Lyxen
Great Old One
As far as I've seen, it's only the damaging ones, for the purpose of computing the offensive CR. Spells like dominate, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Maze, all very offensive, have not been.
D&D 5E Counterspell nerfed!
- Thread starter Ancalagon
- Start date
As far as I've seen, it's only the damaging ones, for the purpose of computing the offensive CR. Spells like dominate, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Maze, all very offensive, have not been.
Lyxen
Great Old One
Neither do I. But neither should they be shouted.
My point is that it's really up to the DM, and it might depend on the battle. If it's just one adversary on the other end of the room, and the caster is near, there should be no problem in hearing it. If it's in the middle of a large battle and the caster is on the other side of the room, it would probably be overlooked.
All local rulings depending on the circumstances, and rewarding players who project their characters in the fantasy world and immerse all their persona in the feelings of the character, understanding why some things can be heard and not others.
Again, the gamist view of simplification which allows purely tactical use of the rules is certainly possible, and encouraged in some cases even by the designers, for example when JC says that a DM who, as a basis, thinks that everyone in the room tracks the position of invisible creatures that are not hidden is probably not far from a good interpretation. And I'm not far from this, in a sense, so that invisibility is not too powerful and abused, and to keep stealth worthwhile, but at the same time, it might depend on the circumstances, relatively easy in a muddy area or where footsteps are easily heard, much harder in a spotless environment with a lot of noise around.
Yes, they've separated out (for the most part) the damaging offensive spells. Which is, hilariously, another type of oversight.
Damaging spells are all well and good, but they are far from the most effective way to play a spellcaster. For example, for one of the NPCs (antagonists)- the description highlights the fact that she can use faerie fire to help her companions against the PCs. It fails to mention that Hypnotic Pattern (listed on the same line as faerie fire) will be far more likely to REALLY help the NPCs against the party.
But again, that's not really the issue. The separated spells, are not listed as spells, so are suddenly not subject to effects that interact with/counter spells (you can infer it's a spell on SOME of them because it says "spell attack" but it's not explicit). It's a sloppy oversight - and that's the point.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Well, according to the DMG CR is calculated almost entirely based on hit points, AC, and damage, and has nothing to do with how smart the monster is played. So the dev's comments make perfect sense from their point of view.
Ringtail
World Traveller (She/Her)
Not a fan of this change. I had a situation in a game where a DM was adapting a 3rd Edition creature called a Mooncalf.
The creature cast a pretty high level Call Lightning on us, and when we we attacked it, we reminded him to make a Concentration Check, to which he responded: "I don't think it has to. This isn't a spell, it's a spell-like ability." There was a huge fight over this, but in the end we managed to convince him that he still had to make Concentration because "Spell-Like Ability" does not exist in 5e, only 3e. Furthermore, he explicitly told us it was Call Lightning, the spell on page whatever of the PHB and not some made up lightning ability.
While it wasn't a counter-spell in my situation, the result I imagine is pretty damn close. The difference being in this case, it isn't a spell, it's a spell like ability. But c'mon, if it looks like a fireball, hurts like a fireball and is as big as a fireball. . . .
The creature cast a pretty high level Call Lightning on us, and when we we attacked it, we reminded him to make a Concentration Check, to which he responded: "I don't think it has to. This isn't a spell, it's a spell-like ability." There was a huge fight over this, but in the end we managed to convince him that he still had to make Concentration because "Spell-Like Ability" does not exist in 5e, only 3e. Furthermore, he explicitly told us it was Call Lightning, the spell on page whatever of the PHB and not some made up lightning ability.
While it wasn't a counter-spell in my situation, the result I imagine is pretty damn close. The difference being in this case, it isn't a spell, it's a spell like ability. But c'mon, if it looks like a fireball, hurts like a fireball and is as big as a fireball. . . .
I know what you mean, but I've been alive too long not to get a chuckle out of that...
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Why do you think I included "generally?"
The published text is the only thing that matters when Crawford answers questions about the game rules. In this very article there's a classic Crawford formulation: the harengon's hop isn't a high jump or a long jump, and if it were either of those things "the text would have said so." He uses the phrase in quotation marks very, very frequently. For the record, I think that clarification about the harengon is fine—but he uses this same "It's all so obvious and clear, what's the problem?" rhetorical move far too often, about things that really are problematic from a design perspective.
And Crawford's statements about design intent always take a back seat to his statements about RAW, right up until new errata is announced—indeed, he almost always insists that there is no discrepancy at all between RAI and RAW. That's understandable: expressing design intent by carefully crafting RAW is his whole job. And he's very reluctant to acknowledge mistakes in the RAW (also understandable, I guess; no one likes admitting to flaws in their work). Remember this one? "Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? The intent is no. The Trance trait does let an elf meditate for 4 hours and then feel the way a human does after sleeping for 8 hours, but that isn't intended to shorten an elf's long rest." Only once the PHB long rest wording was errata'd did his Sage Advice answer change, so that elves now require only 4 hours to complete a long rest, which was the only interpretation of design intent that made a lick of sense to begin with.
So I don't think there's going to be any movie to watch with your popcorn. The designers deliberately redesigned NPC spellcaster stat blocks and deliberately reclassified certain damage-dealing spells so as to not be spells anymore. I don't think they're so incompetent that they could have failed to realize this would affect game elements that interact with spells.
I'm certain this will be his response regarding these new magical actions: "If they were spells, the text would have said so."
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That is all well and good for the power with out the spell keyword but there are ones with the spell keyword in the statblock.
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