Hey, Veeky Forums. I'm DMing a game of DND 3.5 and I had a question about spell areas, specifically spheres.
A monster was surrounded by the party and one of the casters used glitterdust, which would have blasted everyone including his party. However, since it's a spherical burst, he just placed it in the air directly above the monster so only the absolute bottom of the sphere touched the monster and avoided hitting his party. Is this legit? It seems like bullshit but I can't find anything that would disallow it.
James Hill
You're the GM, you can disallow it.
Sebastian Campbell
Naturally. I mostly allowed it at the time because they were getting slaughtered but I wanted to do further research outside of game to have a concrete stance that is hopefully backed up by more that "cuz I say so".
Lincoln Wright
Why not? It's a sphere, and the monster is presumably taller than them. Rules as written. Part of being huge is that you're easier to hit with things. There's a size modifier to attacks for this reason.
Of course, it goes both ways. Maybe a tiny spellcaster can pull the same move on them!
Tyler Walker
Allow him to use creativity to solve problems, if you feel like he is cheesing all the fights then make them harder
Joshua Wright
>It's a sphere, and the monster is presumably taller than them.
The monster was medium size like them. Pic related, sphere is the air burst spell, red is the monster and blue is the party. Note because of the shape of the sphere, only the absolute center of it reaches down far enough to touch and since it curves back up, it goes above the party.
>Of course, it goes both ways. Maybe a tiny spellcaster can pull the same move on them!
That's actually a good point, thanks.
Fair enough, if they whinge about excessive CR well then that's their fault..
Asher Ramirez
Allowing that would in practice turn area of effect spells into single target spells at will, which would be bad for game balance.
Camden Morris
compromise: it's kind of cheesy but technically valid, so how about the NPC gets a reflex save for reduced damage, because the blast is basically just barely scraping the top of their head?
Levi Murphy
Only if the room is tall enough to allow the caster to see the mid-point of the sphere (i.e. the center of the spell being cast).
If that's the case, its a good move, and there's no reason not to allow it.
Ayden King
True.. but isn't it similar to just placing the spell behind the monster and only hitting it with the corner of the spell? Pic related, blue is player, red is monster, yellow square is the area of effect of a spell. Only the bottom most left corner hits the monster and it avoids the player entirely.
Possible, kinda opens up a can of worms though and may not always be consistent. I've got nearly no house rules, I've been trying to run the game as RAW as possible.
Yeah, the roof was high enough and a lot of the time the players are outside in the open air, so they'd have all the room necessary.
Benjamin Ramirez
>balance >3.5 Please.
Thomas Gomez
Considering the complexity, 3.5 is remarkably well balanced.
Eli Parker
With how the grid and burst/spread/emanations work it would have hit atleast a 10'x10' You see that 10-radius diagram? Think of that as level 0, It also looks exactly the same on level 1 but it also has a 10 foot wide, 10 foot long and 5 foot tall area both at level -1 and level 2, just like see those parts sticking out a bit on the 4 cardinal sides.
Joseph Sanders
Meaning, a true sphere does not exist in dnd? And it's represented mechanically by that OP pic 10' radius diagram but also with 3D height added?
Alright ok, that makes more sense. So even if you air bursted the spell, those immediately surrounding the monster would also be hit. Air bursting wouldn't really do anything, but placing the spell behind the monster like in pic related would still work.
Ayden Jones
Hey he said he was going RAW so I gave him a RAW answer. You handle it like that because you put that sort of template centered on intersections, both on 2d 5' square grids and when necessary 3d 5' cube grids.
Josiah Jenkins
Shut the fuck up. Even with no splatbooks 3.5 is an unbalanced mess of a game.
Luis Bell
Lol, I'm OP and I wasn't criticizing you. You actually helped a lot.
Calm down, cuckmaster. 3.5 being wildly imbalanced is mostly a meme. And actually the splatbooks are often examples of remarkable balance. Sure you can snipe a few example of poorly written things, but that's out of hundreds or thousands of items, feats, skills etc.
Colton Myers
>Air bursting wouldn't really do anything It would make the area on the ground effected smaller if you set it at in intersection 5' higher so that level -1 was where the monster and party were at relative to the spell but it's still be a 10'x10' area so 3 squares adjacent to the monster would be getting hit.
Sebastian Perry
Ah, ok, sorry. I'm running out of neurotransmitters. It's 9am here and I've been up all night.
Alexander Stewart
>It would make the area on the ground effected smaller
Why? Wouldn't the whole diagram be projected up and down in 3D? Including the "wings" if you will. Or would the "wings" of the diagram only be in the 0 level to represent the curving nature of a sphere?
Chase Barnes
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Austin Morgan
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Austin Myers
10/10. You're the best, user. This helps a ton.
Joseph Jackson
Wait, are medium size creatures 2 squares tall but so are large size? The only difference is the large size are 2 squares wide as well?
Chase Clark
pretty much. huge creatures go up to 4 meters so they are 3x3x3, but large are still under 3 meters so are only 2 high. medium is greater than 1.5 meters but smaller than roughly 2.25 meters, so 2 squares high.
