Shield spell

[trentonjoe]

Can someone give me a link to one of the shield spell diagram's?

I have housed ruled that you cannot "face" a diagonal direction and want to see if what I did makes sense with the WOTC rules.

 

[IceBear]

I don't know the link, but you *CAN* face it in a diagonal direction. It was one of the diagrams in the Dragon magazine article.

IceBear

 

[Caliban]

http://www.d20reviews.com/Eric/shieldpic.jpg and http://www.d20reviews.com/Eric/shieldtext.jpg

 

[IceBear]

Cool....I didn't think scanned stuff would be on the net.

Thanks Caliban.

IceBear

 

[trentonjoe]

Thank you for the link.

Now, I am sure this has been covered a thousand times but why is it so much better when you turn diagonnal?

Assuming no reach, a character can be threatened my 8 squares. If you face non-diagonally the shield spell protects you from attcaks form 3 squares. If you face diagonally it protects you from 5.

What's up with that?

 

[ShadowMaster]

why don't you just use an hexagonal map (battletech like)? It's much more easyer!

 

[IceBear]

That's probably why a lot of people just use 4 adjacent squares as the area protected by the spell.

The Sage, in an earlier Dragon magazine stated to use 3 adjacent squares to form the line of protection by the shield spell.

Use whichever one that's more to your liking - I use the 3 myself, just to eliminate tracking the 4th square, but 4 squares is "half" of the 8 squares and thus "half" the battlefield (at least according to some )

IceBear

 

[IceBear]

why don't you just use an hexagonal map (battletech like)? It's much more easyer!

For some it is. For others it's not (long debate - don't want to start it again). Since the 3E rules were written with grids in mind it's more consistent to stick with a grid, and many people map on a grid - so it gets weird to translate to hex.

Hexes do have things in their advantage - just whatever suits you the most I guess.

IceBear

 

[trentonjoe]

Thank you guys!

THis has answered my questions.