In our last Pathfinder gaming session, one of the other players and I got into a somewhat heated dispute over a rules interpretation.
The specifics of the situation:
One of the players casts Sleet Storm on a group of 5 hill giants, blocking vision into the area. The other player was flying above them. I suggested that he use a wand of fireballs on them. He said that he couldn't do that, as he has to have Line of Sight to the grid intersection where the fireball would originate.
I argued that was not the case, that the fireball would need an unobscured line of effect to the grid intersection, but being able to see it was not an actual requirement. Specifically, he could point, aim, guesstimating where it would hit the ground, and fire the spell off. While it might not hit precisely where he wanted, it should be within a square or two.
His counterargument was that the grid intersection was a target, and that the rules specifically say you had to see a target (or touch it) in order to affect them.
Anyway, we did something different - aiming at the top of the Sleet Storm which would affect the giants as they are 10' tall.
We are still of the opinion that each others' interpretation is totally (or near totally) wrong.
I just wanted to see what other people think. Using his interpretation it would be impossible to send fireballs through obscuring mists, etc. and that just seems wrong to me.
This brings up an odd question of: does a fireball explode in a sphere in a 3d space?
If yes, then just aim at the top of the cloud, if not I think he has a point about line of effect.
Of course he could fire his fireball, in game you set the lenght the fireball travels before explodes (for example 100 feet in front of me) and then the fireball travels that distance and ti explodes. Of course because he couldn't see where he wanted the fireball to explode then there is a chance of exploding prematurely because of an obstacle (let's say a stone dome created by a stone wall spell after the sleet storm came into effect).
You only need line of effect to any point of origin spell. Fireball is a point of origin spell. You need line of sight for spells that have targets, like Magic Missile. I hope that helps. /salute!
if trying to make a specific target (i.e. the grid intersection) and there are things blocking you have to make a range touch attack with the fireball to hit the place
That came up, actually, in the discussion - the DM brought up the arrow slit example. I thought that was reasonable - if you missed, you hit something else.
This brings up an odd question of: does a fireball explode in a sphere in a 3d space?
If yes, then just aim at the top of the cloud, if not I think he has a point about line of effect.
We did end up aiming at the top of the Sleet Storm. His point wasn't about line of effect - we had that. It was about line of sight, which was obscured.
