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<blockquote data-quote="Ibrandul" data-source="post: 8416720" data-attributes="member: 6871736">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 &quot;the text would have said so.&quot; 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 &quot;It's all so obvious and clear, what's the problem?&quot; 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? &quot;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.&quot; 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: &quot;If they were spells, the text would have said so.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ibrandul, post: 8416720, member: 6871736"] 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 [I]always[/I] 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." [/QUOTE]

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