In one of my games, the GM has ruled that wording of the spells means it can only be a circle or straight line. His game and I have zero problem with that. This is not about arguing against his ruling.
But it got me thinking about whether I've been doing it wrong in all my other games as GM or player.
We've used walls of stone to make a box around a downed ally to keep the bad guys from finishing them off. Zig-zagged a wall of fire across a large cavern so the opposition had to cross multiple lines to close with us. Wall of force in an 'X' shape to split the enemy into 4 groups. Wall of wind as sorta half pipe around the army rappelling down the cliff to protect them from archers. Etc... We even had a wizard that kinda specialized in walls for just some of these uses.
Have we been doing this wrong all along? Only a straight line or circle seems really limiting for a high level spell.
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The effect is: "wall whose area is up to one 10-ft. square/level" The magic section doesn't define the form of the wall, and while the text implies that it is a single wall, there is nothing explicitly saying that it can't be 2 joined walls making an X shape.
I, as a GM, would limit it to a single flat shape or a circle but it isn't clear at all how complex the shape can be.
Note that wall of stone is different, it must merge with existing rock surfaces and can be shaped into complex shapes, but that is in the text of the spell and is not pertinent to different spells.
Each wall spell has its own "shaping rules" in the descriptions, and/or most oftentimes they appear in the "effect" portion of the spell as a shorter description. There is no "one size fits all" rule for Wall Shapes, though.
Usually the "shaping rules" reference being 10ftx10ft or 20ftx20ft squares per caster level and tethered to the sides, like Wall of Stone must be tethered or merged to an actual wall that has stone in it, but it can take any shape or form you desire, or Wall of Ice must be anchored on either side and can be straight or hemisphere shaped. Conversely, Wall of Fire and Wall of Sound don't need to be tethered on either side, and in fact can be a circle/ring with a radius or a straight line, etc.
Here's the point: you're going to have to go into each individual spell to find the shaping rules for each particular wall spell, because every single wall spell has its own shaping rules.
So as far as your GM just hand-waiving this into a "one size fits all" rule of all walls are simply straight lines or rings/circles, then that is his own house rule, and frankly its a shapoopy rule.
Side Note: when you formed a Wall of Force into an X shape, that violates Wall of Force's shaping rules. It has to be a flat plane up to one 10ft square/level and must be continuous and unbroken. Your Wind Wall was fine, you can shape it in just about any way you want so long as the wall is one continuous shape. Your Wall of Stone example was fine too, you can shape it anyway you want, so long as it's "anchored" to stone; you can even create it as a bridge and make it with buttresses, or with battle positions and crenelations. Your wall of fire as zig-zag wall example is a little iffy, but I'd allow it. YMMV with different DM's on a zig-zagged wall of fire though.
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Side Note: when you formed a Wall of Force into an X shape, that violates Wall of Force's shaping rules. It has to be a flat plane up to one 10ft square/level and must be continuous and unbroken. ....
It's been a few years. I don't remember the exact details. He may have closed off 1 or 2 sides of the 'X' to make it a continuous line.
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So as far as your GM just hand-waiving this into a "one size fits all" rule of all walls are simply straight lines or rings/circles, then that is his own house rule, and frankly its a shapoopy rule. ...
I guess I don't really know if he meant it to apply to all wall spells with no regard to the text. I had used the zig-zag wall of fire on some opponents with little-to-no ranged options to make them take some significant burns to engage us. He allowed during the fight, but with some further thought, he felt that didn't agree with the RAI for the spell.
I really hadn't looked in detail at all the 'wall' spells. I just checked a couple and they had almost identical wording. I will have to go give all of them a detail check and see which ones seem like they are really useful.
I will say that, by the level you can cast wall of fire, it's damage is quite underwhelming if you can't set it up to make them cross it more than once.
I will say that, by the level you can cast wall of fire, it's damage is quite underwhelming if you can't set it up to make them cross it more than once.
The cool part about Wall of Fire is that it deals damage every round in a REALLY wide area, up to 20ft away from the wall, so if you're falling behind in Action Economy vs. an overwhelming force, you can absolutely obliterate their Action Economy with this one Standard Action.
Set it up as a Ring shape on top of enemies up to 100ft +10ft/lvl away, and use it like a pinball machine to split enemy forces in half, or after they've crossed your chokepoint to trap half of them on either side. Use it like a fiery little funhouse to bisect opposing forces if you think they can overwhelm you with numbers.
It's not really about the damage per se, it's about forcing 17 move actions in non-ideal directions in the exact round you cast it, and anyone who doesn't comply with your forced mass exodus gets to take damage every round.
Granted, there are about 40 spells that are better than Wall of Fire, but it's not completely useless. Get it on a Scroll and save it for a rainy day :P
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(S) Shapeable: If an area or effect entry ends with “(S),” you can shape the spell. A shaped effect or area can have no dimension smaller than 10 feet. Many effects or areas are given as cubes to make it easy to model irregular shapes. Three-dimensional volumes are most often needed to define aerial or underwater effects and areas.
Depends on the spell.
Wall of stone and wind wall are shapeable.
Wall of force and wall of fire are not (though wall of fire explicitly can be a ring instead of a line).