Hellhound breath attack range

[Metroknight]

I was looking over some monsters and noticed that the hellhound has a breath attack but no range is mentioned. The damage for the attack is based on it's hit dice/d6 but there is nothing for range. Anyone have an idea or a suggestion?

[Obombo]

Just use the distance from the AD&D MM. 10'

[Longman]

15' cone.

[Obombo]

15' cone.

Cool, can you point to the page?

[Longman]

No, that's just about what I reckon it should be. Not in the rules, or anything.

[Metroknight]

I was originally just going to use a 5ft per hd as a rule of thumb which they start at 3hd so that would start at 15ft. Their max would have been at 7hd and be 35'. Didn't think about the cone aspect, just more along the lines of a flamethrower like stream.

[Longman]

You could always allow one 5' square per hit die. The 15' cones above have 6 and 7 squares respectively. A 3 HD creature would have a much smaller cone but could maybe reach 15' feet with a jet like you describe.

But personally, I have a hard time visualising a creature the size of a very large dog producing a 35' jet, like a firehose. A cone seems like a more natural shape to me.

This one really is the DMs call.

[Woe]

I can, possibly because you phrased it like that. Think of it similar to a spitting cobra. Those cobras can shoot venom up to 2 meters. Replace the venom with a "combusts on contact with air" napalm and make the cobra the size of a huge dog... 35' seems reasonable to me.

However, cone seems more likely how I'd play it if I were the GM.

[Solomoriah]

I'm leaning toward a cone 10' at the wide end, 10' long for the smaller hellhounds, 15' for the medium-sized ones, and 20' for the biggies.

Will be in the next release of the Core Rules.