Squared FireBalls?

[Spinachcat]

Here's your easy houserule.

If you are in the edge square of an area effect, you take half damage. If it is not a damage effect, but a save effect, then your save gains a +5 bonus.

Badabingbadaboom.

Personally, I am cool with square fireballs. If you are going to accept every other nonsensical thing about grid based games, then throw this one on the pile too.

 

[Wiseblood]

Doesn't much matter to me. I flipped over my battlemat and wham-o there are hexes. Squares are so four sided. Y'all should upgrade.

UA has the layout for using hexes.

 

[HeinorNY]

I haven't seen a spherical Fireball since 1999.

Behold!

You can't do that in 4E

 

[mach1.9pants]

At 1ppi, my battlemat is fairly low resolution---the fireballs look waaay too pixelated.

Apply 16xAA (you can force it in the NVidia Control Panel if your battle mat doesn't have the option) and it will make those edges look much smoother

 

[Mouseferatu]

I said this in the other thread, and I'll say it again here:

If fireballs are square, so what?

People aren't actually 5-ft. square creatures, but that's what they occupy in the abstraction of the board.

Horses aren't square. Dragons aren't square. Beholders certainly aren't square. Trees aren't square. Boulders aren't square. But all of them are abstracted to squares on the board, be they creatures or objects.

Why, then, should spell effects be any different? That's the nature of a grid-based battlemat--things are abstracted to squares.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Beholders certainly aren't square.

What about that nerdy one in the glasses with the pocket protector who told us about the problems of illegal drugs and threw out the spiked punch?

Who invited that square, anyway?

 

[Stalker0]

Behold!

You can't do that in 4E

An interesting note is that if you turned that circle into a square it only gains 4 extra squares of coverage. I'm more than willing to accept that for the convenience of easier placement.

Besides with all the nerfs wizards seem to be getting, we can afford them a small buff

 

[Counterspin]

ainatan - Except that's not actually the shape of a 3e fireball. You just drew a circle on a grid. A 3e fireball effects the entirety of every square it enters, and so the actual area of effect is radically different from your drawing.

 

[Mouseferatu]

What about that nerdy one in the glasses with the pocket protector who told us about the problems of illegal drugs and threw out the spiked punch?

"Hey! 20-eyes!"

 

[HeinorNY]

An interesting note is that if you turned that circle into a square it only gains 4 extra squares of coverage. I'm more than willing to accept that for the convenience of easier placement.

Besides with all the nerfs wizards seem to be getting, we can afford them a small buff

Actually the firebox gains 20 squares of coverage.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating against fireboxes, I'm perfectly ok with the rules changing on that. It was a pain in the back to adjudicate those spell areas.

Except that's not actually the shape of a 3e fireball. You just drew a circle on a grid. A 3e fireball effects the entirety of every square it enters, and so the actual area of effect is radically different from your drawing.

Yes it is.

Fireball
Evocation [Fire]
Level: Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: 20-ft.-radius spread

It just does not affect creatures in those squares it doesn't almost completelly cover, creating the illusion of a "pixelated" circle. But the 3.5 fireball is a circle, no doubt on that.