Protection from Evil / Good discrepancy

The Protection from Evil spell differs from the Protection from Good / Law / Chaos spells in they way they deal with summoned creatures. Here is the relevant text (from the SRD):

Protection from Evil
Third, the spell prevents bodily contact by summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature. Good summoned creatures are immune to this effect.

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Protection from Good
This spell functions like protection from evil, except [...] good summoned creatures cannot touch the subject.

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Protection from Law
This spell functions like protection from evil, except [..] lawful summoned creatures cannot touch the subject.

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Protection from Chaos
This spell functions like protection from evil, except [...] chaotic summoned creatures cannot touch the subject.

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Note that Protection from Evil protects against Neutral and Evil summoned creatures, but Protection from Good / Law / Chaos do not protect against Neutral summoned creatures. There is nothing in the PHB errata reagarding this, so is it intentional or an overlooked error, and which is correct?

thorian said:

Note that Protection from Evil protects against Neutral and Evil summoned creatures, but Protection from Good / Law / Chaos do not protect against Neutral summoned creatures.

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Actually, that's not quite right.

Protection from Evil protects against Neutral and Evil summoned creatures.

Protection from Law protects against Neutral, and Evil summoned creatures, and Lawful Good summoned creatures.

Protection from Chaos protects against Neutral, and Evil summoned creatures, and Chaotic Good summoned creatures.

And Protection from Good protects against all summoned creatures.

They're badly written. I recommend scrapping "functions like PfE" entirely, and instead cut and past the entire spell description, but replace all instances of 'Good' with Chaos, Law, or Evil, and all instances of 'Evil' with Law, Chaos, or Good, respectively.

-Hyp.

Hypersmurf said:

Actually, that's not quite right.

Protection from Evil protects against Neutral and Evil summoned creatures.

Protection from Law protects against Neutral, and Evil summoned creatures, and Lawful Good summoned creatures.

Protection from Chaos protects against Neutral, and Evil summoned creatures, and Chaotic Good summoned creatures.

And Protection from Good protects against all summoned creatures.

They're badly written. I recommend scrapping "functions like PfE" entirely, and instead cut and past the entire spell description, but replace all instances of 'Good' with Chaos, Law, or Evil, and all instances of 'Evil' with Law, Chaos, or Good, respectively.

-Hyp.

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While I agree that they are screwed up, and that the best solution is to take PfE and substitute appropriately, I disagree with your interpretation (perhaps for the first time).

As written, here is how I interpret the spells:

Protection from Evil protects against Neutral and Evil summoned creatures.

Protection from Law protects against Lawful summoned creatures.

Protection from Chaos protects against Chaotic summoned creatures.

And Protection from Good protects against Good summoned creatures.

My logic is as follows:

Protection from Evil
Third, the spell prevents bodily contact by summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature. Good summoned creatures are immune to this effect.

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Protection from Good
This spell functions like protection from evil, except that the deflection and resistance bonuses apply to attacks from good creatures, and good summoned creatures cannot touch the subject.

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Protection from Evil mentions that it protects against bodily contact by summoned creatures, but Good creatures are immune to this effect. Protection from Good mentions it is as PfE except good summoned creatures cannot touch the subject. I interpret the except to mean instead of (not in addition to), so PfG would only protect against bodily contact from good summoned creatures. Of course, I think they didn't actually mean for it to work the way you or I have interpreted the rules as written, but someone just did a poor job of writing the spell descriptions. Anyway, does anyone know of any "official" corrections or clarifications?

thorian said:

Protection from Evil mentions that it protects against bodily contact by summoned creatures, but Good creatures are immune to this effect.

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Right. And PfG is the same as PfE (summoned creatures can't touch, withthe exception of Good creatures), except that Good creatures can't touch.

Which effectively removes PfE's exception to which summoned creatures can't touch.

-Hyp.

thorian said:

I interpret the except to mean instead of (not in addition to), so PfG would only protect against bodily contact from good summoned creatures. Of course, I think they didn't actually mean for it to work the way you or I have interpreted the rules as written, but someone just did a poor job of writing the spell descriptions. Anyway, does anyone know of any "official" corrections or clarifications?

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I have always read it the same as you do. The language has been the same all through 3.0 and 3.5 editions.

Distressingly, there's never been any errata, FAQ, or clarification to this. This stands out as one of the issues that clearly should have been clarified in 3.5, instead of the mess they wound up doing.

dcollins said:

Distressingly, there's never been any errata, FAQ, or clarification to this. This stands out as one of the issues that clearly should have been clarified in 3.5, instead of the mess they wound up doing.

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Basically, someone got their thought processes twisted while trying to convert the spell in their head.

It should probably read, for Protection From Law "...except that Chaotic creatures rather than Good creatures are immune to the warding effect", rather than prohibiting Lawful creatures... which are already prohibited by the PfE wording.

-Hyp.