No two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart.

[Mysterious Stranger]

No two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart.

How do other people interpret this? It does not say must be within a 30 radius so I assume that it means that it is like a line that each person has to be within 30 ft. of the next in line. Looking at it though it could be interpreted either way.

[BiggDawg]

No two of which can be more than 30ft. apart is pretty clearly a circle. If no two can be more than 30ft. that is the same as saying a 15ft. radius circle because if you pick any two people affected (like say the two furthest) they can't be more than 30ft. apart. The main difference to this and a circle is that you don't have to define the center and measure out from it, you measure from the two farthest targets.

[Mysterious Stranger]

It does not say that all must be no further apart than 30 feet. That is where the confusion is. I could have a line of 6 characters all 20 ft. from each other. No two of which would be more than 30 ft. apart

I was hoping someone would be able to site an official rule.

[RainyDayNinja]

EDIT:

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

It does not say that all must be no further apart than 30 feet. That is where the confusion is. I could have a line of 6 characters all 20 ft. from each other. No two of which would be more than 30 ft. apart

I was hoping someone would be able to site an official rule.

Yes, two of them are more than 30 feet apart. The first and last are 100 feet from each other, the first and fifth are 80 feet from each other, and so on. Those aren't valid targets.

[j b 200]

Yes, if you draw a line between any 2 targets, the line cannot be more than 30ft long (6 squares or 4 diagonally). The other reason it is not "targets in 15ft radius" is because 1) it has a defined number of targets not all targets you can shove into the circle and 2) You are specifically targeting the creature which interacts differently with some abilities than just an AoE spell.

[brock, no the other one...]

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

It does not say that all must be no further apart than 30 feet. That is where the confusion is. I could have a line of 6 characters all 20 ft. from each other. No two of which would be more than 30 ft. apart.

Take your line. The two at either end are 100' apart. They violate the condition that 'no two' can be more than 30' apart.

For a circle, it would be a 30' diameter, not radius.

No two means ' consider all possible sets of two'.

[Claxon]

What big dogg said. Measure the farthest distance between two intended targets. Is it more than 30ft? If so, then they're not valid targets, try different targets. You may not be able to get all the desired targets with the casting of the spell.

[james maissen]

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

No two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart.

How do other people interpret this?

Some do this incorrectly by improperly negating the statement. An example is in this thread where a person is claiming a chain meets this criteria, which it does not.

It is NOT each target must be within 30ft of another target. THIS would allow such chains.

Instead it is saying that no two targets can exist with a certain condition... namely by being more than 30ft apart.

Other have given you reasons why this is not defined as a 30' diameter circle, and they are mostly game centered reasons. The spell is upon targets rather than an area, and as such does not have a center point (for purposes of dispels, antimagic, targeting, etc).

Now you might still wonder: why not just say: within a circle of radius 15'. To do this you would need to be able to target the center of this circle (treating it as an area effect rather than targeted). This might not be the case.. you might not have line of effect to said center, but could still have line of effect to all the targets within that circle.

-James

[Kirk]

I've run into a different interpretation of this rule with my party. Some feel that we should be measuring from the edge of one square to the far side of the other.
They say that two adjacent characters are 5 ft. apart (so that one can reach the far end of the other one's square for game effects).

And therefore "30 ft. apart" is twenty to twenty-five ft. of distance between them, depending on if you have to pay the extra diagonal to reach the back of one of the squares.

My explanation is lacking, so perhaps just plot it out on a piece of graph paper or bit of map to see what they're getting at.

Some are also looking to apply the same logic in other areas, such as jumping... so jumping from your current square past a 5' pit to the square beyond is a 10' leap... 15' if you have to go diagonally.

This isn't a slam, just me not being fully in agreement. Thoughts?

[bbangerter]

Kirk wrote:

I've run into a different interpretation of this rule with my party. Some feel that we should be measuring from the edge of one square to the far side of the other.

They say that two adjacent characters are 5 ft. apart (so that one can reach the far end of the other one's square for game effects).

And therefore "30 ft. apart" is twenty to twenty-five ft. of distance between them, depending on if you have to pay the extra diagonal to reach the back of one of the squares.

My explanation is lacking, so perhaps just plot it out on a piece of graph paper or bit of map to see what they're getting at.

Some are also looking to apply the same logic in other areas, such as jumping... so jumping from your current square past a 5' pit to the square beyond is a 10' leap... 15' if you have to go diagonally.

This isn't a slam, just me not being fully in agreement. Thoughts?

Pick any one target. He is 0' distance from himself. All squares adjacent to him are 5' distant from him. Two squares out are 10' (if horizontal/vertical) or 15' (if diagonal). Continue in this manner till you hit 30' - 6 squares in a straight vertical/horizontal line or 4 squares if all squares are diagonal. All of these are 30' from the target. Any square beyond these distances is more than 30'. This will result in 25' of squares between (but not including) two targets.