D&D 5E When RAW goes too far

[tetrasodium]

There's a logic problem here, alright. But it's not Crawford's. None of the spells you're quoting are everyday things - walls, gravity, bread, laughter - that we have experience with. Hence, his statement is really touching those spells at all. Why would you expect it to?

because the rules as written suggest pretty strongly that a third level ritual spell is on par with or better than a 5th or 7th level spell & it causes many arguments. His statement is great & all when talking about a wooden or stone wall but is completely inapplicable for all the reasons you point out to the absurd wording of tiny hut but will be used to tenuously fill in for the long overdue errata

So, back before sage advice. Many people were sure breath attacks counted as magical. It's common sense, it's surely not natural to have a creature barf up cold so it should count as magical. Except it doesn't.


The arrows weren't really the point, but for the record, you aren't burning anything with fire arrows. They're usually too fast and the wind kills the flames, too front heavy to be effective projectiles, or they people next to it will just stamp the fire down.

the decision from the 5e team to stop differentiating (Ma)gical/(Ex)trorinary/(Su)pernatural/(Sp)ell-like was a big mistake that causes a lot of problems with things like that dragonbreath & others

And this matters when? In an anti-magic field? I can't think of another situation where it would, off the top of my head. Except that 5e does distinguish between spells and other effects that are usually considered magical. And parsing the difference between various supernatural abilities is a far cry from realizing that a wall provides cover from most effects and attacks.




And what was the point? The point I was making is that 5e's rulings not rules goes a long way to expediting the game without having to provide a physics manual on how each thing works. We can still have arguments about how effective fire arrows are/were/should be in game, we just don't have an arbitrary rule bloating the books about it.

Spoiler: Here

If it's not a spell creature or object then it's an important state of being in at least one situation. Unfortunately in 5e it's completely undefined situation

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

It's called role-playing. Page 6 How to play section 2. «The player describes what they want to do.»

do you mean that i can role-play in a role-playing game?

 

[Fenris-77]

So we can suspend disbelief for dragons barfing up spells but not cold or acid? I don't see a huge difference.

 

[tetrasodium]

So we can suspend disbelief for dragons barfing up spells but not cold or acid? I don't see a huge difference.

It's less a matter of suspending disbelief so much as sometimes the answer to what it counts as is important.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. You want clarity on whether or not you can dispel a breath weapon? That must be a 4e thing. I wouldn't assume dispel or antimagic field would effect breath weapons at all unless it specifically said it did. I'm not sure that's the same as undefined either.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. You want clarity on whether or not you can dispel a breath weapon? That must be a 4e thing. I wouldn't assume dispel or antimagic field would effect breath weapons at all unless it specifically said it did. I'm not sure that's the same as undefined either.

Breath weapons are not the only thing where this kind of thing is an issue. Multiple races get to save differently against "magic", I pointed out the tiny hut example, you bring up the antimagic field/dispel case & who knows what other edge cases like those fall into the same box where the distinction is relevant & critical to adjudicating things. Not only that is the fact that had ability type/source been clearly labeled like in the past a great many of those issues might not have even been a case because there would have been an instant "wait, that wording doesn't work with this long list of su/ex/sp abilities".

 

[Fenris-77]

I guess I can see the concern. I wouldn't have labelled the BW magic at all in the first place, so this wouldn't have occurred to me as an issue. Like I said, maybe that was a 4e thing. I wouldn't expect anyone with a save or resistance against magic to get that against BWs either, not unless the BW was specifically defined as magic.

Why are people assuming it is magical, or that this is even a question? I'm curious.

 

[Asisreo]

I guess I can see the concern. I wouldn't have labelled the BW magic at all in the first place, so this wouldn't have occurred to me as an issue. Like I said, maybe that was a 4e thing. I wouldn't expect anyone with a save or resistance against magic to get that against BWs either, not unless the BW was specifically defined as magic.

Why are people assuming it is magical, or that this is even a question? I'm curious.

Well, it's certainly an unnatural occurence. Like, I could explain scientifically why an element-breathing dragon couldn't exist. I mean, fire/ice? It's a stretch but ok. Lightning? Hell no. Plus, dragons are canonically magical. And while tweets and sage advice state "things only do what they say they do." Most people jumping into 5e aren't going to see these things until much later down the line.

I mean, it's not just dragons. Shadows can nonmagically drain your strength but the Roar of a sphinx is magical. Creatures with magic resistance are effected differently. So while maybe dragons are obvious from a veteran's perspective, things are really hard to determine as a newbie.

 

[tetrasodium]

I guess I can see the concern. I wouldn't have labelled the BW magic at all in the first place, so this wouldn't have occurred to me as an issue. Like I said, maybe that was a 4e thing. I wouldn't expect anyone with a save or resistance against magic to get that against BWs either, not unless the BW was specifically defined as magic.

Why are people assuming it is magical, or that this is even a question? I'm curious.

he creature statblock cutout section I included was from 3.5 & i'd be shocked if 4e didn't do some explicit differentiation for various creature abilities I wouldn't have considered it magic either, but 5e does not define a breath weapon as anything. There is no question that it's not a "creature". Is it an object like a campfire affected by reverse gravity or a torch/vial of acid/etc?... maybe? Is it a spell?... maybe?... is it a.. oops there are no more types defined in 5e. So in the many cases where is it X is important you don't have a strong case for ruling out spell or object due to the lack of anything else. Not only is it an undefined nothing it and so much more is an unfinished null state rather than an explicit nothing .

Instead of asking "why are other people thinking it's magic" turn the question around on yourself and you clearly make a case for what specifically that it is using things explicitly defined in 5e. As far as I can tell you have choices of "creature" "object" and "spell." since the old grouping terms are no longer a thing
@Asisreo crawford talks about breath weapons & such here around 22 minutes in & pretty much all he does is rule out the old extraordinary & probably weapon* categories by saying it doesn't require lungs or any anatomy beyond a "mouth-like orifice" resulting in even less clarity on your post 138 question including lightning breath specifically.

* I think 4e had that as one.

 

[clearstream]

I'd probably ask how they wanted to disintegrate Waterdeep. If they have something in mind, I'll listen. If it's nonsensical, I'll tell them it probably won't work. If they're persistent to try, I'll let them fail quickly just to reinforce that it wasn't possible.

Yes, exactly. Just as I do, you disallow them to just "attempt to disintegrate Waterdeep". What you look for is them to say they want to do something that you will allow them to attempt. That something could be the first step in a cunning plan that eventually allows them to attempt what they want. So to be even clearer, I am speaking of attempt in an immediate sense. Not deferred along a chain of actions.

I agree that "How will you do that" is one of the best ways of gently saying "No" and guiding them to think of something that they could possibly attempt.