to be rolled alongside the attack roll ("hmm, I won't bother with Elven Accuracy, it was only minimum damage anyway"). :)

This is quite a nasty but to me falls neatly into the rule of cool: it's *cool* for your PC to have manhandled the golem out of the way as soon as he saw that its attack was going to potentially hit so many of your party. I would have forced the golem to redraw its blast after having been forcibly moved, and I wouldn't really have cared whether or not the person who triggered Divine Castigation was still in the blast or not.
 

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