Here is the scenario:
My wizard is flying above the enemies. I'd like to cast Burning Hands on them, straight down.
The disagreement came that I believed it should essentially be a 15' Radius, much like a actual 3-D cone with the caster being at the top of the cone, but my GM felt it would still essentially be a regular 15' cone shape, with some minor adjustments.
I went with the ruling after a couple minutes of discussion, but I just wanted to know what other think about it as well.
If this has been discussed before I do apologize, but I couldn't find any threads discussing this.
Hand him a funnel and ask what part of "cone-shaped" he is having problems with. But in seriousness, I have both played and GM'd characters with cone spells and never even had it suggested that it should run any way other than how you wanted to do it.
One note though, a 15' cone will have a 15' diameter circle at the base, not radius.
A cone-shaped spell shoots away from you in a quarter-circle in the direction you designate. It starts from any corner of your square and widens out as it goes. Most cones are either bursts or emanations (see above), and thus won't go around corners.
Note where it says "quarter-circle." I think this wording, combined with an essentially 2-dimensional battle, is why you have the problem. People look at the battle map and think "fan" rather than "cone" and eliminate the third dimension. This is weird when you have to take into account flying creatures, but it happens.
I always count cones as cones. Granted, when you're standing on the ground they essentially become half-cones, but when fired into the air (or in your instance, from the air to the ground) I take into account an entire cone-shaped area, meaning that in your example I'd have everyone standing in a 15 foot diameter at the end of the effect making Reflex saves.
See, this is why we don't play on a grid, but on terrains with actual elevation and buildings and trees, and whatnot.
Off the grid, your thinking is freed up from abstracts. A cone aimed downward becomes a circle as a matter of course.
This sort of thing is why I really don't like flying PCs in the d20 system. Three-dimensional thinking is hard; there's a reason rocket science is the cliche for difficulty.
/sarcasm... I hope...
Yeah, I meant diameter instead of radius. I'll admit even after Calculus 2 and other high-level math classes, I still get them mixed up some nights.
Thanks for your input guys!
My Calc 2 professor was fond of reminding us that professional mathematicians frequently forgot how to add.Yeah, I meant diameter instead of radius. I'll admit even after Calculus 2 and other high-level math classes, I still get them mixed up some nights.
Thanks for you're input guys!
Well, addition is pretty complicated if you construct it from a foundation of one propositional logic operator.
Would it be a 3x3 square grid, or one without the corner squares (cross)?
Probably 15' x 15' - though that's only if the caster is exactly 15 feet away from the ground. If he's 10 feet away, it'd be 10' x 10', and if he's 5 feet off the ground it'd only hit the square directly beneath him.
I'd say the GM is well within rights to limit spells to working in a 2-dimensional, by-the-book manner, as working with 3-dimensional combat can be frustrating for some*, but burning hands would function as a cone in my game.
*In a 3-D game, squares really become cubes. Now you need to figure out how many cubes tall creatures are. If you're 20 feet up and cast burning hands, do you only hit the ogre or does it hit everyone but the gnome rogue? What if the human fighter is prone? The cubes are 5 feet on a side, and Medium creatures can exceed this height by nearly double, or fall short of it by a foot. However, dropping prone doesn't by default cause a Medium creature to occupy a 1x2 space.
Long long ago in some edition far far away the Burning Hands spell used to describe the effect as a "fan-like sheet of flames" I wonder if the DM remembered that description and based the ruling on it. I recall times in an old 1e/2e game where somebody would drop prone so that the Magic-User could shoot Burning Hands over them to zorch the monsters.
I agree that a cone fired from the air should have a diameter about as wide as the height from which the cone was generated, but if you want to be really exact you could check the AoE templates for cones since the larger ones tend to get a little narrower near the far end, more like a teardrop than a traffic cone.
Breathing down in this manner can be a great tactic for dragons, especially if they have Flyby Attack.
Actually the math comes out pretty well. A 15' cone pointed straight down becomes a circle with roughly a 10' radius. (15^2+15^2=450, sqrt(450) = 21.21). A 30' cone makes a circle with a 20' radius, and a 60' cone makes a circle with a 40' radius.
Actually the math comes out pretty well. A 15' cone pointed straight down becomes a circle with roughly a 10' radius. (15^2+15^2=450, sqrt(450) = 21.21). A 30' cone makes a circle with a 20' radius, and a 60' cone makes a circle with a 40' radius.
Ummm..... A 15' cone has a 15' diameter base and a 15' height. Also, in the event of an irregular cone then you did the math wrong. You can't find the adjacent side's length in the fashion you describe, even if you assumed the hypotenuse was 15'. In fact, a cone with a 15' height and a 15' hypotenuse would be called a line.