Wall of Fire Question

[jcayer]

Last night in my game, we had a question about Wall of Fire. I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet. The spell says: You conjure a wall that consists of contiguous squares filled with arcane fire. It can be up to 8 squares long and up to 4 squares high.

The player cast it and filled up his 8 squares. He was trying to wall off a group of opponents. In so doing, the angle of the wall had corners touching, not sides. In my opinion, this would have allowed a monster to cross from one side of the wall to the other, without actually passing through it.

The wall looked something like this, with the monster(M) moving down and to the right:
XX
M XXXX
XX

Today I looked up the definition of Contiguous because I wasn't happy with either solution from last night. Contiguous is defined as sharing a common border or touching. I'm starting to think that the layout of the wall wasn't legal.
Maybe it should have looked like this:
XX
XXX
XX
That would have them sharing common borders.

Thoughts? Comments.

 

[OnlineDM]

I don't have access to the rulebooks at the moment, but I believe the definition of a Wall might require that each square of the wall have a side (not just a corner) touching another square of the wall.

 

[jcayer]

I never thought to look up the definition of Wall.
Per the compendium:

A wall fills a specified number of contiguous squares within range, starting from an origin square.

Each square of the wall must share a side—not just a corner—with at least one other square of the wall, but a square can share no more than two sides with other squares in the wall (this limitation does not apply when stacking squares on top of each other).

Last nights wall was illegal.

 

[jcayer]

Darn, it won't let me give you XP. Says I need to spread it around some more. I'll hit you another time. Thanks again.

 

[OnlineDM]

I never thought to look up the definition of Wall.
Per the compendium:

A wall fills a specified number of contiguous squares within range, starting from an origin square.

Each square of the wall must share a side—not just a corner—with at least one other square of the wall, but a square can share no more than two sides with other squares in the wall (this limitation does not apply when stacking squares on top of each other).

Last nights wall was illegal.

Also, note that the wall you proposed as an alternative would ALSO be illegal, as one of the squares is touching three other squares on the same level (which is a no-no). Basically, your walls can have corners but not T-intersections.

 

[jcayer]

Both of my wall examples got hosed because all the spaces got taken out. The second one I showed was correct, it was staggered, but overlapped.
Thanks again.
And thanks to the person who awarded XP for me.

 

[Colmarr]

Both of my wall examples got hosed because all the spaces got taken out. The second one I showed was correct, it was staggered, but overlapped.
Thanks again.

Just to clarify, do you mean this one?

XX
XXX
XX

If so, the only way that wall is legal is if it was meant to be:

XX
..XX
....XX

If it was meant to be:

XX
..XX
XX

then the placement is invalid because the bolded wall square touches more than 2 others.