Rakshasa spell immunity

[Sir Whiskers]

Opinions requested:

In a particular encounter, our party rescued a couple npc's. Being the typical paranoid people that most (surviving) characters are, the cleric cast True Seeing. Everything showed normal. The two later turned out to be rakshasas. The gm's decision was that, since rakshasa are immune to all spell effects of 8th level and below, the spell had no effect. I disagree, based on the following points:

1) The rakshasa description says "Rakshasas ignore the effects of spells and spell-like abilities of 8th level or less, just as if the spellcaster had failed to overcome spell resistance."

2) The description of True Seeing says "Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)", which implies only the spell resistance of the target (the cleric) applies, not the spell resistance of those creatures he looks at.

The encounter is over, so I'm asking solely to clarify how to handle similar situations in the future. Thanks.

 

[Teleri_mm]

As a DM i hate to say this... but i think you, the player, are right

I see the perspective of your DM but have him look at spells like Detect Evil... they have no spell resistance and they would have let you detect the Rakshasas... assuming they did not have some other effect running on them at the time. Your DM is most likely thinking of their ability as something like anti magic that suppresses effects... but that is clearly not the case.


Teleri, the smiling DM

 

[hong]

2) The description of True Seeing says "Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)", which implies only the spell resistance of the target (the cleric) applies, not the spell resistance of those creatures he looks at.

This is correct. The target of true seeing is the person doing the looking, not the people being looked at. The rakshasas are not the target of the spell, so their SR doesn't apply.

 

[AuraSeer]

[obligatory]The DM is always right.[/obligatory]

However, in this instance, your DM was wrong. Spell immunity acts exactly like unbeatable SR. The description of SR, on this SRD page, says in part:

Spell resistance has no effect unless the energy created or released by the spell actually goes to work on the resistant creature's mind or body.
[...]
Spell resistance does not apply if an effect fools the creature's senses or reveals something about the creature, such as minor illusion or detect thoughts does.

In the situation described, True Seeing would only have revealed information about the rakshasas. Since it was not affecting them directly, their spell immunity should not have applied.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

This misinterpretation comes up in a variety of different contexts. The other really common cases are with golems and nightshades. I'd characterize it as interpreting "immunity" as "no spell works in any way which would be disadvantageous to you," as opposed to "no spell affects you."

The rakshasha case is interesting in that at least it explicitly acts like spell resistance, which makes it easier to adjudicate. Nevertheless, spell resistance only applies if you are the target of the spell in question, or if you stand to be directly affected (generally by virtue of being in an area of effect). It explicitly does not apply if the spell acts on some other creature or object and the affect is merely inconvenient to you. All of this information is clearly spelled out in the description of spell resistance as a special ability (in the DMG and SRD).

Spell resistance clearly does not provide any protection from true seeing unless someone is trying to cast the spell on you and for some reason you don't want the ability it would grant (for example, there's an invisible medusa in the room and true seeing would expose you to its gaze attack). Of course, even if you do want the true seeing you have to use an action to lower your spell resistance, as usual, if you want to receive the spell from somebody else.