Casting and Close Combat

hi there,

it is clear to me that a caster may cast a spell while being in combat himself. But I could find no section in the rules that treats casting into a CC from OUTSIDE.

also I'm aware that all spells need line of sight since the annual 2002.

Some months ago, I posed this question on specialist games and also in the FAQ-section here, but I did not get any answer so far.


So what about the following situation:

caster stands near a closecombat , where members of his own warband fight others. The caster stands clearly seperated from the cc, no enemy model in btb.

In which situations can he cast into the cc?



1) a buff spells that demands to target a friendly model (other than the caster)

2) a debuff spells that demands to target an enemy model

3) offensive spells working much like magic missiles in warhammer fantasy (something hostile "flies" towards an enemy target, defined as such beforehand )

4) other offensive spells needing to pick a target

5) hostile Area of Effect - spells (either going from a point beside the caster or the caster himself being the center of the AoE)

6) friendly AoE spells


PS. sorry if this post should be redundant. I remember that this topic has been discussed briefly elsewhere but I couldn't find that thread again and I would like to discuss the topic in a more systematic manner anyway...

We let all spells (good and bad) to be cast into CC except for Silver Arrows of Arha because Silver Arrows of Arha is fired like a ballistic weapon.

Our theory is that spells are inherently more accurate than shooting so there is no risk of accidentally hitting a friendly model *instead* of the enemy model (obviously friendly models may be hit in addition to enemy models for AoE spells but that would generally be a *choice* made by the player rather than an accident).

Dahag wrote:

I'm aware that all spells need line of sight since the annual 2002.

They do? Where is that covered? (Aside from in the Annual, like what page?) Should have bought that, it seemed so redundant when I browsed through it 8 yrs ago...

Von Kurst wrote:

They do? Where is that covered? (Aside from in the Annual, like what page?) Should have bought that, it seemed so redundant when I browsed through it 8 yrs ago...

ohoh, I guess I'm caught off guard. Just checked the annual 2002 but couldn't find that passage anymore. But I'm really sure they defined that rule some years ago.

It may be that it was not published in the annual though but somewhere else... can somebody please help out?


but to the topic: of course spells that don't need to define a target or the caster is the target himself you probably would not need line of sight / you always see yourself, so LOS is superfluous in this case

Hummm I was to understand that spells only required LOS if it specifically stated it in the spell.

With that in mind, we play that LOS required spells can not be cast into H2H for the same reasons you can't shoot. Any other spell would be able to be cast without issue.

I dont have a rule book in front of me right at this minute to give you an example...but this is how we play in our group and seems to work out well.

Von Kurst wrote:

They do? Where is that covered? (Aside from in the Annual, like what page?) Should have bought that, it seemed so redundant when I browsed through it 8 yrs ago...

HornedRat wrote:

Hummm I was to understand that spells only required LOS if it specifically stated it in the spell.

i just found the correspondant passage in annual 2002, p. 106:

"Q: Can spells be cast on a model out of line of sight to the caster or which are hidden? What about spells which simply affect all models within a certain radius of the caster?"

A: Spells cannot be targeted at models which are out of sight. However, models which are out of sight may still be affected by spells with an area effect provided another model is targeted and they fall within the spell's radius."

So I was not precise in the first place: Not every spell needs line of sight but all the spells that need to nominate a target (and those where LOS is explicitly required of course ). Hope that makes sense...

RationalLemming wrote:

We let all spells (good and bad) to be cast into CC except for Silver Arrows of Arha because Silver Arrows of Arha is fired like a ballistic weapon.

we disallowed casting hostile spells into cc from outside because we felt (without experience though) that this would be too inbalanced and a great disadvantage for cc bands. going into cc is like a little protection from harm coming from outside... didn't your group experience that this would be too powerful?

My friends and I play that you can cast into CC but you run the risk of hurting your own people, the same as shooting into CC. We roll a die to determine if you hit friendly or enemy models.

i.e. if there are 6 models in combat, each one is assigned a number and if that number comes up they are hit. Larger models count for more of a chance to be hit etc..

We have not found this to be too powerful because of the fear of hitting your own models.