How High are bursts and blasts

[pauljathome]

I can't seem to find this information anywhere.

What are the vertical dimensions of a blast/burst spell? I;ve just acquired a
dragonling familiar and I want him to use spells from the air without coming into
melee distance.

I'm guessing that the spell goes up and down the same vertical as horizontal distance. Which will let him strafe from a reasonable distance especially when
Enlarge Spell is factored in,

 

[Oompa]

There is no rule for this..

A cust serv answer once said that a square affected has no height limit and even a bird 300 feet in the air would be affected..

We houseruled that a close blast/burst/area spell would the same height as length.. so a 3x3 spell would also be 3 height..

 

[James McMurray]

Depends on who you ask.

There was once a customer service response to the effect that you should ignore vertical distance and just say "it's high enough."

If you go by the literal wording, blasts are flat because they are X by X, but bursts are 3-d because they extend in all directions from the origin.

If you go by our house rule, turn the flat square represented on the battlemat into a cube.

 

[Ryujin]

There is no rule for this..

A cust serv answer once said that a square affected has no height limit and even a bird 300 feet in the air would be affected..

We houseruled that a close blast/burst/area spell would the same height as length.. so a 3x3 spell would also be 3 height..

If that's the customer service response, then I'll be building my keep by using the Earthen Ramparts ritual. A "wall 2" of infinite height makes for a pretty nice barricade.

 

[Obryn]

It's pretty well understood by actual players that spell bursts and blasts are basically cubes. This may or may not be a house rule.

CustServ had a bizarre response, as detailed above, several months back, but I probably wouldn't go with their answer.

-O

 

[DNH]

Ooh, takes me back! Anyone else remember 1e and its Fireballs having a volume of 33,000 cubic feet "conforming to the general shape of the area in which it occurs"? Fun for the DM, all them shenanigans.

Fwiw, I DM 4e now and, not that it's come up yet, but I rule that these effects are cubic, extending up or down in the Z-plane for the same distance as they extend in the X and Y planes.

 

[Khime]

Cubic, though half of the cube is normally "underground" so is blocked unless you're flying or casting from on high.

 

[pauljathome]

Cubic, though half of the cube is normally "underground" so is blocked unless you're flying or casting from on high.

Thanks for the answers. Given the amount of flight that
shows up at late heroic levels and above I'm kinda
surprised that this wasn't actually determined by
WOTC.

I think that what makes sense to me is that
bursts would have the vertical middle of
the cube be at the caster (and ignore
the underground half) and blasts the
caster gets to choose where the cube
is (all above, all below, some above some
below, whatever).

 

[Jhaelen]

Thanks for the answers. Given the amount of flight that
shows up at late heroic levels and above I'm kinda
surprised that this wasn't actually determined by
WOTC.

I think that what makes sense to me is that
bursts would have the vertical middle of
the cube be at the caster (and ignore
the underground half) and blasts the
caster gets to choose where the cube
is (all above, all below, some above some
below, whatever).

3d support for combat is pretty much non-existing in 4E. Maybe DMG2 will come to the rescue.

Allowing casters to pick an arbitrary cube (i.e. at any height within their 'range-cube') as the center of area powers is too complicated for my taste. As a DM I'd simply make an ad-hoc rule how many flying enemies can be affected and leave it at that.

 

[Derulbaskul]

Why do people ever ask WotC's customer service people anything? If you want a definitive ruling, you're better off asking here as one of the designers will happen along or Hypersmurf will simply post the correct answer.

The only thing sillier that a WotC customer service answer is the idea of asking a question of them in the first place.