Fireballs, Force Orbs, and Ranged Attacks

[eleran]

So, in essence you're saying the force orb is like a water balloon? I can throw it at someone hit them directly and get them really wet and the people standing next to them kinda wet, or if I miss then no one gets wet at all. Or I could just "lob" it so it hits the ground at someones feet and gets everybody a little wet?

 

[small pumpkin man]

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

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.

This. Seriously, what's people's problem with this?

 

[eleran]

This. Seriously, what's people's problem with this?

My only problem is the amount of abuse it could receive as written. If I can target 1 square to do a defacto AoE at 8 people, why cant I target 4 squares to do a defacto AOE at 12 people if the opportunity presented itself?

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Yeah Cactot, that's a good question. I guess I would say any square where the line of effect passes through opposite sides of a square would have a chance of being hit.


Good point. Let's leave crossbow bolts and arrows out of it.

Yeah, I agree Generico but I think it's interesting how simulationism and gamism cropped up here, because Andur's way is clean and simple but your line effect, in my view, achieves more realism at the cost of cleanliness.

You can't leave crossbow bolts, arrows, sling stones, thrown dagger, darts etc. etc. etc. out of this.

Currently, the rules say that if a roll to hit misses, then whatever had that roll to hit is assumed to miss everything and just fly off into unoccupied space.

You're designing rules to say:

- If a roll-to-hit spell effect misses, let's plot out the remainder of its flight path to see what else it might hit.

This is a HUGE buff to magic spells and is totally logically inconsistent with not applying the same rules to other ranged attacks.

Even if you apply it to ranged attacks, you've still got a problem in that you're giving a TREMENDOUS advantage to ranged and spell attacks over melee. All of a sudden you're making the fighter a lot weaker.

Everybody in your campaign will start using spell or ranged attacks and only melee as a last resort. . . and why shouldn't they? With a ranged attack under these rules, you get multiple chances to hit. With a melee attack if you miss you miss.

This rule is a colossally bad idea for game balance had has no logical internal consistency whatsoever if you apply it only to spell attacks and not all ranged attacks. That causes LESS realism, not more.

 

[Dragonblade]

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

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.

Yeah, it just doesn't seem broken to me to get the secondary attacks off adjacent targets by targeting the floor. Of course, once we see the book I expect things will become more clear.

 

[GoLu]

Some people think hit points are abstract, right? As in, if I jab my sword at someone and do 5 damage, it might not literally mean I've run them through or even that I've hit them at all.

Realistically speaking, a ranged attack that misses ends up going somewhere. It might hit someone between me and the target, it might smack into the wall somewhere, or it might fly part the target and maybe even hit something important on the other side. But a hit doesn't have to mean the attack literally hit, right? Just that you removed some hit points from the target, whatever those are. So... for those who find hit points suitably abstract, couldn't an attack that hits also fly past and hit someone else? Even if you don't think hit points are abstract, what if I took a weapon with a lot of penetrating power and lined up the targets just so?

That's very quickly getting into a level of detail and complexity (aka, finicky rules mongering) that I simply don't want in a game. Besides that, I really don't think it adds much. A hallway "packed" with orcs probably has one orc every five feet or so. Plenty of space for things to slip past without effect, and I don't really want to slow ranged combat down to a crawl just to handle the possibility that the archer might have hit a different orc, and maybe the dwarf fighter.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

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.

Its the same way that characters can fly. All they have to do is fall towards the ground, roll a 1 to miss, and voila flight. Now if I can only get a small fish with a permanent Comprehend Languages spell cast on it.

 

[Imban]

You can't leave crossbow bolts, arrows, sling stones, thrown dagger, darts etc. etc. etc. out of this.

Currently, the rules say that if a roll to hit misses, then whatever had that roll to hit is assumed to miss everything and just fly off into unoccupied space.

You're designing rules to say:

- If a roll-to-hit spell effect misses, let's plot out the remainder of its flight path to see what else it might hit.

This is a HUGE buff to magic spells and is totally logically inconsistent with not applying the same rules to other ranged attacks.

Even if you apply it to ranged attacks, you've still got a problem in that you're giving a TREMENDOUS advantage to ranged and spell attacks over melee. All of a sudden you're making the fighter a lot weaker.

Everybody in your campaign will start using spell or ranged attacks and only melee as a last resort. . . and why shouldn't they? With a ranged attack under these rules, you get multiple chances to hit. With a melee attack if you miss you miss.

This rule is a colossally bad idea for game balance had has no logical internal consistency whatsoever if you apply it only to spell attacks and not all ranged attacks. That causes LESS realism, not more.

I'm all in favor of it for attacks that have a blast radius. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and if you're using a hand grenade or rocket launcher...

In any case, the reason you can only target one square should be obvious. I'm assuming (and this may be a farfetched assumption, but I'm again assuming 4e's designers are not monkeys until I'm absolutely proven wrong) that if you target a colossal dragon, Force Orb's blast does not suddenly become 6 by 6 and capable of hitting 20 goblins packed around the dragon when it is capable of hitting only 9 goblins if aimed at a tightly packed formation of goblins.

Basically, I'd be likely to run it like I've always run explosive attacks in RPGs - if it misses its target, we either roll scatter dice for grenades (which, admittedly, isn't for everyone - it's very fast and easy for me, though) or just continue until it hits something immobile for rockets.

There are bad rationalizations for everything, but not dealing with "the target pointer for that is darkened because he's got a light blue circle under his feet instead of a red circle" is one of the reasons why I sit down to play tabletop RPGs at all.

 

[HeinorNY]

WE can, (and should) keep arrows out of this since they are attacks against AC, so it's easy to describe the arrow hitting the armor or shield.

Force Orb is an attack against reflex, so or it hits the target or the targets dodges away. The problem is with the spells effect and descriptions.

In a cinematic approach, it's easy to imagine the first orc, or maybe even the first few dodging out the way and then hitting the 3rd or nth or whatever. But from a rules standpoint how should that work?

We don't need any special rules to address this, we already have rules for that. In the Force Orb's case, and probably many other spells, the effect should instead be a Line. A line that affects the closest target, and when one target is affected, the spells ends. Since you're gonna roll attack for each target anyway, roll first for the closest target, if it his, the spell ends, if it misses, roll for the second closest, and so on, until you hit. Simple.

Now you can cast your Force Orb in a corridor full of orcs. Spells are more powerful this way, but at least they make sense.

 

[Lacyon]

WE can, (and should) keep arrows out of this since they are attacks against AC, so it's easy to describe the arrow hitting the armor or shield.

Force Orb is an attack against reflex, so or it hits the target or the targets dodges away. The problem is with the spells effect and descriptions.

It's easy to describe Force Orb as hitting a shield as well, since shields add to reflex defense.

It's only easy to describe arrows hitting armor or shields against armored and shielded opponents.