Support an option for Measured Templates to allow their displayed area to be constrained by walls. #3656

Open aaclayton opened 4 years ago

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

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Feature Summary

When drawing spell templates, the templates bled through walls and into adjacent rooms that could NOT have been affected by the spell.

What we need is either to have walls block the spell template -- or to be able to easily erase the parts of the spell template that are not valid. I don't know if there are higher level spells that can go through walls, if so then erasing might be the most general way to go. Probably best to do that to support multiple game systems.

User Experience

Because the spell templates were bleeding into areas where they didn't belong, it became a bit awkward to as a work-around keep reminding people that the spell was NOT in effect in various areas that were bled into. I had trouble remembering myself.

We use spell templates all the time, so this feature is very important to us.

Priority/Importance

On a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 the most important, I'd make this probably a 9.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

Ok. Constraining by wall structure is fine. I think it represents the minimal template needed in all cases and will enable us to fill-in the remainder, if there is any, maybe by using the square template.

Erasing is more complicated even than constraining the template using the wall structure, so that definitely won't be happening.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

I've thought about this more. We had multiple things going on when someone casted a Web spell. It was cast in a 10' by 10' room with a door on the west and east side -- both doors open.

Then, on the east side there was a long L-shaped hallway that was 10' wide -- the exterior wall of the room on the east side made the lower part of the L.

On the west side was a larger room.

On the other side of the south wall of the room was a large open space.

Depending on the type of spell cast, even in Pathfinder 1e, the GM might want to be able to control the area affected by the spell in different ways.

For example, a gas would be handled differently than fireball or web. Radiation might also be handled differently (my players are playing Iron Gods where radiation is a hazard).

Therefore, it seems the most useful solution would be to be able to erase the parts of the template we don't want after it's drawn -- if the erasing can be done quickly and easily.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

I'm okay with lowering the priority. We will probably get used to the current behavior -- but a solution is very much desired.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

Either way is fine, I think. Some game systems might want to make the constrain or not to constrain decision on the fly.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

Also, another way might be to provide a configurable option to control whether or not spell templates are constrained by walls or barriors via the vision blocking layer.

Originally in GitLab by @adventuremagic123

Therefore, I suggested providing an eraser to remove parts of the templates we don't want.

I think it's fine to leave this open for the longer term as a potential option that can be configured at the template level, i.e. "this template is blocked by walls" (yes/no) - but the priority is not that high, more of a long term thing in my view.

Originally in GitLab by @anathemamask

Given that templates are system agnostic and used for things other than spells, it is perfectly legitimate to have them ignore walls by default. They do not cause illumination and do not reveal anything beyond the walls and are, as the name indicates (Measurement Templates) used for measurement.

I can think of several examples where it is more beneficial to have these templates ignore walls for dimensions than not. As a potential workaround, consider using a coloured light source to indicate spells that are affected by walls.

foundryvtt / foundryvtt