Fireballs, Force Orbs, and Ranged Attacks

[Voss]

You could target the Force Orb at the ground. Effectively you give up your primary damage in order to have a better chance at doing secondary damage.

And of course, you're setting up a precedent for other powers to do the same thing. Thats potentially quite unbalancing. Stretching a non-AoE attack into one is an abuse of the rules, and its quite possible to break the game with it.

By similar logic, you could target a door with otiluke's resilient sphere to block access to a room.

 

[hong]

... what's wrong with using otiluke's resilient sphere to block access to a room?

 

[small pumpkin man]

And of course, you're setting up a precedent for other powers to do the same thing. Thats potentially quite unbalancing. Stretching a non-AoE attack into one is an abuse of the rules, and its quite possible to break the game with it.

By similar logic, you could target a door with otiluke's resilient sphere to block access to a room.

Nope, Resiliant Sphere has to be centred around a creatures, you have to stand someone/sometihng in the doorway and cast it on that (although you could summon something and then cast it on that). Force Orb specifically states "creature or object" allowing you to cast it on objects.

Why you would want to use resiliant sphere when you could just cast hold portal or arcane lock I don't know. (I guess most people don't take those spells).

 

[DreamChaser]

Stretching a non-AoE attack into one is an abuse of the rules, and its quite possible to break the game with it.

Again...see above and please demonstrate (versus my example) how this is making it AoE rather than targeted?

DC

 

[Andur]

Dreamchaser, can you target the arm of a creature 4e RAW?

Can you target one leg of a table 4e RAW?

Since the answers to both of those are NO, then you cannot say the floor is an object AND call a hit location on the floor.

The problem with targetting the floor is you can NOT miss it. So if you roll a miss (let's just say a 1) then what happens? It is akin to saying one must roll a to hit in order to drop something at your feet.

In the past terrain was not considered an object, there were exception rules for targetting a portion of terrain, and I'm sure there will be again. I have a feeling that objects/creatures which do not have a certain type of defense cannot be attacked by abilites which are versus those defenses.

 

[Voss]

Again...see above and please demonstrate (versus my example) how this is making it AoE rather than targeted?

DC

A pseudo-AoE.
Say you have creatures arranged like this
XXX
X_X
XXX

X= creature
_=empty space

with force orb as written, you can't get all of them- 3 can't be hit
With the way you're abusing it, you can.
Makes a distinct difference in the power of the 'target: creature or object' spells with secondary targets. Suddenly it *is* acting largely like a burst, when it was written as not-a-burst.

And no, resilent sphere was not a perfect example. But with less than 10 4e spells to draw from, I was trying to illustrate an example of the can of worms this opens.

 

[Li Shenron]

If the person your shooting at avoids the red pearl, or the force orb, there's no detonation and it continues on its vector path. So, there's nothing cheesy about aiming the fireball for the ground underneath the kobolds, in order to avoid the miss chance right? Right.

Wrong. There is no need for that, because the caster chooses at which points in space the fireball explodes. It doesn't need to collide with anything.

In 3e at least, the Reflex save does not mean you completely dodge it, and that it keeps traveling. It just means you avoid some of the flames when it explodes.

It's true that if the fireball accidentally hits an obstacle in its path, it detonates prematurely, but not the other way around.

(edit: still thinking in 3e terms here, I don't know how the 4e fireball works)

 

[Lacyon]

A pseudo-AoE.

It is written as a pseudo-AoE. That is its intended functionality.

Say you have creatures arranged like this
XXX
X_X
XXX

X= creature
_=empty space

with force orb as written, you can't get all of them- 3 can't be hit
With the way you're abusing it, you can.
Makes a distinct difference in the power of the 'target: creature or object' spells with secondary targets. Suddenly it *is* acting largely like a burst, when it was written as not-a-burst.

It's *supposed* to strike one creature or object and splash every adjacent enemy. That's what the spell does.

If it's not broken for the spell to be able to hit 9 creatures, there's no way it's broken to let it hit 8 instead.

 

[deathdonut]

Anyone who'd tell their players that they can't target the ground or use otluk's to block a passage or a lightning bolt to power a gnomish time travelling DeLorean has no place being a GM.

Your job is not to tell the players what they can't do, it's to decide how the results will entertain them.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Dreamchaser, can you target the arm of a creature 4e RAW?

No, but you can target their glove.

Can you target one leg of a table 4e RAW?.

No, but you can target the cup on the table

Since the answers to both of those are NO, then you cannot say the floor is an object AND call a hit location on the floor.

You aim at a pebble on the floor.

The problem with targetting the floor is you can NOT miss it. So if you roll a miss (let's just say a 1) then what happens? It is akin to saying one must roll a to hit in order to drop something at your feet.

Actually there are rules for hitting a square in 3.x, there may well be rules for hitting a square in 4e. In fact this is pretty similar to throwing acid or alchemist's fire at a square, both in effect and power level.

In the past terrain was not considered an object, there were exception rules for targetting a portion of terrain, and I'm sure there will be again. I have a feeling that objects/creatures which do not have a certain type of defense cannot be attacked by abilites which are versus those defenses.

I think it's more likely they give objects all defenses, since they're apparently giving them con scores.