Line of sight~No line of sight

WOTC is trying to make it easier for us to understand. I think I finally got it.

No line of site:


There is no line of sight between these two creatures. No line of sight can be drawn that does not get stopped by a forest corner or edge.



No line of sight exists between these creatures. No line can be traced without crossing two edges of a forest square

Line of site:


In this example, the Elf Archer is able to trace line of sight to the Warforged Infiltrator. The Elf can trace line of sight from his upper left corner as a starting point, and it doesn't count as two edges because it is the starting corner.

Line of sight does not exist in the reverse case. Because all lines from the Infiltrator need to go through that forest corner, the Warforged can't see the Elf.

If the Elf were to attack the Warforged, the Elf would have combat advantage. Whenever an attacker can trace line of sight to a target but the target cannot trace line of sight in return, the attacker is invisible to the target and benefits from combat advantage accordingly.


There is line of sight between these two creatures. When tracing this line of sight, the first corner counts as one only edge.

I've alway found WotC's LoS rules a bit silly, since you can draw a LoS that doesn't touch either figure's base; our house rule is to draw the line from the 2 furthest apart opposite corners, but only including intervening terrain as blocking LoS:

ie. In your first picture above, the line would travel from the lower left corner of the Warforged's space to the upper right corner of the Elf's space, so there would be no LoS. Same effect as described, but drawn from a different corner.

The 2nd & 3rd pic's LoS remain the same as described, but you'd have to draw the LoS from the back centre of each mini's square.

The 4th pic wouldn't have ranged LoS in our rules, since the minis are adjacent.

True. I never really understood the rules too much. you can measure line of site from four areas. I guess it makes since as that 5' square is your area.

They all seem sensible to me except the third one....it's just silly.