Lines of Lightning

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I was reading a thread on the Iron Heroes magic system: Magic Oddities and I had a thought about lightning spells.

Why the heck are lighting effects lines instead of ranged touch attacks? Electricity can't just shoot out into the air. It MUST ground somewhere. It is in the nature of the beast.

I was thinking about changing the rules on it in my game (so maybe this should have been a House Rules thread), if said game ever restarts. Is there a good balance reason for any of the spells or effects that anyone can think of? I'm looking at dragons who breathe lines of lightning as a source of problems, but I haven't crunched any numbers. Not really sure if it's worth it for such a minor point of verisimilitude (though I'm wondering why my resident engineer/realism-irritant never brought it up).

Thoughts? Am I erring on the side of picky?

 

[Len]

I think your logic is wrong. If you make it a ranged touch attack, that still doesn't have anything to do with the lightning bolt being grounded. A flying character is not grounded, but is a valid target for a ranged touch spell. You'd have to make up rules for electrically grounded targets.

For me, that's "erring on the side of picky". YMMV.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Canis, congratulations on post 1234.

As for lightning, I can't say I have a good solution to this question, but I do think that you raise an interesting questions and that Len also makes a good point. Now I'm just bothered that there is no readily-available, sensible solution to make lightning bolt playable and realistic.

 

[PrinceZane]

well, see.. this starts dabbling in that "Logic" thing I've heard of a few times.

And so I present: Zane's Law of Logic and RPGS:
"In any fantasy realm or game, any player shall forever know that logic and the laws of the said realm or game shall never cross. To be put a different way: Logic + (game/realm laws) = {empty set}"

 

[Infiniti2000]

Changing lightning bolt and dragon breath weapons from area effect to single targeted ranged touch spell seriously nerfs them, unless they are fighting a single opponent. In that case, it could potentially be an improvement if a critical threat is ever rolled. As Len pointed out, though, you're gonna have to go through a whole lotta trouble to make the whole thing 'realistic' and you might wind up with it all being unplayable and a waste of time.

 

[dcollins]

Why the heck are lighting effects lines instead of ranged touch attacks? Electricity can't just shoot out into the air. It MUST ground somewhere. It is in the nature of the beast.

(a) It's magic. The magic forces it in a line for a certain distance before going to ground.
(b) Because it was originally written for Basic D&D when no "ranged touch attacks" existed.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Heh, I thought this was going to be a thread about 'why did they change lightning bolt to a line in 3.5' since I'd never come across any complaints or misunderstandings with the 3.0 version but when 3.5 came out there were numerous discussions about what it actually meant and how it could be used.

As it is though, I think Canis is right - it should be a house rules thread, so I'll move it over there.

Cheers

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I think your logic is wrong.

Yep. It was. That's what I get for posting before I put any real thought into it.

For me, that's "erring on the side of picky". YMMV.

Had a feeling I was. Nice to have it confirmed.

As it is though, I think Canis is right - it should be a house rules thread, so I'll move it over there.

Or perhaps, the "Hairbrained notions" forum might have been more appropriate.

That said...

Changing lightning bolt and dragon breath weapons from area effect to single targeted ranged touch spell seriously nerfs them, unless they are fighting a single opponent. In that case, it could potentially be an improvement if a critical threat is ever rolled. As Len pointed out, though, you're gonna have to go through a whole lotta trouble to make the whole thing 'realistic' and you might wind up with it all being unplayable and a waste of time.

Yeah, I thought about that briefly. I was considering something like a grenade weapon at the point of "grounding" instead of a straight ranged touch attack. The dragon (for example) is magically manipulating charge at his mouth and at some point out in space near his intended target/targets. Lightning then leaps the gap, doing maximum damage at the point of "contact" and collateral damage to surrounding squares from electrical discharge. But I'm guessing to make this anywhere near as powerful as the original breath weapon, it would have to do a metric boatload of damage (slightly larger than the Imperial boatload).

As others have concluded... not worth it.