Non-magical area attacks

[OnlineDM]

The folks on this forum were very helpful a couple of weeks ago in helping me understand the proper way to think about magical area attacks with superior cover. In a nutshell, a wizard can have his area attack explode on the far side of an arrow slit. As long as he has line of effect to the square in which he wants the burst to begin, he can start it there. It's magic, and the fact that he only has a narrow aperture of line of effect doesn't matter - that narrow aperture is enough.

A related question: What if the area attack is non-magical in nature? What if it's a literal hand grenade, or the D&D equivalent - Alchemist's Fire? Can a character chuck a vial of Alchemist's Fire unerringly through an arrow slit to have it explode exactly where he wants?

By RAW, I think the answer is yes. As long as you have line of effect to the origin square of the burst, you can have it burst right there. This is one that feels even weirder to me than the magical option, though. A character literally has to throw that vial through the arrow slit just so.

So my questions are twofold:

• Is my interpretation of RAW correct, in that you can have your Alchemist's Fire burst originate in any square that you have line of effect to, even on the other side of an arrow slit?
• Would anyone house-rule this differently? That is, would you want there to be some chance of the vial exploding against the outside of the wall instead of making it inside?

 

[malraux]

• Is my interpretation of RAW correct, in that you can have your Alchemist's Fire burst originate in any square that you have line of effect to, even on the other side of an arrow slit?
• Would anyone house-rule this differently? That is, would you want there to be some chance of the vial exploding against the outside of the wall instead of making it inside?

By raw, I'm pretty sure you are ruling it correctly. To the best of my knowledge, there's no rule about hitting interposing objects.

That said, it seems totally legit to claim that you must first hit the arrow slit. The obvious thing would be Dex vs 10 AC (the AC/Ref of a tiny object) with 5/10 range (that is, from 6-10 squares you have a -2 to the attack). If they miss then it detonates at the arrow slit.

As a side note, arguably that's not a house rule as much as it is a terrain feature.

 

[DracoSuave]

How, exactly, is a magic exploding potion that requires special magical knowledge to create non-magical in nature?


Facetiousness aside, I do not suggest changing the rules for 'non-magical' attacks. Firstly, 'non-magical' is not a concept that exists in 4e. The game does not differentiate for reasons of balance and simplicity. Most arguments about 'non-magical' stuff getting 'special' treatment usually ends up being 'Nerf the Martial Power source/Weapon keyword for no other reason than it's not Arcane or Divine/Implement.'

That's not a good enough reason.


Secondly, altho it seems good from a 'realism' angle, the game moves really slow when you need to make attack rolls in order to be allowed to make attack rolls. The game is supposed to be streamlined and fast paced, which is why a lot of powers skip the 'make a roll to see if you're allowed to do this thing' step, or the 'roll to hit them, then they roll to save against the not-damagey parts' or the god-forsaken miss chance which is probably the worst rule from 3.x in existance.

You're already checking once for success/fail. There's no reason to make a second from a game-play aspect. If you want to make someone harder to hit... just give a circumstance-related penalty and walk away. All this stuff about hitting arrow-slits is confusing.

Give the arrow-slit a terrain based bonus to defenses against area attacks, and walk away. Keep it simple.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

The five foot by five foot area is really quite a large target to hit.

You're a fantasy badass, more skilled than the average joe.

The attack roll to hit can already include the grenade going off target if you adjust your description ("the grenade hits the far side of the origin square, so this guy is just outside the explosion, while that guy gets hit big time" is a valid description of a typical area attack, where your narration is an explanation of what you rolled to hit.)

There are substantial game level reasons not to change how this works, some of which were outlined above. Note also that any ability that requires two checks would need increased in power to compensate for the loss in accuracy.

I see no particular advantage gained in verisimilitude by changing the rule, and a loss in gameplay.

 

[malraux]

The five foot by five foot area is really quite a large target to hit.

You're a fantasy badass, more skilled than the average joe.

The attack roll to hit can already include the grenade going off target if you adjust your description ("the grenade hits the far side of the origin square, so this guy is just outside the explosion, while that guy gets hit big time" is a valid description of a typical area attack, where your narration is an explanation of what you rolled to hit.)

There are substantial game level reasons not to change how this works, some of which were outlined above. Note also that any ability that requires two checks would need increased in power to compensate for the loss in accuracy.

I see no particular advantage gained in verisimilitude by changing the rule, and a loss in gameplay.

I'll just say that, similar to the last discussion on this, these sort of terrain elements shouldn't be used willie nillie. But making it a complication is little different than a trap that attacks whenever someone uses an arcane power, or attempts to bounce all ranged and area attacks back at the origin.

 

[eamon]

If the holy handgrenade can only just barely fit through the slit and will thus sometimes fail to penetrate it entirely, that means you've got a terrain element which almost blocks line of effect.

As an exceptional element - sure, why not? I think believability matters, and the occasional oddball reminder that there's a real world behind the dice-rolling is fine and perfectly legitimate DM-ing. However, I don't see what arcane vs. non-arcane has to do with it - if you fling a fireball, you might miss the gap just as well.

I wouldn't do this more than once, or I'd make it a feature of a very specific architectural style - no point in bogging the game down (and that means thinking it through - does it make sense for this style to be rare?) In 4e, I think the best way to model this is not with a Dex-check, but with a plain attack roll. I'd make it an attack roll vs. AC10 +5 per square between you and the slit (i.e. an adjacent target can almost always hit it, but even at high levels the "easy" range is tactically relevant).

Alternately, perhaps more conservatively (and thus safely), you could rule the slit too narrow to penetrate at all but exceptionally, permit attacks originating right in front of the slit to hit targets on the other side with (superior) cover. I.e. no line of effect except from squares directly adjacent to the slit to the other side, and then only with (superior) cover. That way, you can throw your holy handgrenade at the slit, hit the slight, and have the burst penetrate somewhat or have the archer stand right next to the slight and shoot through it.

Whatever you do, distinguishing between power sources is opening a can of worms - I mean, if you're going to do that, you kinda need to distinguish between various weapons or various spells too, and so on. Doing that is a lot of work, and it's fairly arbitrary - which is kinda a red flag. You could do it, but be sure to have it all worked out, also considering balance, for all classes and all powers before you start the campaign and be sure all players know this before starting to build their chars - as for all house rules. Obviously, I don't think it's worth it...

 

[Pbartender]

A related question: What if the area attack is non-magical in nature? What if it's a literal hand grenade, or the D&D equivalent - Alchemist's Fire? Can a character chuck a vial of Alchemist's Fire unerringly through an arrow slit to have it explode exactly where he wants?...

...This is one that feels even weirder to me than the magical option, though. A character literally has to throw that vial through the arrow slit just so.

Just remember:

You are a PC in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. You are, at the very least, Heroic with a capital "H". Something as trivial as throwing a glass vial unerringly through an arrow slit is all in a day's work for you.

But, to think of it another way...

Regardless of whether it's a magical attack or not, which creatures and how many creatures you successfully hit with the attack roll can be, narratively speaking, the determination of how well aimed your area attack was. If it hits (almost) everybody, then it was right on target where you wanted it to be. If it misses most (or all), then maybe you bobbled it, and it detonated at the wrong time or in the wrong spot.

I've found great enjoyment creatively interpreting the dice rolls and results in more tactical games like D&D.


EDIT: In other words, Mr. Teapot's got the right idea... I agree with him.

 

[Pbartender]

You're already checking once for success/fail. There's no reason to make a second from a game-play aspect. If you want to make someone harder to hit... just give a circumstance-related penalty and walk away. All this stuff about hitting arrow-slits is confusing.

Give the arrow-slit a terrain based bonus to defenses against area attacks, and walk away. Keep it simple.

Another way to run that is to take an example from some of the defensive blur and fog type spells and effects... Namely, pick a number of squares (based on how narrow the slit is), and past that distance it effectively blocks line of sight and line of effect.

 

[OnlineDM]

Thanks for all of the replies. I'm embarrassed for having asked this question - the tone of some of the replies seems pretty exasperated with me. I'm sorry.

All I was looking for is opinions about house rules. Some of you have said: Yes, it might make sense to have a house rule that says, "If you're on the opposite side of an arrow slit, you have a +2 bonus to defenses against area attacks whose casters are on the other side of the slit, even if the origin square of the attack is on the same side of the slit as you." Maybe you don't apply this house rule if the attack is purely a bolt out of the blue, but you do apply it if there's some chance of a vial catching on the edge of the arrow slit. Seems reasonable to me.

I never meant to imply that I thought it was important to make two separate attack rolls, adding a layer of complexity, etc. I just wanted to know if other people felt that this type of terrain should provide any additional defense against this type of attack. The answer is, "Sure, if you feel like it, why not?" Suits me.

By the way, this isn't an academic exercise - it actually came up in my game. In the first session, the party was assaulting a keep that had some archers in a tower with arrow slits. In a later session, the party itself had holed up in the tower and was being attacked by monsters throwing exploding vials at them. In both cases I handled the rules correctly - if it's an area attack, it doesn't matter that the origin square is on the opposite side of an arrow slit from the caster/thrower.

Whatever you do, distinguishing between power sources is opening a can of worms...

As for the magical versus physical area attack, the reason I mentioned that was because in my earlier post DracoSuave did a good job of helping me understand the philosophy of why a magical area burst 1 can unerringly start in any square that the caster chooses - it's MAGIC! It doesn't have to shoot from the wizard's finger to the origin square - it just explodes in the origin square, without any magical string that has to fit through the gap.

I thought maybe things were different if a character is literally throwing something through the gap rather than just pointing through the gap. They're not different by RAW, but some people might add some kind of defense bonus as a house rule. I get it now.

The five foot by five foot area is really quite a large target to hit.

You're a fantasy badass, more skilled than the average joe.

I'm talking about squeezing a thrown vial through a slit a few inches wide, remember. Yes, the heroes/monsters can unerringly lob vials through that slit because they're heroes/monsters - but it's not like I thought they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn here! Also, in this latter case it's actually some orcs lobbing the vials, not the fantasy badass Heroes, but the same logic applies in D&D, I know.

I'll be quiet now, and I'll try to make sure I never use arrow slits again in my game so that these stupid questions won't come up any more!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, I think it is a decent question to ask. I doubt the rules really intentionally made it work in a strange fashion. I suspect it was more like nobody really thought about it until Alchemical Fire was invented in AV1 and still nobody really thought about it. The situation is pretty rare, though obviously it comes up now and then.

I do suspect it isn't really worth spending a lot of time worrying about. The 'grenade' rules are pretty abstract and simplified. There is no scatter, etc. You could certainly elaborate that, and I might even do it for an unusual situation where it really mattered, but in general the sort of abstract simple version works well enough most of the time. Alchemical Fire and similar stuff is already fairly wimpy compared to magic anyway, so it doesn't seem worth a lot of effort.