April Rules FAQ: Great Weapon Fighting, Pact of the Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Booming Blade, Moonbea

The latest rules D&D 5E rules FAQ from WotC's Jeremy Crawford looks at class features and spells. More specifically, it discusses whether Great Weapon Fighting offers retools with features like Divine Smite (no), If Pact of the Blade's bond has to be with a melee weapon (no), if green-flame blade and similar spells work with extra, opportunity, and Sneak attacks (yes and no) and how moonbeam works.

The Sage Advice Compendium now has these updates incorporated. Read this month's answers here.

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[Istbor]

I can still see a War Cleric using Green-Flame or Booming to great effect. Thank you for this Morrus.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I imagine there will be some complaining about these answers (particularly the gw fighting and maybe the battlefield hazard spells), but not from me. I think of moonlight as like being under a space ship in Independence Day--if you see the big light shining down on you and you don't move quick enough, you get blasted.

 

[Don-V Snell]

Happy they were able to clarify PotB somewhat. I personally think a Vorpal Maul would still be kind of hilarious, but opening it to ranged weapons is pretty nice. And yea, I know, DMs choice.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The moonbeam one was clarified a long time ago. I wonder if it's one of those things that's going to keep coming up every so often.

 

[Faenor]

I imagine there will be some complaining about these answers (particularly the gw fighting and maybe the battlefield hazard spells), but not from me. I think of moonlight as like being under a space ship in Independence Day--if you see the big light shining down on you and you don't move quick enough, you get blasted.

Well, no. You move on your turn. So if it's cast above you, then you start your turn under it and take the damage. This says you don't take the damage both when it's cast and when you then start your turn under it. It also makes it so that you can't be pushed back and forth across it on the same round, taking damage each time. So, you only take the damage 1/round, but you also can't jump in and out to avoid the damage on your turn.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think of moonlight as like being under a space ship in Independence Day--if you see the big light shining down on you and you don't move quick enough, you get blasted.

That's...not what it says, though. It's if you pass into the beam, not if the beam passes over you. So you could start in the circle, and then get knocked out of it by somebody else (accidental tactic snafu--quite common in any game with both the concepts of "forced movement" and "areas of effect"), and thus you did in fact stand inside the beam, but nothing happened to you. Or the beam could pass completely over a particular monster--the "Independence Day laser" sweeps across the field, vaporizing anyone along the way. Except that that doesn't happen with Moonbeam--if the spell passes completely over a monster, then it remains unaffected, despite having completely failed to "move quick enough" to avoid getting blasted.

Well, no. You move on your turn. So if it's cast above you, then you start your turn under it and take the damage. This says you don't take the damage both when it's cast and when you then start your turn under it. It also makes it so that you can't be pushed back and forth across it on the same round, taking damage each time. So, you only take the damage 1/round, but you also can't jump in and out to avoid the damage on your turn.

Well, technically it says once per turn, rather than once per round, so the way he phrased it contradicts itself. Either it's only on that monster's turn, in which case it's once per round, or it's not only on that monster's turn, in which case the "once per turn" makes sense. Only if we assume he's saying once per target's turn does it make sense...but that's a weird thing to mean when you say "once per turn."

 

[MechaTarrasque]

It says:

Reading the description of any of those spells, you might wonder whether a creature is considered to be entering the spell’s area of effect if the area is created on the creature’s space. And if the area of effect can be moved—as the beam of moonbeam can—does moving it into a creature’s space count as the creature entering the area? 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.

When I mean Independence Day, that bold underlined italicized thing is what I am talking about. If you remember the movie, a whole bunch of people were partying under the light thinking the aliens were going to beam them up. Light shines (spell is casted), suckers don't move, start of their next turn still in the light, get blasted. Exactly what he said.

 

[Kite474]

Well phooy, Moonbeam and its ilk are kind of useless at our table if we go by this ruling.

On the other hand.... Rouge's just got a really, really, fun new use of magic initiate!

 

[Pauper]

Well, technically it says once per turn, rather than once per round, so the way he phrased it contradicts itself. Either it's only on that monster's turn, in which case it's once per round, or it's not only on that monster's turn, in which case the "once per turn" makes sense. Only if we assume he's saying once per target's turn does it make sense...but that's a weird thing to mean when you say "once per turn."

I'm not sure it's contradictory:

Some spells and other game features create an area of effect that does something when a creature enters that area for the first time on a turn or when a creature starts its turn in that area.

Keep in mind, however, that a creature is subjected to such an area of effect only the first time it enters the area on a turn. You can’t move a creature in and out of it to damage it over and over again on the same turn.

What's being clarified is that you can't do the old 'I slide the creature in and out of the Wall of Fire' trick from 4e to do massive damage on a single turn. But if a party has a bunch of forced-movement effects, there seems to be no restriction against each party member forcing a monster into the moonbeam area on each of the party members' turns (and then back out again, so the next party member can push it back in and out), then the last party member leaving the monster in the area so that it takes damage at the start of its turn.

I don't see that either the spell description or Crawford's advice uses the term 'round' at all.

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Pauper