D&D 5E Can you twin booming blade

[Charlaquin]

There is also "no, anyone doing this is a munckin" in more than one post.

No, there isn’t. The closest anything comes to that is Lumenbeing arguing that it doesn’t make sense for a character without Extra Attack to be able to make two attacks in one turn, but that’s an argument about verisimilitude, not game balance.

 

[Charlaquin]

lumenbeing was doing it, which is why the thread became active again.

Eh, I guess? Seems to me more like Lumenbeing is saying “I don’t care what the technical reading says, it doesn’t make sense to me so it isn’t possible in my game.” But whatever, I’m so sick of arguing about our interpretations of a poorly worded spell when almost none of us actually disagree on its function.

 

[Esker]

Eh, I guess? Seems to me more like Lumenbeing is saying “I don’t care what the technical reading says, it doesn’t make sense to me so it isn’t possible in my game.” But whatever, I’m so sick of arguing about our interpretations of a poorly worded spell when almost none of us actually disagree on its function.

I read them as making a stronger claim than that -- that it was an exploit and those who allowed it were bending and twisting the rules for the purposes of gaining an exploit, with, it seemed to me, a clear implication that it was overly powerful to allow it. I don't think anybody would have taken issue if they were just saying they didn't allow it in their game.

But anyway, ultimately I agree; it's pretty pointless to keep arguing, and I'll take a mea culpa on stoking the flames by keeping at it.

 

[NotAYakk]

[...]A single word is not good enough a justification for the argument in favor of this exploit. [...] You are making naughty word up to justify giving a non-multiclassed sorcerer two melee attacks with control in one round.

[...] That passes the sniff test.[...]
Any time you bend and twist the RAW to squeeze any amount of extra something out of a given spell or feature, it’s an exploit regardless of how much extra you get. [...]
Those DMs without functioning brains can always go ask JC on Twitter what his brain would do.

That is a lot of accusations of "exploit" and "making naughty word up" and "DM's without functioning brains (allowing this)".

I claim my charactization of this being the player is a munchkin trying to exploit is pretty reasonable.

 

[Charlaquin]

That is a lot of accusations of "exploit" and "making naughty word up" and "DM's without functioning brains (allowing this).

I claim my charactization of this being the player is a munchkin trying to exploit is pretty reasonable.

Fair enough, I suppose.

 

[lumenbeing]

That is a lot of accusations of "exploit" and "making naughty word up" and "DM's without functioning brains (allowing this)".

I claim my charactization of this being the player is a munchkin trying to exploit is pretty reasonable.

That is a lot of accusations of "exploit" and "making naughty word up" and "DM's without functioning brains (allowing this)".

I claim my charactization of this being the player is a munchkin trying to exploit is pretty reasonable.

Except that you cherry picked what I wrote out of context.

"Making naughty word up" was in reference to the invention of some fluff to justify an interpretation of mechanics. Specifically whoever it was who said "maybe its a ghost arm" or " "maybe the spell makes it so you only need half the effort to make a weapon attack"was indeed "making naughty word up" when I would rather rely on the actual text in the spell description in a debate about rules.

"DM's without functioning brains" was not a reference to DMs may stand on the other side of this debate from me, but rather those who who blindly accept a tweet from JC as the final word on any subject.

I actually respect the thoughts and opinions presented in this thread. This thread is a much more reasoned and thoughtful discussion than you will ever get out of Mr Crawford. If you think the debate is over, because either you found a previous argument compelling or you found a tweet, that's your prerogative I suppose. But if I, having just discovered that there was a debate on the subject, should want to continue the discussion and add my thoughts for posterity sake, I supposed that's mine.

It's a little weird to me how 4 or 5 people can discuss something and decide "almost none of us disagree. The matter must be settled". Surely you realize that until WotC fixes the wording of Booming Blade, people like myself will continue to search Google and this thread will continue to come up. I read the whole thread and in my judgement, a different perspective was warranted. If you don't have anything else to add to the discussion then feel free to not post again. Apparently I've offended some gatekeepers.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's a little weird to me how 4 or 5 people can discuss something and decide "almost none of us disagree. The matter must be settled". Surely you realize that until WotC fixes the wording of Booming Blade, people like myself will continue to search Google and this thread will continue to come up. I read the whole thread and in my judgement, a different perspective was warranted. If you don't have anything else to add to the discussion then feel free to not post again. Apparently I've offended some gatekeepers.

Almost all of the people who have been posting in this thread do agree on what we think the intended function of the spell is (and Jeremy has confirmed as much). Which makes it pretty frustrating when people complain about people using convoluted interpretations to support how they want the spell to work instead of house ruling it, when as far as I can tell, no one has done any such thing. You’re free to interpret the spell any way you like, I’m just sick of my arguments being mischaracterized as some kind of bad-faith attempt to justify a ruling I don’t even make.

 

[Creed2347]

As far as I am concerned, the spell states that you must make a weapon attack as a part of the casting of the spell. Since the spell states that you attack a twinning is totally eligible. Now I can see why it would depend on the DM because this essentially gives your character Multiattack (targeting different enemies) without actually having it. Plus if you're teamed up with some one that can cause the frightened effect they are almost garunteed to activate booming blades effect and if they took the warcaster feat they could cast booming blade as an opportunity attack. Then it would depend on if the DM counts the continual movement as a trigger for the spell as well since it moved after getting hit, or say the spell fails since the opportunity attack hits the enemy before it moves out of attack range and doesn't stack which can be danced around by using a lance or whip and using the spell at 5ft for the action then 10ft as the opportunity attack and you can combat the lance or whips drawback by using a normal weapon for the initial attack and utilize the reach feature for the opportunity. Plus a pact of the blade warlock with the thrusting blade invocation gains Multiattack with the pact weapon (and this is where I would start denying legitimacy due to the main action being a spell) you could, if the DM allows, make a normal attack during the attack Acton as well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That is a lot of accusations of "exploit" and "making naughty word up" and "DM's without functioning brains (allowing this)".

I claim my charactization of this being the player is a munchkin trying to exploit is pretty reasonable.

True. But in this case, "making sh*t up" is the only way to resolve the issue, since there is no rule to tie the "extra attack" feature to attacks granted by spells.

 

[NotAYakk]

True. But in this case, "making sh*t up" is the only way to resolve the issue, since there is no rule to tie the "extra attack" feature to attacks granted by spells.

Hence the reason why we are discussing ray of frost with such passion.

I mean, it clearly states you make "a" ranged spell attack against the target. When twin spell adds another target, it does not change "a", which means singular. So how can that work?

A frigid beam of blue-white light streaks toward a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, it takes 1d8 cold damage, and its speed is reduced by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.

So, you get 2 targets (which is what twinspell does), and nothing else changes (rules do what they say, no more): so only 1 ("a") ranged spell attack. There is no rule to tie "extra attacks" to spells. So you can twin spell "ray of frost", which lets you pick which one of the targets you can make your one ranged spell attack on. And it also say "A frigid beam" - again, singular. If there are two targets hit, how can one beam effect both?

I am sure there are some people who expoit the rules and make naughty word up, like twin spell changes the text from "make a ranged spell attack" to "make ranged spell attacks on each target". Or that instead of one ray, there are two rays. DMs should make up their own mind about this kind of thing, but some admirble DMs will stop that kind of exploit cold. DMs without a brain in their heads may use JC's tweets to excuse them from thinking about it, and JC might say it is permitted.

Not everyone feels a need to play D&D with exploits like that, and not every DM tolerates it. When you bend the rules to get an effect -- like ray of frost producing two beams -- it is an exploit, regardless of the effect.

Now if the sorcerer had some special ability -- like, a feat that let them point at two people at once using one hand -- then I could seen permitting this.