D&D 5E Spiritual Guardians question

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Spirit guardians doesn't separate between enemies and allies, they only accept a "white list" of designated non-targets at the time the spell is cast. Crucially, the caster can only exclude creatures he can see, so if one party member is behind a corner when Spirit Guardians is cast, he will suffer the spell's effects if he enters the radius.

The spell description is pretty explicit about how and when the caster can exclude creatures from the spell.

 

[KarinsDad]

Spirit guardians doesn't separate between enemies and allies, they only accept a "white list" of designated non-targets at the time the spell is cast. Crucially, the caster can only exclude creatures he can see, so if one party member is behind a corner when Spirit Guardians is cast, he will suffer the spell's effects if he enters the radius.

The spell description is pretty explicit about how and when the caster can exclude creatures from the spell.

And this has resulted in other PCs getting smacked by the PC Cleric's Spiritual Guardians in our game. An invisible PC, or one around a corner when it is cast. Lots of fun when it happens, especially when they forget and waltz into it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

IIRC, the DMG grid option counts diagonals 2-1-2? I think I recall noting it was the opposite of 3.5's 1-2-1.

So:

___3___
_33233_
_32123_
3210123
_32123_
_33233_
___3___

But that still gives you a pixilated 35' diameter instead of a 15' radius. :shrug:

TotM, don't worry about it. Has the Cleric been killing too many things with Spirit Guardians? Err on the side of having fewer enemies in its area. Has the Cleric been underperforming? Err on the side of more.

 

[KahlessNestor]

IIRC, the DMG grid option counts diagonals 2-1-2? I think I recall noting it was the opposite of 3.5's 1-2-1.

So:

___3___
_33233_
_32123_
3210123
_32123_
_33233_
___3___

But that still gives you a pixilated 35' diameter instead of a 15' radius. :shrug:

TotM, don't worry about it. Has the Cleric been killing too many things with Spirit Guardians? Err on the side of having fewer enemies in its area. Has the Cleric been underperforming? Err on the side of more.

No, it's still 1-2-1 for the optional rule (p 252).

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, it's still 1-2-1 for the optional rule (p 252).

Good, I didn't care 2-1-2, which must have been from a playtest packet or something.

Ultimately, though, just taking it literally at an actual 15'r, not pixilated 35'd strikes me as the better way to go.

How we did it back in the day, and if you were on the edge of the radius, save for half or no damage... 5e, that could just be advantage...

... but, anyway, compas, protractor, but of string, whatever you can use to get an acceptable circle...

 

[Harzel]

IIRC, the DMG grid option counts diagonals 2-1-2? I think I recall noting it was the opposite of 3.5's 1-2-1.

So:

___3___
_33233_
_32123_
3210123
_32123_
_33233_
___3___

But that still gives you a pixilated 35' diameter instead of a 15' radius. :shrug:

It might look like 35' diameter, but in some sense that is a discretization error. The center-to-center distance from square 0 to each of the squares labeled 3 is <= 15 ft.

Has the Cleric been killing too many things with Spirit Guardians?

What does that even mean?

 

[Tony Vargas]

It might look like 35' diameter, but in some sense that is a discretization error. The center-to-center distance from square 0 to each of the squares labeled 3 is <= 15 ft.

It doesn't look much like a circle, at all, but yes, it's pixilated, so sometimes it's reaching out to 17.5 ft, other's less than 15 ft, from the center. :shrug:

Really, there're partially-filled squares being 'rounded' (squared?) one way or the other.
:shrug:

There just isn't a 'clean'/simple/intuitive circle-to-grid conversion. Diagonal-square-counting schemes like the one above, are none of the three. Templates of the same, or intersection-centered templates like the ones in 3.x, are simpler to use, but still messy/un-intuitive. Tracing the circle over the grid and dealing with partial squares is intuitive but less simple and arguably still messy. Counting diagonals as 1, giving you square circles, is clean & very simple, but un-intuitive.

Then again, the point of going to a grid is simplifying movement/range/positioning - and area.

What does that even mean?

Is the Cleric's (ab?)use of Spirit Guardians spoiling the fun of other players? (Or the DM's for that matter?)

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Is the Cleric's (ab?)use of Spirit Guardians spoiling the fun of other players? (Or the DM's for that matter?)

Spirit Guardians is a really party friendly spell in my experience. Unlike Fireball which will often clear a room of monsters before anyone else gets to have any fun, Spirit Guardians will usually just weaken enemies so that other characters can land the finishing blow.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Maybe we need Savage World's small, medium, and large burst templates LOL

 

[Ganymede81]

The relevant AoE rule says "Typically, a point of origin is a point in space, but some spells have an area whose origin is a creature or an object." It also says that "Each creature takes up a different amount of space" and that Small and Medium creatures take up a five foot square. This means that the radius of the spell is emanating from a PCs five foot square, which makes the sphere's diameter 5' longer than it would be if the point of origin was a point in space.

In addition, remember that the PC's five foot square is also a part of the sphere's area of effect: "A sphere’s point of origin is included in the sphere’s area of effect."