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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Magus Coeruleus" data-source="post: 3209089" data-attributes="member: 1704">I think you have it wrong, I2K.  As I understand it, the point about going around cover is that if a straight line from the point of origin to the target place is blocked by cover it can still be reached if, by going up to that cover and then continuing along and around, you can eventually reach it with the total distance "traveled" still within the radius of the effect.  Whether or not you can see it is not the more important point; in fact it is a moot point.A spread does not ignore cover.  It is just that a spread can circumvent cover if there is a non-straight path through unblocked squares, no more than <radius of spread> length from the point of origin to the target location.  When you have a nice clear area with walls, I think it is very clear how this works and everyone, to my knowledge, agrees.  With the Web it should be as simple but there seems to be confusion.  For the sake of argument, let's for now say I go with yours and KD's interpretation that a Fireball does nothing special against the cover provided by a Web in that round in terms of burning stuff away.  In that case, after penetrating past the first 5' of Web, the FB spread encounters cover.  It can go around cover, but does penetrate straight through it unabated.  So consider the diagram below:W W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WW W W W W W W WI hope that works.  If you have a black background you should see a 20' spread of Ws with one red W and some green and blue ones as well.  The W's represent the area of the Web.  Imagine a Widened Fireball whose origin point is at the lower left corner of the bottommost blue W's square.  If you follow a path straight north on the right side of the origin point you  go through 20' of Web (represented by blue Ws) before the red W target location and so are blocked from affecting that square.  But if you follow the path straight north on the left side of origin, first you go through 5' of empty space, then 15' of Web (green W's) before going diagonally northeast to the red W so that only regular (not total) cover applies.  In either case it would take you 25' of spread to cover that red W square (hence Widened FB) but in one case there is 20' of Web to go through before the close edge of that red W square and in the other there is only 15'.  If I have the Web spread wrong in any way you can just imagine a Web that has been partially burnt away in previous rounds to establish a scenario where one path leads through 20+' of Web while another doesn't.The same logic applies whether you are wondering whether you can get to the target through less than 20' of Web to avoid total cover or whether you can get there through less than 5' of Web to avoid any cover at all.  For the latter question, consider the same Widened Fireball with the same origin (bottomleft corner of bottommost blue W square) and a target of the orange W's square.  While most paths take you through many squares of Web to get to it, with a 40' radius FB you can easily skirt along the edge counter clockwise and then--bam!--hit that orange W square from the SE with no Web squares along the path before it, so no cover applies at all.You don't reconsider whether you have 5' (or 20') of cover after each advancing 5' of the spread for the same reason that you don't do that for an arrow.  You don't say that the arrow makes it through the first 5' fine and then, at that point, there is 0' to the next square of Web.  That would defeat the point of having Web provide cover after 5' and total cover after 20', if once you get up to a point you reconsider as if the origin point had moved.  What makes a spread different from an arrow (or a burst) is not that it ignores cover but that it can take advantage of alternate paths from the point of origin to the target location that might be clear of cover (or have fewer squares of cover to go through), so long as this alternate route takes no more distance to travel than the radius of the spread.</blockquote>

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