Xanathar and Area of Effect Shading

[SirBayard]

With the new Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the AoE template in FG for Cones isn't shaded properly for affected squares. On page 86 it specifically states "If any part of the square is under the template, that square is included in the area of effect." Only circles have the at least half the square must be covered to be affected rule. Seems it was always meant to be this way, per an old JC tweet: https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/10/15...eas-of-effect/

It's easy when in game to just adjudicate "It touches it counts, ignore shaded squares" but seems something that should maybe be fixed in the future?

[Zacchaeus]

Some discussion on cones here.

[LordEntrails]

I guess if the rules say any square the cone touches on is targeted then it would be nice to have FG updated to reflect that. But, as a GM I would stick with the 1/2 the square has to be covered, otherwise the cone effectively gets much bigger.

But, then again, I go with whatever FG gives me and don't worry about little things like this, they play both for and against both sides equally.

[Rhym]

Technically, XGtE only provides two new alternative methods. You can still use the original PHB method.

However the half-square method gets kinda finicky in FG imo. You have to move tokens around to determine if the ground beneath them is actually shaded and it can take some time trying to position the effect. The template method from p.86 seems a lot quicker.

*edit* I did some testing and a fireball gains 46% area using this. So that's pretty huge.

[SirBayard]

Technically, XGtE only provides two new alternative methods. You can still use the original PHB method.

As linked above from the JC tweet that is a year before XGtE came out, the PHB method has always been "all touched squares for any AoE except circles." Fireball doesn't change at all, as circles still require half a square or more to count, but all lines, cones, and squares expand in affected volume as the half square rule has never applied to them even before XGtE came out.

EDIT: Like I said above though, it's easy to adjudicate the "if it touches it counts" without looking at shaded squares for non-circles, just popped into my mind that the auto-shading in FG doesn't technically line up with the 5e ruleset.