D&D General Magic Effects (Help with a House Rule)

[NYC DM]

In 2024, a magical effect is just an effect from a spell, magic item or whose description labels it as magical. However, lots of monsters have effects that I'd think of as magical, ranging from placing curses to turning people to stone or paralyzing with a touch. Personally, I find this a bit dissatisfying, and wanted to come up with some rules that expand it, but not so much I can't remember it on the fly. While I love consistency, this is more "what do I tell my players so they know what to expect."

Here's what I came up with so far:

• Any effect that does Force, Necrotic, Psychic or Radiant damage.
• Any effect that imposed the Charmed or Petrified condition.
• All abilities of Celestials, Fey, Fiends or Undead that does damage (other than Bludgeoning, Piercing or Slashing) or causes a condition.
• All abilities that involve Curses (as well as Illusions, Telepathy or Teleportation, but these are explicitly magical in the Rules glossary).

This is just my 90% solution - I run a high-level game where Antimagic and Magic Resistance is common, and sometimes it feels bad to tell my players "no" when they ask "is this a magical effect." I will say that the use of spells as abilities in the Monster Manual makes this problem much less critical than it would have been.

 

[Stalker0]

In 2024, a magical effect is just an effect from a spell, magic item or whose description labels it as magical. However, lots of monsters have effects that I'd think of as magical, ranging from placing curses to turning people to stone or paralyzing with a touch. Personally, I find this a bit dissatisfying, and wanted to come up with some rules that expand it, but not so much I can't remember it on the fly. While I love consistency, this is more "what do I tell my players so they know what to expect."

Here's what I came up with so far:

• Any effect that does Force, Necrotic, Psychic or Radiant damage.
• Any effect that imposed the Charmed or Petrified condition.
• All abilities of Celestials, Fey, Fiends or Undead that does damage (other than Bludgeoning, Piercing or Slashing) or causes a condition.
• All abilities that involve Curses (as well as Illusions, Telepathy or Teleportation, but these are explicitly magical in the Rules glossary).

This is just my 90% solution - I run a high-level game where Antimagic and Magic Resistance is common, and sometimes it feels bad to tell my players "no" when they ask "is this a magical effect." I will say that the use of spells as abilities in the Monster Manual makes this problem much less critical than it would have been.

like you said, as a 90% solution that gets you most of the way there, I think this is a fine baseline. And then of course you still might have to tweak for a few specific situations but it gets you most of the way to where you wan to go without creating a large onerous list.

So looks solid to me.