I was hoping that someone could explain to me how attacks off of elevated terrain works. Where does a person who is elevated from a roof have line of fire to? I have been told that an elevated character only has a 90 degree line of fire and I just want to make sure about this because it comes up pretty often.

The key to understanding is this - a line of fire between an elevated character and a grounded character is blocked by elevated terrain. The only exception to this is the square that the elevated character occupies.

When you have elevated terrain:

. . .|. . . .|. . . . . . .
. . .|. . X .|. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . 4 . . . .
. . . . . . . . 3 . . . . .
. . . . . . . 2 . . . . . .
. . . . . . 1 . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .


the red squares show you where X can draw a line of fire. 1 and 2 are squarely in his line of fire. 3 is in his line of fire, but he is right there on the diagonal - still clear, but as close as you can get without going over. 4 is outside of the "cone".

People call it a 90 degree angle, because the easiest way to measure this is to look at the diagonal (a 45 degree angle) in each direction (45+45=90).

The reason why the "perfect diagonal" measurement works so well, is because of... geometry! (One of my favorite math classes and something that people who need to figureout lines of fire would do well to refresh themselves on).

When you look at the angle off of a roof, anything along the diagonal clearly does not cross one of the adjacent elevated squares (labeled a and b in the reprint diagram below). They don't cross those squares because the line heads right through the intersection of a/b and the square in front of X. If something were "outside" of that 90 degree cone, in order to get there, the line has to "shift" a little bit to that side, it would leave the intersection and (here's the key) cross another square of elevated terrain.


. . .|. . . .|. . . . . . .
. . .|. a X b|. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . 4 . . . .
. . . . . . . . 3 . . . . .
. . . . . . . 2 . . . . . .
. . . . . . 1 . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I understand it without any doubts now

No problem. I thought of 2 other things on this topic...

1 - Remember that lines of fire are reciprocal. If you're having trouble visualizing if the grounded guy can draw a line of fire to the elevated guy, if you reverse your thinking - does the elevated guy have LOF to the grounded guy - the answer will be the same (with the obvious exception being powers and abilities that could be in play that alter this - like a Stealth guy in hindering's ability to draw a LOF without it being drawn to him in return).

2 - This doesn't just work with elevated terrain, but any/all lines of fire. I can't tell you how many times I've been called over to determine if a LOF betwee 2 grounded characters crosses a wall or a square of blocking terrain. Something like this:

. . . . . . . .
. 1 . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . B 2 .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .

I get called over and I'm asked if 1 can draw a LOF to 2. They've used strings and such and cannot agree. It takes me seconds to look at the map, see 2's diagonal, see that 1 is outside of that cone, and boom - you know that the LOF is blocked (because any LOF that has to shift to the left of the diagonal between 2 and the blocking terrain will HAVE to cross that blocking terrain).

Thanks for going the extra distance. I appreciate all of the work that you do in helping us out. It is just another reason why this is the only game that I play!