Elven Trance, Spell Scrolls, Grappling & More: New Sage Advice

Jeremy Crawford's September Sage Advice column has appeared, and it deals with elven traces, thief features, various combat questions, plus a couple of queries about spells and scrolls. As usual, these questions and answers have also been added to the Sage Advice Compendium. "Elven Trance, spell scrolls, grappling, and other rules bits. This month, we touch on several rules questions that have come up quite a few times over the past year." (thanks to Ghost Matter for the scoop)

 

[Hriston]

Interesting, so you'd apply the dexterity modifier too but only to the attack roll and not to the damage roll! That's a variant I haven't heard of yet.

Yeah, on second thought, and for the sake of simplicity, I'd add the dex mod to the damage as well as per the rules on p. 196 of the PHB.

Seems like every DM does it different which is just another proof that the rules are not clear enough about it.

Like many have said, this is proof of the rules working as intended. With something like improvised weapons I don't think hard and fast rules would be too helpful. Also, it's important to remember that Sage Advice is a clarification, not a change. Weapon attack classifications were always separate from weapon types.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The game I ran just two nights ago involved dead kobolds being used as improvised ranged weapons by the barbarian--usually thrown, but at one point lobbed/catapulted off the tines of her trident. Followed by a game of lethal rugby/keep-away as the kobolds and PCs tried to recover the magic artifact from each other, then lobbed it across the battlefield to allies trying to keep the other side from retrieving it, all while trying to kill each other in the process.

It was the most fun we've had in a game in quite some time, and I promise that "DM's discretion, based on a loose set of guidelines," like we have in 5E, made that work a lot better than any attempt at iron-clad procedures would have.