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View Full Version : Trick shots? Does this need adjudication?



Typewriter
2009-04-16, 10:46 AM
EXAMPLE

So, the half-dragon has been separated from the party, and the main party is being overwhelmed by tons of low level mobs. The party is up against a wall, and there are enemies right in front of them.

The half-dragon stumbles into this room, and fires his breath weapon at the backs of the low-level mobs. The 30 ft. cone envelops all the enemies, but stops(literally) scant inches away from the parties faces, this wall of roaring fire burns brightly directly in front of them for a few seconds before fading out, leaving scorched enemies in it's place.

Awesome, right?

Replace half-dragon with caster and breath-weapon with any AoE spells and you have this same classic scenario that constantly pops up.

But what happens when every single shot is a trick shot. The grid is a utility used to determine placement of characters/effects/etc. but it's being used to determine the exact strategic position that you need to stand in in order to fire off these AoEs in such ways as to perfectly miss allies on all sides, while scorching the optimum number of enemies.

I think it's cool, and not a big deal if used occasionally, but every single AoE seems to be doing this nowadays.

Should I drop the grid, and wait until people declare how they're using their powers before pulling out an AoE tile and placing it in front of them. Oh, your estimations were slightly off, and you nuked the unconscious bard, too bad :(

Or just let it be. Let every AoE be an awesome trick shot, and give no extra thought to it when it's coming from an 8 INT sorceror?

Opinions please :)

Telonius
2009-04-16, 11:15 AM
Just let it be. If the character is a Wizard, he's mapped out the precise angles and trajectories down to the centimeter he needs to fire in order to make the fireball. If it's a Sorcerer, the magic is as familiar to him as the back of his hand, so he'd know intuitively how to aim it. (If it's a Cleric, his god would want to do the maximum amount of help).

Going further, this sort of thing is actively encouraged by the Sculpt Spell ability of the Archmage PrC. Not only does he get to aim where the spell goes generally, he can cause the spell to specifically miss allies.

On a more theoretical level, players will try to maximize their pluses, and minimize their minuses, with whatever system you use. You have to either use some sort of a grid (and live with the consequences that players will use it to their advantage), or freeform the AoE entirely.

Also, remember that NPCs and Monsters can use this too. Nothing stopping the evil sorcerer from targeting all the PCs but leaving his minions untouched.

valadil
2009-04-16, 12:38 PM
This kind of shot is what makes me play casters with AoEs. It's just fun to do.

The way the PCs were up against a wall with enemies around them is a good reason for the enemies to bunch up like that. Do they always do that? I expect the groups to mingle a little more, especially if anyone is pushing or pulling. Then you get situations where the caster can hit 2/5 enemies or 4/5 but with one PC. Even if you aim perfectly there's still a tactical choice to be made there.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-04-16, 01:36 PM
Should I drop the grid, and wait until people declare how they're using their powers before pulling out an AoE tile and placing it in front of them. Oh, your estimations were slightly off, and you nuked the unconscious bard, too bad :(

You're asking if you should intentionally and maliciously screw over your players and their characters in lethal ways with something they can't see or make any sort of informed decision about?

Look, if you want to do that, just keep repeating "Oops, sorry, that specific spot where you stepped was a trap, you take 10d10 damage, no save!" until they stop playing with you. It's simpler and faster.

Shpadoinkle
2009-04-16, 02:25 PM
You're asking if you should intentionally and maliciously screw over your players and their characters in lethal ways with something they can't see or make any sort of informed decision about?

Look, if you want to do that, just keep repeating "Oops, sorry, that specific spot where you stepped was a trap, you take 10d10 damage, no save!" until they stop playing with you. It's simpler and faster.

Pretty much.

You're suggesting screwing over the players for no reason other than to screw them over.

WHY?

The PCs are basically superheroes in thier world, they're SUPPOSED to be powerful! "OH NO! The PCs are taking full advantage of thier abilities! NERF!"

Characters using thier abilities, that they have worked long and hard to acquire, to the fullest extent they can take them, is THAT big of a deal?

Typewriter
2009-04-16, 05:20 PM
I understand what you all are saying, and I think I agree. I am not going to make any changes/rules about this in my campaign.

BUT - I think you misunderstood the intent behind my thoughts. Yes, the players are taking full advantage of their powers, but they are doing so using out of character knowledge. The grid allows them to see everything in perfect 5 ft. squares, it allows them to see where the 'stealthed' rogues are. It allows them a strategic view not actually available to their characters.

The example I used was not actually something that happened, it was just a good way to explain the way they were doing things.

Related question:

A medium creature takes up a 5ft. square, but is 6ft. tall. A large creature takes up four 5 ft. squares, and is 10 feet tall.

Players with breath weapons are flying above combat, and pointing breath weapons down so that they hit the large creatures, but don't hit their allies.

Allow/disallow? This was what they first started doing that made me think something should be done about this, but I was thinking of doing a global AoE nerf, based off of my feeling that it's use of ooc knowledge. But what about this? Nothing says that you take up a 5 ft. cube, and you're 6ft. tall.

For flying do you just designate a height at which you're flying and call it good?

So if you're in a party of all halflings and you're a flying dragon-shaman or some such, you fly to 35 ft, and use your 30ft cone to burn the heads off of all your enemies even though your allies are right below?


And for the record: If I was in character and a caster continually threw fire directly at me, having it land only inches from my face - I'd get pretty angry, and would be having words with that character. In character I don't know what he's doing because I'm a fighter with a sword. Yes, he's helping - but he is continually putting my life in danger.

@Shpadoinkle

Only been in one campaign where I was a superhero in the world. It was boring.

I've run campaigns where people felt like superheroes. They said it was boring.

They're people who have banded togethe to do something, nothing more and nothing less. They are Clark Kents, not supermen - yet they get the job done.

And the why - To try and stress to them the difference between in character and out of character knowledge - even in combat.

Chronos
2009-04-16, 07:18 PM
The big problem with verisimilitude here is the existence of AoEs with sharp boundaries. Ultimately, it's hard to picture a blast of fire that does 15d6 damage (or whatever) to someone here, but then none at all to someone there, right next to the guy who got blasted. You could fix this, I suppose, by saying that anyone one square out of the area of effect takes some much smaller but nonzero amount of damage, such as 1d6 for a fireball. Whether this would be a net improvement to your game or not, I don't know: Ultimately, you need to talk this over with your players and decide as a group.

Jarawara
2009-04-17, 02:16 PM
The problem I see here is that in the past, players were always offered two types of combat resolution. In some games, they always had grids (they called them 'battlemats' back then, though often they were just hand-drawn maps on sheets of paper, but good enough to use miniatures on them). In other games, they dispensed with the miniatures and combat was simply described and imagined all within the mind.

In the games with miniatures, they always had trick shots and precise spell placements, though there was less shaping of AoE spells back then, so if you didn't do the math right with the fireball you might enjoy some backdraft on it. If the wizard's player was doing his job, calculating the math correctly, and the fighter players were coordinating their own battle lines so that none of them were pushing forward into the next spell's expected AoE, then each and every spell would fry the enemy and stop within inches of the PC's. It was true back in the 80's, and true today.

Of course, there were occasional moments where the player utterly botched the job and blasted the party with the enemies, simply because he didn't bother to keep note of the AoE, or didn't care.

But in the games without battlemats, without miniatures, it was also true. In those games, since there were no miniatures and everything was simply all in the imaginations of the players, it was all up to simply how you describe it. The player says "I cast a fireball, and place the point of detonation so that it expands out and fries all the monsters, but stops within inches of the PC's. The DM nods and starts recording damage on his nastybads. Every shot was a trick shot *by assumption*.

Sometimes the stealthed rogue took it in the shorts, as that was a reasonable consideration to worry about. The DM might allow you to simply know where he was, or he might say "nope, you'll have to guess", and rogue's didn't have evasion back then. Do you like your rogues medium-brown or extra crispy?

Even if the DM was more strict, and imposed rules like "AoE spells effect everyone in combat, period", then at least the players knew that going in. And the players could simply choose to find another DM, as this one is never going to let you cast an AoE spell unless you totally get the drop on the enemy and cast your fireballs before either side engages in combat.

So, what you're going to do here is impose a return to the days of the no battlemats and assumed locations in battle, but then add the limitations of actually having a battlemat of sorts? Where you have placements of miniatures, but then you have to basically guess where you are exactly because there's no grid to the battlemat? Where it's up to the wizard to place the spell exactly for himself, but has no reference to be able to do the math himself. It's the worst effects of both systems for the players.

In short, you're basically proposing limitations to the player's control that has not existed in any edition of the game, ever before.

*~*~*

And yes, I saw that you've already resolved this, but I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, having played since 1980 in both styles of character-location-determination, so I went ahead and posted my thoughts.

There was always, in either of the above scenarios, questions of how to resolve certain situations. Like, for example, the all halfling party and the burst of flame 5 feet off the ground. If the wizard specified he was doing it, I'd probably allow it, though there would be a significant saving throw bonus to any tall enemy that could reasonably duck down into that 5' safe zone. But another DM might rule differently, or even outright disallow it. That one's up to you, I guess.

Sorry I can't be any more helpful with that, as I'm basically saying "Stick to Tradition", and then admitting there's no tradition to back you up in some situations. :smallconfused:

*~*~*

As for the roleplay aspect, that's up to the players. If the wizard is frying the monsters and flames are stopping mere inches from the fighter's face (more reasonably about 1 to 3 feet away from the fighter, but same difference), then it's up to the fighter to roleplay his reaction. Of course, if they're a team and they've been doing that for awhile, his reaction might be smug satisfaction and he then charges in to finish off the stragglers.

First time... it'd spook me to no end, and I'd prolly not even know it was the wizard who did it. I had that happen once, the wizard let off a fireball without having revealed in character to the other PC's that he was a wizard (he liked being the 'mysterious stranger' type), so when the fireball went off, I immediately panicked, and started calling for the others to retreat, as clearly there were some geothermal risks here. If there's that much explosive gas coming into the room in bursts like this, then hot magma could be right behind. I actually got the bulk of the party to flee the room before the wizard PC finally called them all back in and reluctantly dropped the whole mysterious stranger bit. :smallbiggrin:

*~*~*

And Chronos referenced an idea I've played before - that some AoE spells diminish in effect as the spell expands. Fireball, most notably. Select the target hex, and then it expands out 20 feet (8 five foot hexes) in all directions. In the center hex and two hexes out from there, 100% damage. 3-4 hexes, 75%. 5-6 hexes, 50%. 7 hexes, 25%. 8 hexes, 10%.

So if you want the flames to stop mere inches from the players faces, then the monsters in front of said players are taking 12d6 damage, times 10%, or 4 points of damage, 2 if they save. That puts us back to needing to target enemies that haven't yet engaged the party, but we were used to large groups of enemies, so there were plenty of nastybads that were much closer to the center.

I think the DM also compensated by having major penalties to the saves the farther in the AoE that the target was. The BBEG's at ground zero, he's taking the full 12d6, with such a pathetic save as to be non-existant. And fie on that silly evasion, there's just no place for him to dodge to. Fry for me, you extra crispy rogue you!

*~*

So there's my 2 cents worth, adjusted for 28 years worth of inflation.

Typewriter
2009-04-17, 02:45 PM
Thank you for that actually.

A very long post, but one worth reading, with little besides good points in it.

For now I am not going to do anything(except possibly determine how I'm going to manage people blasting downwards into squares where large creatures are even though their friends are there).

VirOath
2009-04-17, 03:23 PM
Thank you for that actually.

A very long post, but one worth reading, with little besides good points in it.

For now I am not going to do anything(except possibly determine how I'm going to manage people blasting downwards into squares where large creatures are even though their friends are there).

Between Large and Medium, they "Can't"

Simply put, a Medium Humanoid occupies one square in width and two in height. This can be argued as such since they occupy part of the square above them, they would be hit with it. Or you can say they are 5 foot cubed.

But rather, I enjoy the opposite. They are creating a situation that hits less than half of a creature with an AoE. Now the space occupied by a creature isn't filled with that creature, to explain: A human doesn't fully fill a 5 foot square, that's just the space they use to fight effectively. This is reflected in that any creature can squeeze into an opening one size smaller than it with a penalty. So to simplify it, if it didn't affect more than half of the cubes a creature occupied, and it was possible to the creature to move in that fashion, it ducked.

The other things you can do is not to show on the battlemap what they can't see. Keep notes are to where stealthed and invisible creatures are, but keep them off the battlemap. If someone can spot them, describe the location, or even point it out, but don't place a figure on the map until they are pulled out of it. Creatures that are out of sight shouldn't be on it either.


And finally, remember that magic spells are literally lines drawn in the sand. Fireball, Cone of Cold, Meteor Swarm, these are cases of rain on only one half of the road. Magic isn't wild, it's very precise and controlled, much to the fact that a failed spell fizzles rather than having a random effect. Magic make the laws of physics sit down and shut up. It is as precise as swinging a sword as a fighter, using the cleave feat or reach weapons.

That is, you could draw exact lines as to where you wanted the spell to land. That is the caster's control over it. But, do they want to avoid hitting allies, are the enemies bunching up to let them all be hit by AoEs? The caster doesn't control the placement of what he is fighting, only where he gets to place the spells.

And creative use of AoE templates is required. Otherwise AoEs become useless. That is, I've lost count of the number of times I've angled a cone spell to blast the big baddie but go over the heads of the party without harm.

Count Chumleigh
2009-04-17, 04:15 PM
I don't think it's a big problem. Characters and monsters don't actually occupy their whole fighting space, after all*, so these "trick shots" are probably missing creatures on the fringes by a fairly good margin.

But if you really want to change things up, I'd suggest dropping squares altogether from tactical movement, and replace it with something more in keeping with Savage Worlds: characters' movement is expressed in inches, as measured by taking a rule or length of measuring tape. If you want to drop an area effect on something, you either use a burst template cut out from the back of the books or you just whip out the ol' tape measure again. If the template covers any part of a creature's base, the creature takes a hit.

Cheers,
--Count Chumleigh

*Well, maybe Gelatinous Cubes.

VirOath
2009-04-17, 09:54 PM
I don't think it's a big problem. Characters and monsters don't actually occupy their whole fighting space, after all*, so these "trick shots" are probably missing creatures on the fringes by a fairly good margin.

But if you really want to change things up, I'd suggest dropping squares altogether from tactical movement, and replace it with something more in keeping with Savage Worlds: characters' movement is expressed in inches, as measured by taking a rule or length of measuring tape. If you want to drop an area effect on something, you either use a burst template cut out from the back of the books or you just whip out the ol' tape measure again. If the template covers any part of a creature's base, the creature takes a hit.

Cheers,
--Count Chumleigh

*Well, maybe Gelatinous Cubes.

Heh, I like! Tabletop wargame rules!

Though if you do this, I would recommend you use Centimeters. A combat spread out over 60 ft square would require a 6 foot by 6 foot battle surface. Using cm instead would make that combat closer to 2 feet. Much easier to build around.

That is, unless you want to use some complex conversion that can handle everything from 10 ft to 1000 ft and express it in an even number of inches on a linear scale...