D&D 5E Disintegrate Vs. Druid

[Noctem]

The disintegrate spell says "If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, it is disintegrated."

The Wild Shaped druid is hit with disintegrate. Takes damage that reduces his animal form to 0 hit points, and is disintegrated.
A disintegrated creature is dead. "Die" is one of the things that triggers reversion. So, the dust is Druid dust, not animal dust. Hooray! As a result of reversion, at least the Druid's magic items are recoverable.

Think of the order of operations like this:

Work At Disneyland: while you work at Disneyland, put on a Mickey Mouse costume. You have to take off the Mickey Mouse costume and get back into your regular clothes if your costume gets wet. If your costume gets dirty, your boss fires you. Someone throws a bucket of mud on you. Now you're wet. So you have to change out of your Mickey Mouse costume. But you're also dirty, so you're totally fired immediately.

Work at Disneyland = wildshape ability. Wear costume = animal form. Get wet = Reach 0 hit points. Get fired = disintegrate.

In other words, in the above example getting wet and getting dirty both happen--they're inextricably linked--and both consequences apply.

Same with reaching zero hit points from disintegrate. The spell's damage reduces taget's HP to zero, so the target is disintegrated. That happens. The target was a wildshaped druid, and wildshaped druids revert when they die. So the (dead, pile-of-ash) druid reverts. That happens.

The Target was a wild shaped Druid. WAS A WILD SHAPED DRUID. The wild shape IS the Druid. There is NO FORM LEFT, as the wild shaped form, which is now dust, was the Druid. The wild shape is not a shield, it is not a battery of hit points FOR THIS EFFECT, the damage itself is what is irrelevent - if the disintegrate does enough damage to make the wild shape reach zero, then as per the spell description, the form turns to DUST, there is nothing left to revert to a Druid. DUST will not revert to anything.

Sorry but you're both wrong via the rules in the PHB and because Jeremy Crawford has directly stated as much. So if you want to houserule at home that this is how it works, go for it! But don't bother going online and trying to tell other people that your houserule is how the game is meant to be played. That's not the case at all.

 

[Pssthpok]

14 pages of this crap and all I've learned is how to add Maxperson to my ignore list.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Sorry but you're both wrong via the rules in the PHB and because Jeremy Crawford has directly stated as much. So if you want to houserule at home that this is how it works, go for it! But don't bother going online and trying to tell other people that your houserule is how the game is meant to be played. That's not the case at all.

Sure thing, Sheriff of the Internet. How silly of me to think that a discussion forum is an appropriate place to engage in a discussion.

 

[AriochQ]

Your lack of understanding of how two game elements interact by the rules and by the intent of the lead designer of the game you're playing doesn't mean the correct way to play = creative semantics. You should put that paint brush away before you hurt yourself.

Jeremy stated that was the intent of the rule, but that is not the way he wrote the rules.

Target reduced to zero HP's, it reverts to druid form.
Target reduced to zero HP's, it is disintegrated.

You aren't allowed to define 'target' one way in one ruling and another way in a second ruling and claim you are 'following the rules'. Any DM can make any interpretation they want, but a straight reading of the rules ends up with the druid being dust.

Of course, 'rulings not rules' apply. Personally, I don't think Wild Shape should be some sort of power shield against death effects so I go with the most straight forward reading of the rules.

 

[Noctem]

Sure thing, Sheriff of the Internet. How silly of me to think that a discussion forum is an appropriate place to engage in a discussion.

I'm sorry that you feel the need to resort to petty name calling like that. Is that how you engage in discussion? If so I'll pass on any further talks with you. gl hf.

 

[eamon]

Of course, 'rulings not rules' apply. Personally, I don't think Wild Shape should be some sort of power shield against death effects so I go with the most straight forward reading of the rules.

Reverting to druid form would not be a power shield to death effects. When a druid reverts; excess damage is carried over to the druid form. If that excess damage were enough to reduce the druid form to 0 hitpoints, there'd be no discussion: that druid's dust.

It's pretty clear that the intent in general is that wild shape protects a druid from the consequences of falling to 0 hit points in beast shape. It's also clear that in general disintegrate makes the consequences of falling to zero more severe.

RAW, this is clearly ambiguous. You might argue that the disintegrate is more important, and only that applies. But there's no basis for ignoring the druids abilities. You might argue that only the druids wild shape rules apply - but there's no basis for ignoring the disintegrate rules. You might argue that a both triggers fire, and you resolve the druid's first. Finally, you might argue that the disintegrate applies first, and then the wild shape. This one's tricky, because how does a pile of dust turn back into a druid? Well, RAW this isn't relevant: wild shape doesn't impose limitations on reverting to normal form - so that pile of dust would turn right back into a druid. Disintegrate doesn't explicitly state the target dies, either - that's just a consequence of being dust. And the reverted druid explicitly has hit points, so that sounds pretty lively. Then again, the intent of disintegrate is clearly to kill a creature... (but if you care about intent, why have you read this far?)

Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of such an analysis would be.

I'd try to apply both rules, and that easy to do - let the druid revert, and let the excess damage carry over, and if that results in a 0 hit point druid, he's dust. But that's just a choice. You might rule otherwise; heck, you could even come up with some creative amalgamation of a half-dust-half-druid superposition that explodes in a huge quantum bubble, destroying the material plane. There's no meaningful RAW for this scenario, and the game explicitly discourages RAW-style readings anyhow, so you might as well just do what feels right. Power word kill is another great one - by RAW that would seem to result in a dead druid with hitpoints...

 

[epithet]

... so I go with the most straight forward reading of the rules.

Not so much.

The most straightforward reading of the rules is that disintegrate does a bunch of damage, and if after the damage is done the target doesn't have any hit points left, it turns to dust. The way wild shape works, you go through the hit points of the beast form, revert, then start going through the hit points of the humanoid form. So, if you get through the hit points of the humanoid form, the druid turns to dust.

It's really not complicated.

Now, the problem in this thread is that some folks want to get hung up on semantics instead of just taking the plain, simple meaning of the text. Y'all get excited over the phrase "reduced to zero," without regard for the fact that what that means is "don't have any hit points left." A druid that takes enough damage to wipe out his beast form hitpoints still has his druid hit points, so unless he takes enough damage to wipe those out, too, he's got hit points left.

When damage forces a druid to revert back from wild shape, it doesn't render the druid unconscious, even momentarily. It doesn't trigger any of the things that normally happen when a character falls to zero hit points - there are no death daves, the druid doesn't automatically lose concentration, etc. Druids losing all the hit points of their beast form is clearly and obviously not the same as a character falling to zero hit points, and it is absolutely ridiculous to pretend that it is. The only reason Jeremy Crawford didn't use words like "obviously" and "of course" in his response is that he's representing WotC, but I'm pretty sure he was thinking them.

 

[Noctem]

Jeremy stated that was the intent of the rule, but that is not the way he wrote the rules.

Target reduced to zero HP's, it reverts to druid form.
Target reduced to zero HP's, it is disintegrated.

You aren't allowed to define 'target' one way in one ruling and another way in a second ruling and claim you are 'following the rules'. Any DM can make any interpretation they want, but a straight reading of the rules ends up with the druid being dust.

Of course, 'rulings not rules' apply. Personally, I don't think Wild Shape should be some sort of power shield against death effects so I go with the most straight forward reading of the rules.

You're correct that the real point of this discussion is about the resolution order when multiple game elements trigger off the same thing. In this case, being reduced to 0 HP. However here's why it works the way it does:

Wildshape specifies that the reversion back into druid form when reduced to 0 HP because of damage happens DURING the damage resolution step of the Making an Attack section of the PHB. You can see this for yourself because it is stated that if the damage taken would bring you to 0, you revert and then take any remaining damage. The only way to do this is if it can happen during the 2nd step of the Making an Attack section. Essentially all attacks made (melee, ranged, spell, weapon, etc..) all follow these 3 steps. Paraphrasing the first step is making the attack, second is resolving damage and finally the 3rd step is resolving any effects the attack might have. This is the general rule for how ALL attacks are generally resolved except for where specified otherwise (this is an exception based game system where general rules are given and other game elements bend, break or get around them as specified) resolved as a whole including Disintegrate. So because of this, disintegrates turning the target to dust takes place during the 3rd step vs Wildshape reversion takes place during the 2nd step. So already you can tell which one will have priority and always happen first.

After the reversion happens, the 3rd step begins and the power checks to see if the target of the power has been reduced to 0 hit points. At this point, the target of the power (the druid, not the wildshape form to be clear) has HP and is not at 0 say for the purposes of this explanation. So the effect does not trigger. However, as Jeremy Crawford explained, if the druid is reduced to 0 hit points by the excess damage from Disintegrate after reversion, the spell checks for HP and sees that the druid is at 0 HP. The druid must then make a saving throw against the spell's effect, during step 3 of the Making an Attack rules and should the druid fail the save he is turned to dust.

The problem with how some posters are processing these game elements is that you're allowing Disintegrate's effect section to happen before damage is even resolved. You're also considering the wildshape form as a separate creature for the purposes of triggering the effect. The target of the spell, the druid, has not been reduced to 0 HP regardless of if his wildshape form is. That's like saying that temp HP going to 0 means you've been reduced to 0 HP or something similar. A druid in wildshape form having the form reach 0 HP because of DAMAGE, will never proc effects that require going to 0 hit points. That being said, an effect like the one from Power Word Kill, which only cares about the target's current HP count will work and kill the druid outright and then because the druid dies, he will revert back to druid form still dead. The target of the spell, which is the druid, is dead by the spell's effect. Reverting to druid form does not undo outright death which is what I feel many of the people here think Wildshape allows. This is not true at all, wildshape does not undo death! For that to happen it would have to specifically state that it can undo death when reverting. Since it doesn't, it can't.

Now I've explained both RAW and RAI behind the way these game elements work so I hope that helps some people.

EDIT: Epithet above gets it.

 

[Maxperson]

Whatever.

Look, Crawford has spelled out the way the rule should be read. Trying to parse what he said along some ridiculous distinction like "RAI" vs "RAW" is just silly.

He did no such thing. Saying that the intent that disintegrate not kill wild shape is not a direction on how you are to read the rule. That's what rulings are for and he didn't make one.

You can certainly rule, at your table, that disintegrate will perma-kill a wild shaped druid if the spell knocks him out of his wild shape, but let's be clear: that's your house rule.

It can't be a house rule, because it's RAW.

It is contrary to the "official" interpretation.

There is no official interpretation. Crawford never made any attempt to interpret RAW. He only spoke about intent.

 

[Maxperson]

Your lack of understanding of how two game elements interact by the rules and by the intent of the lead designer of the game you're playing doesn't mean the correct way to play = creative semantics. You should put that paint brush away before you hurt yourself.

Hey. You called a post of mine that had directly to do with your arguments and showed you to be wrong as "irrelevant", and then laughed at my post calling you out on it. That sort of childish behavior doesn't do you any good. Calling someone else out for what you are actually doing is fairly hypocritical as well.