Posted By Skyscraper on 12/19/2006 1:57 PM
There were actually many such occurences when we started playing. There are still the occasional ones, but they become more rare as we go on. Some examples of recent discoveries:

- I recently discovered that multilple rays of enfeeblement don't stack on a same victim (he just suffers from the worst ray, for him, alike bonuses). That should have been obvious, but for some reason it escaped me;
- After reading the errrata, i discovered also recently that a creature does not provide cover against melee attacks. (This is of course useful to know for reach attacks.) Thus, a cleric located one square behind his fighter ally who battles a hill giant in melee at a 5' distance (the giant having reach 10') will provoke an attack of opportunity if he casts a spell, since his fighter ally provides soft cover that doesn't offer cover from melee attacks.

This being said, it's kind of weird that a character would not provide cover to another located behind him in a situation where an ennemy is attacking with, say, a longspear (reach 10'). In other words, say the fighter from above is in the square in front of his cleric, and in front of them there is located an ennemy man-at-arms armed with the spear. The man-at-arms could attack the cleric, who would not benefit even from cover from the intervening fighter. I find that it would be quite hard to hit someone with a spear if he's behind another, no? I know that theoretically the longspear tip reaches beyond the fithter anyway, but swap that with a chain or any reach weapon, it rings weird.

Sky

FYI, in D&D minis, you do get cover from an ally against melee reach. Is it 100% certain that no cover applies for that in D&D itself?

Posted By nyjastul69 on 12/19/2006 12:30 PM
I had originally misread the AoO section. I read the within or out of a threatened space as in to or out of a threatened space. So win iniative, move to the creature and provoke an AoO. We did this for a session or two before saying, that's just not right.

Posted By IanB on 12/20/2006 11:31 AM
Guess we were doing it right after all, that's what I get for listening to Skyscraper!

Posted By Skyscraper on 12/20/2006 10:56 AM
You mean you never tried hitting a PC behind another with a reach melee attack such as from a giant or something?

Sky

Posted By Skyscraper on 12/19/2006 2:04 PM
oh, oh i got another

From a discussion on (these?) boards, i also got that the spell ice storm, that deals damage for one full round, should be construed as dealing damage:

a) when the spell starts; and
b) whenever a player enters the area of effect during the spell.

This kinda sucks, because a player that remains within the area of effect would in fact receive less damage from the spell than a player that receives initial damage from the spell, leave the area, and enters it again since he should then receive twice the damage while in fact remaining for less time in the area of effect. I haven't used the spell since, but i would probably house rule that a player can't receive damage twice from that spell, although that also feels not quite right since entering the area of effect would become a non-issue for those who already got some damage, sort of an immunity to the spell - albeit a very limited immunity, i grant you.

Sky