Damage to bigger/smaller creatures from area effects?

[Kahuna Burger]

Has anyone seen or used house rules to increase or decrease damage from area effects based on creature size? The complaints about the mutliblast fireball and the possibility of aiming for different parts of a creature lead to me thinking "and why not?" A big creature, by virtue of being big has lots of hit points. If you put a dragon in a blade barrier, why shouldn't it take more damage by the same virtue of being big? By the same token, a tiny creature may have fewer hit points, but there is also less of it to take damamge from such a spell.

Obviously there are balance issues, but has anyone expereimented with this?

kahuna burger

 

[Mithreander]

Do you allow your characters to aim for specific body parts? If so, then that house rule may have started the whole issue.

Yes, larger creatures have increased Constitution, so they have more hit points. But the increase is rather small and scaleable, where the size of a fire ball is not. What do I mean? Well, a fire ball hitting a smaller creature will, more then likely, encumpous more of his flesh. In comparison, the same fireball will effect a smaller portion of the larger creature.

Why would a dragon take more damage froma blade barrier spell? Because he has less of his total mass effected by it, if not the same. A sword cut that cuts one of us in half would only be a nick to a dragon if it was delivered with the same deapth and such. I think there are more arguements for reducing damage to larger creatures, then increasing damage... but as the rules are right now, it seems ballanced.

I would not implement any such changes. There are to many arguments against.

JMHO.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Yes, larger creatures have increased Constitution, so they have more hit points.

actually, larger creatures as a rule have more hit dice. When there is direct comparison between related creatures, the increase is pretty consistent. Its not primarily a matter of constitution.

Why would a dragon take more damage froma blade barrier spell? Because he has less of his total mass effected by it, if not the same. A sword cut that cuts one of us in half would only be a nick to a dragon if it was delivered with the same deapth and such. I think there are more arguements for reducing damage to larger creatures, then increasing damage... but as the rules are right now, it seems ballanced.

I would not implement any such changes. There are to many arguments against.

A human completely inside a blade barrier spell recieves cuts aross X square feet of his flesh - as if he had been attacked with a set number of knives, lets say. A huge creature completely inside a blade barrier is damaged against expodentially more square feet of flesh - he has effectively been attacked by many more knives. yet the damage done is the same. You have made an argument for scaling damage really - the dragon has had the same proportion of his mass effected, so why doesn't he lose the same proportion of his hit points? (or even close).

Anyway, not to be snarky, but I'm wasn't asking for opinions on the general idea - I specificly asked for feedback on how people had seen it implemented. If you've seen it done badly, tell me what was bad about it, but I'm secure in the underlying reasoning.

Kahuna burger

 

[S'mon]

A human completely inside a blade barrier spell recieves cuts aross X square feet of his flesh - as if he had been attacked with a set number of knives, lets say. A huge creature completely inside a blade barrier is damaged against expodentially more square feet of flesh - he has effectively been attacked by many more knives. yet the damage done is the same. You have made an argument for scaling damage really - the dragon has had the same proportion of his mass effected, so why doesn't he lose the same proportion of his hit points? (or even close).

That's not right - the dragon in the blade barrier has the same proportion of his outer surface area affected, but a much lower proportion of his total volume. Put another way, the dragon is much less likely to take damage to his internal organs, rather than just scratching his surface, so the blade barrier is less effective against him.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I think area-effect damage is based on the proposition that the victim is entirely within the area of effect - if the dragon is partly outside it he should take less damage - and a 500' long creature should probably ignore 40' fireballs.

 

[Mithreander]

Alright, I have seen it done, but it was unsatifactory. They took into consideration the amount of hitpoints larger creatures gained and scaled area effect spells preportionally. Thus a large creature generally has +4 Con above a mediam sized creature (Pg. 12 of the 3.0 monster manual) so they said that area spells gained +2 per hitdie worth of damage against large creatures: +4 per HD of damage against Huge, +6 vs Gargantuan, and +8 versus Colossal. All of that was based on that chart in the MM.

The problem to this was that the creatures natural armor tended to be thinker as well, offering a form of protection (same chart). Furthermore, what if the spell does NOT effect all of the creature, but, say only hits it in the flank? Now the amount of mass effected, preportionally is much less then the all or nothing that ussually effects smaller creatures.

There you go, my experience in a nut shell. I hope it helps you in some way.

Cheers.