Koury
2010-01-15, 05:50 AM
I brought this up in the Q&A thread but want to keep discussing it.
Original question:
Q 78
Say I am a level 5 Wizard casting a Sculpted Hail of Stone. Is there any reason I cannot choose to place all 4 10' cubes in the same spot and deal 20d4 damage to someone? Meteor Swarm comes to mind as a spell that allows overlapping of its own area to deal more damage.
Responses so far:
A78
If I remember the wording of the spell correctly, it is similar to most area damage spells and does not "do damage to the area". I don't see anything prohibiting you from putting all 4 10' cubes in the same spot, but this would not result in 5d4 damage to the area repeated 4 times. The way such spells are worded, it works as a binary check of "is X creature inside the spell's area?", with damage as given dealt to creatures that are and no damage dealt to creatures that aren't. If a creature is in all 4 cubes, which could happen with a large creature even without stacking them in the same spot, then it is in the spell's area and takes the damage - once.
RE: A78
You create a rain of stones that deals 1d4 points of damage per caster level (maximum 5d4) to creatures and objects within the area. Material Component: A piece of jade worth at least 5 gp.
I believe the bolded is what you are referring to. However, it is in 4 separate areas that happen to overlap. Meteor Swarm can affect single individuals multiple times, why not this? And for a more level appropriate example, Magic Missile.
A 78, additional
Assuming for the moment that you can overlap the squares (which seems doubtful, but I don't have a RAW reference to back that up at the moment), you would need to make four separate attack rolls against the target, doing 5d4 damage on each successful roll.
That aside, a potential 20d4 to a single target with a 1st level spell (even using metamagic to up the spell slot by 1) seems excessive, and is almost certainly not RAI.
"The area" is the total of all 10' cubes. A creature is either in the area or not, as far as the spell is concerned.
Meteor Swarm is an exception because it specifies four separate areas and each area, rather than the spell as a whole, does damage. Similarly with Magic Missile, each missile does damage rather than the spell as a whole doing damage.
Sculpt Spell changes the area of a spell but does not change that it is the spell as a whole that does the damage, and the spell only cares about whether a creature is in the area or not, not how many times it is in the (single) area.
Edit: Hail of Stone does not require an attack roll, so Duke of URL's point is irrelevant for this case. It also doesn't allow a save. Or SR. And it's untyped. And an area spell. Yes, this makes it rather difficult to avoid taking full damage. And by "difficult" I mean that, in a level 50 gestalt arena where a typical character is immune to damn near everything it's possible to be immune to, I seriously considered making a character based on using this spell as his primary offense.
OK, so, the spell Caltrops, also from SpC, says in it SPECIFICALLY that the spell does nothing if you target the same square more then once with the same casting. This seems to me like a case of specific overriding general, with the general being that a spell CAN overlap with itself and the effects apply multiple times.
Original question:
Q 78
Say I am a level 5 Wizard casting a Sculpted Hail of Stone. Is there any reason I cannot choose to place all 4 10' cubes in the same spot and deal 20d4 damage to someone? Meteor Swarm comes to mind as a spell that allows overlapping of its own area to deal more damage.
Responses so far:
A78
If I remember the wording of the spell correctly, it is similar to most area damage spells and does not "do damage to the area". I don't see anything prohibiting you from putting all 4 10' cubes in the same spot, but this would not result in 5d4 damage to the area repeated 4 times. The way such spells are worded, it works as a binary check of "is X creature inside the spell's area?", with damage as given dealt to creatures that are and no damage dealt to creatures that aren't. If a creature is in all 4 cubes, which could happen with a large creature even without stacking them in the same spot, then it is in the spell's area and takes the damage - once.
RE: A78
You create a rain of stones that deals 1d4 points of damage per caster level (maximum 5d4) to creatures and objects within the area. Material Component: A piece of jade worth at least 5 gp.
I believe the bolded is what you are referring to. However, it is in 4 separate areas that happen to overlap. Meteor Swarm can affect single individuals multiple times, why not this? And for a more level appropriate example, Magic Missile.
A 78, additional
Assuming for the moment that you can overlap the squares (which seems doubtful, but I don't have a RAW reference to back that up at the moment), you would need to make four separate attack rolls against the target, doing 5d4 damage on each successful roll.
That aside, a potential 20d4 to a single target with a 1st level spell (even using metamagic to up the spell slot by 1) seems excessive, and is almost certainly not RAI.
"The area" is the total of all 10' cubes. A creature is either in the area or not, as far as the spell is concerned.
Meteor Swarm is an exception because it specifies four separate areas and each area, rather than the spell as a whole, does damage. Similarly with Magic Missile, each missile does damage rather than the spell as a whole doing damage.
Sculpt Spell changes the area of a spell but does not change that it is the spell as a whole that does the damage, and the spell only cares about whether a creature is in the area or not, not how many times it is in the (single) area.
Edit: Hail of Stone does not require an attack roll, so Duke of URL's point is irrelevant for this case. It also doesn't allow a save. Or SR. And it's untyped. And an area spell. Yes, this makes it rather difficult to avoid taking full damage. And by "difficult" I mean that, in a level 50 gestalt arena where a typical character is immune to damn near everything it's possible to be immune to, I seriously considered making a character based on using this spell as his primary offense.
OK, so, the spell Caltrops, also from SpC, says in it SPECIFICALLY that the spell does nothing if you target the same square more then once with the same casting. This seems to me like a case of specific overriding general, with the general being that a spell CAN overlap with itself and the effects apply multiple times.