Defining "Your Opponent" in a spell

[ThirdWizard]

Celestial is by definition and naming itself, the language spoken by Celestials.

So fiendish creatures understand what? Infernal or Abyssal? Both? Do Axiomatic and Anarchic creatures understand lawful and chaotic languages?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Celestial is by definition and naming itself, the language spoken by Celestials.

I agree. Couldn't have put it better myself.

But what are Celestials?

"Angels are a race of celestials, or good outsiders, native to the good-aligned Outer Planes."
"Archons are a race of celestials, or good outsiders, native to lawful good-aligned Outer Planes."

'Celestials' are 'good outsiders'. A Celestial Bear, on the other hand, is a magical beast... therefore not a good outsider... therefore not a Celestial.

Celestial is the language spoken by Celestials, but not the language understood by Celestial Bears, since their description does not 'note otherwise'. According to the rules, the language understood by Celestial Bears is Common.

-Hyp.

 

[JDowling]

...
A former ally of the party, that the party has suspicions about, but never really decided was an enemy is, unknown to the party, invisibly present - does he get blessed? Does the answer change depending on whether he really is an ally or an enemy?
...

That really depends on if you think magic targeting is a metaphysical matter (what is acctually the case) or an epistemological matter (what you know to be the case). If not spell casting in general, at least if the designation of ally is knowledge-based or reality-based.

Similarly the doppleganger cases come to the same point. Does Bless target as a matter of who really is an ally or just who you think is an ally?

Cases like this might be useful to see what your intuitions on it are, but I don't think the RAW ever touches on the matter, although I could be wrong

To avoid silly linguistic/philosophical matters like this I tend to say 'ally' is equivalent to 'party member' (unless the party is attacking itself) and 'enemy' to mean 'thing trying to injure party member'.

Anyway, decide if you think magic targeting is a matter of what you think is the case or what really is the case and you have your answers to the tough questions (or show where the RAW says one way or the other).

If I had to go one way or the other, then I would tend to go with magic being knowledge-based in instances like targeting allies. If it were who was acctually an ally or not, then a smart mage could easily come up with a handy spell:

Mageo's Handy Ally Detector: all allies in a 30-ft. radius acquire an illusiory blue nimbus around their head.

Anyone without a blue glowing ring around their head after this spell is cast is either an enemy or simply not-an-ally. You could have a similar spell where on a failed save a red-ring indicated enemy. I think for this reason, if no other, ally-desnignation would need to be knowledge-based.

It should be noted then that if it is knowledge-based then it wouldn't necessarily be whoever has ever been an ally of the caster, but who the caster is currently thinking about being an ally, and thus the caster should enumerate all entities who he/she thinks are allies (and if someone is an ally and invisible and in the area and is not enumerated then they do not benefit from the Bless).

my 2 cp.

as an edit to continue my thought:
if it is knowledge-based then the doppleganger might not receive the bless even if he is perfectly disguised as an ally because he is not the entity refered to by 'Bob' when the caster says 'Bob' is an ally.

However, if the caster were to physically point out each ally, then he might mistakenly point out the doppleganger (and it would get the benefit of bless).

So, if ally-designation is knowledge-based are entity-references ever able to be tricked. When I say, "My allies for this spell are Squarehead, Blockman, Smilyface, and Myself" am I picking out the entities or am I picking out who I take to be the entities? I could still pick out specific entities who I think are allies (and be wrong that they are allies) and it would be knowledge based.

It's a similar designation to saying "The Joker wants to kill Batman, but he doesn't want to kill Bruce Wayne". That statement is simply false because Batman is necessarily identical to Bruce Wayne (unless you have a very bizzare theory of the world) and if The Joker wants to kill Batman, then he also necessarily wants to kill Bruce Wayne, he's just confused and doesn't know that by wanting to kill BM he really wants to kill BW because they just are the same person.

I think this is really just a giant can of worms if you have much to do with philosophy of language / mind / metaphysics and try to make sense of games in the light of that. Bad idea.

 

[Hypersmurf]

If I had to go one way or the other, then I would tend to go with magic being knowledge-based in instances like targeting allies. If it were who was acctually an ally or not, then a smart mage could easily come up with a handy spell:

Mageo's Handy Ally Detector: all allies in a 30-ft. radius acquire an illusiory blue nimbus around their head.

It already exists - Bless in conjunction with Arcane Sight

-Hyp.

 

[JDowling]

I will stand corrected:

PHB: "an ally is a creature friendly to you. In most cases, references to "allies" include yourself"

disregard my last post as I was assumeing (because these questions were raised at all) that the PBH didn't have a clear definition of what "ally" ment or how it was designated.

In reference to above: ally is clearly a metaphysical designation per RAW, no matter how well a doppleganger disguised itself the only way Bless would ever work on it was if it was 'friendly' to the caster.

EDIT: to tie back to origonal post-
Enemy: a creature that is unfriendly to you.

Opponent is not a clearly defined game-term, but the spell discription uses opponent and enemy interchangeably. Your animals summoned with Summon Nature's Ally spells will attack your enemies (things unfriendly to you) to the best of their ability unless you can communicate with them to make them do otherwise.

That meaning - if anyone in your party is "unfriendly" to you (secretly plotting your death perhaps) then they won't benefit from Bless (and similar spells), and your summoned badgers will chew on them as much as the orcs that are trying to stick sharp things into you.

 

[reanjr]

I think the DM is probably correct, but should be nicer.

[edit] To clarify. My interpretation of the terms opponent and ally within the context of D&D is that you pick and choose targets from among those valid. If a spell affects allies and opponents differently (as opposed to affecting one but not the other), you can choose to have a target affected by both effects (prayer comes to mind).

 

[JDowling]

per RAW if the Hobgoblins are 'unfriendly' to the caster then the DM is just plain wrong and the summoned things will go for em (assumeing the caster had line of sight to summon them somewhere).

If the caster knows about the hobgoblins or not has no bearing on if they are an 'enemy' per RAW, it's purely a metaphysical concern (if these things really like or dislike the caster, it has nothing to do with what the caster knows).

 

[reanjr]

per RAW if the Hobgoblins are 'unfriendly' to the caster then the DM is just plain wrong and the summoned things will go for em (assumeing the caster had line of sight to summon them somewhere).

If the caster knows about the hobgoblins or not has no bearing on if they are an 'enemy' per RAW, it's purely a metaphysical concern (if these things really like or dislike the caster, it has nothing to do with what the caster knows).

Per the RAW, there is no definition of unfriendly.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Per the RAW, there is no definition of unfriendly.

Actually, there is

[b]Attitude    Means                        Possible Actions[/b]
Hostile     Will take risks to hurt you  Attack, interfere, berate, flee 
Unfriendly  Wishes you ill               Mislead, gossip, avoid, watch suspiciously, insult 
Indifferent Doesn’t much care            Socially expected interaction 
Friendly    Wishes you well              Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate 
Helpful     Will take risks to help you  Protect, back up, heal, aid

And as KarinsDad is fond of pointing out, this means that someone who is 'hostile' to you is unaffected by spells that target enemies... since enemies are defined as 'unfriendly'.

-Hyp.

 

[JDowling]

the odd thing, for me, is that by RAW the nosy town gossip would be targeted by any enemy spells because (s)he is certainly prone to "Mislead, gossip, avoid, watch suspiciously, insult" you

Better be careful not to summon those badgers in town or else you might have some 'splainin to do'

RE: 'enemy' not denoting 'hostile's
if something would "Attack, interfere, berate, flee" you isn't that logically stronger than "Mislead, gossip, avoid, watch suspiciously, insult"?

Rather, doesn't 'hostile' entail 'unfriendly'?

Similarly someone who is 'helpful' would still fit the definition for 'friendly' - "Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate".

I think to assert that a 'hostile' is not an 'unfriendly' also is poor reasoning. Similarly to say a 'helpful' is not a 'friendly' is equally ludicrous.

Is there anything in RAW that says that a creature can have one, and only one, attitude towards you?