Thursday, May 04, 2006

Rules clarification: Forest terrain

Although I don't often post rules clarifications here, this ruling (found on Guy Fullerton's clarification page) deserves wider attention:

Forest: Forest squares are considered difficult terrain. Also, forest provides cover; a creature in a forest square has cover against all melee and ranged attacks. Line of sight (but not line of effect) is blocked if the line touches a corner of a forest square or 2 edges of the same forest square. A creature can still trace line of sight to creatures and squares in its own space as well as to adjacent creatures and squares.

Details of the change: This clarifies how corners interact with forest's ability to block line of sight. To make this work, the criteria for forest blocking line of sight is now based on the line *touching*, not passing through. The last sentence was added to make sure diagonally adjacent creatures in forest (or with just one in forest) can still trace line of sight to each other.

Answers to common Forest questions:
1. Blindsight does not allow a creature to see through forest. The Blindsight glossary definition lists the things that it counters, and neither Forest terrain nor the effects of Forest terrain is not among those things.

2. A large or larger creature gets cover from forest terrain when it's in just a single square of forest terrain. The forest rules say a creature in forest gets cover from melee and ranged attacks. See the last paragraph on page 24 of the War Drums rulebook for the rule about whether a large or larger creature counts as being in a type of terrain.

3. Because a creature in forest has cover versus all melee attacks, it can move without provoking AoOs, can make ranged attacks, and can cast non-touch spells even if it is threatened by an enemy.

(Note: This is an official ruling).