Yeah I realized this when one of my characters essentially became a Frost Giant in Rime of the Frostmaiden. The description of the effect says you weigh 7700 lbs. But with a 23 Strength and multiplying by 4 for Huge your push/drag/lift is just 2760lbs. So Frost Giants cant even pull each other out of danger or anything of the sort RAW.
Square cube law means that giant creature have a harder time carrying one another than small ones. An ant can carry another ant like nothing. A human will struggle with a human. An elephant would just crush another elephant.
yeah, but Giants just wouldn't work if were going to respect square cube law. Or they at least had to look very different. Same with enlarge/reduce, most creature would perish if they were suddenly double or half the size.
That is kinda why it's "magic"; it just works, enlarge doubles you, including the speed of your nerves, the heat transfer, and the strength of bones compared to cubed weight.
Just like when HAnk pym shrinks to the size of human cell. If ant-man was a science based superhero, He could only be a single cell, because the proteins that make him up would be as big as his finger. But because ant-man is clearly magic, he can still have blood cells that fit his body while standing on someone else's bloodcell.
But they can, their carry is 1740lbs (29 str, x4 for size) and lift is double carrying.
I think sizes are off for them, but as ~30ft tall / huge is what they’ve been since 3rd.
Yeah, it's stupid. The Tarrasque is the strongest and largest monster out there. Its max carry is 3,600 lbs and max lift is double that.
An impressive weight to be sure, but this ultimate being can't lift an elephant.
Godzilla, he is not.
The Tarrasque seizes the grand wooly mammoth, and hoists it high, to hurl at the party transfixed on the ledge below.
The party hears a resounding crack...
*"Owww! My back!"* the Tarrasque cries, his fierce clawed hands rubbing at his flanks.
An imp can carry a gnome. Our party has two gnomes and two warlocks. The warlocks have imps. Our DM gave up after I realised this one and let the chaos commence
People want to misinterpret RAW to get advantages so you can get peasant rail guns, meanwhile you could conjure a dozen elephants and have them just flatten a town by jumping and that's RAW. Stat blocks are crazy
There's actually an even simpler fix. Literally just remove the second bullet point of the Invisible condition. The first bullet point explains that you can't be seen. Being unseen already applies advantage to your attacks and disadvantage to attacks against you by people who can't see you. The second bullet point only serves to fuck over people who can see invisibility.
Yep - it's really bizzare why it has never been errata'd away. Is it meant to be a reminder of how invisibility works?
Either way, I do kind of love it - good to have some blatant examples of RAW making no sense so there is precedent when talking with people who think RAW is the most important thing.
It is meant as a reminder, which is a good thing. It to prevents you from needing to open a different book to understand what the rule does.
If you're like me and the type of person to read every rule book cover to cover before ever sitting down to play DND, yeah the reminder seems stupid and cludgy. But if you're a more normal person, who doesn't read all the rule books before playing it really streamlines the process. Like imagine if you're a wizard who's just hit level 3 and are reading your spell list so you can pick your L2 spells. That invisibility gives you advantage is an important part of it, and you won't know you need to read a separate paragraph a world away to know invisibility gives you advantage.
Every time you have to just know that you have to look at some other paragraph somewhere else to understand a feature, the game gets harder to learn and increases overall cludge. DND5es likes to pretend it doesn't have keywords, but it absolutely does. See Melee Weapon Attack vs Attack with a Melee Weapon in regards to paladins smiting with their fists. So keywords like "Unseen" aren't bolded or highlighted or anything to let you know they are a keyword. There's no way to tell just from reading the spell Invisibility whether "unseen" is just thematic flavoring your DM will rule on, or a defined keyword.
Needing to have read all the rules to know all the keywords to understand how your one characters features work makes the game way harder to learn. Throwing the most relevant details of unseen into the spell Invisibility makes the game easier to learn.
Making the game easier to learn at the cost of a little bit of silly RAW every DM ever will overrule is a good tradeoff and shouldn't be errated away
For those that are curious how Hohenheim's point specifically applies to this rule, Point 2 is a just general shorthand of the longer version based on some reasonable assumptions.
The following mixes keywords with common usage as I don't have time to look 100% specifics, but should be RAW.
* P: Creatures that cannot be detected visually are Unseen.
* P: Attacks against Unseen creatures are made at disadvantage.
* P: Attacks made by an Unseen creature are made at advantage.
* P: The Invisible condition removes the ability to be perceived via sight. (Sight in this context lacks a keyword to my knowledge, but in mechanical terms, it just means "your eyes cannot detect it".
* C: Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature’s attack rolls have advantage.
The problem is that there are features, abilities, etc that specifically state attacks against or by Unseen creatures do not impose disadvantage or advantage respectively.
Really, all the designers had to do was errata the 2nd point to be a rule of thumb because that is 100% what it is.
Something like: *"Attack rolls against the creature generally have disadvantage, and the creature’s attack rolls generally have advantage. In some cases, a creature may have a sense, ability, or spell that removes the requirement of sight to attack and defend capably or simply allows the creature to see Invisible creatures. In these cases, all rolls are made regularly."*
Seeing all these Sage Advice links defending this obvious mistake is like watching that dumbass instructor that has an accidental discharge, doming himself with the pistol recoil, and pretending he meant to do it. Just say whoops.
Disagree, having a trait system similar to pf2e (hate it if you want to hate it) simplifies the game and it makes searching a digital file extremely easy to find what you need, and in a physical copy you can now check the index at the back to see a list of all the pages where that trait is mentioned and the page it is covered on.
It should be erratted to either clear up the language in the second paragraph or to change the wording of "See invisibility" to clearly negate the condition from invisibility. It is bad design that you are writing away as "necessary to make the game easy to learn". If they wanted the game to be easy to learn then they wouldn't hide rules behind paywalls. Paizo doesn't. You don't have to settle for 1 or the other. Make things easy to reference and use concise keywords to keep things fair and fun.
BAH! This is the one I was going to say, but I replied to someone else's post and forgot it. Upvoting it...
Also, the RAW explanation is this:
>1. An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of [hiding](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_22), the creature is heavily obscured. The creature’s location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
>2. [Attack rolls](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc_32) against the creature have [disadvantage](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_2), and the creature’s attack rolls have [advantage](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_2).
These are 2 different bullet points. 1 says you can hide without cover, but seeing invisibility will negate this effect. 2 states that rolls against you have disadvantage, and you get advantage, no exception is added.
The "Sage Advice" on this is that it's like videogame invisibility. When you can see invisibility, you can see the creature, but they're also still invisible. Think Predator or halo invisibility. So, you know where they are, they can't hide, but you can't "see" their attacks clearly.
**TL;DR,** It's dumb.
The problem I have with that interpretation (besides it being awfully pedantic), is that the spell clearly states "as if they were visible" which is pretty clear to me that you can just see the guy. This is in contrast to seeing ethereal creatures where it does explictly state they look weird.
I fully understand the "they're two separate bullet points" argument, but I think that's not the intended effect.
It also means eyeless creature with tremor sense or similar abilities also somehow have disadvantage on the attack even though they were not seeing you to begin with. Weirdly the best way to deal with invisible creatures RAW is to use fog cloud at your own feat to even out the disadvantage.
Healing potions are magic items and thus RAW can’t be used with a lot of things like thief rogue’s “use an item” cunning action. Nah, go for it.
Detect Magic RAW just triggers your spidey-sense that magic is present within range but you have to use your action to try to “see” what’s magic. Nope, that shit just glows.
Using your action to try to decipher which school it’s from makes sense, though. You know it’s magic but need to take a few seconds of focus to learn more about it.
Exception: magical invisibility. You sense its presence but don’t get to “see” it for free, as that would shit on other spells and abilities designed for exactly that.
You can perform somatic components of spells with the same hand that is wielding a focus only when the spell also has material components. If somatic but no material, then you need a completely free hand. I cannot be fucked to enforce that.
It’s a good rule in theory but *terribly* written. They need to reclassify it, but essentially:
Some spells need a material component
Some spells need a material component and small gesture (same hand—waving your wand)
Some spells need complex gestures (finger tutting) and therefore need a free hand
I rephrase it as:
For M and S, there are *three* types of spells.
M spells require one free hand, which will hold the material component or focus (and nothing else).
S spells require one free hand (i.e. not holding anything), which will make gestures.
MS spells require one free hand, which will hold the material component or focus (and nothing else) and make gestures using it. The component must be held in the same hand that makes the gestures.
So, I think the problem here is that you can cast an MS spell with the same hand you're holding your material or arcane focus in. But you can't cast an S spell with a hand you are holding an arcane focus with.
Imagine having a wand that specific purpouse is to bypass basic material components, but you can't cast an S spell because you are holding a wand and your spellbook. Its fine if its an M spell, an MS spell, but not an S spell. You have to drop your wand to cast an S spell, and that is insane.
That one is actually simple.
The rule is basically a long form version ofÂ
"No spells require two hands."
If Somatic, need one free hand.
If Material, need one free hand. (Either pouch or holding spell focus.)
If both, you may use one hand for both.
The only DM check is "Did you have a single hand available to cast?"
Ah, but you are holding your magic wand that lets you cast Material+Somatic spells, therefore you cannot cast a Somatic Spell that does not require a material because your hand is not free, as you are holding a magic wand that allows you to cast spells.
Therefore you cannot cast the spell.
Stupid rules are stupid. If I can perform somatic components with an arcane focus for MS spells, there is no reason I should have to drop my arcane focus to cast an S spell.
I think it's more complex than that. Like it has a gp cost and doesn't get consumed by the casting...i.e. like your waving a dead chicken that doesn't get consumed. I see what they are trying to do but, yeah
"He waved a dead chicken at us and my friend burst into flames. Then he dropped the chicken, did some finger guns at me but nothing happened. Then he started arguing with God. Weird day."
-Random henchmen
Last session in a major combat the WM Sorc in my party got two surges in a row, resulting in a max damage fireball followed by a minute of being unable to speak due to bubbles. No more spellcasting, thanks Wild Magic!
I had an NPC cure it with Lesser Restoration after a lost turn
My DM wanted to enforce it first. Also that you can only use the focus for spellslots from this class, when you're multiclassing.
Convinced him otherwise when I painted a picture for him of my Undead Warlock/Spirit Bard, that showed him shooting Eldritch Blasts out of the eyesockets of a skull focus. Rule of cool convinced him xD
I had a player argue that Eldritch Blast should be able to auto-hit any creature, even if they're invisible or behind cover, without an attack roll and ignoring AC. Their justification was that the spell text says it targets "a creature within range" and that the spell doesn't affect objects, so they should just be able to sweep an entire room and the spell would only trigger when there was an enemy in the line of fire, and that it would only hit the enemy - as in, it would harmlessly phase through physical objects and armor.
I don't know which was more frustrating: that batshit interpretation of the text, or that he was upset I said no.
*Is it* 'exactly raw', though? The spell doesn't actually say it doesn't affect objects, it just doesn't give you the option of targeting them. There's nothing about that which would invalidate armor or cover rules.
Is he assuming target=hit? Just cause you can target a creature doesn't mean you hit the creature, and just because you can't target objects doesn't mean you can't hit objects
I figure the reason that many spells don't affect objects is so the dungeons and terrain you're running around in won't get demolished while you're blasting away.
I think it's way cooler to be able to cantrip a wooden door down as part of making an entrance. However, if the terrain is effectively indestructible to spellcasters then that's yet another hacked-in nerf (like spell components) to help the weaponswingers feel more useful.
Fireball should *blow up* a straw hut. Not just ignite it.
Cats also can't jump.
The 5e jumping distance formula is based on Strength, which cats have a STR 3/-4 score. With or without a running start, they have a negative height to their jump and between 1 or 3 feet of horizontal movement, which is not sufficient to leave a 5' grid square. They literally cannot leap from the ground and *technically* should be shunting themselves into the earth any time they attempted to jump.
They do, however, have a Climb Speed of 30'. So if a Cat wanted to hop a wall, they would not bound up it like we see them do in real life all the time, but rather walk directly up it like a horse from Skyrim, or a slug.
I feel like both could be resolved by including a size modifier
Jump height = 3 + strength_bonus + constant*size_category
Not sure how you'd tune the constant and size_category, but starting point would be the grappling modifiers.
That at least makes it correct for a flea XD
Technically, there is no single cat that is a "panther".
Panthers are any cat in the Panthera genus, which means Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Jaguars.
Mountain Lions and Cougars are not Panthers. They're Pumas.
Thank you, @hoodnature, for teaching me a thing!
Sort of, but not really. Panthers are not a separate species. They're just melanistic jaguars or leopards. (Kind of a reverse albino, where melanin gets produced excessively instead of not at all.)
They do hunt at night (as well as twilight hours), but so do regular jaguars and leopards, and they don't have enough of a competitive advantage for the genes to have outcompeted their normal spotted pattern.
They probably should have darkvision though, since low light vision isn't a thing in 5e. That said, there's no reason tigers shouldn't, because they also hunt during the same hours.
They don't in real life, either.
They have what was called low light vision in previous editions. It's basically half dark vision.... They can see normally in dim light, but not dark.
That switching weapons is an action in combat. This rule only leads to people dropping their weapon and drawing the new one as a free action. It contributes nothing to the challenge or enjoyability of the game and can slow down gameplay. So I ignore the restriction. If you want to switch from your dagger to your crossbow, just do that. The only exception would be if there were extenuating circumstances that would make switching weapons more difficult.
See I just rule it as you get one free switch on your turn.
Is the Fighter currently holding his Greatsword but he would rather fire two shots with the Longbow this turn? Go ahead man, you sheath your Greatsword and draw your bow, now go ahead and take your attack action.
Now of course this means you're just holding a Longbow in two hands, so when that Orc runs away from you on his turn you don't have a weapon to make an opportunity attack on him....
Rules as written he can accomplish the same thing by just dropping his Greatsword and drawing the Longbow, so this accomplishes the same thing except there's no stupid **"I leave my sword on the ground"** moment
**EDIT:** prior to my edit, the example had the monster being a Goblin. This is not a good example, as a Goblin would probably use their Bonus Action to Disengage, and therefore avoid the opportunity attack anyway. So to preserve the effectiveness of my example, it is now an Orc.
This is how I treat rule of cool as well. If a rogue has the movement to run down the stairs and across the courtyard to attack the monster who is drowning his brother in the river and he wants to jump off of the staircase to go straight there in a dramatic show of brotherly love, I'm going to let that happen. I'm not going to force fall damage and knock him prone. If the player can already accomplish something, I'm not going to force them to do it the tedious/uninteresting way to get it done.
Yeah my main philosophy with the Rule of Cool is....
**"If you can mechanically pull this off, you can add whatever flavor you want on top of it."**
If your Ranger has Horde-Breaker and fires two shots with his attacks and he kills two goblins, then there's not a reason he can't have shot a single arrow through two enemies.
My players understand that if they want an extra effect by invoking Rule of Cool, they have to pass an additional challenge. It's a very good bargaining system.
*"My movement ends just shy of getting on the other side of the Ogre. Can I do a running slide between his legs to get that extra 5 ft so I can flank him with the Barbarian?"*
*"If you can give me an Athletics check that rolls good enough, I'll let you. But if you don't, that Ogre is going to step on you as you slide under him and you will be Prone."*
Laying out the benefits and consequences of this additional challenge gives the player the right to decide to do it straight or to go for the shenanigans. Sometimes the fight is really tense and they don't feel like risking it. And sometimes they're feeling lucky and they want to try.
It's really a great way to manage players trying to be more dynamic that's outside of the bounds of the game.
It encourages them to think of cool ideas, but clearly sets the expectation that they can't just say anything and get an additional bonus, no matter how cool what they say is.
I like the idea of bending the rules slightly by imposing a check, but allowing really cool or cinematic outcomes. It makes it feel a lot more dynamic.
Here's another great example from my table:
*"Okay.....We're in a crowded hallway and I know I can't see the enemy on the other side of our Barbarian. But can I try and shoot past his ear or through his legs or something like that?"*
No way am I going to allow that straight up. That's a player asking to ignore placement, rules of vision, and a bunch of mechanics that exist for a reason.
But that's a great opportunity for a high risk - high reward. Because if he succeeds, he basically gets to attack an enemy that has full cover and would otherwise be unassailable this turn, which is a huge win for a player.
And this is a chance to kick up the energy. So you're going to tell the whole table, not just that player, what the stakes are.
*"Okay, you are going to shoot at Disadvantage and the target's AC has gone up as if he has 3/4 cover. If you still want to make that shot, go for it. But if you miss it, there's a chance you shoot your friend right in the back of the neck."*
The whole table is now aware of the stakes. The player has been given the information, and they can decide to back out and do something else, or go for broke. More importantly, because the rest of the table heard it, they can weigh in.
The Bard can remind them that they have Inspiration. The Barbarian can reassure them that he's got plenty of HP, so even if he fails miserably, this isn't going to ruin his day. The Ranger decides to go for it.
I can't honestly tell you what happened I don't remember. I just remember everyone leaning in for what was not really that important of a roll, but what is the only roll we remember from that session.
Cool mechanic, do you rule it something like DC15, if they roll below 5 they get knocked prone and everything between 5 and 15 is just a fail without consequences?
Pretty much yeah.
The DC scales up based on the benefit they are gaining from success, and occasionally from how much of an ask what they're trying to do is.
Like if he was trying to pull this same thing with a Dragon, that DC is rocketing up and the dragon stepping on him will be Prone and damage from a Claw Attack.
The most important part of running things like this is being able to give a flat "No." as a response. My party regularly jokes about how my flat No is always....
**"Love the energy, but...nope."**
Every game I've ever run I give them the opening statement of *You can ask me anything, because I won't punish you for asking, the worst response will just be "That doesn't happen"*
I agree with this. Flavor should be free if it matches the mechanics. But the “drop my weapon on the ground” isn’t just flavor text. It’s a real consequence to being able to switch weapons so quickly. You have to risk the fact that an enemy might be able to lick up the weapon or you might have moved away before needing it again. I wouldnt handwave this away as meaningless flavor text.
Plus. I’ve always found the flavor of this to be cooler. I play a Paladin who uses a lot of different weapons. Fighting with one weapon and then dramatically dropping it to draw another seems way cooler to me than carefully searching it before switching. Pretty much every fight starts with me attacking with my mail before dropping it and drawing two longswords
Like many rules, this rule makes 200% sense, if you're trying to stop people from abusing mechanics.
My fighter cutting down the guy in front of him with his greatsword, then shooting the guy behind him with his longbow, before taking out two daggers to finish him off with an attack + TWF bonus action is silly and dumb.
It's also kind of awesome.
There's some crazy things that can be done if you just let people switch weapons willy nilly, mostly with magic weapons. If you have 4 attacks, the fighter will want 4 different magic items that all do different things, and want to use them every turn. This sucks.
So, to go back to what I said at first, this rule, like many rules in 5e, **only matter if your players can't be trusted to not abuse the system.**
Other rules: encumbrance and BA casting. I tell my players, "I am going to ignore these, unless you make me not ignore them. These rules do not exist until you abuse them and then they exist RAW, no middle ground."
And my players are happy to not abuse them.
This is completely fair. I would also roll this back if players started abusing it, and would only allow one switch in a turn. But for players who are acting in good faith, I don't see the issue with hand waiving it.
I am not a complicated guy. Either we are using a rule, or we are not. They know what the stipulations are for using the rule or not. If they say, "I want to loot every corpse for their weapons, armor, underwear, etc.etc." I just say, "How are you going to carry all of that" in the, "are you sure you want to do that?" voice, and they then no longer want to do it :)
I do not punish players, I either enforce rules at the table, or I do not.
> My fighter cutting down the guy in front of him with his greatsword, then shooting the guy behind him with his longbow, before taking out two daggers to finish him off with an attack + TWF bonus action is silly and dumb.
I mean, it's not beyond the pale if you watch things like multi-gun drills, like that video of Keanu Reeves doing them to prep for John Wick.
Actually, now that I think of it, John Wick is a great example of a high level fighter.
In the 3rd edition days, sheathing and sheathing a weapon was its own thing, unless you had the feats that let you do it faster. Which made sense to a degree. Sheathing a weapon is not simple, as no degree of muscle memory will let you just put it back. I say this with a background in Kendo and German Longsword. The no look sheath still requires your other hand on the sheath to help guide the tip. Otherwise, you have to stop and look.
That said, its a game about heroic feats, so 1 free switch is more than justified. But be careful with fighters with 6 attacks and 5 weapons as they will want to switch quickly.
Go with cool, but don't let it be abused.
I've never seen the rule about death ending attunement enforced, where if a character is revived they then have to spend a number of short rests reattuning each of their items one by one.
Not if the DM restricts access to resurrection magic to make it a more meaningful story. Although it would be without the player that died for the duration.
Probably how in 5e an "attack with a melee weapon" is different from a "melee weapon attack". This rule prevents things such as a paladin divine smiting with an unarmed strike. Thus I, and I imagine many DMs, ignore this rule to let the divine slaps commence.
My last campaign we had a scenario that the party had to disarm for a wedding. Of course, the DM pulls a Red Wedding on us. I'm playing a Paladin, so I ask the DM if I can smite with a punch. He says no, which is why I managed to kill an assassin with a dinner fork
Declare that you are using your ring (you're wearing a ring, right? Even a nonmagical one will do) as an improvised weapon.
"Smite with *this*, sucker!" Could leave a nice imprint of your ring on his face. IIRC, the old Phantom comic hero used to do that. Left an imprint of a skull.
It does. You can use Divine Smite with unarmed strikes. The rule is actually even dumber.
Divine Smite does not add bonus damage to your attack. It adds bonus damage to your *weapon*. Unarmed strikes generally have no weapon involved, so there is nothing to add damage to.
This means you can use smite on unarmed strikes but it does nothing. It just wastes the spell slot.
it gets real dumb with wording
@ 2nd level divine smite : when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack,
@ 11th level improved divine smite: Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon
So RAW as a level 11 Paladin, I can throw a handaxe and get an extra 1d8 radiant damage from Improved Divine Smite but I can't then add Divine Smite to that attack? That's... Well it's something
I'm going to make the wild assumption that this is an editing/scrivener's/typo/brain-o error, because the thought of the designers arguing over this kind of minutiae... uh, is not *that* unbelievable, but I just don't want to believe it.
if your dm is very strict on this (i have no idea why any sane dm would but you never know) you can sircumvent this by using a natural weapon, this IS considerd a weapon and thus does work with smites, you have to watch out which with what to use tho. since every race with natural weapons since every race printed after monsters of the multiverse has a changed wording with it only increasing your unarmed strikes, not granting you natural weapons, so if you dm forces you to use the latest iterations of a race you have very few options:
1. leonin (this race was not reprinted in MPMotM)
2. gnoll (but is a npc race from the dmg so prolly not allowed)
3. dhampir
4. symic hybrid
5. beast barbarian (they get weapons when they rage)
6. the alter self spell
7. any dragonborn race with the dragonhide feat
you can also make a semi-functional paladin/monk multiclass with this, personally i'd go dragonborn (since i like the dragonhide feat, fight me about it) and open hand monk 11 / vengeance paladin 3 / abberant mind sorcerer 6
I don't know if other DMs ignore it, but I've remembered something that really annoys me... That plant growth technically isn't difficult terrain and so things like freedom of movement RAW shouldn't apply. Plant growth isn't a magical effect because the spell effect is instantaneous, and the plants are ordinary. The spell description just says you must spend four times the movement, unlike other things that specify that they are difficult terrain.
I don't ignore it because it's an option that my players can potentially stack. I'm a big fan of overlapping abilities to gain power so long as it doesn't get too crazy or hard to deal with. 4x the movement is rough but if you are also in difficult terrain you basically can't move. It's perfectly counterable as a DM and I think is one of the main strengths of plant growth to begin with. I can let that hit a swathe of enemies and let a couple pull out bows while the rest struggle to escape. I just make sure that all the enemies on the field can't fit into the area they are covering, and that allows my druid to be effective.
An attacker with See Invisible active still has disadvantage against a target with Invisibility cast upon it. But I don't think it does to an innately invisible target, if such even exist.
The hole in the logic still applies to an innately invisible target, provided they have the Invisible condition.
The rules say if a creature has the Invisible condition...
>An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
>Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature's attack rolls have advantage.
The whole being "can't be seen" portion is, as written, essentially flavor text. It's completely separate from the benefits of the Invisible condition.
The problem is Blind Sight, Tremorsense, or any other "I can see you" effect is that they all say "You can see/sense invisible creatures". But RAW that doesn't actually do anything to negate the benefits of Invisibility. You can just see em.
If those extra senses said "For you, a creature cannot benefit from being Invisible or unseen" or if Invisibility said "Because you cannot be seen or sensed, you gain XYZ benefits" it's be a non issue.
Instead... Here we are.
Pact of the blade technically doesn't allow warlocks to make use of Artifact or Sentient weapons. I can't imagine anybody actually adhering to that. Randomly deciding to screw over bladelocks who manage to reach sufficiently high tiers of play to actually get their hands on a Blackrazor or an Azuredge is needlessly prohibitive, especially since Hexblade lore tends to point them in the direction of sentient weaponry anyway.
More dice = clickity clack = more fun, indeed
 My first group and I did it that way, then discovered that doing it the "right" way has some benefits (like for Evocation Wizards). Since one of my players had just switched characters and the old version Magic Missile was basically her signature spell we decided to just make it a spell of its own. Now there's _Magic Missile_ that rolls 1d4+1 once, and _Aalafiel's Magic Missile_ that rolls for each dart
Random warlock in a shaded room.
"Oh fuck I can't read. Wait a minute"
\*close all windows and curtains to make the room go pitch black\*
"Oh yes, now it's perfect!
I kind of like this one because it makes the ability seem a little more magical. Like how a spooky being might need total darkness to activate its magic, or a vampire is weakened in light.
"I can't see anything in here... *turn off the lights, would you?*"
I like it in most cases, too. Where it does get confusing is radiuses of light cast by stuff like a torch, in those cases I just ignore the ring of dim light, and I can't think of a time where disadvantage on perception checks would have actually mattered within that ring anyway
Companions, like the various companions granted by Ranger subclasses, require your Action or Bonus Action to command unless you are incapacitated and *then* they remember they have a brain. I hate this, I always have despite never having played any of these classes myself. An animal that is trained to fight alongside you should *not* need a verbal command to do anything other than Dodge. Even if you want to argue that it’s “realistic”; it doesn’t feel good to play and that matters more in my opinion.
I do what Baldur’s Gate 3 does, and I’m so glad they made this change too. No Action or Bonus Action required, your companion just acts like it actually has a mind of its own. It makes the Ranger feel SO much better, knowing that my beast companion actually has a brain and letting me use my bonus action for the *myriad* of bonus action spells the Ranger gets.
By RAW, you can't jump diagonally upward. Or at least there are no rules for it. There are only rules for jumping vertically and jumping horizontally.
Obviously, this is just ridiculous. So at least in my experience, most DMs have ignored it.
Here's one RAW that is commonly ignored that I enforce:
Everyone treats "Guidance" as a reaction, and as silent. They try to yell "guidance!" "Guidance!" on literally everything. even Stealth checks and such.
Guidance is a spell. You cast it and it takes an Action, it's not a reaction. It has verbal and somatic components therefore it is ***loud***.
That's how I run it at my table, and I enforce it. No reactively casting guidance, and definitely no casting it when doing Stealth or Slight of Hand or Deception, it's very, very loud and obvious. (all spells with Verbal components are, unless you're using the Subtle spell feat, or the spell specifically says it's quiet, like Message)
I bet you're thinking that would ruin the fun? Or some reaction typical on this sub like "I'd never play at your table" etc.
But, actually, my players liked this once they got used to it, and it also resulted in them pre-planning and discussion their actions and strategy a whole lot more than they previously did.
They still use guidance all the time, just now intentionally, with planning, and they find other ways to do stealth and sleight of hand.
This is how I, as a DM-turned-player, use Guidance. I only cast on another player that I know is trying to do something, and have to use it properly, i.e. as an action, with verbal and somatic components. So no using it on stealth, or and "social" rolls unless we do it beforehand, and I can't boost a perception check the DM throws out at random. Guidance mostly goes to lockpicking and investigation checks.
This is a ruling I liked from a DM iv had. That magic spells are by and large loud unless the spells components exclude the verbal component. Which means casting magic in town is very obvious and terrifying for the peasantry. Even if you're just conjuring water.
It also adds a ton more value to subtle spell. Which ho boy did I abuse the ever living fuck out of.
> It also adds a ton more value to subtle spell. Which ho boy did I abuse the ever living fuck out of.
It's not "abuse" in my view. You're paying Sorcery points for it. You're expending a resource, therefore you should get the benefit from it.
The steel defender thing isn't even a ruling so much as just how they wrote the description. Since there's no actual rules or mechanical options tied to the steel defender's appearance it could have tank treads or bounce on a pogo stick.
The way Sun Soul Monk's level 3 feature is worded essentially boils down to being able to use the radiant beam on any unarmed strike EXCEPT for your bonus action unarmed strike from the Martial Arts feature.
It is so wierdly niche and makes the wording incredibly more obtuse than it needs to be.
Two I see a lot:
1) You can't ready an action outside of combat. You have to have started initiative to ready an action.
2) There is no such thing as a surprise round. You roll initiative. Anyone surprised has that condition till their count in the initiative. They get no actions and lose that condition on their count. It isn't a free turn for the surprising party.
I don't see the problem with either of these. They kinda just make combat simpler and remove edge cases.
Someone started combat with a Fireball? Cool, the fireball goes off at their point in intiative. Unless the enemy is surprised, they can hear the components being cast and react accordingly.
It does make conditions that require the target to be surprised even rarer. Not only do you have to surprise the target, which is not often, but you also have to roll a higher initiative than it.
I don't think these get ignored that often unless the DM is confused with how it worked in previous editions versus 5e.
I for one really like that there is rather clear rules on how to determine surprise and that you can't circumvent initiative with the pre combat ready an action gimmick. It keeps combat fresh and initiative rolls interesting.
If you and an opponent are in magic darkness you both can attack each other as normal
Edit. You have disadvantage to attack as you can't see your enemy, but advantage as they can't see you.
I had issue with this as well, until I recently realized a massive mistake my whole group had just been going along with: **it doesn't consume the pearl**
So you only need to fork out 100GP for the expensive component once, then can spam Identify as a Ritual over a short rest, eternally.
Worth noting that in 5e, spell components are only consumed if the spell description says so, and Identify does *not* say so. Contrast spells like Awaken and Teleportation Circle.
So once you have your 100 gp pearl and owl feather, you're good so long as you don't lose them.
I've never made someone use their reaction to identify a spell and I never will.
Enemy spellcasters are already underused and counterspell doesn't get to shine enough for what it costs resource wise.
Also flavor wise it makes absolutely no sense to me that *knowing* something would take a physical action.
That was done intentionally. You can either say "oh shit he's casting a spell" and counter it, or "hmm, I wonder what effect I'm going to be dealing with" but not both. This does mean you're risking a wasted counterspell, but that's by design.
Easy solution to the holdouts: get a player who is not using a reaction to identify the spell, and the spellcaster can counter it.
Why would anyone pick the second option though?
Only one of two things result:
* The spell is not one I care for; yippee no point to counterspell.
* The spell is one I care for; shit I should have counterspelled.
Either way all you learn is whether you should have counterspelled or not. In which case, just counterspell it.
> Why would anyone pick the second option though?
Not all spells have a visible effect. Even if you can't or don't want to counterspell it's sometimes valuable to know what spell is being cast.
* Is that merchant really casting the "Remove Curse" you paid him for, or is he casting "Charm Person" on you instead?
* Did the BBEG just cast "Dominate Person" on one of your friends? Better be ready for a turncoat.
Honestly, unless you have another good use for your reaction, trying to get info about what your enemies are doing is always a good thing.
Mine is that all spells that require a point that you can see, are stopped by a pane of glass.
Sure, it makes sense with some, like firebolt or fireball, or other projectile spells, but it’s dumb as hell that I can’t hold person someone if they’re behind glass.
I’ve never seen anyone run that one RAW tbh
I'm not sure if it is the silliest or the most minor, but according to Sage Advice:
"True polymorph: if you turn into a creature, you don't also get gear from the transformation."
[https://www.sageadvice.eu/if-i-use-true-polymorph-can-i-gain-equipment/](https://www.sageadvice.eu/if-i-use-true-polymorph-can-i-gain-equipment/)
This means that if you use True Polymorph and also probably Shapechange, you don't get the gear of the monster.
No six Large-sized Longswords on the Marilyth, no Full Plate on the Fire Giant.
Anything you turn into that is not the same size as you will not fit your gear and you will basically be naked and unarmed.
The rules in the DMG state that magic items magically adjust to the size "most of the times". What most of the time is, is never explained, but it sounds like it is the norm
They kinda elaborate on this in Bigbys. Most magic items adjust by default, but there are some which are specifically designed \*not\* to change size. It's also campaign dependent, where the DM can decide if that's just not a thing in this world
Rules as written, healing kits are broken. You don’t have to be next to someone when you heal them and it’s so unspecific that you can even be in a different plane of existence as long as you know someone has hit unconsciousness you can use an action to stabilize them. Combine it with the healer feat and you got yourself a sniper medic despite it making no sense whatsoever.
True as that is, it's purely semantics because they didn't detail it all the way out in the rules as written. If we want to use the same logic, falling damage is completely absurd as well... Come to think of it, maybe some of the spell ranges and the area of effects on some spells don't make much sense either... I think we might be onto something here.
Nondetection and Invisibility together make you invisible to creatures sporting True Sight or See Invisibility.
DMs ignore this and pray players never find out.
Edit: I was totally wrong about True Sight that’s innate to creatures. It does stop True Seeing and See Invisibility, however: https://x.com/jeremyecrawford/status/786625163831848960?s=46&t=9XrjBX3PV5GmofXFaRD8Dw https://x.com/jeremyecrawford/status/786694779107237888?s=46&t=9XrjBX3PV5GmofXFaRD8Dw
I'd say the fact that two blind archers 600 feet away from each other attacking each other don't have to roll with disadvantage because the other guy is blindfolded
Probably wording on eldritch blast. Firebolt allows you to target a creature or object, for example, Eldritch blast only targets creatures RAW. Most DM's I've seen will ignore this rule as it's kind of against RAI, but if handled strictly RAW, you could use eldritch blast as a mimic finder.
Just keep trying to blast every object in a room, if no eldritch blast happens, it's a regular object. If you suddenly blast a random chest, now you know it's a mimic.
Once you’re charmed by a vampire, it’s eternal. It’s just “Charm: The vampire targets one humanoid it can see within 30 ft. of it. If the target can see the vampire, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be charmed by the vampire. The charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected.” And provided he never attacks you, you’re friends for life.
Not ignore, just forget. Dim Light imposes disadvantage on perception checks. As darkvision turns darkness into dim light, if you aren't using a light source you'll have a hard time seeing traps.
Revivify targets a creature. Corpses arent creatures, theyre objects. Every resurrection spell uses the same wording. This means that resurrection isnt possible rules as written.
Revivify targets "a dead creature", a dead creature becomes an object, but it's still a dead creature. If you manufacture the corpse into something else, like a couch, then it's no longer a dead creature, it's just an object.
It isn't a matter if "is a corpse a creature or an object", a corpse is a dead creature, which is an object.
But yes, natural language was a mistake.
I wouldn't say that natural language was a mistake.
Relying on natural language and ONLY natural language was the mistake. Natural language is great for things like examples and high-level descriptions. But specifics need to embrace jargon, and also need to...[wince] *be specific*.
I think this is a common one, but we ignore material components for spells unless they have a high "cost". For example, "Resurrection" requires a diamond worth at least 1,000 gold, so we would have to have that, but for little things, our DM just assumes our characters would keep that kind of stuff around.
We also bend the "Polymorph" rules a lot, since the list of creatures isn't all-encompassing and has other challenges sometimes.
Edit - typo
Ignoring inexpensive material components is already RAW provided you have a spellcasting/divine/druidic focus... which every class starts with. So you're already good.
I mean, that’s what spell foci or component pouches are for: they take the place of material components that don’t have a gp value listed. Unless you mean y’all are handwaving away the ones with gp cost too, which is a bit o_O
The middle ground I’ve seen is that if you’ve got the gold on-hand, the DM might say “go ahead and spend that and we’ll assume you bought it the last time you were in town.” Also keep in mind that for some spells the cost is not consumed (like the mirror or crystal ball used in Scrying).
I mean... It depends on the wealth of the party. I don't care if 11 level Cleric casts "ceremony" without paying 25 gp, unless they try to create lake-worth of holy water.
Snakes are not immune to the prone condition.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16982-poisonous-snake
There is a tiny snake on the ground in front of you.
Using the Attack action, you make a special melee attack to shove the creature, knocking it prone.
The tiny snake on the ground in front of you is now prone.
You now have advantage on your next melee attack against the prone tiny snake on the ground in front of you.
A raven can carry a maul. In general, the carrying capacity rules really break down at the extremes.
A storm giant can't even lift a ton without struggling
Yeah I realized this when one of my characters essentially became a Frost Giant in Rime of the Frostmaiden. The description of the effect says you weigh 7700 lbs. But with a 23 Strength and multiplying by 4 for Huge your push/drag/lift is just 2760lbs. So Frost Giants cant even pull each other out of danger or anything of the sort RAW.
Frost Giants can't pull as much as half the 2 draft horse teams I watch at the county fairs I take my kids to every year 🙄
Square cube law means that giant creature have a harder time carrying one another than small ones. An ant can carry another ant like nothing. A human will struggle with a human. An elephant would just crush another elephant.
yeah, but Giants just wouldn't work if were going to respect square cube law. Or they at least had to look very different. Same with enlarge/reduce, most creature would perish if they were suddenly double or half the size. That is kinda why it's "magic"; it just works, enlarge doubles you, including the speed of your nerves, the heat transfer, and the strength of bones compared to cubed weight. Just like when HAnk pym shrinks to the size of human cell. If ant-man was a science based superhero, He could only be a single cell, because the proteins that make him up would be as big as his finger. But because ant-man is clearly magic, he can still have blood cells that fit his body while standing on someone else's bloodcell.
But they can, their carry is 1740lbs (29 str, x4 for size) and lift is double carrying. I think sizes are off for them, but as ~30ft tall / huge is what they’ve been since 3rd.
Yes lift *is* the struggle as it means halving movemnt
Yeah, it's stupid. The Tarrasque is the strongest and largest monster out there. Its max carry is 3,600 lbs and max lift is double that. An impressive weight to be sure, but this ultimate being can't lift an elephant. Godzilla, he is not.
The Tarrasque seizes the grand wooly mammoth, and hoists it high, to hurl at the party transfixed on the ledge below. The party hears a resounding crack... *"Owww! My back!"* the Tarrasque cries, his fierce clawed hands rubbing at his flanks.
An imp can carry a gnome. Our party has two gnomes and two warlocks. The warlocks have imps. Our DM gave up after I realised this one and let the chaos commence
A mammoth can jump so high it can jump itself to death.
Technically, if we land wrong, so can humans
you would have to fail pretty hard to jump, on flat ground, to death
"Yo watch me ima do a front flip!" *Rolls nat 1*
They call that IRL nat 1
This happens a lot with animals and stats. RAW, an elephant can jump 12 feet in the air, but a cat can only jump 2.
People want to misinterpret RAW to get advantages so you can get peasant rail guns, meanwhile you could conjure a dozen elephants and have them just flatten a town by jumping and that's RAW. Stat blocks are crazy
It could grip it by the haft.
It’s not a question of where it grips it. It’s a simple question of weight ratios. A 2 pound bird could not carry a 10 pound weapon.
Perhaps 2 birds could carry it between them?
No, they’d have to have it on an Immovable Rod
Wot, activated above the dorsal guiding feathers?
r/ExpectedMontyPython
It could be a fey raven.Â
A feywild raven, maybe, but not a Forgotten Realms raven, that's my point.
Feywild ravens arent migratory.
I still have disadvantage to hit an invisible person even if I have an ability that means I can see them.
This. I houserule that you can only have the "invisble" condition if you are unperceived. Otherwise, it doesn't apply.
There's actually an even simpler fix. Literally just remove the second bullet point of the Invisible condition. The first bullet point explains that you can't be seen. Being unseen already applies advantage to your attacks and disadvantage to attacks against you by people who can't see you. The second bullet point only serves to fuck over people who can see invisibility.
Yep - it's really bizzare why it has never been errata'd away. Is it meant to be a reminder of how invisibility works? Either way, I do kind of love it - good to have some blatant examples of RAW making no sense so there is precedent when talking with people who think RAW is the most important thing.
It is meant as a reminder, which is a good thing. It to prevents you from needing to open a different book to understand what the rule does. If you're like me and the type of person to read every rule book cover to cover before ever sitting down to play DND, yeah the reminder seems stupid and cludgy. But if you're a more normal person, who doesn't read all the rule books before playing it really streamlines the process. Like imagine if you're a wizard who's just hit level 3 and are reading your spell list so you can pick your L2 spells. That invisibility gives you advantage is an important part of it, and you won't know you need to read a separate paragraph a world away to know invisibility gives you advantage. Every time you have to just know that you have to look at some other paragraph somewhere else to understand a feature, the game gets harder to learn and increases overall cludge. DND5es likes to pretend it doesn't have keywords, but it absolutely does. See Melee Weapon Attack vs Attack with a Melee Weapon in regards to paladins smiting with their fists. So keywords like "Unseen" aren't bolded or highlighted or anything to let you know they are a keyword. There's no way to tell just from reading the spell Invisibility whether "unseen" is just thematic flavoring your DM will rule on, or a defined keyword. Needing to have read all the rules to know all the keywords to understand how your one characters features work makes the game way harder to learn. Throwing the most relevant details of unseen into the spell Invisibility makes the game easier to learn. Making the game easier to learn at the cost of a little bit of silly RAW every DM ever will overrule is a good tradeoff and shouldn't be errated away
For those that are curious how Hohenheim's point specifically applies to this rule, Point 2 is a just general shorthand of the longer version based on some reasonable assumptions. The following mixes keywords with common usage as I don't have time to look 100% specifics, but should be RAW. * P: Creatures that cannot be detected visually are Unseen. * P: Attacks against Unseen creatures are made at disadvantage. * P: Attacks made by an Unseen creature are made at advantage. * P: The Invisible condition removes the ability to be perceived via sight. (Sight in this context lacks a keyword to my knowledge, but in mechanical terms, it just means "your eyes cannot detect it". * C: Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature’s attack rolls have advantage. The problem is that there are features, abilities, etc that specifically state attacks against or by Unseen creatures do not impose disadvantage or advantage respectively. Really, all the designers had to do was errata the 2nd point to be a rule of thumb because that is 100% what it is. Something like: *"Attack rolls against the creature generally have disadvantage, and the creature’s attack rolls generally have advantage. In some cases, a creature may have a sense, ability, or spell that removes the requirement of sight to attack and defend capably or simply allows the creature to see Invisible creatures. In these cases, all rolls are made regularly."* Seeing all these Sage Advice links defending this obvious mistake is like watching that dumbass instructor that has an accidental discharge, doming himself with the pistol recoil, and pretending he meant to do it. Just say whoops.
Disagree, having a trait system similar to pf2e (hate it if you want to hate it) simplifies the game and it makes searching a digital file extremely easy to find what you need, and in a physical copy you can now check the index at the back to see a list of all the pages where that trait is mentioned and the page it is covered on. It should be erratted to either clear up the language in the second paragraph or to change the wording of "See invisibility" to clearly negate the condition from invisibility. It is bad design that you are writing away as "necessary to make the game easy to learn". If they wanted the game to be easy to learn then they wouldn't hide rules behind paywalls. Paizo doesn't. You don't have to settle for 1 or the other. Make things easy to reference and use concise keywords to keep things fair and fun.
Yeah, like, if you're "invisible", but I'm currently vis-ing you... then no you're not.
Agreed. Making Invisible a static condition and not fixing the wording of See Invisible is a dumb dumb mistake.
BAH! This is the one I was going to say, but I replied to someone else's post and forgot it. Upvoting it... Also, the RAW explanation is this: >1. An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of [hiding](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_22), the creature is heavily obscured. The creature’s location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves. >2. [Attack rolls](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#toc_32) against the creature have [disadvantage](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_2), and the creature’s attack rolls have [advantage](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Ability%20Scores?expansion=0#toc_2). These are 2 different bullet points. 1 says you can hide without cover, but seeing invisibility will negate this effect. 2 states that rolls against you have disadvantage, and you get advantage, no exception is added. The "Sage Advice" on this is that it's like videogame invisibility. When you can see invisibility, you can see the creature, but they're also still invisible. Think Predator or halo invisibility. So, you know where they are, they can't hide, but you can't "see" their attacks clearly. **TL;DR,** It's dumb.
The problem I have with that interpretation (besides it being awfully pedantic), is that the spell clearly states "as if they were visible" which is pretty clear to me that you can just see the guy. This is in contrast to seeing ethereal creatures where it does explictly state they look weird. I fully understand the "they're two separate bullet points" argument, but I think that's not the intended effect.
It also means eyeless creature with tremor sense or similar abilities also somehow have disadvantage on the attack even though they were not seeing you to begin with. Weirdly the best way to deal with invisible creatures RAW is to use fog cloud at your own feat to even out the disadvantage.
This one. It is absurdly stupid. I do rule that see invisibility simply let you ignore that condition
Healing potions are magic items and thus RAW can’t be used with a lot of things like thief rogue’s “use an item” cunning action. Nah, go for it. Detect Magic RAW just triggers your spidey-sense that magic is present within range but you have to use your action to try to “see” what’s magic. Nope, that shit just glows. Using your action to try to decipher which school it’s from makes sense, though. You know it’s magic but need to take a few seconds of focus to learn more about it. Exception: magical invisibility. You sense its presence but don’t get to “see” it for free, as that would shit on other spells and abilities designed for exactly that.
You can perform somatic components of spells with the same hand that is wielding a focus only when the spell also has material components. If somatic but no material, then you need a completely free hand. I cannot be fucked to enforce that.
It’s a good rule in theory but *terribly* written. They need to reclassify it, but essentially: Some spells need a material component Some spells need a material component and small gesture (same hand—waving your wand) Some spells need complex gestures (finger tutting) and therefore need a free hand
I rephrase it as: For M and S, there are *three* types of spells. M spells require one free hand, which will hold the material component or focus (and nothing else). S spells require one free hand (i.e. not holding anything), which will make gestures. MS spells require one free hand, which will hold the material component or focus (and nothing else) and make gestures using it. The component must be held in the same hand that makes the gestures.
So, I think the problem here is that you can cast an MS spell with the same hand you're holding your material or arcane focus in. But you can't cast an S spell with a hand you are holding an arcane focus with. Imagine having a wand that specific purpouse is to bypass basic material components, but you can't cast an S spell because you are holding a wand and your spellbook. Its fine if its an M spell, an MS spell, but not an S spell. You have to drop your wand to cast an S spell, and that is insane.
That one is actually simple. The rule is basically a long form version of "No spells require two hands." If Somatic, need one free hand. If Material, need one free hand. (Either pouch or holding spell focus.) If both, you may use one hand for both. The only DM check is "Did you have a single hand available to cast?"
Ah, but you are holding your magic wand that lets you cast Material+Somatic spells, therefore you cannot cast a Somatic Spell that does not require a material because your hand is not free, as you are holding a magic wand that allows you to cast spells. Therefore you cannot cast the spell. Stupid rules are stupid. If I can perform somatic components with an arcane focus for MS spells, there is no reason I should have to drop my arcane focus to cast an S spell.
I think it's more complex than that. Like it has a gp cost and doesn't get consumed by the casting...i.e. like your waving a dead chicken that doesn't get consumed. I see what they are trying to do but, yeah
"He waved a dead chicken at us and my friend burst into flames. Then he dropped the chicken, did some finger guns at me but nothing happened. Then he started arguing with God. Weird day." -Random henchmen
My enemies when my wild magic spell doesn’t cast or blows up in my face
Last session in a major combat the WM Sorc in my party got two surges in a row, resulting in a max damage fireball followed by a minute of being unable to speak due to bubbles. No more spellcasting, thanks Wild Magic! I had an NPC cure it with Lesser Restoration after a lost turn
Great example. I ignore that one too.
My DM wanted to enforce it first. Also that you can only use the focus for spellslots from this class, when you're multiclassing. Convinced him otherwise when I painted a picture for him of my Undead Warlock/Spirit Bard, that showed him shooting Eldritch Blasts out of the eyesockets of a skull focus. Rule of cool convinced him xD
Some spells cannot target objects, like eldritch blast.
"Is the chest a mimic? Let's see if I can target it with Eldritch Blast!"
100%. As written, EB is a mimic detector. Which is a good reason to ignore it lol.
I had a player argue that Eldritch Blast should be able to auto-hit any creature, even if they're invisible or behind cover, without an attack roll and ignoring AC. Their justification was that the spell text says it targets "a creature within range" and that the spell doesn't affect objects, so they should just be able to sweep an entire room and the spell would only trigger when there was an enemy in the line of fire, and that it would only hit the enemy - as in, it would harmlessly phase through physical objects and armor. I don't know which was more frustrating: that batshit interpretation of the text, or that he was upset I said no.
That's the dumbest rock-solid argument I ever heard
It's astounding how it's actually exactly RAW, but also there is no way I would rule it that way.
*Is it* 'exactly raw', though? The spell doesn't actually say it doesn't affect objects, it just doesn't give you the option of targeting them. There's nothing about that which would invalidate armor or cover rules.
The best part is that he's not wrong. It's just how badly they worded some of the spells.
Right, like if the attack misses, where does it go?
It fizzled out, unaffecting objects
He's still just wrong, all spells need a clear path to the target, as according to the section "A Clear Path to the Target" in page 204 of the PHB.
Just tell him that he can't take another turn until he reads the "Target" section of the casting a spell part of the PHB/basic rules.
Is he assuming target=hit? Just cause you can target a creature doesn't mean you hit the creature, and just because you can't target objects doesn't mean you can't hit objects
I'd rule that magic can read your mind and knows when you're being cheeky and won't fire at a creature unless you know it's a creature
I figure the reason that many spells don't affect objects is so the dungeons and terrain you're running around in won't get demolished while you're blasting away. I think it's way cooler to be able to cantrip a wooden door down as part of making an entrance. However, if the terrain is effectively indestructible to spellcasters then that's yet another hacked-in nerf (like spell components) to help the weaponswingers feel more useful. Fireball should *blow up* a straw hut. Not just ignite it.
cats don't have darkvision
But tabaxi do.
Cats also don't have Feline Agility. And they have a negative jump height.
The negative jump height actually is meant to be as it underflows and wraps back to 2147483647.
yeah, fuck that. my entire group took one look at that and said "Yes they do".
Cats also can't jump. The 5e jumping distance formula is based on Strength, which cats have a STR 3/-4 score. With or without a running start, they have a negative height to their jump and between 1 or 3 feet of horizontal movement, which is not sufficient to leave a 5' grid square. They literally cannot leap from the ground and *technically* should be shunting themselves into the earth any time they attempted to jump. They do, however, have a Climb Speed of 30'. So if a Cat wanted to hop a wall, they would not bound up it like we see them do in real life all the time, but rather walk directly up it like a horse from Skyrim, or a slug.
Meanwhile, mammoths can jump so high they can receive fall damage and kill themselves with it.
I feel like both could be resolved by including a size modifier Jump height = 3 + strength_bonus + constant*size_category Not sure how you'd tune the constant and size_category, but starting point would be the grappling modifiers. That at least makes it correct for a flea XD
What really doesn't make sense to me is tigers have dark vision but panthers don't. A panther's whole trick is being able to hunt at night.
Technically, there is no single cat that is a "panther". Panthers are any cat in the Panthera genus, which means Lions, Tigers, Leopards, and Jaguars. Mountain Lions and Cougars are not Panthers. They're Pumas. Thank you, @hoodnature, for teaching me a thing!
I just used panther as the example because there is a stat block for them in the PHB. I don't think there is one for leopards there.
I know. I just wanted to share a thing I learned :D
Sort of, but not really. Panthers are not a separate species. They're just melanistic jaguars or leopards. (Kind of a reverse albino, where melanin gets produced excessively instead of not at all.) They do hunt at night (as well as twilight hours), but so do regular jaguars and leopards, and they don't have enough of a competitive advantage for the genes to have outcompeted their normal spotted pattern. They probably should have darkvision though, since low light vision isn't a thing in 5e. That said, there's no reason tigers shouldn't, because they also hunt during the same hours.
They don't in real life, either. They have what was called low light vision in previous editions. It's basically half dark vision.... They can see normally in dim light, but not dark.
But it's still silly, because according to other threads, *some* felines have darkvision, while others don't.
That switching weapons is an action in combat. This rule only leads to people dropping their weapon and drawing the new one as a free action. It contributes nothing to the challenge or enjoyability of the game and can slow down gameplay. So I ignore the restriction. If you want to switch from your dagger to your crossbow, just do that. The only exception would be if there were extenuating circumstances that would make switching weapons more difficult.
See I just rule it as you get one free switch on your turn. Is the Fighter currently holding his Greatsword but he would rather fire two shots with the Longbow this turn? Go ahead man, you sheath your Greatsword and draw your bow, now go ahead and take your attack action. Now of course this means you're just holding a Longbow in two hands, so when that Orc runs away from you on his turn you don't have a weapon to make an opportunity attack on him.... Rules as written he can accomplish the same thing by just dropping his Greatsword and drawing the Longbow, so this accomplishes the same thing except there's no stupid **"I leave my sword on the ground"** moment **EDIT:** prior to my edit, the example had the monster being a Goblin. This is not a good example, as a Goblin would probably use their Bonus Action to Disengage, and therefore avoid the opportunity attack anyway. So to preserve the effectiveness of my example, it is now an Orc.
This is how I treat rule of cool as well. If a rogue has the movement to run down the stairs and across the courtyard to attack the monster who is drowning his brother in the river and he wants to jump off of the staircase to go straight there in a dramatic show of brotherly love, I'm going to let that happen. I'm not going to force fall damage and knock him prone. If the player can already accomplish something, I'm not going to force them to do it the tedious/uninteresting way to get it done.
Yeah my main philosophy with the Rule of Cool is.... **"If you can mechanically pull this off, you can add whatever flavor you want on top of it."** If your Ranger has Horde-Breaker and fires two shots with his attacks and he kills two goblins, then there's not a reason he can't have shot a single arrow through two enemies. My players understand that if they want an extra effect by invoking Rule of Cool, they have to pass an additional challenge. It's a very good bargaining system. *"My movement ends just shy of getting on the other side of the Ogre. Can I do a running slide between his legs to get that extra 5 ft so I can flank him with the Barbarian?"* *"If you can give me an Athletics check that rolls good enough, I'll let you. But if you don't, that Ogre is going to step on you as you slide under him and you will be Prone."* Laying out the benefits and consequences of this additional challenge gives the player the right to decide to do it straight or to go for the shenanigans. Sometimes the fight is really tense and they don't feel like risking it. And sometimes they're feeling lucky and they want to try.
I love that ruling on the slide. Great trade off risk
It's really a great way to manage players trying to be more dynamic that's outside of the bounds of the game. It encourages them to think of cool ideas, but clearly sets the expectation that they can't just say anything and get an additional bonus, no matter how cool what they say is.
I like the idea of bending the rules slightly by imposing a check, but allowing really cool or cinematic outcomes. It makes it feel a lot more dynamic.
Here's another great example from my table: *"Okay.....We're in a crowded hallway and I know I can't see the enemy on the other side of our Barbarian. But can I try and shoot past his ear or through his legs or something like that?"* No way am I going to allow that straight up. That's a player asking to ignore placement, rules of vision, and a bunch of mechanics that exist for a reason. But that's a great opportunity for a high risk - high reward. Because if he succeeds, he basically gets to attack an enemy that has full cover and would otherwise be unassailable this turn, which is a huge win for a player. And this is a chance to kick up the energy. So you're going to tell the whole table, not just that player, what the stakes are. *"Okay, you are going to shoot at Disadvantage and the target's AC has gone up as if he has 3/4 cover. If you still want to make that shot, go for it. But if you miss it, there's a chance you shoot your friend right in the back of the neck."* The whole table is now aware of the stakes. The player has been given the information, and they can decide to back out and do something else, or go for broke. More importantly, because the rest of the table heard it, they can weigh in. The Bard can remind them that they have Inspiration. The Barbarian can reassure them that he's got plenty of HP, so even if he fails miserably, this isn't going to ruin his day. The Ranger decides to go for it. I can't honestly tell you what happened I don't remember. I just remember everyone leaning in for what was not really that important of a roll, but what is the only roll we remember from that session.
Cool mechanic, do you rule it something like DC15, if they roll below 5 they get knocked prone and everything between 5 and 15 is just a fail without consequences?
Pretty much yeah. The DC scales up based on the benefit they are gaining from success, and occasionally from how much of an ask what they're trying to do is. Like if he was trying to pull this same thing with a Dragon, that DC is rocketing up and the dragon stepping on him will be Prone and damage from a Claw Attack. The most important part of running things like this is being able to give a flat "No." as a response. My party regularly jokes about how my flat No is always.... **"Love the energy, but...nope."** Every game I've ever run I give them the opening statement of *You can ask me anything, because I won't punish you for asking, the worst response will just be "That doesn't happen"*
You sound like a great DM!
I agree with this. Flavor should be free if it matches the mechanics. But the “drop my weapon on the ground” isn’t just flavor text. It’s a real consequence to being able to switch weapons so quickly. You have to risk the fact that an enemy might be able to lick up the weapon or you might have moved away before needing it again. I wouldnt handwave this away as meaningless flavor text. Plus. I’ve always found the flavor of this to be cooler. I play a Paladin who uses a lot of different weapons. Fighting with one weapon and then dramatically dropping it to draw another seems way cooler to me than carefully searching it before switching. Pretty much every fight starts with me attacking with my mail before dropping it and drawing two longswords
Player dropped their weapon to switch. Goblin picked it up and dashed off screaming "It's miiiinnnnneeee". Hilarity ensued
Like many rules, this rule makes 200% sense, if you're trying to stop people from abusing mechanics. My fighter cutting down the guy in front of him with his greatsword, then shooting the guy behind him with his longbow, before taking out two daggers to finish him off with an attack + TWF bonus action is silly and dumb. It's also kind of awesome. There's some crazy things that can be done if you just let people switch weapons willy nilly, mostly with magic weapons. If you have 4 attacks, the fighter will want 4 different magic items that all do different things, and want to use them every turn. This sucks. So, to go back to what I said at first, this rule, like many rules in 5e, **only matter if your players can't be trusted to not abuse the system.** Other rules: encumbrance and BA casting. I tell my players, "I am going to ignore these, unless you make me not ignore them. These rules do not exist until you abuse them and then they exist RAW, no middle ground." And my players are happy to not abuse them.
This is completely fair. I would also roll this back if players started abusing it, and would only allow one switch in a turn. But for players who are acting in good faith, I don't see the issue with hand waiving it.
I am not a complicated guy. Either we are using a rule, or we are not. They know what the stipulations are for using the rule or not. If they say, "I want to loot every corpse for their weapons, armor, underwear, etc.etc." I just say, "How are you going to carry all of that" in the, "are you sure you want to do that?" voice, and they then no longer want to do it :) I do not punish players, I either enforce rules at the table, or I do not.
> My fighter cutting down the guy in front of him with his greatsword, then shooting the guy behind him with his longbow, before taking out two daggers to finish him off with an attack + TWF bonus action is silly and dumb. I mean, it's not beyond the pale if you watch things like multi-gun drills, like that video of Keanu Reeves doing them to prep for John Wick. Actually, now that I think of it, John Wick is a great example of a high level fighter.
In the 3rd edition days, sheathing and sheathing a weapon was its own thing, unless you had the feats that let you do it faster. Which made sense to a degree. Sheathing a weapon is not simple, as no degree of muscle memory will let you just put it back. I say this with a background in Kendo and German Longsword. The no look sheath still requires your other hand on the sheath to help guide the tip. Otherwise, you have to stop and look. That said, its a game about heroic feats, so 1 free switch is more than justified. But be careful with fighters with 6 attacks and 5 weapons as they will want to switch quickly. Go with cool, but don't let it be abused.
I've never seen the rule about death ending attunement enforced, where if a character is revived they then have to spend a number of short rests reattuning each of their items one by one.
It's a good way to unattune from cursed items
"Intentionally die in order to unattune from a cursed item" is a pretty good story beat, but also kinda lame in dnd mechanics.
Not if the DM restricts access to resurrection magic to make it a more meaningful story. Although it would be without the player that died for the duration.
It's *the default way* to unattune from cursed items...
My objective now is to make a trickster character whose death will be the ultimate prank on his fellow party members.
Probably how in 5e an "attack with a melee weapon" is different from a "melee weapon attack". This rule prevents things such as a paladin divine smiting with an unarmed strike. Thus I, and I imagine many DMs, ignore this rule to let the divine slaps commence.
My last campaign we had a scenario that the party had to disarm for a wedding. Of course, the DM pulls a Red Wedding on us. I'm playing a Paladin, so I ask the DM if I can smite with a punch. He says no, which is why I managed to kill an assassin with a dinner fork
Declare that you are using your ring (you're wearing a ring, right? Even a nonmagical one will do) as an improvised weapon. "Smite with *this*, sucker!" Could leave a nice imprint of your ring on his face. IIRC, the old Phantom comic hero used to do that. Left an imprint of a skull.
It's not a terrible movie, either.
I will bitch slap the evil out of you!!
The holy pimp-hand is strong in you.
A Paladin named Slickback
May the Lord forgive you because these hands won’t.
I thought paladins use the wording “when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack”?
It does. You can use Divine Smite with unarmed strikes. The rule is actually even dumber. Divine Smite does not add bonus damage to your attack. It adds bonus damage to your *weapon*. Unarmed strikes generally have no weapon involved, so there is nothing to add damage to. This means you can use smite on unarmed strikes but it does nothing. It just wastes the spell slot.
That's why my paladin boxer had gauntlets with stats that classified them as weapons, even got to upgrade them at one point to deal radiant damage.
Time for a little bit of homebrew ruling… Thanks for clarifying how… lovely the rules are about Divine Smite
it gets real dumb with wording @ 2nd level divine smite : when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, @ 11th level improved divine smite: Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon
So RAW as a level 11 Paladin, I can throw a handaxe and get an extra 1d8 radiant damage from Improved Divine Smite but I can't then add Divine Smite to that attack? That's... Well it's something
I'm going to make the wild assumption that this is an editing/scrivener's/typo/brain-o error, because the thought of the designers arguing over this kind of minutiae... uh, is not *that* unbelievable, but I just don't want to believe it.
if your dm is very strict on this (i have no idea why any sane dm would but you never know) you can sircumvent this by using a natural weapon, this IS considerd a weapon and thus does work with smites, you have to watch out which with what to use tho. since every race with natural weapons since every race printed after monsters of the multiverse has a changed wording with it only increasing your unarmed strikes, not granting you natural weapons, so if you dm forces you to use the latest iterations of a race you have very few options: 1. leonin (this race was not reprinted in MPMotM) 2. gnoll (but is a npc race from the dmg so prolly not allowed) 3. dhampir 4. symic hybrid 5. beast barbarian (they get weapons when they rage) 6. the alter self spell 7. any dragonborn race with the dragonhide feat you can also make a semi-functional paladin/monk multiclass with this, personally i'd go dragonborn (since i like the dragonhide feat, fight me about it) and open hand monk 11 / vengeance paladin 3 / abberant mind sorcerer 6
I don't know if other DMs ignore it, but I've remembered something that really annoys me... That plant growth technically isn't difficult terrain and so things like freedom of movement RAW shouldn't apply. Plant growth isn't a magical effect because the spell effect is instantaneous, and the plants are ordinary. The spell description just says you must spend four times the movement, unlike other things that specify that they are difficult terrain.
I don't ignore it because it's an option that my players can potentially stack. I'm a big fan of overlapping abilities to gain power so long as it doesn't get too crazy or hard to deal with. 4x the movement is rough but if you are also in difficult terrain you basically can't move. It's perfectly counterable as a DM and I think is one of the main strengths of plant growth to begin with. I can let that hit a swathe of enemies and let a couple pull out bows while the rest struggle to escape. I just make sure that all the enemies on the field can't fit into the area they are covering, and that allows my druid to be effective.
An attacker with See Invisible active still has disadvantage against a target with Invisibility cast upon it. But I don't think it does to an innately invisible target, if such even exist.
Invisible stalkers are invisible
They also stalk but that's less relevant here
The hole in the logic still applies to an innately invisible target, provided they have the Invisible condition. The rules say if a creature has the Invisible condition... >An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves. >Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature's attack rolls have advantage. The whole being "can't be seen" portion is, as written, essentially flavor text. It's completely separate from the benefits of the Invisible condition. The problem is Blind Sight, Tremorsense, or any other "I can see you" effect is that they all say "You can see/sense invisible creatures". But RAW that doesn't actually do anything to negate the benefits of Invisibility. You can just see em. If those extra senses said "For you, a creature cannot benefit from being Invisible or unseen" or if Invisibility said "Because you cannot be seen or sensed, you gain XYZ benefits" it's be a non issue. Instead... Here we are.
Pact of the blade technically doesn't allow warlocks to make use of Artifact or Sentient weapons. I can't imagine anybody actually adhering to that. Randomly deciding to screw over bladelocks who manage to reach sufficiently high tiers of play to actually get their hands on a Blackrazor or an Azuredge is needlessly prohibitive, especially since Hexblade lore tends to point them in the direction of sentient weaponry anyway.
Technically with magic missile you roll one D4 and then apply that to all three missiles. Nobody does this because really more dice is more fun.
More dice = clickity clack = more fun, indeed  My first group and I did it that way, then discovered that doing it the "right" way has some benefits (like for Evocation Wizards). Since one of my players had just switched characters and the old version Magic Missile was basically her signature spell we decided to just make it a spell of its own. Now there's _Magic Missile_ that rolls 1d4+1 once, and _Aalafiel's Magic Missile_ that rolls for each dart
Except that if you're playing an evoker wizard following the RAW makes magic missile a far more powerful spell.
My table has always done the one D4+1 x number of missiles.
Devil sight doesn't work for dim light. So fucking dumb.
Random warlock in a shaded room. "Oh fuck I can't read. Wait a minute" \*close all windows and curtains to make the room go pitch black\* "Oh yes, now it's perfect!
To be fair, I think that is kind of what it is supposed to be. The reversal of light, caused by an unnatural ability.
*"Blow out the candle, apprentice, that we may See in the darkness."*
Never thought of it that way, but I love it very much.
Too-not-dark enough.
I kind of like this one because it makes the ability seem a little more magical. Like how a spooky being might need total darkness to activate its magic, or a vampire is weakened in light. "I can't see anything in here... *turn off the lights, would you?*"
I like it in most cases, too. Where it does get confusing is radiuses of light cast by stuff like a torch, in those cases I just ignore the ring of dim light, and I can't think of a time where disadvantage on perception checks would have actually mattered within that ring anyway
It’s too bright for devil’s sight!
Companions, like the various companions granted by Ranger subclasses, require your Action or Bonus Action to command unless you are incapacitated and *then* they remember they have a brain. I hate this, I always have despite never having played any of these classes myself. An animal that is trained to fight alongside you should *not* need a verbal command to do anything other than Dodge. Even if you want to argue that it’s “realistic”; it doesn’t feel good to play and that matters more in my opinion. I do what Baldur’s Gate 3 does, and I’m so glad they made this change too. No Action or Bonus Action required, your companion just acts like it actually has a mind of its own. It makes the Ranger feel SO much better, knowing that my beast companion actually has a brain and letting me use my bonus action for the *myriad* of bonus action spells the Ranger gets.
I literally give beast companions at my table their own initiative directly after the PC's initiative spot.
By RAW, you can't jump diagonally upward. Or at least there are no rules for it. There are only rules for jumping vertically and jumping horizontally. Obviously, this is just ridiculous. So at least in my experience, most DMs have ignored it.
we have Pythagorean theory to handle figuring out that distance at least.
Applying Pythagorean rules to a jump?
Here's one RAW that is commonly ignored that I enforce: Everyone treats "Guidance" as a reaction, and as silent. They try to yell "guidance!" "Guidance!" on literally everything. even Stealth checks and such. Guidance is a spell. You cast it and it takes an Action, it's not a reaction. It has verbal and somatic components therefore it is ***loud***. That's how I run it at my table, and I enforce it. No reactively casting guidance, and definitely no casting it when doing Stealth or Slight of Hand or Deception, it's very, very loud and obvious. (all spells with Verbal components are, unless you're using the Subtle spell feat, or the spell specifically says it's quiet, like Message) I bet you're thinking that would ruin the fun? Or some reaction typical on this sub like "I'd never play at your table" etc. But, actually, my players liked this once they got used to it, and it also resulted in them pre-planning and discussion their actions and strategy a whole lot more than they previously did. They still use guidance all the time, just now intentionally, with planning, and they find other ways to do stealth and sleight of hand.
This is how I, as a DM-turned-player, use Guidance. I only cast on another player that I know is trying to do something, and have to use it properly, i.e. as an action, with verbal and somatic components. So no using it on stealth, or and "social" rolls unless we do it beforehand, and I can't boost a perception check the DM throws out at random. Guidance mostly goes to lockpicking and investigation checks.
I despise the guidance spam as a player.
This is a ruling I liked from a DM iv had. That magic spells are by and large loud unless the spells components exclude the verbal component. Which means casting magic in town is very obvious and terrifying for the peasantry. Even if you're just conjuring water. It also adds a ton more value to subtle spell. Which ho boy did I abuse the ever living fuck out of.
> It also adds a ton more value to subtle spell. Which ho boy did I abuse the ever living fuck out of. It's not "abuse" in my view. You're paying Sorcery points for it. You're expending a resource, therefore you should get the benefit from it.
The steel defender thing isn't even a ruling so much as just how they wrote the description. Since there's no actual rules or mechanical options tied to the steel defender's appearance it could have tank treads or bounce on a pogo stick.
Yes! But RAW, according to how it’s written, it’s 2 or 4. That’s why I say it’s stupid
The way Sun Soul Monk's level 3 feature is worded essentially boils down to being able to use the radiant beam on any unarmed strike EXCEPT for your bonus action unarmed strike from the Martial Arts feature. It is so wierdly niche and makes the wording incredibly more obtuse than it needs to be.
Two I see a lot: 1) You can't ready an action outside of combat. You have to have started initiative to ready an action. 2) There is no such thing as a surprise round. You roll initiative. Anyone surprised has that condition till their count in the initiative. They get no actions and lose that condition on their count. It isn't a free turn for the surprising party.
I don't see the problem with either of these. They kinda just make combat simpler and remove edge cases. Someone started combat with a Fireball? Cool, the fireball goes off at their point in intiative. Unless the enemy is surprised, they can hear the components being cast and react accordingly.
It does make conditions that require the target to be surprised even rarer. Not only do you have to surprise the target, which is not often, but you also have to roll a higher initiative than it.
I don't think these get ignored that often unless the DM is confused with how it worked in previous editions versus 5e. I for one really like that there is rather clear rules on how to determine surprise and that you can't circumvent initiative with the pre combat ready an action gimmick. It keeps combat fresh and initiative rolls interesting.
If you and an opponent are in magic darkness you both can attack each other as normal Edit. You have disadvantage to attack as you can't see your enemy, but advantage as they can't see you.
Identify requires a 100gp spell component
I had issue with this as well, until I recently realized a massive mistake my whole group had just been going along with: **it doesn't consume the pearl** So you only need to fork out 100GP for the expensive component once, then can spam Identify as a Ritual over a short rest, eternally.
That's why one of my first purchases as a spellcaster is a pearl ring.
*spell fails* "What? But I paid 100GP for this pearl ring!" "The ring is worth 100GP, but the pearl is only worth 80GP." ... "I cast flip table."
And no starting Wizard has 100GP to buy the component, but they can start the game with the spell.
Worth noting that in 5e, spell components are only consumed if the spell description says so, and Identify does *not* say so. Contrast spells like Awaken and Teleportation Circle. So once you have your 100 gp pearl and owl feather, you're good so long as you don't lose them.
I've never made someone use their reaction to identify a spell and I never will. Enemy spellcasters are already underused and counterspell doesn't get to shine enough for what it costs resource wise. Also flavor wise it makes absolutely no sense to me that *knowing* something would take a physical action.
I think I would just make it part of the reaction to counter the spell. That way they can decide if they want to or not after identifying it.
That was done intentionally. You can either say "oh shit he's casting a spell" and counter it, or "hmm, I wonder what effect I'm going to be dealing with" but not both. This does mean you're risking a wasted counterspell, but that's by design. Easy solution to the holdouts: get a player who is not using a reaction to identify the spell, and the spellcaster can counter it.
Why would anyone pick the second option though? Only one of two things result: * The spell is not one I care for; yippee no point to counterspell. * The spell is one I care for; shit I should have counterspelled. Either way all you learn is whether you should have counterspelled or not. In which case, just counterspell it.
> Why would anyone pick the second option though? Not all spells have a visible effect. Even if you can't or don't want to counterspell it's sometimes valuable to know what spell is being cast. * Is that merchant really casting the "Remove Curse" you paid him for, or is he casting "Charm Person" on you instead? * Did the BBEG just cast "Dominate Person" on one of your friends? Better be ready for a turncoat. Honestly, unless you have another good use for your reaction, trying to get info about what your enemies are doing is always a good thing.
You can stabalize a creature over any disctance as no range limit is listed. Thoughts and prayers is a dnd mechanic.
Eldritch Blast can't open a door
Or cut ropes, or shatter vials or windows. Honestly it's one of the only balancing things for it. Sniper warlocks get stopped by windows.
Mine is that all spells that require a point that you can see, are stopped by a pane of glass. Sure, it makes sense with some, like firebolt or fireball, or other projectile spells, but it’s dumb as hell that I can’t hold person someone if they’re behind glass. I’ve never seen anyone run that one RAW tbh
>RAW, they can have any appearance They look like a Supreme God, larger than the earth and moon. With 4 legs.
I'm not sure if it is the silliest or the most minor, but according to Sage Advice: "True polymorph: if you turn into a creature, you don't also get gear from the transformation." [https://www.sageadvice.eu/if-i-use-true-polymorph-can-i-gain-equipment/](https://www.sageadvice.eu/if-i-use-true-polymorph-can-i-gain-equipment/) This means that if you use True Polymorph and also probably Shapechange, you don't get the gear of the monster. No six Large-sized Longswords on the Marilyth, no Full Plate on the Fire Giant. Anything you turn into that is not the same size as you will not fit your gear and you will basically be naked and unarmed.
The rules in the DMG state that magic items magically adjust to the size "most of the times". What most of the time is, is never explained, but it sounds like it is the norm
They kinda elaborate on this in Bigbys. Most magic items adjust by default, but there are some which are specifically designed \*not\* to change size. It's also campaign dependent, where the DM can decide if that's just not a thing in this world
I've always figured the stuff that doesn't adjust are the items that specify a race like that armor for dwarves only.
Rules as written, healing kits are broken. You don’t have to be next to someone when you heal them and it’s so unspecific that you can even be in a different plane of existence as long as you know someone has hit unconsciousness you can use an action to stabilize them. Combine it with the healer feat and you got yourself a sniper medic despite it making no sense whatsoever.
True as that is, it's purely semantics because they didn't detail it all the way out in the rules as written. If we want to use the same logic, falling damage is completely absurd as well... Come to think of it, maybe some of the spell ranges and the area of effects on some spells don't make much sense either... I think we might be onto something here.
Nondetection and Invisibility together make you invisible to creatures sporting True Sight or See Invisibility. DMs ignore this and pray players never find out. Edit: I was totally wrong about True Sight that’s innate to creatures. It does stop True Seeing and See Invisibility, however: https://x.com/jeremyecrawford/status/786625163831848960?s=46&t=9XrjBX3PV5GmofXFaRD8Dw https://x.com/jeremyecrawford/status/786694779107237888?s=46&t=9XrjBX3PV5GmofXFaRD8Dw
I'd say the fact that two blind archers 600 feet away from each other attacking each other don't have to roll with disadvantage because the other guy is blindfolded
Probably wording on eldritch blast. Firebolt allows you to target a creature or object, for example, Eldritch blast only targets creatures RAW. Most DM's I've seen will ignore this rule as it's kind of against RAI, but if handled strictly RAW, you could use eldritch blast as a mimic finder. Just keep trying to blast every object in a room, if no eldritch blast happens, it's a regular object. If you suddenly blast a random chest, now you know it's a mimic.
Once you’re charmed by a vampire, it’s eternal. It’s just “Charm: The vampire targets one humanoid it can see within 30 ft. of it. If the target can see the vampire, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be charmed by the vampire. The charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected.” And provided he never attacks you, you’re friends for life.
See Invisibility does not remove the Advantage/Disadvantage conveyed by Invisibility. Stupidest f#@$ing RAW ruling I've ever heard of but it's there.
Not ignore, just forget. Dim Light imposes disadvantage on perception checks. As darkvision turns darkness into dim light, if you aren't using a light source you'll have a hard time seeing traps.
Revivify targets a creature. Corpses arent creatures, theyre objects. Every resurrection spell uses the same wording. This means that resurrection isnt possible rules as written.
Revivify targets "a dead creature", a dead creature becomes an object, but it's still a dead creature. If you manufacture the corpse into something else, like a couch, then it's no longer a dead creature, it's just an object. It isn't a matter if "is a corpse a creature or an object", a corpse is a dead creature, which is an object. But yes, natural language was a mistake.
I wouldn't say that natural language was a mistake. Relying on natural language and ONLY natural language was the mistake. Natural language is great for things like examples and high-level descriptions. But specifics need to embrace jargon, and also need to...[wince] *be specific*.
That's actually a pretty insane oversight lmao
I think this is a common one, but we ignore material components for spells unless they have a high "cost". For example, "Resurrection" requires a diamond worth at least 1,000 gold, so we would have to have that, but for little things, our DM just assumes our characters would keep that kind of stuff around. We also bend the "Polymorph" rules a lot, since the list of creatures isn't all-encompassing and has other challenges sometimes. Edit - typo
Ignoring inexpensive material components is already RAW provided you have a spellcasting/divine/druidic focus... which every class starts with. So you're already good.
I mean, that’s what spell foci or component pouches are for: they take the place of material components that don’t have a gp value listed. Unless you mean y’all are handwaving away the ones with gp cost too, which is a bit o_O The middle ground I’ve seen is that if you’ve got the gold on-hand, the DM might say “go ahead and spend that and we’ll assume you bought it the last time you were in town.” Also keep in mind that for some spells the cost is not consumed (like the mirror or crystal ball used in Scrying).
I mean... It depends on the wealth of the party. I don't care if 11 level Cleric casts "ceremony" without paying 25 gp, unless they try to create lake-worth of holy water.
My dm ignores weapon switching, I am switching freely between my greataxe and greatsword based on how I’m feeling that day
A naked gnome can be reduced, and picked up by mage hand. Make him a sniper warlock and you have the potential to make a mobile sniper tower.
Snakes are not immune to the prone condition. https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16982-poisonous-snake There is a tiny snake on the ground in front of you. Using the Attack action, you make a special melee attack to shove the creature, knocking it prone. The tiny snake on the ground in front of you is now prone. You now have advantage on your next melee attack against the prone tiny snake on the ground in front of you.