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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Laurefindel" data-source="post: 7586688" data-attributes="member: 67296">Not quite.A creature wouldn't be utterly confused by a shield of faith, and who is the caster behind that spell has a limited impact on its behaviour.A creature getting confused by the spell, wasting attacks and actions on an immaterial effect because it doesn't (immediately) understand the nature of the spiritual weapon, or not being able to assess who the aggressor is, has a bigger impact on the combat. I don't want to play spiritual weapon as a misdirection spell - and I don't think it was designed to be used that way - but as a combat spell."Suddenly, you are attacked by an spectral-looking, slightly glowing animated, spear" can cause all kinds of reactions from players. It takes a certain mastery of D&D spells to immediately identify this as a spiritual weapon effect, and that the correct course of action is to ignore and outrun the spectral spear, and to zero-in on the cleric who cast it. An intelligent opponent might catch what's going on after one or two rounds or trials and observation, but only an opponent with a good grasp of magic or experience with clerical war magic would immediately know what's going on.That's why I believe that an obvious connection between the caster and the spell is important in this case, unless we are ok with spiritual weapon being a good misdirection spell.Otherwise, of course I created this thread because this particular situation bugged me. House rules are just that; attempts to fix things that bug us (whether they succeed at it without creating other bugs is debatable, I'll give you that).</blockquote>

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