placing AoE effects

[Skrum]

The group I play with now is exclusively over Discord using Roll20. As such, all combats (well almost all) are on a grid. This has led to something that perhaps irrationally irks me - the perfect placement of AoE spell effects. Obviously, players have near-perfect knowledge of the battlefield along with a nice little template of what the spell is going to affect. Thus, each of these spells is laid down with surgical precision to hit the maximal amount of bad guys while sparing any allies.

This bugs the hell out of me lol. Especially in the case of spells like Fireball that narratively at least have a tiny spark of fire that must be aimed and detonated at the right moment....this level of precision is "unrealistic" (to use the very loaded term). Even a spell like Hypnotic Pattern must be placed in space. Being able to judge that to literally the inch, in combat, is very silly.

Mechanically, I feel like this leads to the players getting just a little too much mileage out of AoE's.

My inclination is make the players roll for this, making a spell attack against some AC depending on how "placed" they're going for. Roll badly, and the spell effect is displaced in a random direction.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Should I just let this go?

[Abracadangit]

I feel like I'm missing something here, maybe because I don't play on Roll20.

How is this different from if you played on a physical tabletop, with someone using an AoE template to figure out the optimal blast radius for a Fireball spell?

[J-H]

My advice is to let it go. Enemies/NPCs can act with the same level of precision.

This is one area where more simulationism would be a negative.

[Skrum]

I feel like I'm missing something here, maybe because I don't play on Roll20.

How is this different from if you played on a physical tabletop, with someone using an AoE template to figure out the optimal blast radius for a Fireball spell?

It's not; but this is the first time I've ever played full-grid. So it's a change for me.

[Skrum]

My advice is to let it go. Enemies/NPCs can act with the same level of precision.

This is one area where more simulationism would be a negative.

Heard. I seem to be the only one in the group bothered by it too.

[The Glyphstone]

Can you justify it to yourself with 'its literally magic'? Precise aim beyond normal human ability could easily just be a secondary side effect of the spell, for this very reason.

[Skrum]

Can you justify it to yourself with 'its literally magic'? Precise aim beyond normal human ability could easily just be a secondary side effect of the spell, for this very reason.

I guess. Martials have to roll for every stupid thing, but a caster gets to lay down a fireball, with perfect placement, with no roll. Idk. There's part of me that just likes sticking it to casters.

[PhantomSoul]

I guess. Martials have to roll for every stupid thing, but a caster gets to lay down a fireball, with perfect placement, with no roll. Idk. There's part of me that just likes sticking it to casters.

Clearly time to bring back spell failure as a balancing mechanic! (Or spell failure per target within a broader range than the spell, I guess, which gets you the feel of wonkier spell sizes or area of effect placement?)

[Boci]

I guess. Martials have to roll for every stupid thing, but a caster gets to lay down a fireball, with perfect placement, with no roll. Idk. There's part of me that just likes sticking it to casters.

Not in this particular case. Martials also get to perfectly calculate if they have enough movement without dashing to reach their target, whether or not they can also avoid an OA doing so, ect.

[Greywander]

On the one hand, you could choose to embrace it. One advantage of this is that it can prevent drama resulting from friendly fire, especially if it leads to a character's death (even just an NPC). Especially something big like a Fireball could accidentally include other PCs or a friendly NPC (or, say, an important item that is flammable, such as a scroll or spellbook). There are reason to want to avoid these kinds of things happening, as it can lead to drama between players (not characters), so it just depends with how the table feels about it. Some of them might be fine with it.

Or you could say accidental friendly fire is part of the game, it's a risk you take when you use an AoE and don't place it carefully enough, or that it's one of the benefits of being an Evoker or using Careful Spell. In this case, I think there's two simple rules you could implement that might work for you. The first is that the player choose a point, rather than placing down the entire AoE template. You, as the DM, place the AoE template on top of the point they choose, and there are no backsies if they misjudged the size of the AoE. Now, this could lead to them just meticulously measuring before choosing a point, so the second rule is a time limit on turns. You'll probably need to experiment to figure out what a good time limit length is, but it's highly likely whatever you choose will seem too short at first, and your players will hate it, but I think you'll see them adapt and be able to make decisions much quicker.

Turn time limits also have other benefits in that they can greatly speed up the flow of combat. Something important to note is that the time limit should only apply to player input; it's only the time they have to decide what they're doing, actually resolving the outcomes of those actions can extend past the time limit. I'd also give every player a bonus action to "plan" or "strategize" that extends their turn time limit. No one wants to give up a precious action, even a bonus action, so you won't see it used except when they really need the extra time to lay out some elaborate plan or strategy.

Anyway, those are just some ideas that might help. You should know better than I would if these will work for your table.

[Christew]

Being able to judge that to literally the inch, in combat, is very silly.

You guys must be using an incredibly detailed grid if you are judging to the inch.

Seriously though, depending on whether the AOE is curved or not, you are dealing with 2.5-5 ft increments of accuracy. That is not even that unrealistic in terms of someone who is trained in/regularly uses such skills. Chalk it up to system abstraction and let it go.

If you particularly like homebrewed grit, I guess you could work up a system where it is more difficult to gauge placement of the AOE for newly learned spells.

[Ashe]

I guess. Martials have to roll for every stupid thing, but a caster gets to lay down a fireball, with perfect placement, with no roll. Idk. There's part of me that just likes sticking it to casters.

So stop making martials roll for every stupid thing?

[TyGuy]

I'm picking up the vibe that it's less about the perfect spell placement and more about your game turning into a tactical war simulator instead of being an immersion-first RPG.
Not that those two are mutually exclusive. But if you're spending the time measuring the perfect fireball placement, you're typically not following up with as much or more time and effort role-playing the casting.

[PhantomSoul]

I'm picking up the vibe that it's less about the perfect spell placement and more about your game turning into a tactical war simulator instead of being an immersion-first RPG.
Not that those two are mutually exclusive. But if you're spending the time measuring the perfect fireball placement, you're typically not following up with as much or more time and effort role-playing the casting.

And slowdowns might be an extra concern (whereas seamless turns might seem less jarring, so the caster character having prepared where to target before their turn might help). In that respect turn timers (rather than time turners) could help. If it's pure fluff, the group is likely to want to keep playing with "perfect" casting -- but maybe you fluff it as them "seeing" in their mind's eye what the area will be while they're starting to draw on the magic. Doesn't change that the probably wouldn't do as well from the character's perspective (rather than top-down semi-omniscience), but could help.

[quindraco]

The group I play with now is exclusively over Discord using Roll20. As such, all combats (well almost all) are on a grid. This has led to something that perhaps irrationally irks me - the perfect placement of AoE spell effects. Obviously, players have near-perfect knowledge of the battlefield along with a nice little template of what the spell is going to affect. Thus, each of these spells is laid down with surgical precision to hit the maximal amount of bad guys while sparing any allies.

This bugs the hell out of me lol. Especially in the case of spells like Fireball that narratively at least have a tiny spark of fire that must be aimed and detonated at the right moment....this level of precision is "unrealistic" (to use the very loaded term). Even a spell like Hypnotic Pattern must be placed in space. Being able to judge that to literally the inch, in combat, is very silly.

Mechanically, I feel like this leads to the players getting just a little too much mileage out of AoE's.

My inclination is make the players roll for this, making a spell attack against some AC depending on how "placed" they're going for. Roll badly, and the spell effect is displaced in a random direction.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Should I just let this go?

Players can't miss points in space - this isn't specific to spells or to AOEs. For example, suppose you want to throw an oil flask into a target grid square. Provided it's in range (20 feet), you just land the flask in the target square, no roll required.

Also, your description of AOE placement is simply incorrect on a grid, because AOEs snap to grid intersections. You literally can't place it with within an inch. You can only place your AOEs to within about 30 inches.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Also, your description of AOE placement is simply incorrect on a grid, because AOEs snap to grid intersections. You literally can't place it with within an inch. You can only place your AOEs to within about 30 inches.

At our own table we mostly use grids because they allow us to easily recognize movement, position and scale of things. When it comes to targeting effects and establishing cover we prefer to blend the theatre of the mind approach and pretend the grid isn't there, which does allow for us to have that kind of precision when we need it. Most times it doesn't make all that much of a difference but it feels special when you find the perfect spot for a big move.

As far as rationalizing that precision, I'm very willing to suspend my disbelief. Wizards are just that intelligent and can "see the grid" on the battlefield, Sorcerers simply have that much of an intuitive understanding of their magic, Clerics have the powers at be dabbling in their spells to bend them to their desires.

[Ryton]

Being able to judge that to literally the inch, in combat, is very silly.

—

Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Should I just let this go?

It might help to regard the AoEs as rough approximations, even with the grid. Instead of being accurate to the inch, Hypnotic pattern actually only has to be accurate to just under ±2.5 feet on the X, Y, and Z axes, which effectively means that characters only have get their spells within roughly a 5 foot cube to achieve the optimum effectiveness indicated by the grid.

[Tanarii]

Battlemats introduce a lot more problems in terms of perfect tactics than just perfect AoE placement. They make it possible (space allowing) to weave perfectly across the battlefield avoiding OAs. To far more easily line up a shot with no cover. To easily determine if you can stay one square away from an enemies movement, assuming you've guessed it. To know precisely if something is in range or within movement.

Those are also considered advantages by many folks of course.

[dafrca]

I'm picking up the vibe that it's less about the perfect spell placement and more about your game turning into a tactical war simulator instead of being an immersion-first RPG.

I had the same thought and this is a struggle that I have seen on many a table and even more on forums like this one. Over time, D&D has always pulled back and forth between wargame/miniature game and pure role play game. Where the two intersect there will always be this kind of odd conflict. Add to the mix many of the procedures and rules are abstracts anyway and the "realism" factor is just stretched and for some folks, breaks.

So should you just let it go? In my opinion, yes I would.

[Kane0]

When casting under pressure a concentration or arcana check for placement, DC 10 or the CR of the nastiest for you're facing. Failure puts the spell at a random adjacent space.

Hows that?

[Keravath]

Personally, I would suggest just letting it go.

The main reason you seem to have an issue with it is "unrealism". How can a wizard or other character place their spell so precisely?

This seems to forget the entire premise that it is MAGIC. Characters are trained to use their spells with maximum possible effectiveness because they know they have limited spell slots. EVERY casting counts and is important since they don't know how many more they will need. Casters would train endlessly to assess the layout of a battlefield and place area spells as efficiently as possible. Similarly, more martial characters would train in the best techniques to move through a battlefield without approaching opponents so closely that they would be able to attack.

None of these are a side effect of playing on a grid. Playing on a grid makes these much more obvious to the players since they can map out where to move or where to place a spell for maximum effectiveness. But, honestly, even without a grid these actions make complete sense. These are what the characters train to do and playing on a grid just makes it easier for the DM and the players to see what their characters would be trained to see.

In addition, even when playing in theatre of the mind, a character casting a fireball will say that they want to place it to catch as many opponents as possible. It is up to the DM to decide (or based on their description), how many opponents that would be. The optimization of spell placement is a character trait - not a player one.

The only exception might arise when the optimal placement of a spell is such as to include creatures behind total cover that the character doesn't know are there. However, that gets into metagaming rather than optimal spell placement.

Anyway, the bottom line for me is that I see no reason to make the placement of AoE effects more challenging when optimal placement of such effects is one of the skills any caster using such spells would train on intensively.

[Valmark]

What's the alternative though? This seems like it'd be a problem even without a grid. The only time you can't measure something is with ToTM- and there you have the DM telling you who and how can you fit what.

[heavyfuel]

When playing "old school" VRPGs (namely Baldur's Gate I & II and Pillars of Eternity), it's pretty easy to place your AoE with near perfect accuracy after some practice.

Fireballs are maybe a bit different because you actually shoot a projectile that explodes, but (almost) every other spell is just choosing a point in space. Still, I don't think it's worth it to crate a separate rules just for Fireball

[Segev]

When playing "old school" VRPGs (namely Baldur's Gate I & II and Pillars of Eternity), it's pretty easy to place your AoE with near perfect accuracy after some practice.

Fireballs are maybe a bit different because you actually shoot a projectile that explodes, but (almost) every other spell is just choosing a point in space. Still, I don't think it's worth it to crate a separate rules just for Fireball

In older editions, fireball required an attack roll if you were trying to fire it through an opening too small for a character to run through.

[Catullus64]

Here's a thought; why don't you ask the DM to turn off the grid? The map that he's drawn behind it will still show up, all the distances will be the same, but now you either have to guess distances or measure them with the ruler tool. If a sense of imprecision and calculated risk is what you want, the DM can ask the person not to use the ruler.

I now imagine the placement of a fireball going something like this:

Spellcaster: I cast Fireball.
DM: OK. Make a mark using the pen tool for the point where you want to center the radius.
Spellcaster: Eyeballs placement of enemies, makes a snap judgement. Here.
DM: Uses the measurement tool to sweep out a 20-foot radius around the point. Looks like you hit four of the trolls, and the fighter.
Spellcaster: Ouch. Sorry about that. Everyone laughs and gets on with their lives.

I used to play a skirmish wargame called Mordheim, and the rules of that game expressly said you had to declare a missile attack or a charge before measuring the distances, automatically missing or failing your charge if you misjudged the distance. D&D can work on similar principles. In general, I'm always in favor of any change by the DM which incentivizes fast, imperfect, in-the-moment decision making, rather than slowly measuring things out and planning moves like pieces on a chessboard.

[Rukelnikov]

AoE placement has been discussed many times in my party, its an effect we call "grid eye". We have gone back and forth allowing it and requiring rolls, usually casting stat + prof (like a spell attack).

The problem is that what the DC should be by RAW is absurdly low. Enemies incapable of motion like Shriekers, Violet Fungus and Gas Spores have an AC of 5, so if my PC just imagines there's a Shrieker where he wants to place his fireball and shoots at it, it should hit everytime save for a nat 1. Arguing that RAW hitting the floor within range could have an AC much above 5 seems disingenuous. So we usually only call for it when its a specially complicated placement, like shooting thru a narrow passage while sliping past the two people meleeing in there, and then the DC tends to be kinda winged.

if the roll isn't high enough, to determine the intersection where the projectile ended up exploding/landing, we roll a d8 for the direction from the target square, and then another die to see how far in that direction. The latter is usually in relation to how far away from target is the shotter, both in distance and in roll, for a shot 60 ft away with a roll a couple points away maybe 1d2 squares, for a shot a 1000 ft away with a roll well off below required maybe 4d10 squares.

[MoiMagnus]

I now imagine the placement of a fireball going something like this:

Spellcaster: I cast Fireball.
DM: OK. Make a mark using the pen tool for the point where you want to center the radius.
Spellcaster: Eyeballs placement of enemies, makes a snap judgement. Here.
DM: Uses the measurement tool to sweep out a 20-foot radius around the point. Looks like you hit four of the trolls, and the fighter.
Spellcaster: Ouch. Sorry about that. Everyone laughs and gets on with their lives.

I used to play a skirmish wargame called Mordheim, and the rules of that game expressly said you had to declare a missile attack or a charge before measuring the distances, automatically missing or failing your charge if you misjudged the distance. D&D can work on similar principles. In general, I'm always in favor of any change by the DM which incentivizes fast, imperfect, in-the-moment decision making, rather than slowly measuring things out and planning moves like pieces on a chessboard.

That's weird to me. If your were to apply similar rules at my table, you would obtain the exact opposite of what you want: peoples taking even more time to place correctly their fireball since they know they can't rollback mistakes.

For peoples like the one I play with, to incentivizes fast play, you have to go the other way around: automatic success and never failing because of trivial issues. The player make a decision quickly, and if the GM finds a flaw or a simple optimisation, he fixes the player's choice (unless the player object to the change) instead of playing "Gotcha". So:

Spellcaster: I cast Fireball around there (player point at a position).
DM: Uses the measurement tool to sweep out a 20-foot radius around the point. Looks like you hit four of the trolls, and the fighter, though you that last part is easily avoided by shifting the area north, so you hit the four trolls.
Spellcaster: Fine for me.

[Tanarii]

Spellcaster: I cast Fireball around there (player point at a position).
DM: Uses the measurement tool to sweep out a 20-foot radius around the point. Looks like you hit four of the trolls, and the fighter, though you that last part is easily avoided by shifting the area north, so you hit the four trolls.
Spellcaster: Fine for me.

IMO a trade off is better. Theatre of the mind style:
Soellcaster: I cast Fireball, hitting as many Trolls as possible.
DM: Looks like you can hit four of the trolls and the fighter, though you that last part is easily avoided by shifting the area north, instead hitting three trolls.

To be, TOTM style is a base number of typical targets for the size of the AoE, adjusted up or down by 1-3 for circumstances. So a trade off of +1+ally vs +0+noally fits within the structure just fine if that ally is mixed up in melee with the enemy,

[MoiMagnus]

IMO a trade off is better. Theatre of the mind style:
Soellcaster: I cast Fireball, hitting as many Trolls as possible.
DM: Looks like you can hit four of the trolls and the fighter, though you that last part is easily avoided by shifting the area north, instead hitting three trolls.

To be, TOTM style is a base number of typical targets for the size of the AoE, adjusted up or down by 1-3 for circumstances. So a trade off of +1+ally vs +0+noally fits within the structure just fine if that ally is mixed up in melee with the enemy,

I have to agree with that.

[Catullus64]

That's weird to me. If your were to apply similar rules at my table, you would obtain the exact opposite of what you want: peoples taking even more time to place correctly their fireball since they know they can't rollback mistakes.

For peoples like the one I play with, to incentivizes fast play, you have to go the other way around: automatic success and never failing because of trivial issues. The player make a decision quickly, and if the GM finds a flaw or a simple optimisation, he fixes the player's choice (unless the player object to the change) instead of playing "Gotcha". So:

Spellcaster: I cast Fireball around there (player point at a position).
DM: Uses the measurement tool to sweep out a 20-foot radius around the point. Looks like you hit four of the trolls, and the fighter, though you that last part is easily avoided by shifting the area north, so you hit the four trolls.
Spellcaster: Fine for me.

That's perfectly workable, and in fact how I often choose to handle these things. But clearly the OP is interested in a version of combat where mistakes and fumbles can happen and cause problems, and people accept that both of themselves and of their fellow players.

Under that vision of combat, if you want the advantage of hitting a large number of enemies who are in close quarters with you and your allies, it should be hard to do that safely, and there should be serious risk involved; presumably the Sculpt Spells feature assumes that maneuvering AoEs around allies is at least very challenging. If the risk of failure bothers you, try something other than launching big splash damage spells into melee.