D&D 5E Can a caster tell if someone saved or not against their spell?

[Blue]

Is there a definitive rule if a caster knows if a target succeeded on a save or not?

The example that came up is someone (a bard) cast Charm Person, which has no visible effect when cast. The target (an enchanter wizard who also has the spell) identified the spell as it was being cast, saved, and acted friendly.

Outside of other checks (deception vs. insight, etc.) is there any inherent knowledge by the caster if the spell save was successful or not in the rules? There was in some earlier editions, but 5e is it's own definition.

Another example could be several targets in fireball, and one takes half damage thanks to fire resistance, not a successful save. Outside other checks, would the caster inherently know that target had failed their save?

 

[iserith]

Likewise if the one hour were meant to apply to all the listed activities it would have been written differently.

"one hour of: walking, fighting, spellcasting..."

As written it can go either way. Because the outcome is so dumb otherwise, I read it as one hour of walking, any fighting, any spellcasting.

How can combat not be strenuous until it reaches 60 minutes? You're under attack. There's a real possibility of death. Quite literally there are things trying to murder you. That is inherently stressful and trying to not die while trying to murder someone else is inherently strenuous.

Besides. Rulings not rules. I don't care what the RAW says when it says dumb stuff.

The way I run it is that any amount of fighting during a short rest interrupts the rest. For a long rest, it's interrupted only if you have to quit your camp. So you can have the fights, but if you have to flee, then you'll have to try to rest again, the assumption being that you have to move far enough away from trouble and set up a new camp which is more than an hour. This seems more reasonable than "any fight during a long rest interrupts." Though really that just depends on the frequency of wandering monsters/random encounters in a given game.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't disagree that it's a bad rule, but if the one hour only applied to walking I'd expect the sentence/s to be structured differently--I don't think it's a misreading of the rules as they're written to say that you need to be fighting for an hour to disrupt a long rest.

Meh, it's just worded in a way that has two significantly different meanings. Lawyers and technical writers should study it as a perfect case of how not to write for clarity.

In practice, taking it literally (in either reading) results in silly situations, so most people end up doing what makes sense in the moment/fiction rather than play the rule in either reading of 'as written.'

 

[overgeeked]

Meh, it's just worded in a way that has two significantly different meanings. Lawyers and technical writers should study it as a perfect case of how not to write for clarity.

In practice, taking it literally (in either reading) results in silly situations, so most people end up doing what makes sense in the moment/fiction rather than play the rule in either reading of 'as written.'

I can't think of a case where taking it literally on the side of any combat interrupts a long rest yields silly results. It's not restful to fight for your life, take damage, run around, cast spells, try not to die, all while trying to murder the people who're trying to murder you. There's literally no case where someone should be in that situation while also adding time to / ticking down to a long rest reset.

 

[Voadam]

I think the silly situation of that reading of the sentence would be interpreting "a period of strenuous activity" as including casting a one action casting time spell.

The intent of the other reading of the rule seems to be allowing for night attacks without disrupting the whole recovery mechanic for hp and spells.

 

[prabe]

Meh, it's just worded in a way that has two significantly different meanings. Lawyers and technical writers should study it as a perfect case of how not to write for clarity.

In practice, taking it literally (in either reading) results in silly situations, so most people end up doing what makes sense in the moment/fiction rather than play the rule in either reading of 'as written.'

As I said, I don't disagree that it's a bad rule--it does seem kinda silly that you'd need to fight or cast spells for an hour to disrupt a long rest--but I think it says exactly what it says. It seems to me as though some of the people wanting it to be unclear are reacting at least in part to the daftness of it: "They can't have intended it to mean that ..."

 

[overgeeked]

As I said, I don't disagree that it's a bad rule--it does seem kinda silly that you'd need to fight or cast spells for an hour to disrupt a long rest--but I think it says exactly what it says. It seems to me as though some of the people wanting it to be unclear are reacting at least in part to the daftness of it: "They can't have intended it to mean that ..."

In my case I'm an editor. It's not a precise sentence. It can easily be read either way.

 

[iserith]

I think the silly situation of that reading of the sentence would be interpreting "a period of strenuous activity" as including casting a one action casting time spell.

The intent of the other reading of the rule seems to be allowing for night attacks without disrupting the whole recovery mechanic for hp and spells.

Right, it seems to me they're allowing for the trope of the (sometimes) armor-less night attack with that one guy with the bad Perception on watch without it completely blowing up resource regeneration.

 

[prabe]

In my case I'm an editor. It's not a precise sentence. It can easily be read either way.

How would you have phrased it differently to more clearly mean what Crawford says it means? I can see ways to phrase it to mean otherwise, but I stand by my position that people reading it as unclear are reacting to it being daft, not to it being unclear.

 

[GSHamster]

I'd be inclined to letting the caster know that it failed. The more unreliable something is, the less likely it will be used. Charm Person is already pretty unreliable, and now you're adding a chance that it will backfire horribly on your group.

Not knowing if Charm Person failed feels like a passive-aggressive way of banning the spell.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I can't think of a case where taking it literally on the side of any combat interrupts a long rest yields silly results. It's not restful to fight for your life, take damage, run around, cast spells, try not to die, all while trying to murder the people who're trying to murder you. There's literally no case where someone should be in that situation while also adding time to / ticking down to a long rest reset.

After 7 hours, 59 minutes and 54 seconds of rest, you cast prestidigitation to light a cookfire for this morning's breakfast. Yo do not recover any spell slots, hit points, hit dice, or anything else.

A squirrel appears in the campsite. The ranger decides to shoot it to eat later. The dm decides to roll initiative for the two to see if the squirrel has a chance to run away first. You do not cast any spells, or take any actions at all. You do not recover any spell slots, hit points, hit dice, or anything else, because combat happened.