Area effect spells

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

Long time lurker, first time poster. Looked through the RAW posts and searched, but didn't find an answer that was truly about this.

Most area effect spells say something along the lines of "creatures in the area take (X) damage (ref for half). Now I know it's a game, and not perfect, but sometimes the physics of this don't make sense to me.

I'm going to use the example that sparked this debate in my group.
I cast greenfire as a lvl9 Druid. I fill 9 5ft squares with acidic fog. If I hit 9 orcs in adjacent squares they each take 2d8+9. If I hit a storm giant who occupies 9 squares by himself he also only takes 2d8+9. Not 2d8+9 for each square he occupies, or at least that's what RAW seem to indicate.

Thoughts?

[Venger]

Your reading is correct. No interpretation necessary. A monster is either in the greenfire, or he isn't.

[Khedrac]

As a general rule, attempting to correlate D&D with physics is always disasterous. Or, in other words, don't worry about it - this is just how D&D works.

It might be argued that this was done for game balance (which would be a laugh seeing as how imbalanced D&D is) but a better explanation is probably tht it has been done to keep play (relatively) simple.
If you start looking at the volume (or surface area) that a creature has exposed to a AoE effect then you also have to worry about smaller creatures that could argue they should be takign 1/16th damage (or less). Next up the character in full plate will argue that sicne most of their skin is covered they should take less damage and so forth.

Don't worry about the physics, just go with the rules as they are.