D&D 5E Warlock and Repelling Blast

[Bolares]

Ok here's the thing. I don't care how my posts make me look when it comes to most people. I just simply don't care. You and I seem to have the same opinions but I think it's simply a difference in caring about what others think of us. It's a difference in personality perhaps. What I do care about on the other hand is that if 3 pages ago someone linked the rules quote for something, spending time and effort to explain that rule, and now some bloke makes a claim that clearly goes against that rules quote; that they be immediately reminded about the rules quote and that it be respected. I've noticed that most of the people who opine don't seem to care about actually reading the rules for this game and are more than comfortable spewing their interpretations as rules mantra. When someone comes asking about the rules, your houserule is the last thing you should be answering with imo unless the question has been answered and/or you clearly label it as such.

So I work to combat that spread. Arial Black's houserule about instantaneous spells shouldn't be submitted to answer a rules question but here we are. It's been debunked by dev tweet responses, rules quotes and that sort of thing. But he's stubborn. From his houserule, he's now spread it (with the help of others who have bought into his houserule) to include other game elements and how they interact with each other. Even though the duration clearly says it can't be dispelled, now there's talk about some kind of time between attacks that allows you to dispel. Needless to say, time between attacks like they are inventing doesn't exist. There's no such defined time in the rules of the game. But wait! The dictionary says something! Let me be clear, if you need to point to half a definition on a random dictionary website and you use that as the entire basis for your rules argument, you've lost from the get go. Essentially, they are going through the various rules that might cause problems and rewriting them (instantaneous can be dispelled, time between attacks exists, instantaneous = simultaneous, etc..) to fit into the houserule they invented to begin with. Like, it's nonsense and if my calling it out as such gets people to stop and think then that's good enough.

Its not as much about caring about what other people think as a philosophy of being kind to receive kindness. I always ponder if my statements will bring kindness to the world or willcontinuate the tread of animosity that reigns the internet and real life this days.

We are all intusiasts of a great passtime, we all share the same love for RPG, there is no need to treat each other with rudeness.

 

[Noctem]

You told me to go read example readied action triggers that fall completely within the realm of DM fiat to accept or reject. That's like me telling you to go ask your DM about if he would accept me swimming a mile in the river. He can say yes or he can say no and either way it's his prerogative. Present me with real evidence, like a rules quote saying it works the way you claim or a dev tweet and I'll agree with you, say I was wrong. If you're incapable of doing that then you have no grounds to say I'm wrong since it's DM fiat. In my game I can say a trigger can go off in between attacks and another DM can say they don't. The guidelines are vague as well so I expect a huge variation between what is acceptable and what is not.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You told me to go read example readied action triggers that fall completely within the realm of DM fiat to accept or reject. That's like me telling you to go ask your DM about if he would accept me swimming a mile in the river. He can say yes or he can say no and either way it's his prerogative. Present me with real evidence, like a rules quote saying it works the way you claim or a dev tweet and I'll agree with you, say I was wrong. If you're incapable of doing that then you have no grounds to say I'm wrong since it's DM fiat. In my game I can say a trigger can go off in between attacks and another DM can say they don't. The guidelines are vague as well so I expect a huge variation between what is acceptable and what is not.

No, I told you to go look at the explicit examples on page 193 of the Player's Handbook. You might want to rewrite history, but you can't.

ETA: If you are honestly claiming that such examples are DM fiat, and that the intent is to never allow RAs to interrupt actions (a statement not made anywhere in the rules), then you're automatically ceding all ground over the definition of instantaneous, as that's a similar statement to the one you're dismissing as DM fiat.

 

[Noctem]

No, I told you to go look at the explicit examples on page 193 of the Player's Handbook. You might want to rewrite history, but you can't.

ETA: If you are honestly claiming that such examples are DM fiat, and that the intent is to never allow RAs to interrupt actions (a statement not made anywhere in the rules), then you're automatically ceding all ground over the definition of instantaneous, as that's a similar statement to the one you're dismissing as DM fiat.

So again, you told me to go look at example triggers (without any context) in the PHB which are fully within the DM's realm to accept or refuse. That's not evidence that you're right. Those are just examples of how to phrase it to go off a potentially perceivable trigger. It's not proof one way or the other for this discussion... Give me a rules quote that says you can interrupt actions or a dev tweet that says you can do what you suggest for example. Simply pointing to example triggers means nothing because the implementation of those triggers is totally up to the DM AFAIK.

And now you're trying to claim that because I don't agree with you on one thing I must concede on another completely unrelated point?

See @Bolares, this is why I don't care what these people think of my posts. This is the kind of nonsense I have to sift through....

 

[Noctem]

Its not as much about caring about what other people think as a philosophy of being kind to receive kindness. I always ponder if my statements will bring kindness to the world or willcontinuate the tread of animosity that reigns the internet and real life this days.

We are all intusiasts of a great passtime, we all share the same love for RPG, there is no need to treat each other with rudeness.

Well then perhaps you're a better person than I am

 

[Ovinomancer]

So again, you told me to go look at example triggers (without any context) in the PHB which are fully within the DM's realm to accept or refuse. That's not evidence that you're right. Those are just examples of how to phrase it to go off a potentially perceivable trigger. It's not proof one way or the other for this discussion... Give me a rules quote that says you can interrupt actions or a dev tweet that says you can do what you suggest for example. Simply pointing to example triggers means nothing because the implementation of those triggers is totally up to the DM AFAIK.

And now you're trying to claim that because I don't agree with you on one thing I must concede on another completely unrelated point?

See @Bolares, this is why I don't care what these people think of my posts. This is the kind of nonsense I have to sift through....

If your position is that those examples are free for DMs to ignore, you've completely lost any ground on which to stake rules arguments. I can dismiss everything you've said by just saying that the rules are there for the DM to ignore as they want. That seems to be your position here. It would be quite laughable if I didn't actually think you were serious.

 

[Noctem]

I'm saying that you're grasping at examples presented without any context about things that can be perceived. Those examples don't serve to say that they must resolve the way you claim or that I claim. It proves nothing. Do you have anything else?

 

[seebs]

Ok here's the thing. I don't care how my posts make me look when it comes to most people. I just simply don't care. You and I seem to have the same opinions but I think it's simply a difference in caring about what others think of us. It's a difference in personality perhaps.

This is an interesting thing, because you appear to care a great deal how your posts make you look, and react with significant hostility if people inform you that they are not making you look the way you want to.

What I do care about on the other hand is that if 3 pages ago someone linked the rules quote for something, spending time and effort to explain that rule, and now some bloke makes a claim that clearly goes against that rules quote; that they be immediately reminded about the rules quote and that it be respected.

Except that you are frequently just plain wrong about what the rules say, which makes you the wrong person to do this reminding.

I've noticed that most of the people who opine don't seem to care about actually reading the rules for this game and are more than comfortable spewing their interpretations as rules mantra. When someone comes asking about the rules, your houserule is the last thing you should be answering with imo unless the question has been answered and/or you clearly label it as such.

Except, again, so far as I can tell you're one of the worst offenders in this regard, frequently making things up and claiming that they are rules.

So I work to combat that spread. Arial Black's houserule about instantaneous spells shouldn't be submitted to answer a rules question but here we are. It's been debunked by dev tweet responses, rules quotes and that sort of thing. But he's stubborn. From his houserule, he's now spread it (with the help of others who have bought into his houserule) to include other game elements and how they interact with each other. Even though the duration clearly says it can't be dispelled, now there's talk about some kind of time between attacks that allows you to dispel. Needless to say, time between attacks like they are inventing doesn't exist. There's no such defined time in the rules of the game.

This is why I think you are doing a better job of arguing for AB's position than AB is. You're arguing that there is no time between attacks, and if there's genuinely no time between them, it's conceptually impossible for the decision about what to target with the second beam to be made only after the result of the first beam is known.

But wait! The dictionary says something! Let me be clear, if you need to point to half a definition on a random dictionary website and you use that as the entire basis for your rules argument, you've lost from the get go. Essentially, they are going through the various rules that might cause problems and rewriting them (instantaneous can be dispelled, time between attacks exists, instantaneous = simultaneous, etc..) to fit into the houserule they invented to begin with. Like, it's nonsense and if my calling it out as such gets people to stop and think then that's good enough.

You seem to be conflating the posts of a number of different posters, with the net result being that you are thinking of things as being based on AB's "houserule" when they are, in fact, being offered as rebuttals to it, or at the very least alternative interpretations of the rules.

My observation is that the rules for this game are often imprecise or informal or rely on general English terminology rather than rigid formal definitions. It's true that nothing in the rules defines the amount of time that occurs between attacks, but if you're allowed to evaluate the results of an attack before choosing how to make the next attack, there must be some kind of interval where you are observing things and thinking about them, even if it's a very very short hunk of time. And we have a general principle that, quite clearly, readied actions can take place between attacks, or during movement, after which the attacks or movement will continue (if they can).

So if eldritch blast lets you make several attacks, and in general you can hit someone with a readied action between their attacks, it seems pretty reasonable to think that you can hit someone with a readied action between the attacks of eldritch blast. And if you can do that, we have a circumstance under which a readied action can actually take place during an "instantaneous" spell. And AB's theory is that this can't be possible because AB reads "instantaneous" as restricting the entire spell to being instantaneous (and thus precluding making choices based on the outcomes of the first attack when targeting the second). Me, I read "instantaneous" as just meaning "the spell's effect is complete once you've resolved it, and there's nothing still there to do anything to". But in the case of, say, eldritch blast's multiple attacks, it seems to me like there might actually be magic up during the attacks. It's just very rare for anyone to do anything at such a time. Especially because in general AoO and the like can't interrupt casting, meaning there's not much benefit to trying to ready actions against casters.

 

[seebs]

So again, you told me to go look at example triggers (without any context) in the PHB which are fully within the DM's realm to accept or refuse. That's not evidence that you're right. Those are just examples of how to phrase it to go off a potentially perceivable trigger. It's not proof one way or the other for this discussion... Give me a rules quote that says you can interrupt actions or a dev tweet that says you can do what you suggest for example. Simply pointing to example triggers means nothing because the implementation of those triggers is totally up to the DM AFAIK.

This is ridiculous. Let's get the text of the rules here so people can look at it (PHB p. 193):

First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include "If the cultest steps on the trapdoor, I'll pull the lever that open it," and "If the goblin steps next to me, I move away."

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes, or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.

(end quoted material)

For what Noctem says here to make any sense at all, we have to assume that the writers did not imagine that this text would suggest that such stated triggers and responses would work, only that you would be allowed to declare them. But in fact, when the cultist steps on the trapdoor, you then wait for the cultist's move to complete, and then pull the lever. This is even worse for the goblin case, because the goblin's move isn't over until the goblin's used up all their movement; they could attack you, knock you down, and then keep moving, because your movement can be split up with attacks interspersed. So if you have to wait until the goblin's actually completely done moving before attacking it, you can't do much of anything.

That said, the rules for opportunity attacks do say that you can interrupt movement, and since movement can be an action, that gets us the explicit statement that you can interrupt a thing. See page 195, under opportunity attacks:

To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature. The attack interrupts the provoking creature's movement, occurring right before the creature leaves your reach. (emphasis mine)

So we have an absolutely unambiguous statement, in the rules, that a reaction can interrupt at least one kind of action.

We also have counterspell, which says:

You attempt to interrupt a creature in the process of casting a spell.

It has a casting time of "1 reaction, which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell".

So we have two examples in the rules of interruptions of actions, at least, and the trigger examples certainly seem to suggest that interruptions of actions, as opposed to triggers, are possible with a readied action.

 

[Noctem]

I know you like to take things to extremes when speaking about what I said, but that doesn't serve the discussion at all Seebs. Especially when you're simply making strawmen to argue against. Counterspell, just like Shield specifically calls out that it can interrupt an action and invalidate it's own trigger. Shield an attack vs Counterspell is the casting of a spell. I still haven't seen anything more other than the examples which give no context or direction as to how to resolve the triggers in practice. I see examples of perceivable events, which fall within DM fiat to allow in the first place. So I'm not convinced at all. Again you making strawmen to argue against doesn't make you right.

EDIT: And looking at the 2 examples you listed, both involve movement and don't specify ongoing actions. A goblin moving next to someone and in response to that event a character moves away. The example allows for both interpretations, there's nothing stating the goblin was going to continue moving. Simply that he moved next to someone. The trap door is the same, pulling a lever when someone steps on a trap. No mention of moving beyond the trap door or an ongoing action, simply moving onto it. That allows again for BOTH interpretations to be true. So basically, even the examples can be shown to support both interpretations if you don't add biased context. What we need for example is a rules quote that says reactions can interrupt ongoing actions, like going off mid movement or between attacks. Or a dev tweet which supports either side. AFAIK there is no rules quote available to support the interruption of actions with reactions beyond specific reactions that specifically state that they do. IE: Shield, Counterspell, Opportunity Attacks. I would also say that I find it odd that these reactions need to specifically call out that they can interrupt actions the way they do while you're assuming all reactions can, even without rules text to support that claim. But let's stick to the first points since it'll answer this one too.