D&D 5E AoE spells: Do you play by RAW or RAI?

[tommybahama]

An issue with area of effect spells keeps coming up in our campaign and I'm wondering how many people play by rules as intended:

"Our design intent for such spells is this: a creature enters the area of effect when the creature passes into it. Creating the area of effect on the creature or moving it onto the creature doesn’t count. If the creature is still in the area at the start of its turn, it is subjected to the area’s effect."

So a spell like moonbeam, cloudkill, or spiritual guardians doesn't do damage when cast over a creature. So you might not do any damage the first round you cast it depending what you roll for initiative.

I've never seen it played that way in any of the three campaigns I've played in or in about six months of weekly Adventurers League play with numerous DMs. So I'm curious if anybody actually plays that way?

 

[Flamestrike]

So a spell like moonbeam, cloudkill, or spiritual guardians doesn't do damage when cast over a creature. So you might not do any damage the first round you cast it depending what you roll for initiative.

But that doesn't matter in 99 percent of cases.

In the corner case times it does matter, it allows friends to push or shove allies out of the way (before the start of their turn) which I actually see as a feature and not a bug.

 

[tetrasodium]

Where the heck did you find that rai for persistent effects? I personally run their damage instant because it makes my life easier as a GM rather than waiting till monster q gers a turn. I dont generally have monsters enter these effects on their turns (deliberately or otherwise) but think I'd pop them right then if they did.

That silly maybe kinda sorta feela wrong and I think there is more than ample math to support doing it as harshly in favor of the spell being efficient at doing the thing it was cast to do

 

[tetrasodium]

But that doesn't matter in 99 percent of cases.

In the corner case times it does matter, it allows friends to push or shove allies out of the way (before the start of their turn) which I actually see as a feature and not a bug.

Alice casts spell.... bob thornwhips an extra baddie into the spell.... cindy took the telekinesis feat and punts yet another baddie in on her turn. Dave uses his gusto cantrip(?) To shove yet another baddie in. It's not that much of an edge case

 

[iserith]

So a spell like moonbeam, cloudkill, or spiritual guardians doesn't do damage when cast over a creature. So you might not do any damage the first round you cast it depending what you roll for initiative.

Right, that's how I play it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As written. I see quite a lot of Moonbeam. It takes effect on the target's turn, which might be in the next round if the caster has lower initiative than the target.

Hypothetically the target could be moved out of the way of the beam by some other character before taking damage.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

These spells do no damage until the turn of the creature receiving the damage. That's how I play them, and I try to get tables I'm at to play them that way (it's not important enough to me to really argue about, I just think people should follow the rules unless they have made an intentional, thought-out decision to do otherwise). It is part of the cost you pay as caster for an ongoing effect that doesn't require a bonus action or action to re-up: no immediate result.

Hopefully if the spells work comparably in a future edition they will adopt a clearer phrasing. To me the intended reading is the natural reading of the spells ("enter" is used as an active verb), but I did go to law school and tend to parse language with more technical precision than is typical.

If you want to play it some other way that's fine, just be aware that if you allow the spell to do damage both on the caster's and the victim's turns then you are letting the spell double dip that round and, given the lengths of 5e combats that is likely increasing the damage output of the spell by a quarter, a third, a half, or by 100%.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I really can't see the difference between rules as written and rules as intended here....

 

[S'mon]

An issue with area of effect spells keeps coming up in our campaign and I'm wondering how many people play by rules as intended:

"Our design intent for such spells is this: a creature enters the area of effect when the creature passes into it. Creating the area of effect on the creature or moving it onto the creature doesn’t count. If the creature is still in the area at the start of its turn, it is subjected to the area’s effect."

So a spell like moonbeam, cloudkill, or spiritual guardians doesn't do damage when cast over a creature. So you might not do any damage the first round you cast it depending what you roll for initiative.

I've never seen it played that way in any of the three campaigns I've played in or in about six months of weekly Adventurers League play with numerous DMs. So I'm curious if anybody actually plays that way?

Yeah, I run it the way it's written (edit: which also matches your 'as intended' quote). Never occurred to me not to, or that anyone wouldn't. These are Concentration spells intended to have a delayed effect, it's part of their balance. There are plenty of spells that do damage when cast; stuff like Spirit Guardians would be OP it gave a double-dip damage IMO.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It does occasionally feel a little counter-intuitive when a spell effect doesn't occur at the time of casting, but rather on the creature's turn who had been affected. Even something like Turn Undead doesn't do any noticeable effect when the cleric uses it... it's not until the creature's turn that it uses its actions to move away. With D&D spellcasting I think we kind of feel like the undead creature should run away right as soon as the cleric uses Turn Undead on it, but they don't. Which gives us this weird occurrence where the cleric uses Turn Undead successfully... but the undead creature doesn't do anything and just stands there, possibly taking several more hits from other members of the party in the interim... and then finally runs away when its turn comes up. That just seems weird.

And that is mirrored by the persistent AoE effects. Where there's this limbo of time when the spell cast been cast but nothing really happens... until the creature's turn comes up when they are affected. While it definitely is how the rules work and I think we all are able to play those rules with a minimum of issue (they really aren't hard to understand after all)... we just feel like something's wrong. Because narratively it seems like there's this gap.

One thing I think we've never really come to grips with in D&D is the conception of simultaneous action. Because the game uses initiative and one-person-at-a-time action... we visualize the game as "YOU go, then YOU go, then YOU go, then YOU go" and so forth. But in truth... with each round taking six seconds, that's EVERYONE on the field actually acting in those EXACT SAME six seconds. So there really isn't any narrative gap between a caster loosing a Moonbeam and then a creature becoming affected by it on their turn-- the spell goes off and the creature is affected immediately. But because between those two things we have to spend several minutes experiencing the other two-- three-- six-- eight-- players and monsters taking their simultaneous actions too... it makes the narrative feel like a gap and feel weird.

But it's really just us as players needing to realign our experiences to what is actually happening, rather than needing to change the rules in any way.