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How do areas of effect work on a grid in #dnd 5e?
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May 21, 2025
How do areas of effect work on a grid in#dnd 5e? The answer might be exactly what you expect! Or not! I don’t know, I read books, not minds. #dnd5e #2024dnd #ttrpg #characteroptimization #dmadvice #dungeonsanddragons
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the Dungeon Master's Guide contains
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rules for how to play on a grid using
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miniatures and a little bit about how to
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place areas of effect but the rules
0:09
there are actually pretty vague
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Xanithar's Guide to Everything expands
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on that The text in the 2024 Dungeon
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Masters Guide is almost identical to the
0:18
2014 Dungeon Masters Guide So Zanithars
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is still a massively useful expansion on
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that text Zanthars goes into two methods
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on how to handle areas of effect the
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template method and the token method
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With the template method you're going to
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use some kind of object as a template to
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represent your area of effect on the
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grid So you might have something like a
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square sheet of paper or a uh a reusable
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plastic triangle that you use to
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represent your areas of effect and
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you'll hold that over the grid in the
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appropriate position to figure out how
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many creatures are affected by the area
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of effect Now that's really useful
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because you can get the precise shape
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without doing a ton of work but then you
1:02
need to figure out how many creatures
1:03
are affected So Zanithars goes into that
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in a little bit more detail and I'll
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talk about that some more in a future
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video The other method presented in
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Xanithars is called the token method and
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you essentially mark squares with tokens
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as you calculate the size of your area
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of effect And the diagrams for both
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methods are in here So you know grab
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your book take a look There's your uh
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your template here for cones and circles
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And then all of these blocks that's the
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token method And they're just using
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oversized D6s as their tokens because
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you know a a D6 is a nice convenient
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square If you look at all of the
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diagrams you'll notice that the token
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method always displays the tokens as
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snapped to the grid So a lot of people
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either from playing previous editions or
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from just assuming like yes it's on a
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grid it's going to snap to the grid or
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from looking at the token method have
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assumed that when you play D and D areas
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of effect snap to the grid That's not
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necessarily true though The text of the
2:01
rules never specifies that the placement
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of AoE's needs to snap to the grid which
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was a mistake that I've been making So
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if you have your templates or even if
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you're using the token method you can
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still place your areas of effect so that
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they don't snap to the grid So let's say
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I'm placing a cube like cloud of daggers
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So you always start from a grid
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intersection So just pretend my
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fingertip is a grid intersection And
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then you place your area of effect so
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that the origin point touches that grid
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intersection Now for a cube area of
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effect the origin point can be any place
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on the cube So you can rotate the cube
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you can slide the cube you like orient
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it however you like Which means that if
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you want to place your cube so that it
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affects two adjacent spaces you just
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slide it exactly 50% And as long as an
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area of effect affects 50% of a 5-ft
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square that square is affected
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