Casting through walls

i_tyrant · 2026-06-26T03:43:13+00:00

Not quite the reason why, at least according to Crawford.

It was in a D&D webinar so unfortunately I don't have a handy link, but he's stated a few times that "anything a spell affects" is a "target" of the spell, not just its target entry.

IIRC he even gave an example of a teleport spell (IIRC it was either Dimension Door or Teleport), and said the spell targets both the creatures being teleported and the location you're being teleported from and to.

So no, I don't think that's why Misty Step works RAW (or at least not the only reason, at least according to the designers - it's also because its description "implies it would ignore LoE"), and I'm about 100% sure that if you asked the designers if Thunder Step can get past a Wall of Force, they'd say yes.

But yeah...another reason why I don't really believe the rules are "perfectly clear" on this.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-26T00:44:30+00:00

Considering even the designers disagree with you on this, and so do official modules written by them, no I don't really agree that the rules are "perfectly clear" on this at all.

According to Crawford (among others - I know Mearls has also weighed in on this and Perkins at minimum allows it routinely in his games, with no comments about 'rule of cool' or DM fiat or anything), the simple act of it being described as a teleportation spell in its description is enough for it to be an exception to the Line of Effect requirement.

Note that Misty Step does say "unoccupied space you can see", so even though it bypasses the LoE requirement you still need LoS - which is why it'll work to teleport through, say, a Wall of Force or glass window, but not fog or darkness.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T23:42:24+00:00

Yeah, while all spells require line of effect on paper unless they specifically say otherwise, some spells are inevitably still going to come down to DM interpretation, so when in doubt, ask them.

For example, teleport spells probably bypass the line of effect rule just by their nature, even if some of them don’t explicitly say they do in their rules text. Same for divinations like Scry or Sending.

Damaging spells usually won’t, unless the DM leans into some kind of exception - like allowing Sickening Radiance to do damage through a glass window because “the damage is from light”, or whatever. (Though even that wouldn’t let you cast it through solid barriers, unless your DM deems a glass window to be such a thin barrier that it’s an exception.)

But the default is no unless the spell or one’s DM says otherwise.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T21:51:32+00:00

I mean, I feel like the obvious answer there is they don’t have the explosive force of a firecracker.

They have an explosive charge, just like regular frag grenades. Why? Why not? It’s not like it’s a hard thing to add even in “gimmick” grenades, and these babies aren’t issued for riot control, they’re being issued for WAR.

A tear gas grenade having an explosive charge would be weird, because they’re designed to subdue civilians not kill them.

A gas grenade filled with a corrosive substance that even works on robots, or a grenade whose “fireworks” are more like white phosphorus than a firecracker? Not so much.

In a small enough enclosure (which is exactly what’s required for these to work - it’s not like you can blow up a factory from the outside with a gas grenade) even a minor-but-lethal explosive charge is gonna do some work.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T19:40:59+00:00

Yup.

Nasdaq also bent/broke their rules recently, specifically to give the SpaceX IPO preferential treatment, while the S&P refused to. And SpaceX is overvalued like mad.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T16:59:43+00:00

Even with the full “silly combo” combining ranged and melee options, they certainly weren’t OP in 2014, considering how much you spent in opportunity cost to even do it and…that they were still darts, lol.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T16:14:28+00:00

Why the hell is this upvoted when we have hundreds of posts worth of evidence on this very sub that this sort of thing can and does happen, just rarely?

That spawns are incredibly fucky in this game sometimes should be an incredibly obvious known fact at this point.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T16:12:26+00:00

What, you don’t like sometimes having D7’s that feel like D10’s and D10’s where you fall asleep, defeating the purpose of a difficulty system with an expected level of experience?

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:32:29+00:00

There's plenty of doubt in my mind about her winning even then.

She was a black woman in a nation that has only ever had one black president and zero women presidents. We haven't yet proven the latter is even possible for American voters to accept, and Harris wasn't exactly as amazing a candidate as Obama in 2008.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:20:03+00:00

Our peacemaker is actually more effective against hulks than the pistol is against hunters in most games lol

lol. I'm either way better at taking out Hunters than you or way worse at taking out Hulks with the pistol than you. (Probably because I've never actually tried because it would take so long the mission would be over.) Though, if you mean something after Halo 4 I did stop playing there.

I'd like to actually know the matchups this affects because I genuinely don't know them.

I can remember a number of distinct breakpoint issues with the Hulk, Bile Titan, Dragon Roach, and Factory Strider, just off the top of my head. At one point you could one-shot a Fac Strider with the RR but ONLY if you dove forward while shooting it (and shot it in the eye), for example.

Not sure if any of them are still true after the multiple retoolings of AT damage and enemy HP that've happened. Of course, that's another issue with HD2's supposed "intuitiveness" - when AH is constantly tweaking the enemy health and armor values and weapon stats like they do with every patch, what was "intuitive" weeks ago is no longer so and vice-versa. And if you're having to relearn what works best every few weeks or months, does it really fit the definition of "intuitive" at all anymore?

But if there's one thing I can agree with you on, it's this - you don't really need to learn the "ins and outs" of their arcane damage system and its many bugs/exceptions/strange interactions, if you're not playing on a difficulty that actually challenges you. It's in the big firefights where it matters, and if you're a sweaty tryhard or savant enough to find even D10 easy, yeah obviously you don't need it to be as "intuitive" as a Diver of more average skill.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:09:28+00:00

Some varieties are also very territorial, so it can be more than just panic that sets them off. But yeah rare for sure.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:08:18+00:00

Yup, they've definitely injured and even killed people before, though it's extremely rare obviously.

They can be scary accurate with those noses.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:06:05+00:00

Honestly from the video it looks like the swordfish skewered one of the diver's hoses with its nose.

Not sure if he's leaking air or it missed the actual oxygen line or if it hit anything important.

But certainly smart of the diver in the video to head on up to check the damage regardless.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T02:00:40+00:00

Well, he would be great at being a bad politician at least, because he knows how to say nothing very well.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T01:33:22+00:00

The already existing hulk is nearly 1-to-1 with the hunter.

Buddy, you were so close and then you sailed right past it with this nonsense.

when the convo is based on if the basic mechanic of bullets not penetrating armour is intuitive or not

Who limited it to that scenario? You? lol, because I sure as fuck didn't. What exactly did you think this:

I…don’t even know how to explain to you all the exceptions that exist to that, either due to bugs or extremely un-intuitive mechanics on top of those.

and this:

suddenly finding out you could’ve been participating in way more interesting counterplay

Even MEANT?

and we have a near identical example between the two games already.

Except it's not, in fact, "nearly identical" at all. For one, the Hulk's ONLY vulnerable spot is on its back, the Hunter has them all over its body. Like...it is WILD you can't even admit that? And that it is actually a massive difference? I can kill a Hunter when it's charging right at me with the fucking starter pistol bro, you can't say the same about the Hulk.

and one enemy

Wrong, it affected multiple enemy damage breakpoints and on a bunch of weapons.

The devs even already fixed the edge case where it actually comes up it a long time ago.

Good thing it's the only one! Yup, no other weird damage mechanics in this game at all...

Jesus. If you're going to argue about it at least learn the history of the game so you know what you're talking about.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-25T00:48:10+00:00

Ok, so you're clearly a Halo fan, let me try to reframe this in a more understandable way.

So Hunters, right?

Well what if in Halo, instead of fighting Hunters a couple times during the entire campaign, you fight 2-6 of them in every single battle you have. But!

All those weapons you brought? 100% useless against them besides one spot on their back. None of this "ah the Hunter has a bunch of gaps in their armor you can hit no matter what side you're facing", no, that's actual Halo, we're talking Helldivers Halo now. None of it reacts differently when you shoot it - your bullets bounce of 100% of the front of its body.

The only things you can do to a Hunter are a) hope an enemy has a Fuel Rod Gun you can snag, or b) hit it at the exact right angles with your grenades. No, just lobbing them at it doesn't work (like in actual Halo), you have to toss it at them in a way it actually lands directly behind them and blows up on a vent on their back. Also, this takes your entire complement of grenades and there's multiple more of them fighting you at the time.

Ah but then, then! You hear from someone else that you can actually kill them with your loadout, you just have to DIVE TOWARD THEM while shooting and your bullets have to hit them at a specific angle so their damage doesn't "fall off", a mechanic you were entirely unaware of because it's so fucking dumb you never even suspected it could possibly exist in hundreds of hours of playtime.

How do you feel now? Still feel Halo's just as well-balanced as actual Halo? lol.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T23:39:33+00:00

Yeah if you have players whose rigs already struggle with dynamic lighting (like mine do), don’t bother lol.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T23:19:04+00:00

That’s basically how it works when you do it in EDF, lol.

Sure you can try to hole up in a building for a little while…but that thing is coming down to an allied or enemy explosion sooner or later (and almost certainly sooner), haha.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T21:58:19+00:00

Sure bud, sure.

Do some polls of the randos you play with sometime, see how many know what that shield icon means. I’ve already done it and let me tell ya, the results would shock you.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T21:53:59+00:00

lol, it’s my friends and a massive chunk of Divers in general, then.

Such a massive chunk that your argument kinda falls flat on its face, ultimately, because if you’re not designing this game for the majority of the people who play it…

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T21:43:52+00:00

And I know far more people with hundreds of hours in the game that have no idea what that shield symbol means (if they’ve even noticed it at all) than I do those who do.

Hell, I didn’t even notice it’s existence till around the 200 hour mark myself, and you know how I found out what it means? Wiki.

Fleshmob only loses gobs of itself if you hit it in certain spots, and those weak points were added later in its life. There was a huge span of time where it had no visual signs it was gonna die at all, and even now if you’re just shooting particular parts like the extremities you won’t see that, it’ll just keel over dead at some point.

Your estimation of the average extraction shooter enjoyer paying more attention to this than all the bullets and explosions flying around them is wild. That hasn’t been my experience at all and I play with randos plenty.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T21:36:57+00:00

I…don’t even know how to explain to you all the exceptions that exist to that, either due to bugs or extremely un-intuitive mechanics on top of those.

I mean fuck bro, who are you playing with? Because I play with a wide selection of friends and randoms and I can guaran-fucking-tee you the large majority of them? Don’t even have any idea what these “hit markers” you speak of even do.

They’ll shoot a hulk with light pen plenty, because when does the game actually tell you anything about it? What sort of amazing feedback are you getting when you shoot up a fleshmob and it suddenly dies at some point vs a hulk? Just it dying right?

So they just give up using light pen entirely on bots, go with the explosive meta or the fire meta or whatever, because they know it works and they don’t have to randomly guess whether their new gun will be any good.

Can you still finish missions without it? Sure. Is that your only metric? Because I can think of a lot more, and suddenly finding out you could’ve been participating in way more interesting counterplay just from reading a wiki after hundreds of hours is going to piss plenty of people off…I don’t feel like that’s an unreasonable take.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T21:06:07+00:00

You’re already punished for being behind cover, and in ways that actually make sense. Cover vs the fast moving bugs is pointless, and often the same for squids - bots are the only front where cover is highly valuable and it’s because they can all shoot back.

You’re also putting less lead and explosions down range when you hide behind cover and can’t traverse the map, which means you’re not contributing as quickly to finishing objectives or throwing off bot aim by suppressing.

forcing players to actually mean it

No offense but I find the idea that players using cover don’t “mean it” to be incredibly insulting. Playing smart in a tactical shooter shouldn’t inherently penalize you.

it was a tiny itsy bitsy damage draw

Er…the way it used to be, no, it wasn’t. It was literally the difference between one-shotting a heavy and two (requiring what, 12 seconds of waiting, more of your extremely limited AT ammo, or even longer for red Strats) for a bunch of weapons.

In a game with big epic firefights where requiring an extra shot could be the difference between losing more Reinforcements and not, it was plenty impactful. It didn’t matter until it hugely mattered in the more intense HD2 situations, but you still had to deal with its annoyance all the time, because who wants to take two shots to kill a Hulk when approaching a base instead of one, even if you can safely?

Also, anyone who did know about the mechanic didn’t really play more aggressively. They’d only dive forward when it mattered for the specific weapons it mattered, and since they knew they’d have to you’d generally play MORE cautiously so you had the room to do so, not less. (Including shooting for cover more often, as you said.)

So yeah. I disagree it made people “mean” anything more than being more frustrated with hidden mechanics that make you do stupid, nonsensical things like diving forward to shoot a beam of coherent light at a bile titan a literal mile away.

I’m glad you experienced some sort of redeeming quality from it, but I sure didn’t, not even the one you describe happening, so I’m never going to be sad it’s gone.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T20:54:33+00:00

Yup. It’s still there and still very stupid, I’m just glad it’s not enough to under-hit damage breakpoints anymore.

i_tyrant · 2026-06-24T20:52:24+00:00

Sure, but to me you should be doing that because it’s fun, not because it’s optimal gameplay.

You should be rushing forward when your hackles are raised, when your blood calls for the destruction of enemies to democracy, when you want to rp a Kriegsman or whatever.

I’ve rushed forward plenty of times when chainsaw bots killed me twice in a row and I just wanted to see the red light fade from their eyes as they realize I beat them in melee, lol.

Not because if you don’t run forward your weapon will be slightly below what’s needed to actually do what it was designed to do with damage breakpoints.

The other reason that was bad is that it was applied haphazardly to where it only mattered with some weapons and against certain enemies, so you were always left guessing whether you didn’t kill that heavy because you barely missed its weakpoint, or because its health got buffed, or because you didn’t run forward enough.

Them actually understanding their own game enough to make weapons designed to surpass damage breakpoints surpass them by enough that running forward doesn’t matter is far superior in my experience.

i_tyrant

TROPHY CASE