Is attacking through a wall of fire with a melee weapon (say from the cold side to the hot side) considered passing through it?
Nope. As long as you stay on the painless side then you will take no damage. If your weapon is long enough to reach an enemy on the hot side then go for it.
Beware of DMs who might want you to apply fire damage to your weapon. There is no RAW that says you should, but I can envision some DMs might think your plan is a little exploitative and their counterbalance will be to have you damage your weapon by sticking it into that Wall of Fire.
Or maybe not. I wouldn't. Maybe I'm warning against something that no DM would actually do.
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Beware of DMs who might want you to apply fire damage to your weapon. There is no RAW that says you should, but I can envision some DMs might think your plan is a little exploitative and their counterbalance will be to have you damage your weapon by sticking it into that Wall of Fire.
But if they do, just remind them that items with hardness take half damage from elemental effects and that issue will go away quickly.
Nope. As long as you stay on the painless side then you will take no damage. If your weapon is long enough to reach an enemy on the hot side then go for it.
Beware of DMs who might want you to apply fire damage to your weapon. There is no RAW that says you should, but I can envision some DMs might think your plan is a little exploitative and their counterbalance will be to have you damage your weapon by sticking it into that Wall of Fire.
Or maybe not. I wouldn't. Maybe I'm warning against something that no DM would actually do.
I'm the GM. ;-)
There's an Oracle of Flame in a scenario I'm running with a long hallway. >:) She's got Resist fire 10, so standing in front of the hot side won't hurt her at all, but pass through could a little.
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Another interesting question is the blade barrier spell. It says that creatures passing through take damage. Does that include a weapon passing through? Imaging a wall of moving and shifting blades, magically swinging through the air -- if you tried to attack through it, would your weapon be damaged?
Of course BB has the issue of whether the blade barrier occupies the squares itself or whether it runs along a grid line between two squares... (Sigh)
Another thing to keep in mind is that the wall of fire creates an opaque wall. My group ran into this recently. So, if you are attacking through the wall, you have to have some way to sense creatures without seeing them.
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If attended weapons are somehow immune to lava when a player sticks it in the pool of molten rock by a quirk of the rules as written, I think a DM is perfectly within their rights to say that sticking your wooden spear through a wall of fire is going to singe it a little. It has hardness and depending on the weapon may not take any damage depending on it's construction, but if the character is not passing through with it, it should not get the attending item exemption it gets when it passes through WITH the character.
Likewise, an enlarged character should not be able to attack through the wall without getting burned if he's using natural reach from the cold side. He's basically standing in the darn thing with part of his body sticking out.
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Another interesting question is the blade barrier spell. It says that creatures passing through take damage. Does that include a weapon passing through? Imaging a wall of moving and shifting blades, magically swinging through the air -- if you tried to attack through it, would your weapon be damaged?
Of course BB has the issue of whether the blade barrier occupies the squares itself or whether it runs along a grid line between two squares... (Sigh)
I believe a wall is technically just a line and needs to be placed a certain way in order to cross squares instead of the gridline(as when laying it through a ground of characters in lightning bolt formation).
Nope. As long as you stay on the painless side then you will take no damage. If your weapon is long enough to reach an enemy on the hot side then go for it.
Beware of DMs who might want you to apply fire damage to your weapon. There is no RAW that says you should, but I can envision some DMs might think your plan is a little exploitative and their counterbalance will be to have you damage your weapon by sticking it into that Wall of Fire.
Or maybe not. I wouldn't. Maybe I'm warning against something that no DM would actually do.
And people say I bend the rules. As far as I'm concerned anything that enters the wall gets burned. That's the whole point of the spell. Total concealment will also pose a problem.
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Kyle, I'm running the same game at Dragon Con. Yes, you can attack through the wall if necessary. Weapons probably aren't going to take enough damage to hamper them due to the half damage rule from elements. Be careful, though. That room can be deadly for the party as is.
Also, with the opaque quality of the wall, I would think total concealment is in play unless the character has another way to see through.
Kyle, I'm running the same game at Dragon Con. Yes, you can attack through the wall if necessary. Weapons probably aren't going to take enough damage to hamper them due to the half damage rule from elements. Be careful, though. That room can be deadly for the party as is.
Also, with the opaque quality of the wall, I would think total concealment is in play unless the character has another way to see through.
It's my interpretation that Gaze of Flames would allow an Oracle to see through a wall of fire.