Does the Fireball spell expand in a narrow corridor?

[Gez]

So think of it this way a wizard says I cast fireball, but whats really happening is hes combusting all the oxygen in a 20' radius.

The interesting side effect of your explanation is that, if you do that in a tight, closed space, then you might have to use the suffocation rules.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Using big, bad, evil guys to increse the volume of your fireball while toasting them at the same time - priceless

And to make it even more logical yet insane, don't forget about the volume of the lungs. Unless the creature is holding its breath and plugging its nose, certainly the fireball will expand into the lungs.

You might have to figure the two volumes, one at complete inhale and the other at complete exhale. Afterall the volume of a titan's lungs just might fill up a 5 x 5 square all by themselves.

Ahhh... simple math...

 

[Funkthis]

Trying to use physics and math to explain MAGIC!!!

I always find these types of threads interesting because people are trying to use physics, math, chemistry and god knows what else to explain something that obviously doesn't even play by those rules....MAGIC.

I know for some it can be fun to try and logically explain the effects. Take if from a veteran of every D&D edition out there...when you try to apply too much logic/science to something that isn't logical to begin with you can get a big mess. Much like the time when after a rather long argument my friends and I at 2:00 a.m. went to a local pool, climbed the fence, and proceded to determine if one could truely drink a potion underwater using a coke bottle (not plastic of course). Sadly we still couldn't come to a concensus .

As for the gaming mechanics, while my group was rather math savy it always seemed to be a little too much trouble and slowed the game down to consistantly calculate fireball spreads. Seeing as how I'm not taking math classes anymore and my job doesn't require anything of the sort I'm all for simplification to make the game smoother.

Just an old guys opinion.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Wow! You use the word crap. Vent that you feel in you honest opionion that the change is idiotic and you get drawn and quartered! Geez I thought these boards we're one of the friendly ones around. People like Kae'Yoss could easily change that.

Freindly is as freindly does. So to speak. If you ask for citations you're effectively asking others to PROVE to you how/why something works. If you then simply respond to answers with "What utter crap!" you're then effectively asking for arguments about why it is/isn't crap and which posters have questionable gene pools. You gave and thus got in return the latter of those possibilities.

I was looking for an official ruling cause I was under the impression that d20 was the most clear D&D rules set so far. Personnally I didn't think "The fireball creates ALMOST no pressure" was clear enough to me. Now that I know, I'm dissapointed and IMHO it's a stupid change so I'll stick to the old rules.

And it continues... There is nothing wrong with the clarity of the rules in this regard. How long have you been running/playing d20 D&D/3rd Edition? You apparantly never read PH pages 175-176 (or for that matter you may not have even read ANY of Chapter 10: Magic) which is rather important information regarding spell targets, areas, and line of sight. Or at the very least you read it and then forgot everything it said and simply decided to run things the way you always have.

Not that there's anything wrong with that as such, but it would work better when dissing the system if you actually have read, understood, and perhaps even TRIED the system as-written so that you can then dis to your hearts content and actually be taken credibly on some level.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Folks, let us please try to keep this civil, hmm? It is heading toward flame and troll country, and I don't want burning trolls running around - they smell bad.

I have to say that most of the players that I game with have been gaming since 1st ed. And they like the new rules better than the older ones in regards to Fireball and Lightning Bolt. And not a little.

Mr. King, you are making generalizations that are not true for most people, though might well be true for your group. My group bid a fond farewell to the old rules by starting to play D&D again, having sat out most of 2nd ed. There has been no real urge to play 1st or 2nd ed, except for glances at Birthright. The rules for magic was one of the main reasons we started playing again. (More magic item creation than anything else, but magic nonetheless...)

Though I will admit to being baffled how you could miss the changes. Now the number of times that I have been caught short by changes between 3.0 and 3.5 is a completely separate matter...

The Auld Grump

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I'm a stickler for consistency and resented DMs who would insist that suddenly with the appearence of a ceiling the volume mattered, but thought that figuring out volumes when there was only the ground involved was too much effort and wanted to keep the game flowing. About as consistently applied as infravision.

Well since those same DM's tended to freak out about trying to place it with any accuracy without impacting on the first pebble in front of you the easy counter was that you were placing it OVER the heads of combatants where it wasn't going to impact with anything and with the combination of the expanded volume displaced by the ground and the curvature of the sphere it came out to a 20' radius anyway. Never had a DM successfully argue that and it eliminated much of the difficulties of targetting that they tried to introduce and much of the volume-calculation nonsense that EVERYONE hated.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

People who can't do simple math like that shouldn't be playing D&D, they might get a paper cut on the books or something...

Please put a smily in that post, otherwise it's not clear that you didn't mean it that way.

 

[TheEvil]

Saw the thread title and number of posts and was immediately reminded of a post by Quasqueton asking how a question with such an easy answer could have so many posts.

I should have known. :\

Just one more comment on the lack of civility in modern culture.

Regards to bouncing lightning bolts and expanding fireballs, sure they were fun, but they really did get old pretty quick. In once amusing instance, my fighter was at one end of a cavern fighting, gnolls I think, when the wizard with the rest of the party at the other end fired off a lightning bolt. Down the cavern. In my direction. After measuring the bouces off the walls of the cavern, frying most of the gnolls, the lightning bolt came up just shy of hitting my poor little fighter. Gods, I hated that mage.

 

[Ballard_Alvar]

Interesting analogy. Consider it stolen.

Fireball does set things on fire, but fireball does not burn all the oxygen in the area. funny thing it doesn't do something unless it says it does something. explination: its magic. Icy Burst, For example does not say that it freezes all water vapors and creates snow, or makes ice patches. . . cool?