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Just out of curiosity. I searched the messageboards but couldn't find any relevant topic.
The Core Rulebook states that the Area of the glyph of warding spell shall be "5 sq. ft./level" (see page 290).
But, shouldn't it be "25 sq. ft./level" or "a 5-foot-sided square/level" or "a 5 ft. x 5 ft. square/level" if it means you can get one square per your level on the battlegrid map?
If they were wanting a single battle map square, then yes those would have been the correct terms. But, since the area is specifically "object touched or up to 5 sq. ft./level", they mean "object touched or up to 5 sq. ft./level". Luckily, since a normal character can't cast this spell until caster level 5, it comes out to 25 square feet, or one battle map square.
I don't see a whole lot of confusion, except trying to find some intent behind the spell which may or may not be there. Since it didn't chance from it's 3.5 incarnation and could have, I am going to safely assume that the fine folks at Paizo meant for it to be "object touched or up to 5 sq. ft./level".
The problem is that you can't actually affect any area less than 25 square feet in game. The text definitely needs clarified, because right now it would be much better reading "1 square/5 levels". 5 square feet is like saying fireball's damage increases by 0.1d6 per level.
Actually, in game, you can effect whatever area sizes you want. We've got "fine" sized creatures that fit hundreds to the square. We've got walls that are two feet wide. Most games don't like dealing with things less than a five foot square because it either requires extra math on their part or because it doesn't fit neatly on the battle map they bought at the game shop. I have other things to do today or I would sit and comb through the core spells for other times when non-standard areas and distances are used. But, as I said before, it hasn't changed since its 3.5 version and could have if the Paizo guys wanted it to be anything other than "object touched or up to 5 sq. ft./level". Since it has a casting time of 10 minutes, it's obviously not a combat spell, so its use might never even appear on a battle map because you've decided to ward a door or a chest or something as a safety precaution.
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The problem is that you can't actually affect any area less than 25 square feet in game.
I thought the same as Zurai, and that made me post this question.
But,
Luckily, since a normal character can't cast this spell until caster level 5, it comes out to 25 square feet, or one battle map square.
Actually, in game, you can effect whatever area sizes you want. We've got "fine" sized creatures that fit hundreds to the square. We've got walls that are two feet wide.
Aha! I guess what Mauril said must be the reason why the area description is as such.
Zurai and Mauril, thanks for your helpful comments!
Actually, in game, you can effect whatever area sizes you want. We've got "fine" sized creatures that fit hundreds to the square.
Right -- they fit hundreds to the square. Pretty much all measurements in game are given in 5' chunks. The game is NOT set up to allow movement of less than 5' at a time, which is required to adjudicate an effect that wards a 5'x1' strip of space. So the glyph takes up only a small part of a square; how do you adjudicate someone who's standing in that square setting off the glyph?
If they set it off automatically, then the glyph might as well be some arbitrarily huge number of squares affected per level because I can hit 12 squares (probably more, actually, but I'm too lazy to graph it out) with 5 square feet by reducing the width to a 1" strip.
There's no way to determine, within the rules, whether a character exists in a specific sub-portion of a square, because there is no such thing as a sub-portion of a square. You can have multiple small creatures in a square, but they never actually occupy a space smaller than a square. A fine creature entering the 5' square occupied by an enemy fine creature provokes an attack of opportunity even though it's theoretically possible that they are actually at opposite corners of said square with their 1' spaces and not logically adjacent at all. Why? Because the rules don't support units of measurement smaller than 5 feet. When you cast a fireball, which has a 20 foot radius, you don't affect partial squares, even though the actual circle formed by the spell's area does extend into more squares than those shown on the "20 foot radius burst" diagram. Not even if those squares contain tiny, diminutive, or fine sized creatures that could actually fit entirely within the "extra" radius of the burst.
The rules should not enforce a rule that they do not describe or support. Like I said, this is exactly like having a spell that deals fractional dice of damage per caster level. There's no way to adjudicate that within the rules, just like there's no way to adjudicate 1' wide spaces within the rules.
As for being a combat spell: it's not going to be cast in combat, but it certainly can reasonably be assumed to trigger in combat, which means it needs to easily interface with the combat rules.
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Wow, we posted at almost the same moment on the same topic from the other sides of the earth ;-) (I'm from Japan)
What Zurai described about the fraction problem sounds quite reasonable, and I guess, if from that view point, as Zurai said earlier,
The text definitely needs clarified, because right now it would be much better reading "1 square/5 levels".
..."1 square/5 levels" is more handlable in a practical play situation. But, maybe the current description is still acceptable, since the practicality in handling the rules can be maintained through your DM's wits.
I'm a bit sick of "Updates" theses days, as I also play 4e. :P
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To make things even more complicated, the spell isn't limited to square shaped areas.
"A glyph can be placed to conform to any shape up to the limitations of your total square footage."
So at 5th level you could make a glyph 1'x25'?
If it is activated by any who pass, what happens if they are flying? How high does it affect?
For objects it makes sense, but for areas I think this spell needs to have a shapeable area similar to the illusion spells.
The way you deal with non-5'x5' areas is the same way you deal with walls. Wall of Ice states that in one form, that it is "1 inch thick per caster level." How do you deal with a 16 inch thick wall? This doesn't fit neatly into the 5'x5' squares. You have to work around it. If your player wants to make a 1'x5' glyph, make him pick an edge so that passing through that edge triggers the glyph. A creature occupying that square, but not passing through the glyphed edge does not trigger the glyph unless his form would fill every inch of the square (such as with an ooze or swarm).
There is a reason that there are GMs with these games. You are there to figure out how what the rules say interacts with what your players have done, or are attempting to do.
In original 1e AD&D, things were not measured in grid squares but in inches, the same way most table top miniature war games are done. There were no problems then with things that didn't fit into neat little squares, because there were only squares out of convenience. 3.x and Pathfinder have stuck with scaled distance. 4e moved to measuring things in squares. If this were 4e (which I have played extensively) then I would agree that things would be difficult if they didn't fit into neat little squares. Not so with Pathfinder. If it doesn't fit into neat squares on your battle map, pull out a dry-erase marker and mark it in. Cut your 5'x5' squares into 25 1'x1' squares if it helps you.
Glyph of Warding works the way it is and, because it is not constrained by excessive metagame principles (beyond caster level), I think it works very well.
So there's no obligation to actually provide rules for things that are in the rule book? Let's say there was a core feat that read, "You gain a +2 bonus to all saves vs purple". You'd be OK with that?
Well, as I am not playing some sort of ersatz Green Lantern, I wouldn't bother taking it. The rules, however, do cover dealing with areas that are not in 5'x5' squares. This is why they refer to distances and areas in "feet" and not "squares" (a la 4e DnD). If at no other point in the core rules were distances measured in feet, then it would be a problem. But since every reference to distance and area that I can find refer to "feet" (or some extension or contraction thereof), there is only a problem of having to use your brain to figure out if a condition has been met. The reason that movement is limited to 5 foot increments is because WotC (when they took over with 3e) wanted to increase the sales of their battle mats and miniatures and those one inch bases/grids worked well for five foot increments (the 1e/2e distance inside dungeons). Paizo carried this legacy over. However, this again, does not mean that everything in the universe is limited to five foot increments.
Also, I would be annoyed with that feat being in core unless the other 7 basic colors (black, white, red, orange, yellow, green and blue) were also covered. And then I would make sure to take at least one of them. You never know when you might need "protection from red".
Funny how the game designers consistently go too low when it comes to square footage and cubic footage...almost like they didn't fully understand the terms when they wrote the rules...