Crynn Shadowfang's page

IkeDoe wrote:

How do you draw a 10' wide line in a grid? I can only think of arbitrary methods to do it that aren't very consistent.

The same way you do 5' wide lines, but instead of picking a start square and a destination square you pick a start corner and a destination corner.

In both cases you have to "guesstimate" when you get weird angles.

Actually, lines already require you to pick a start corner. From the definition of a line: "It starts from any corner of your square and extends to the limit of its range or until it strikes a barrier that blocks line of effect." Assuming that you also pick a destination corner (Is that explicitly stated anywhere? The examples seem to assume it.), no guesstimiation is required at all.

I agree that methods to get a 10' wide line are going to be arbitrary. I already suggested possibly choosing two corners and drawing two lines. Someone else suggested smooshing two lines. If you want to keep it as clean as the orignal, you could create groups of four 5' squares into 10' squares (that is, pretend you're playing on a grid of 10' squares, making sure that the origin corner is still the corner of one of the bigger squares), draw the line as before, and hit every creature in each 10' square it passes through.

The difficulty in creating a 10' wide line is part of the reason that while I think that RAI the range should be doubled, I'm still not convinced that the width should be.

A widened lightning bolt would basically be 2 lines smooshed together, choose one side or the other of your original line to affect.

Unfortunately I don't think the length of the bolt would double to 240 ft. only because you can't push the effect of the Area past the 120 ft. Range of the spell with the Widen metamagic feat, only Enlarge does that.

** spoiler omitted **

--Vrocket Science

Thank you for pointing this out to me. I had never noticed that spells weren't allowed to extend past their range (I thought that a Fireball could be cast with its origin at its max range, creating a normal 20' radius sphere).

Hey that's just how the spell and feat interact by the RAW. If you want to tweak it for your game go ahead. Nothing wrong with Rule zeroing at all.

But in organized play a Widened Lightning bolt is 10 feet wide and only goes 120ft. I mean I play by the rules as they're written. I only tweak something if it really, really needs it. I don't see any reason to change the spell.

But note that you've already changed the rules as written when you made it "2 lines smooshed together, choose one side or the other of your original line to affect." Widen Spell says "Any numeric measurements of the spell's area increase by 100%." Lightning Bolt does NOT say 120' x 5' line (or 120' x 5' x 5' line). The definition of a line also says nothing about a 5' width. And nowhere can you find a rule to smoosh two lines together.

As you said, there's nothing wrong with tweaking RAW for your game (and, indeed, if you want Widen Spell to affect your Lightning Bolt at all, you really, really need to tweak it). But RAW a Widened Lightning Bolt becomes: Range: 120'; Area: 240' line. By the definition of a line, it only affects creatures in the 5' squares the line passes through. By the definition of range, it doesn't affect anything farther than 120' away.

Edit: typo in last sentence.

By the very nature that a line effect affects ALL creatures in a 5' square it passes through is, quite essentially, a 5' wide path.

Now, if the description for a line effect stated that it struck a single creature in each 5' square it passes through, that would be completely different.

Note that it's inaccurate to call it a 5' wide path just because it affects all creatures in a 5' square it passes through. If a line barely passes through one corner of a 5' square, an extremely tiny creature in the opposite corner of the square is a little over 7' away (5 times the square root of 2, roughly 7.07). So if you're judging the width of the line by what it can affect, the line is 7' wide.

Except that that's only one side of the line; it can also barely pass through yet another corner and affect something 7' away on the other side of the line. So perhaps we should call it a 14' wide line?

Except that when it passes exactly through a corner, it doesn't affect either square on either side, not even that extremely tiny creature in the corner right next to it. Do we then call it a 0' wide line?

What we actually have is a line of undefined width, which (presumably for simplicity's sake) hits every creature it might possibly touch. I agree with those who have stated that since the width is not given as a numeric measurement, RAW the width of the line is not doubled.

Furthermore, how would you handle it if it was doubled? You can't just add squares on each side of the already affected squares; that's closer to tripling than doubling. The only reasonable way I can think of would be to draw two different lines from two different corners of your square and affect any creature in any square either line passed through, but that requires a change to the definition of a line spell, not a simple doubling of a numeric measurement.

Edit: ninja'd by AvalonXQ, who makes my same points much more succinctly.

Anyway, back to the topic: Is there any spell that it would be worth choosing to have for Magical Lineage, Lore Seeker, Preferred Spell, and Spell Perfection? I'm a fan of the combo, but maybe it's just not that great.

Is no one else a fan of being able to spontaneously cast a spell that you can spontaneously add metamagic to with an overall level reduced by 1, and then finally add a metamagic for free?

I like the idea of using the combo on a blast spell... but with (as you mentioned as a possibility) Dazing Spell as your free metamagic and Persistent Spell as the level reduced by 1. For the net cost of +1 to the level of the spell, this changes the blast into a save-twice-or-be-dazed-for-a-long-time.

As for the particular blast spell, the damage doesn't really matter for this combo (though if you get Quicken Spell, you could cast it an additional time each round just for its damage), only its level (for DC and length of daze), its area of effect (or number of targets), and (depending on whether or not Dazing Spell really works with spells that continue to inflict damage) its duration.

...

Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I like the idea of using Shadow Evocation as the blast spell.

Benefits: 5th level spell (highest possible in the combo) and great variety in terms of area of effect (and duration, if that matters), as you choose based on the need of the moment. Also has variety in terms of type of damage, to make sure you can daze even creatures immune to one particular type of damage.

Drawback: I'm not sure how Dazing Spell works with Shadow Evocation. If you cast Shadow Evocation as a Fireball, if a target succeeds on either of the two saving throws (Will and Reflex), do they avoid the dazing? If so, that's a huge drawback.

As I've indicated, I'm also not sure how Dazing Spell works with damage over time spells. If you cast Shadow Evocation as a Wall of Fire (which doesn't give an extra saving throw), and a target is damaged and dazed by the wall, will they continue to be dazed for as long as they continue to take damage and fail their saving throw? If this works, the ability to use Shadow Evocation as a Wall of Fire or Ball Lightning could be extremely powerful.