D&D 5E Disintegrate Vs. Druid

[Imaculata]

There is no rule that says you can't be dead and have hit point remaining, and at least one spell that kills you with hit points remaining which proves that the game allows it.

Yes, but it is not the Disintegrate spell. And that's the specific spell we are talking about here. Disintegrate kills you only if you have no more health remaining. The Druid has two health pools, so he obviously has health remaining, and can't be reduced to dust.

 

[Arial Black]

There is no rule that says you can't be dead and have hit point remaining, and at least one spell that kills you with hit points remaining which proves that the game allows it. So yes, you can be reduced to dust by RAW if you still have one hit point pool remaining.

True, but disintegrate is not a save-or-die spell; it is a damage-dealing spell. It only kills/dusts you if the damage leaves you with 0 hp.

The disintegrate rules don't care about the number of pools you have. Disintegrate only cares if you are reduced to 0, which happens when the first pool is depleted.

The wild shape rules don't care if your hp get reduced to zero, because instead of the normal results of being reduced to zero (death, unconsciousness, being turned to dust) the druid reverts.

The wild shape rules, whether it uses the word 'instead' or not, mean that you revert instead of dying/falling unconscious/being turned to dust. If this was not the case, then the druid would die/fall unconscious when the beast form hit zero from a sword stroke, and we know this is not true.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules have 'applying damage' as a single step. There is a before and an after. There is no written rule that allows you to split it up into parts.

The rules have Resolve Attack as a single step. Damage is part of that, yes. Nothing in there says anything about having to go though the full damage before any other part of the attack is resolved.

'Applying this damage' really is applying all of it, because if you apply less then you haven't applied 'this damage'.

Once you have applied 'this damage', then you already have a reverted druid.

That's not true. The English language doesn't require "this damage" to be full damage.

If I can't pay the loan shark $100 dollars, he'll break my kneecaps. I only have $20, so I borrow $80 from my parents. Do my kneecaps get broken because 'technically' I had no money? No, if I pay him on time, he doesn't care.

Bad analogy. A good analogy would be if the loan shark was going to break your legs if at any point you have no money. Your parents can't get you the $80 dollars until after you have run out of the $20, so the loan sharks break your legs anyway as an object lesson.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, but it is not the Disintegrate spell. And that's the specific spell we are talking about here. Disintegrate kills you only if you have no more health remaining. The Druid has two health pools, so he obviously has health remaining, and can't be reduced to dust.

It doesn't matter if it's not the disintegrate spell. The point is that disintegrate doesn't care how many pools of health you have. There is one, and only one care it has, and that's if you hit 0 hit points. The druid does in fact hit 0 hit points PRIOR to reversion, which triggers disintegrate's ash effect. It doesn't care if you have any hit points remaining after you have been ashed. That's not a part of the wording of the spell, so the other pool is irrelevant.......at least by RAW.

 

[Maxperson]

The wild shape rules don't care if your hp get reduced to zero, because instead of the normal results of being reduced to zero (death, unconsciousness, being turned to dust) the druid reverts.

Quote for me out of the wild shape rules where it uses the word "instead". I can quote for you the language that shows it's sequential, and I have multiple times in this thread.

The wild shape rules, whether it uses the word 'instead' or not, mean that you revert instead of dying/falling unconscious/being turned to dust. If this was not the case, then the druid would die/fall unconscious when the beast form hit zero from a sword stroke, and we know this is not true.

The rules explicitly say it is sequential. You do X and THEN you do Y. There is no instead, implied or otherwise.

 

[BryonD]

Yes, but it is not the Disintegrate spell. And that's the specific spell we are talking about here. Disintegrate kills you only if you have no more health remaining. The Druid has two health pools, so he obviously has health remaining, and can't be reduced to dust.

Disintegrate does not care if you have 1, 2, or 50 "health pools".
Disintegrate triggers on being at ZERO hp.
The druid does not have access to this second so-called "health pool" unless something happens to trigger the druid moving into those HP.
What triggers that? Being at ZERO hp triggers that. It says so in the rules. so you can't argue that the druid is never "at zero HP", regardless of whether a second poll of HP is waiting around to trigger or not. The condition "is at ZERO HP" must become true. Thus the "turns to dust" triggers.

A fair conclusion would be that BOTH things trigger. A druid with 50 HP in normal form is in wolf form and drops to 0 HP from a disintegrate. Both things trigger. The being a pile of dust is the most important thing in the druid's world, and he dies.

 

[Maxperson]

Disintegrate does not care if you have 1, 2, or 50 "health pools".
Disintegrate triggers on being at ZERO hp.
The druid does not have access to this second so-called "health pool" unless something happens to trigger the druid moving into those HP.
What triggers that? Being at ZERO hp triggers that. It says so in the rules. so you can't argue that the druid is never "at zero HP", regardless of whether a second poll of HP is waiting around to trigger or not. The condition "is at ZERO HP" must become true. Thus the "turns to dust" triggers.

A fair conclusion would be that BOTH things trigger. A druid with 50 HP in normal form is in wolf form and drops to 0 HP from a disintegrate. Both things trigger. The being a pile of dust is the most important thing in the druid's world, and he dies.

Correct. That's RAW, even if it isn't RAI.

 

[Hriston]

Correct. That's RAW, even if it isn't RAI.

If that's true then why wasn't it included in the errata?

 

[Maxperson]

If that's true then why wasn't it included in the errata?

You'd have to ask them, not me. Maybe it was just too new of an issue to make it into this errata. There are probably lots of things that weren't included in the errata for whatever reasons.

 

[Arial Black]

The rules have Resolve Attack as a single step. Damage is part of that, yes. Nothing in there says anything about having to go though the full damage before any other part of the attack is resolved.

The damage done by an attack is a single amount. There is no suggestion that it is applied in single hp increments.

Your arguments here remind me of the time when you, under your 'Orethalion' username, got me to stop contributing to the WotC threads. Remember when your argument was that the effects of a spell appear before the spellcasting (VSM components) has even been completed, just to try and justify your idea that you can cast some of an 'instantaneous' spell, see what happens, and then decide who to target with the rest of the same instantaneous spell? When you challenged the rest of us to prove you wrong, I realized that you'd gone through the looking glass and I wasn't going to follow.

Here, you're choosing to change the way damage is resolved, just so that you can willfully misinterpret the rules so that you can say that they say something that you know that they don't: in that case 'how instantaneous spells work', in this case 'how damage is applied'.

That's not true. The English language doesn't require "this damage" to be full damage.

In this case it does, because 'this damage', whether it is from a spell or a sword stroke, is a single amount. A sword stroke doing 12 damage doesn't hit you 12 times, and a disintegrate doing 80 damage isn't 80 spells with a dust check after each one.

If 'this damage' is 80 points, then 23 points is not 'this damage'. The spell does 80 damage, 80 damage causes the beast form to lose all of its 23 hp and the reverted druid to lose 57. If you don't apply that 57, then you haven't applied 'this damage' because that 57 is the damage done by that spell just as surely as the other 23.

You think that you are allowed to just do 23 and ignore the other 57, and require us to prove you wrong? Okay, I'll choose to take, say, 1 point and ignore the rest. Prove me wrong! Show me, in the rules, exactly where it says I'm not allowed to do that!

The burden of proof lies with those who are claiming things the rules don't say. They don't say that you can choose not to apply all the damage.

Bad analogy. A good analogy would be if the loan shark was going to break your legs if at any point you have no money.

It might not be the best analogy, but loan sharks care about getting their money, not about the adventures you had in order to get their money.