chain lightning and walls

[exid]

i read the rules supplement again, and understand it now...
"the wall must be in LoS and an adjacent zone must be in range"
it seems natural to me that the zone in range must be in LoS... but it's not what this rule says.

a 1-2 range attacker in an adjacent zone sees the wall and has the other adjacent zone in range (without LoS, but that is not a problem!).
  i understand now!
thanks! (and sorry for the time i needed)

[Halewijn]

I understand what you mean, and apart from it being crazy, your arguments do make sense. 

However, it does not make sense at all that A-->B is an ok distance for an attack, but B--> A is not.

[Zuberi]

I understand what you mean, and apart from it being crazy, your arguments do make sense. 

However, it does not make sense at all that A-->B is an ok distance for an attack, but B--> A is not.

Agreed. That's why I've been calling it unintuitive. Illogical may also apply, to draw upon my inner Vulcan. I have had discussions with people regarding these issues before, and I know it is something that irks Arcane Wonders somewhat as well, but right now this is the best solution we've got. Luckily, you don't currently have to worry about effects coming from walls except in the case of Chain Lightning, so that's not a very common headache at least.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I understand what you mean, and apart from it being crazy, your arguments do make sense. 

However, it does not make sense at all that A-->B is an ok distance for an attack, but B--> A is not.

Agreed. That's why I've been calling it unintuitive. Illogical may also apply, to draw upon my inner Vulcan. I have had discussions with people regarding these issues before, and I know it is something that irks Arcane Wonders somewhat as well, but right now this is the best solution we've got. Luckily, you don't currently have to worry about effects coming from walls except in the case of Chain Lightning, so that's not a very common headache at least.

Why don't they just make zone borders be 0.5 zones away from adjacent zones? Or just count to and from adjacent zones for all purposes?

[Zuberi]

If we count walls as half zones it doesn't really fix anything without us dramatically changing the game, because the game currently is not setup to handle half zones. All measurements are in full zones. If we say that a wall is 0.5 zones away from you, that's well and good, but we still don't know which spells can target it. A spell with a range of 0-1 seems like a no brainer, but what about a spell with a range of 0-0? Is the wall too far? How about a range of 1-1? Is the wall too close? If we limit ourselves to only 0-1 range effects it significantly reduces our ability to hit the wall and creates a very unique targeting requirement both to and from the wall where a range of values is needed rather than just a single target value.

Counting the adjacent zones as range 0 from the wall could be done in a few different ways. The most extreme would be to say that the wall exists in both zones, retconning walls out from their in between zone status. This actually has huge repercussions for the game which may not all be immediately obvious. First off it makes walls more vulnerable as they are now subject to zone effects which they were never designed to be. Conversely, this makes zone effects more powerful than they were ever meant to be and undercosted as they are more likely to hit a greater number of targets than they would have before. It would also allow guards to prevent attacks against walls. These are just a few things for starters to illustrate that the game is not designed to handle it.

Less extreme, we could say that the wall is still between zones but that the adjacent zones still count as range 0. This isn't really any simpler of a solution than saying they're range 1 though. In fact, it's more complicated. We still have the problem with distances getting measured differently to and from the wall, to start with. A creature standing adjacent to the wall can hit the wall with a range 1-1 attack, but the wall would not be able to do likewise. On top of the problem not being fixed, we now have to completely redefine what range 0 means when the source doesn't have to be in the same zone any more.

Basically, the issue is complicated and there are no simple solutions. That's not to discourage proposals, just to reaffirm that we aren't completely bonkers, lol.

[ringkichard]

Measuring range for attacks from Walls makes me grumpy.

Consider the following layout, with zones labeled W,X,Y,Z and the wall in red.
[W][X]|[Y][Z]

You, a mage in zone W, can cast Chain Lightning at the wall, because chain lightning has a range of 0-1, and zone X, which the wall borders, is a distance of 1 zone away. Likewise, a mage in zone Z could cast Chain Lightning and hit the wall because of the distance of zone Y. So... it kinda stands to reason that Chain Lightning can be cast from W at the Wall, and then hit a target in Z on the first hop.

Well, ok, maybe.

Attacking Walls
A creature in either of the zones bordering a wall may make a melee attack against that wall. Ranged attacks may target a wall if either of the adjacent zones is in range, and the wall is in LoS. Walls do not occupy a zone, and are not affected by Zone Attacks or spells that target a zone.

Note that you never actually check that a wall is in range of a ranged attack, only that one of the two adjacent zones is. And there's nothing written about attacks where the wall is the source.

COUNTING DISTANCES
When a creature moves, or when you make an attack, you will need to count distance across the arena. The distance, or “range,” is always counted from one adjacent zone to another (only horizontally and vertically, never diagonally).

Sooo.... range is always counted from one adjacent zone to another. There's no legal way to count range for an attack from a zone border.

Now, this is pretty clearly an oversight, and as far as I know, it only effects one card, Chain Lightning.

Basically, it comes down to this:
Can you hit a wall with a 0-0 ranged attack if you're in an adjacent zone? (Yes.)
Can a wall hit anything other than itself with a 0-0 ranged attack?

The available choices right now are either that 0-0 can't hit anything if it comes from a wall, or that a wall in the center of the long edge of the board is only 1 zone from either of that edge's corners. Neither of these are great options, but for now, for attacks where a wall is the source, I believe the rule is that you have to count as if the first zone is at range 1, if for no other reason than that the wall is not in the target's zone, so can't hit it with a range 0-0 attack.

[exid]

that's how i see it too.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Measuring range for attacks from Walls makes me grumpy.

Consider the following layout, with zones labeled W,X,Y,Z and the wall in red.
[W][X]|[Y][Z]

You, a mage in zone W, can cast Chain Lightning at the wall, because chain lightning has a range of 0-1, and zone X, which the wall borders, is a distance of 1 zone away. Likewise, a mage in zone Z could cast Chain Lightning and hit the wall because of the distance of zone Y. So... it kinda stands to reason that Chain Lightning can be cast from W at the Wall, and then hit a target in Z on the first hop.

Well, ok, maybe.

Attacking Walls
A creature in either of the zones bordering a wall may make a melee attack against that wall. Ranged attacks may target a wall if either of the adjacent zones is in range, and the wall is in LoS. Walls do not occupy a zone, and are not affected by Zone Attacks or spells that target a zone.

Note that you never actually check that a wall is in range of a ranged attack, only that one of the two adjacent zones is. And there's nothing written about attacks where the wall is the source.

COUNTING DISTANCES
When a creature moves, or when you make an attack, you will need to count distance across the arena. The distance, or “range,” is always counted from one adjacent zone to another (only horizontally and vertically, never diagonally).

Sooo.... range is always counted from one adjacent zone to another. There's no legal way to count range for an attack from a zone border.

Now, this is pretty clearly an oversight, and as far as I know, it only effects one card, Chain Lightning.

Basically, it comes down to this:
Can you hit a wall with a 0-0 ranged attack if you're in an adjacent zone? (Yes.)
Can a wall hit anything other than itself with a 0-0 ranged attack?

The available choices right now are either that 0-0 can't hit anything if it comes from a wall, or that a wall in the center of the long edge of the board is only 1 zone from either of that edge's corners. Neither of these are great options, but for now, for attacks where a wall is the source, I believe the rule is that you have to count as if the first zone is at range 1, if for no other reason than that the wall is not in the target's zone, so can't hit it with a range 0-0 attack.

Hmm. While it works functionally, it's very confusing and unintuitive. But aside from chain lightning, attacks originating from zone borders never attack anything that isn't passing through them. It might be a good idea to change the wording of chain lightning so that the subsequent "strikes" are actually originating from some sort of  condition marker, which can move to "a creature or conjuration in its zone, in an adjacent zone, or in a zone border". If something has the marker on it, they receive the attack, and then the marker either moves somewhere else or goes away. And of course the marker can only be placed on a target once per chain lightning card.

Although using a marker like that and having it make the attack seems more like an incantation effect than an attack spell. The effect of chain lightning is kind of like an extended version of sweeping. Maybe you can give it the "multistrike" trait and then say that every time this attack damages a creature or conjuration, you must lower the attack dice and effect die by 1, or the attack ends.

And instead of range 0-1 creature or conjuration, you could have it be range 0-0, say in the card text to CHOOSE either the source of the attack's zone or an adjacent zone or zone border. Target creature or conjuration in that zone or zone border receives the attack, and then if you want to make another strike, it becomes the source of the attack (sort of like a druid using a vine marker to cast her spells originating from them) although you still control the attack they're making (like with reverse attack).

[exid]

but the conjurations attack now!
and i dream of a watter wall in P&S, that would attack 0-1 range (that mean in the adjacents zones) with watter arm that would bring suffocate markers!