Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al'Kelhar" data-source="post: 5713938" data-attributes="member: 7884">Hi guys,My wizard is about to reach 9th level, and is going to take wall of fire as one of his 9th-level daily attack powers.The power's description states that a wall of fire "blocks line of sight". It does not state that any of the squares of the wall are obscured in any way. (FWIW the latest version of the wall of fire power, from the Wizard Playtest in Dragon 404, says exactly the same).Q1. Can a creature see into a square occupied by a wall of fire? Does is make any difference if the creature is itself in a square occupied by the wall?Q2. Can a creature whose space is wholly within a wall of fire see squares either side of the wall? Does it make any difference if the creature is partly inside and partly outside the wall (e.g. because it is Large or larger)?On a vaguely related note, my group has always played that an obscured square grants concealment for both creatures inside the square and for targets of that creature.  That is, obscuring effects are a two-way street - a creature in a foggy square is harder to hit by a creature outside that square, but equally, the creature in the foggy square has just as much difficulty hitting a creature outside that square. If you can't see into the fog very well, how can a creature in the fog see out of it well?However, on reading up on lightly and heavily obscured squares and the concealment rules, it would appear that a creature inside an obscured square is concealed as against all others, but does not suffer any penalties attacking creatures outside the obscured square (assuming there are no other obscured squares between them). In which case, it would seem that it's often beneficial for a creature to stay in an obscured square. Particularly a heavily obscured one. And in that case, powers that create zones of obscured squares ostensibly in order to foil attacks by enemies create the perverse incentive to stay inside them.A case in point - wall of gloom. Whille it expressly states that creatures in the wall (which is heavily obscured) are blinded, it also states that squares adjacent to the wall are lightly obscured. So your enemies simply stay in squares adjacent to the wall, and get a +2 net benefit to defences against melee and ranged attacks, while suffering no penalties. While I can see that placing the wall adjacent to your party's fighter (thereby placing him in a lightly obscured square, ready to smack anything that appears in the heavily obscured squares adjacent to him) might be a feasible use of the wall, that's a fairly specific situation. In most cases, it would be strictly better just to have the wall of gloom create the wall of heavily obscured squares in which creatures are blinded, and do away with the adjacent lightly obscured squares.Similarly, if I'm a bad guy, it actually benefits me to stick around at the edge of a stinking cloud, if I can stand the (now pathetic) poison damage I'll sustain at the end of my turn. On balance, it's often better for the bad guy to take that damage, be effectively invisible to any PC that's not adjacent to him, and gain a +2 net benefit to defences against adjacent PCs. Particularly if he's a ranged controller or artillery - "thanks for that, I'll just hang around in here blasting you with my ranged powers while you can't see me".Q3. Is it really the case that if a creature is in an obscured square, it gains concealment, but does not suffer any penalties to its attacks against creatures outside that square?Cheers, Al'Kelhar</blockquote>

Verification