How big a creature can you entangle with entangling breath?

Question

I am looking for rules (which I could not find in manuals) or personal contributions to the question: how big a creature can you entangle with entangling breath? Should it depend on the size of the creature breathing? Should it depend on the area of the breath? on the amount of damage dealt by the breath?

For example, I have a Dragonfire Adept with entangling breath and I don't know which size of monsters he can entangle with its breath. Now he has a 15ft cone breath, he'll get to 30ft in some levels.

I don't think a 2d6, 15ft breath attack should affect a Huge creature, but, at higher levels, I can expect that a 6d6, 30ft breath would.

So, is there any rule that I missed that determines this? If not, do you have (balanced) suggestions?

Thanks.

Answer 1

No, there is no size limitation

@Ernir covered this nicely.

Nor should there be.

Entangling Exhalation is a nice, reliable form of crowd-control on a class that is otherwise a bit lackluster. Unless or until the Dragonfire Adept gets the fivefold breath of Tiamat, the damage from the breath weapon is on the low end. The class’ chassis (HD, saves, skills) is fairly decent but nothing amazing. And the class gets only a few Invocations, most of which are much less powerful than spells at the same level (and being at-will only matters for a few of them, since usually the limitation is on actions during combat, not daily spell slots).

At very-low levels, Entangling Exhalation is very potent, there I’ll I agree. But after level 3 or 4 or so, it starts losing its impact: it’s certainly not bad but it’s not that impressive as one of the best things the character can do. If you’re currently playing at very-low levels, I’d probably let the character shine for now: in a few levels, they are likely to start lagging behind. Only if the campaign was intended to never hit levels higher than 3 or 4 would I start houseruling things. Even then, size would not be the limitation I’d use.

Answer 2

There is no size restriction on Entangling Exhalation.

This isn't spelled out explicitly by any rule. Rather, it is derived from a lack of contradicting rules text. Entangling Exhalation ("any creature that takes damage from your breath weapon becomes entangled") applies the Entangled condition to the creature. Neither the condition nor the feat reference any size restriction on the effect, thus the effect is independent of the target's size. Contrast with the grapple rules, which take the size of the combatants into account.

This is in accordance with the (admittedly, mostly inferred) D&D 3.5 tradition that rules are not required to have side effects. If you would like a size restriction on Entangling Exhalation, you can houserule it in, but you and other DMs are not required to wonder about such things unless they would like to.

Answer 3

I'm not too sure we're talking about the same thing here, I don't have the manual and I had to look the internet for a definition of the power.

If it's this then the answer is; you don't care about size. As long as one square of a creature is in the breath's area and gets damaged by the breath, that creature gets entangled.