D&D 5E Disintegrate Vs. Druid

[Arial Black]

Disintegrate's ash effect has already triggered. Gaining hit points later does not undo that as there is nothing in the spell to say that it does. Without being able to show me where it explicitly says that disintegrate's trigger is undone by reversion, it does not get undone by reversion.

When the druid reverts because of damage sustained, there is no 'gaining' of it points!

The beast form lost all, and the druid form lost more. At no point during this process did the druid gain hit points.

Disintegrate never triggers because the damage from the spell causes the druid to be reduced to 27 hp, not zero.

 

[Maxperson]

When the druid reverts because of damage sustained, there is no 'gaining' of it points!

Wow! You say you use logic and reason, but you don't see 0 + druid original hit points as a gain.

Disintegrate never triggers because the damage from the spell causes the druid to be reduced to 27 hp, not zero.

So your position is that WotC lied to us all when they put straight into print that druid hit 0 in beast form?

 

[seebs]

Wow! You say you use logic and reason, but you don't see 0 + druid original hit points as a gain.

I think the argument is that you in some way already had those original hit points, so you're not gaining them.

However, I think the way polymorph abilities are written, you really are gaining those hit points. There is a single "you", which has statistics, then you assume different statistics, then you assume the previous statistics. But that means that "you" were at 0 hit points, and then gain back the hit points the previous form had.

 

[seebs]

The bolded part is a house rule. Disintegrate's ash effect has already triggered. Gaining hit points later does not undo that as there is nothing in the spell to say that it does. Without being able to show me where it explicitly says that disintegrate's trigger is undone by reversion, it does not get undone by reversion.

So I'm thinking about this more.

How do you feel about poison or disease? I don't think the polymorph rules (I note that they appear to be identical to wild shape, so focusing on druids is probably pointless) explicitly state anything about those. But I would think that you'd lose poison effects on revert, for instance.

I am currently leaning towards "animal body dusts, and as the dusting spreads through it, the falling dust reforms into druid", because Rule Of Cool.

 

[Maxperson]

I think the argument is that you in some way already had those original hit points, so you're not gaining them.

However, I think the way polymorph abilities are written, you really are gaining those hit points. There is a single "you", which has statistics, then you assume different statistics, then you assume the previous statistics. But that means that "you" were at 0 hit points, and then gain back the hit points the previous form had.

This is exactly right. There is only one you. The druids hit points drop to zero and then he returns/regains his old hit points.

 

[Maxperson]

So I'm thinking about this more.

How do you feel about poison or disease? I don't think the polymorph rules (I note that they appear to be identical to wild shape, so focusing on druids is probably pointless) explicitly state anything about those. But I would think that you'd lose poison effects on revert, for instance.

I am currently leaning towards "animal body dusts, and as the dusting spreads through it, the falling dust reforms into druid", because Rule Of Cool.

As I said more than once earlier in the thread, I'm going with RAI for my game. I'll probably do the same with disintegrate. With poison and disease, though, I probably won't. I'll have to give it more thought, but I think RAI with disintegrate is to not have the spell destroy the druid because he took a weaker form. Poison and disintegrate don't do that. They are simply a form of damage/effect and I think it is likely that RAI isn't for wild shape to destroy other game elements like poison, disease, contagion spell, etc. Add to that the wild shape wording that the druid assumes the shape of the beast, so the beast form is his body. Reversion doesn't change the druid from one body to the other, so I wouldn't think any poison or disease would leave. Then of course there is the paragraph on what exclusions happen upon reversion and poison and disease aren't on that list.

Given all of that, I'm strongly leaning against losing poison/disease effects upon reversion.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not to add fuel to the fire, but here's some gasoline.

I think it is possible to interpret the "Instant Death" rule from page 197 of the Player's Handbook as allowing for negative hp. I realize the words negative hp do not appear in the paragraph, but the wording of it does allow for damage to remain hanging around for a short period after an attack, and being "taken away" or "Compared to" the hp values of the target.

This means at the very least that the remaining damage does not simply disappear once the target hits 0 hp.

 

[Maxperson]

Not to add fuel to the fire, but here's some gasoline.

I think it is possible to interpret the "Instant Death" rule from page 197 of the Player's Handbook as allowing for negative hp. I realize the words negative hp do not appear in the paragraph, but the wording of it does allow for damage to remain hanging around for a short period after an attack, and being "taken away" or "Compared to" the hp values of the target.

This means at the very least that the remaining damage does not simply disappear once the target hits 0 hp.

It doesn't disappear, but neither is it applied to the victim. Once you hit 0, damage stops being applied to your hit points and remains off in limbo having absolutely no effect unless it equals your total hit points, in which case it still isn't applied to you as damage. You simply die.

 

[Noctem]

Unless the excess damage beyond 0 also deals your HP in negative damage, it's nothing beyond that. You get to 0, check remaining damage to see if it kills you outright and if it doesn't you set yourself to 0 and ignore remaining damage. That is of course unless you have something which specifically says you keep any remaining damage, like wildshape which says that any remaining damage is applied to the druid's life total after reverting.

 

[seebs]

Unless the excess damage beyond 0 also deals your HP in negative damage, it's nothing beyond that. You get to 0, check remaining damage to see if it kills you outright and if it doesn't you set yourself to 0 and ignore remaining damage. That is of course unless you have something which specifically says you keep any remaining damage, like wildshape which says that any remaining damage is applied to the druid's life total after reverting.

I think the key here is: 5e is not trying to offer a completely consistent and fully-defined set of rules. There's no reference in the usual damage process to "excess" damage, only to "remaining" damage, but the polymorph rules talk about "excess" damage. But that's because you are assumed to be able to figure it out.

And that's honestly a better design most of the time for most players. But it does mean that there is simply nothing in the game rules as written that fully defines/resolves some ambiguities.