D&D 5E Wall of Force

[Gadget]

For example, once I realized that Misty Step had a target of self, I think this rule is pretty simple. Obviously there's not a consensus on what is clear enough.

Well, yes I agree. But that does not cover spells like Sending and Telepathy, but both of those have a range of Unlimited, which can be used to determine that they don't have to have line of effect. Sometimes the spell description is necessary. Phrases like "as long as the target is on the same plane of existence as you" and such seem to imply that line of effect clearly is not an issue.

What about choose an area spells? Cloudkill targets an area that you can see. Would you prevent that spell too? Wall of force followed by summoned creatures or cloud(whatever type you want in here) has always been a tactic of D&D since the beginning. And what about prismatic wall?

Cloudkill, imho, requires line of effect and therefore would be blocked by Wall of Force. Same for Mage Hand, Chill Touch, and Summoning spells. I would rule Dimension Door would get around a Wall of Force due to the verbiage of "a place you can see, one you can visualize, or one you can describe by stating distance and direction, such as '200 feet straight downward'..." clearly does not need line of effect. This is where the loose language of 5e is sometimes problematic, though.

 

[dave2008]

Well, yes I agree. But that does not cover spells like Sending and Telepathy, but both of those have a range of Unlimited, which can be used to determine that they don't have to have line of effect. Sometimes the spell description is necessary. Phrases like "as long as the target is on the same plane of existence as you" and such seem to imply that line of effect clearly is not an issue.

That is a case of the specific (sending spell) over the general rule "clear path," that is standard 5e practice. And @Oofta has clearly stated that you can get those specific rules, if needed, from the spell description.

 

[toucanbuzz]

….Cloudkill, imho, requires line of effect and therefore would be blocked...

I'm just using your quote to circle back to my original questions. I think your rationale is totally supported by 30 years of how the spell used to be written.

For "line of effect" or "clear path" to apply, we have to believe the Wall provides "total cover" for targeting purposes. If the wall does not provide total cover, then "line of effect" or "clear path" are meaningless because you can see your target.

I'm still not finding any rule or justification that supports the notion an invisible wall provides total cover for purposes of targeting other than Crawford. How could it? 5E changed the spell from preventing all non-teleportation spells from getting through to only physical effects from getting through. Why the change? Why not simply keep the spell as it was originally?

Is there a rule or justification that spells that don't originate from your person (again, the spell description will tell you if it does or not) are still somehow physical and therefore can be blocked on the way to the destination?

 

[Todd Roybark]

Unless you're going to argue that you can make the same shot with a bow -- which also has no strict straight line requirement RAW and instead relies on general targeting rules and DM judgement -- then I don't buy it.

This a reduction of reason to a level quickly approaching absurdity. A bow shot behaving in the manner you described without the benefit of magic, is violating the laws of physics and thus the universal experience we can ground our shared imaginative enterprise on.

The rules as written do not specify explicitly that poison has odor or taste, or that horse dung has odor....the rules as written expect and assume some degree of reasonable extrapolation from our ‘real’ world.

As their is no real world equivalent to the Charm Person spell, I see no compelling reason why a charm spell is subject to physics - does it have mass? How much? Can I lob Charm Person over a wall? Your ruling, Baco Bits creates more headaches than it solves.

My largest issue with Mr. Tweets rulings is that he does not seem to consider the game world implications of his rulings.

If an AC 13, 2-4 hp pane of glass now is imbued with properties that in the past were reserved for Globe of Invulnerability, then every powerful person is going to be in a glass “Pope Mobile” to prevent spell targeting.

As that is the real issue, using the rules literally as written means without a clear path to a target, you cannot even target the person!

So a magic soap bubble made and sustained by a Prestidigitation Cantrip, renewed every round, could very well be interpreted, using RAW as preventing spell lock targeting from Charm Person to Scorching Ray.

So I can shoot a Drow Elf hiding in a Darkness spell with a Scorching Ray, if I chose the correct square, and still hit with Disadvantage on the attack roll, but a pane of glass, or glass box stops the targeting of said Drow, completely....and this is a sound ruling?

It might be technically correct, but despite my love of Futurama, technically correct is not always the BEST type of correct.

From D&D Beyond:

A Clear Path to the Target
To target something, you must have a clear path to it, so it can't be behind total cover. If you place an area of effect at a point that you can't see and an obstruction, such as a wall, is between you and that point, the point of origin comes into being on the near side of that obstruction.

 

[Bacon Bits]

This a reduction of reason to a level quickly approaching absurdity.

Yes, that's the point. It's rhetoric. The point is to take the same logic and reasoning and apply it elsewhere with the same consideration being asked of the original point. Since that results in something absurd, then you haven't got very concrete reasoning.

Here's another argument. Firstly, there are spells which I think conceptually most people will say aren't smart enough to dodge walls. Firebolt, or any spell making an attack roll on the same basis as a ranged weapon attack. The pea from fireball, too, assuming that didn't get retconed. So there's spells that aren't smart enough to dodge an invisible wall.

Say a Charm Person or Magic Missile spell is smart enough to dodge the wall. Well, how smart is it? Say it's a cave with two entrances and the wall of force completely blocks the passageway. Is your spell smart enough to go outside, come back in the other entrance, and find the target? What if the other entrance is a mile away? Or 100 miles away? Or hidden? Or a pinhole? Or entirely unknown to the caster? Or the caster doesn't know the wall of force is even present, given that the spell effect is invisible? Just how smart is our spell? And why can't the magic just pass through solid rock once a target has been chosen? And if it can pass through solid rock, what determines when magic can't pass through solid rock? Can I just cast Firebolts through solid rock blindly? Why or why not? And, given that magic has no real world analog to contextualize what the rules should be, exactly how do the rules teach us this interpretation?

 

[Volund]

I don't think this was mentioned yet, but the Sacred Flame cantrip can be cast through total cover as long as you can see the target. "The target gains no benefit from cover for this saving throw." Jeremy Crawford talked about spell targeting in an official podcast about three years ago. Start listening at 36:30 for the part about Sacred Flame. He says that Sacred Flame is an exception to the "clear path to the target" rule. The intent of the spell is that the cleric is calling down radiant flame from above, so it can't be blocked by cover. He gives the specific example of casting it through a window. I didn't re-listen to the whole Sage Advice section, but there might be other information relevant to this discussion.

 

[Todd Roybark]

A basic principle of adjudication is reasonable restraint. A Firebolt spell is clearly more akin to a flaming crossbow bolt than say the phase shifting Romulan disrupter you were describing before. Giving Firebolt a set of non relevant powers that are not logically inferable or deductible might be rhetorically prudent, but does not yield sound results, and is not imaginatively restrained.

A Firebolt could burn through stone, depending on hardness, hp, etc, but even if you ruled Firebolt was more akin to a plasma lance, a plasma lance does not behave as a PSRD (Phase Shifting Romulan Disrupter). Logic and the ‘real world’ provide a guide.

Take Magic Missile and X-ray vision. X-ray vision may let you see through walls, which would allow one to target Magic Missile, possibly through a stone wall. Since gravity is a type of force, and can ‘pass‘ through walls, allowing this rare combination to work, makes a certain logical sense.

Once one starts applying physical, tangible characteristics to ephemeral effects like Charm Person, the questions become larger than the answers.

Many people play Fantasy RPGs and NOT Sci-Fi RPGs due to not wanting to deal with hard science considerations, let alone Hard Science plus Metaphysical calculations in rulings for a RPG.

Bacon Bits, your post above seems to be a category error, like asking what the weight of the idea of the color yellow is.

What is the weight of a Charm Person spell?

If I can calculate how much a Soul weighs, and the terminal velocity of a Charm Person spell, then something has either gone horribly wrong in my D&D game, or I am about to win a Nobel Prize or Fields Medal.

Why is Charm Person, using your terminology ‘smart’ enough to target someone in full plate?
The visor holes, the chain mail in the armpits?

There is no empirically reasonable reason why a pane of glass or a table offering full cover, stops spell targeting, but not a shell of steel surrounding one, ala plate mail other than “them’s the rules”.

If a pane of glass stops Charm Person from targeting someone, because the spell is ‘dumb’, then a halfling with full cover from a crowded room, or a table is not targetable by RAW.

@Oofta, would you let Charm Person work if cast by a person from across a crowded room, soo crowded that full cover applies?


I doubt most people think they are playing in a D&D world, where having glass panes in your windows makes you safer from certain magical attacks, then not having glass in your windows?


This certainly does not seem to be the case for D&D designer Mike Mearls.

The ruling also takes the magic, the wonder out of spellcasting. A hemispherical Wall of Force can prohibit Dominate Person from achieving spell lock, but if sound is not included under “blocking physical effect” in W.o.F....then an amazing Charisma (Persausion) check can potentially convince the Wall of Force caster to “turn off the wall”, when Dominate Person can not target them.

Is this really, how most people envision the D&D universe works?

What ever happened to the Sympathetic Magic Tradition, from history? Before Einstein’s ‘‘Spooky Action at a distance”, the paradigm’s foundation was laid from centuries of believing that a representation was sufficient to affect the source object with magic.....
....................Not glass window panes are lesser globes of invulnerability.

 

[Gadget]

For "line of effect" or "clear path" to apply, we have to believe the Wall provides "total cover" for targeting purposes. If the wall does not provide total cover, then "line of effect" or "clear path" are meaningless because you can see your target.

A Wall of Force that stops anything from coming through is the very definition of "total cover." What it does not provide is concealment. The presumption here is that even spells that don't shoot physical rays, a bead, or what have you create some sort of magical effect that originates from the caster proceeds to the target...unless they say they don't (like say the above mentioned Sacred Flame).

 

[Oofta]

A Wall of Force that stops anything from coming through is the very definition of "total cover." What it does not provide is concealment. The presumption here is that even spells that don't shoot physical rays, a bead, or what have you create some sort of magical effect that originates from the caster proceeds to the target...unless they say they don't (like say the above mentioned Sacred Flame).

In addition, the rules don't say anything about cover, total or otherwise. Just "To target something, you must have a clear path to it".

 

[toucanbuzz]

….If an AC 13, 2-4 hp pane of glass now is imbued with properties that in the past were reserved for Globe of Invulnerability, then every powerful person is going to be in a glass “Pope Mobile” to prevent spell targeting....

That is what Crawford's rationale leads to - an absurd result - and Mike Mearls' did not. But Crawford's rationale was wrong because Total Cover has nothing to do with stopping damage. It only stops targeting of attacks and spells.

Total Cover is only granted when the target is "completely concealed" by an obstacle. Unless the window is dirty, there is no way a pane of glass "completely conceals" anything. Crawford's rationale was silly.

If you don't think it's silly, then please, stand behind a 1" pane of glass and see if someone can shoot you with a gun through the glass. If Crawford is right, you're safe from harm because you have total cover.

I'll explain more after a quote.

A Wall of Force that stops anything from coming through is the very definition of "total cover."

PHB page 196. "A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle."

So no, total cover has nothing to do with stopping objects. Concealment is the issue. And while the term didn't get defined in 5E, it's a common word that means "hidden from sight."

Further, we can't duck behind the "clear path" argument because that's the same thing. P203: "To target something you must have a clear path to it, so it can't be behind total cover."

The "so" clause explains that "clear path" means your target must be visible to you, not concealed. Nothing in any spell section suggests in any way, shape, or form that spells have a physical form that can be blocked by panes of glass. If a spell manifests a physical effect, like the ball of fire from a fireball, it will say so. If it can be blocked by something, such as a detect spell, it will say so. Otherwise, targeted spells are only limited by what you can see.

So a wall of force or a pane of glass, by definition, don't conceal anything. You aren't hidden. You're visible. Ergo, you don't have total cover.

Now, that's not to say a barrier won't still stop the effect, but that's not the same as total cover or targeting. An arrow will pass through a window if it does enough damage, same as our bullet. However, by specific design, absolutely no physical effect can pass through a wall of force. They removed the old language of all spells and replaced it with physical effects. Some spells say they do, others don't.

Finally, if you're asking would a window stop a fireball, I'd rule yes. Why? Because the physical effect of the fireball streaking to its target cannot cause damage. What would happen is, as per spell targeting with area effects, that the fireball would go off once blocked. The same would apply if an illusionist made you think goblins were charging across a big room when in reality it was close quarters. Your fireball would explode in your face.