New to game: do area spells hit other pc?

[Journeymanmage]

Heh.

Someone, tell him how fireballs worked in 1e...

Fireball: 3rd Level, casting time: 3
Fireball expands to a 20' radius from center.
Thusly filling roughly 33,510 sq. feet. Or 33.5 cubes (10ftx10ftx10ft).
If the Fireball can not expand in a certain direction (say a wall), then the remaining "explosion" expands in another. Therefore if you want to "abuse" your party, throw the fireball into a 10x10x10 dead-end room at the end of a 10x10x X-length corridor. The back-blast will travel 32.5 squares back down the hall, more than likely burning the party and frying the caster.

-(edit: Note, in this case, a square is a 10ftx10ftx10ft cube)

Is that what you were looking for Lizard?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I've been tempted to bring that back as a houserule for 4e, I think it be easier to manage, what with the squares. You simply count up all available squares till you fit it all in.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

well that sucks

Not when you get your DM to calculate how much XP they're worth

 

[mach1.9pants]

Or 33.5 cubes (10ftx10ftx10ft).

Ah, those were the days /nostalgia

33.5 10x10x10 means 268 5x5x5 cubes , if I am doing my math right

 

[hero4hire]

Heh.

Someone, tell him how fireballs worked in 1e...

.

Or worse a Lightning Bolt in a 10' x 10' room.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Or worse a Lightning Bolt in a 10' x 10' room.

YES! Lightning bolts BOUNCED. You could do pool shots with them, had to measure the angle of reflection... I'd forgotten about that!

 

[Belphanior]

Man the old style lightning bolt was great. We did all sorts of crazy stuff, like measuring the exact distance to the opposite wall so the lightning hits the enemies twice but just fails to reach you.

It was even more funny when AD&D2e came out with a Tactics of Magic skill in one of the Player's Options books. Any time the DM cast doubt on how likely it was we could calculate such things, we'd point to sheet, going "I think you'll find this nwp lets me do just that, thank you very much sir!"

Didn't like the old fireball though. Since part would inevitably be "burried" in the floor, it was always larger than you expected. And one time our wild mage got a 200% surge on a fireball into an enclosed room. The entire freaking party was knocked out instantly.