D&D 5E How Many Spaces on a Grid Does Cloud of Daggers Effect?

[fluffybunbunkittens]

The way I see it, if they wanted it to affect four squares, why wouldn't they just make it a 10-foot cube centred on a grid intersection?

I dunno, why would they also be making rulings about spells affecting two squares by passing through the middle? Wizards just does stuff.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The way I see it, if they wanted it to affect four squares, why wouldn't they just make it a 10-foot cube centred on a grid intersection?

Why indeed? If it's just supposed to be one 5-foot square then it shouldn't specify a point in the spell description and should be more like Create Bonfire, and even it it was supposed to affect four squares it would just say so and not mention being centered on a point, similar to how Evard's Black Tentacles says it occupies a 20-foot square area and doesn't mention a point in its description.

I have no idea what the designer's intent was, but going by RAW the spell's description says that it is a 5-foot cube centered on a point, which the DMG on page 251 specifies is an intersection point on a grid or hex map. The closest thing we have to an elaboration is a Sage Advice Compendium entry stating that Cloud of Daggers can affect multiple spaces depending on how it is positioned (though this ruling seems to disregard the DMG's definition of what a point is).

FWIW Baldur's Gate 3 seems to have gone with the interpretation of Cloud of Daggers as having a circular AoE with a 5-foot radius. Whether they decided this on their own or consulted WotC for advice on how the spell should be best implemented in a gridless video game I don't know.