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List of Ambiguous Spells
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<blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 7000649" data-attributes="member: 5890"><p>Except then the writers come back and clarify exactly what the natural language means, often in ways that run contrary to the existing wording and/or to good sense, which runs counter to the rulings not rules sentiment and leaves it looking like they just weren't that good at making coherent rules.</p><p></p><p>Given that, it seems reasonable from the point of a player to either avoid or clarify ambiguous spells, and from the point of view of a DM to work out how the spells should work and what the pitfalls of them could be with specific rulings.</p><p></p><p>Personally I don't think simulacrum should be on this list: it's not ambiguous in the least, it's simply completely bonkers overpowered as written. I would recommend using the 3.5 wording for the spell instead, which creates a final creature that has half the levels of the original, completely doing away with most of the issues of the 5.0 spell.</p><p></p><p>Contagion is one where the spell as written suggests that the creature is slammed by a powerful effect before it makes any saves at all, and the sage's suggestion that it requires 3 failed saves for the spell to work is rubbish too. My suggestion for the spell is to simply have it infect (no initial save) the target with the disease in question, which runs it's course naturally <em>including the incubation time</em>, but with the recovery DC set by the spell DC of the caster. This makes the spell mostly useless for the problematic case (crippling a powerful solo) because every disease has an incubation period of at least one day. It still has some uses, but they are more subtle.</p><p></p><p>My view of weird and phantasmal killer is that the caster would choose where the source of fear is, and can thus sort of use the spell to herd if he wishes.</p><p></p><p>The interpretation of raise dead/resurrection not being able to bring someone back after they've been turned into an undead requires some more details:</p><p></p><p>1. One twitter response is talking about resurrecting Strahd to cure him of vampirism. This won't work because Strahd never died prior to becoming a vampire: he made a pact that turned him into a vampire while he was still alive. Regular vampires and Vampire spawn are explicitly created after the original creature dies, and therefore might be raise/resurrectable. Note however that vampirism is often termed a magical curse or disease, and if that is the case (ie - DM fiat) raise dead and resurrection would not be able to cure it (and therefore would not be able to bring the creature back either).</p><p></p><p>2. Other twitter responses suggest that it's up to the DM whether (for instance) a zombie raised from a corpse can be subjected to raise dead (or the rest of the line) once killed. The specific reason given by the sage as to why it doesn't work is that being animated "damages the soul" in his world, which would also make animating corpses a significantly more evil act than the straight MM/PHB version, but doesn't impact worlds where that's not the case.</p><p></p><p>I think that it comes down to whether you think a 'creature' is it's corpse. If 'creature' is an abstract targeting mechanic (ie - you can choose "bob" or "the last non-undead creature that this corpse was" as a resurrection target), then it works fine unless the DM has specific mechanics in place to obstruct it. If a corpse and creature are one and the same (ie - you MUST choose "the creature that I'm touching the corpse of") then the DM needs to decide which creature a corpse is - the original, or the raised undead, or both. If it's anything other than "only the last thing it died as", then raise and resurrect work fine because they exclude undead. Note that revivify can possibly bring an undead back to undeath, so it's an especially important question here, and utterly confusing if a corpse can be multiple creatures at the same time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Saeviomagy, post: 7000649, member: 5890"] Except then the writers come back and clarify exactly what the natural language means, often in ways that run contrary to the existing wording and/or to good sense, which runs counter to the rulings not rules sentiment and leaves it looking like they just weren't that good at making coherent rules. Given that, it seems reasonable from the point of a player to either avoid or clarify ambiguous spells, and from the point of view of a DM to work out how the spells should work and what the pitfalls of them could be with specific rulings. Personally I don't think simulacrum should be on this list: it's not ambiguous in the least, it's simply completely bonkers overpowered as written. I would recommend using the 3.5 wording for the spell instead, which creates a final creature that has half the levels of the original, completely doing away with most of the issues of the 5.0 spell. Contagion is one where the spell as written suggests that the creature is slammed by a powerful effect before it makes any saves at all, and the sage's suggestion that it requires 3 failed saves for the spell to work is rubbish too. My suggestion for the spell is to simply have it infect (no initial save) the target with the disease in question, which runs it's course naturally [i]including the incubation time[/i], but with the recovery DC set by the spell DC of the caster. This makes the spell mostly useless for the problematic case (crippling a powerful solo) because every disease has an incubation period of at least one day. It still has some uses, but they are more subtle. My view of weird and phantasmal killer is that the caster would choose where the source of fear is, and can thus sort of use the spell to herd if he wishes. The interpretation of raise dead/resurrection not being able to bring someone back after they've been turned into an undead requires some more details: 1. One twitter response is talking about resurrecting Strahd to cure him of vampirism. This won't work because Strahd never died prior to becoming a vampire: he made a pact that turned him into a vampire while he was still alive. Regular vampires and Vampire spawn are explicitly created after the original creature dies, and therefore might be raise/resurrectable. Note however that vampirism is often termed a magical curse or disease, and if that is the case (ie - DM fiat) raise dead and resurrection would not be able to cure it (and therefore would not be able to bring the creature back either). 2. Other twitter responses suggest that it's up to the DM whether (for instance) a zombie raised from a corpse can be subjected to raise dead (or the rest of the line) once killed. The specific reason given by the sage as to why it doesn't work is that being animated "damages the soul" in his world, which would also make animating corpses a significantly more evil act than the straight MM/PHB version, but doesn't impact worlds where that's not the case. I think that it comes down to whether you think a 'creature' is it's corpse. If 'creature' is an abstract targeting mechanic (ie - you can choose "bob" or "the last non-undead creature that this corpse was" as a resurrection target), then it works fine unless the DM has specific mechanics in place to obstruct it. If a corpse and creature are one and the same (ie - you MUST choose "the creature that I'm touching the corpse of") then the DM needs to decide which creature a corpse is - the original, or the raised undead, or both. If it's anything other than "only the last thing it died as", then raise and resurrect work fine because they exclude undead. Note that revivify can possibly bring an undead back to undeath, so it's an especially important question here, and utterly confusing if a corpse can be multiple creatures at the same time. [/QUOTE]
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