Well you know how i feel about it. It will be a consent annoyance of disproportion. Some things i can live with, but this seems to just be in insult to the intelligence of role players.
Burst3.5 used corner lines to denote the blast center, and on page 308-209 of the 3.5DMG they show pictures of how they are supposed to look. Since we would be doing them starting from a square I am guessing they would look much like Large, Huge long and tall would look.
From how i understand it, you pick the square and count out steps normally as you would if you were moving (first diagonal 1, second 2, and so on.)
Code:000+++++++++
99900+++++++
8889900+++++
777889900+++
666778890+++
5556677890++
4445567890++
33344567890+
22234567890+
111234567890
1O1234567890
111234567890
This would be an example of a II quadrant circle. At the bottom left you have the 'O" for origin of the blast/burst, and the number are the square counts out from the origin. The zeros at the out regions stand for 10, and +s are for over 10 range, which I don't think there is.
So 1 = 1burst, 2=2burst, 3=3burst, 4=4burst... I think the burst are always odd numbers so they will fit in a square with an origin.
This is really easy to do, and will only need to be done rarely on a few enemies in the outlaying diagonal direction.
BlastI don't see why blast does not work the same exact way mostly.
You just count out in a 90 or 45 degree angle from your characters origin, the distance of the blast. It is kind of like the examples in the 3.5DMG on page 307.
Blast twenty is the extreme example, and that would be best done with a piece of string, which could be done rocket fast. You would just measure out 20 squares distance with a string, and put one finger on the character, and the other finger out 20 inches, and just do a 90 Degree swipe. Everything in the inside gets hit.
But for blasts like for example blast 5.
Code:---4++
--345+
-12345
012345
-12345
--345+
---4++
Code:-55++++
-4455++
-33445+
-22345+
-112345
-012345
-------
Pretty much what they did in 3.5. Take just a second to count and sort it out.