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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
How wide is a "line", i.e. Lightning Bolt?
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<blockquote data-quote="SnowDog" data-source="post: 1043868" data-attributes="member: 2225"><p>IMO the "pass through or touch" (i.e. what it says in the text accompanying the diagram in the PH) is the only way that makes sense.</p><p></p><p>To do otherwise, to assume that a line spell has zero width and as such can straddle the boundary between two squares perfectly and hit nobody, just raises his huge flag of disbelief.</p><p></p><p>You could then aim a lightning bolt between two 5' creatures and solidly hit the 10' creature standing in front of them. "Great," you say, "more power to the mages."</p><p></p><p>No, not great. Contrast that with a situation where you can aim one millimeter to the left of the spot aimed at in the above example and you've managed to fry the poor halfling standing in front of the giant with XD6 damage. And every single spellcaster is capable of making that one-millimeter targeting decision in combat every single time, with no attack roll, no skill, nothing.</p><p></p><p>The fact that this zero-width spell can hit everything in a 5' square if it so much as touches one millimeter within that square and yet hit nothing within either square if it "floats" on the boundary creates a really messy situation.</p><p></p><p>I'd much rather just deal with the situation that depending on how you fire it, it impacts a varying number of squares. Much cleaner and nicer, and follows the rules of the PH explicitly (even if the SRD leaves room for discussion).</p><p></p><p>That's how I'll be playing it next session in my game. I've already pointed my players at the great diagrams provided earlier. Others are, of course, free to disagree <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SnowDog, post: 1043868, member: 2225"] IMO the "pass through or touch" (i.e. what it says in the text accompanying the diagram in the PH) is the only way that makes sense. To do otherwise, to assume that a line spell has zero width and as such can straddle the boundary between two squares perfectly and hit nobody, just raises his huge flag of disbelief. You could then aim a lightning bolt between two 5' creatures and solidly hit the 10' creature standing in front of them. "Great," you say, "more power to the mages." No, not great. Contrast that with a situation where you can aim one millimeter to the left of the spot aimed at in the above example and you've managed to fry the poor halfling standing in front of the giant with XD6 damage. And every single spellcaster is capable of making that one-millimeter targeting decision in combat every single time, with no attack roll, no skill, nothing. The fact that this zero-width spell can hit everything in a 5' square if it so much as touches one millimeter within that square and yet hit nothing within either square if it "floats" on the boundary creates a really messy situation. I'd much rather just deal with the situation that depending on how you fire it, it impacts a varying number of squares. Much cleaner and nicer, and follows the rules of the PH explicitly (even if the SRD leaves room for discussion). That's how I'll be playing it next session in my game. I've already pointed my players at the great diagrams provided earlier. Others are, of course, free to disagree :). [/QUOTE]
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How wide is a "line", i.e. Lightning Bolt?
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