Magic Missile. How have you and how do you roll the damage.

[S'mon]

Hey, I'm human too, and I don't like seeing people bullied or insulted, especially when - as in this instance - they were correct and all the smug little jerks bashing them are actually wrong.

While I think Crawford made a bad ruling and he's definitely not God's gift to rules interpretation, my problem is not with him, it's with this culture of treating tweets as holy writ. It's the rules monkeys who are the annoying jerks.

(I don't plan to reply further, so feel free to get in a Parthian shot.)

 

[Caliban]

Scorching Ray then. If I target multiple targets and crit on one - do I ignore the crit, roll the crit on all targets, or ignore the idea that I roll the same for each one and treat the unit of concern as each individual ray rather than the spell? If the last, then why am I not doing the same with the individual magic missiles?

Magic Missile specifies simultaneous damage - Scorching Ray does not.

Scorching ray isn't damaging them all at once, it's doing it on different attacks. The rule doesn't apply. As I already stated in the bit of my post you quoted.

Magic missile also doesn't have attack rolls. It doesn't even have a saving throw. But it does do damage simultaneously to all the targets, as specified in the spell itself. That's the important bit, since there is a rule specifically for spells that do that. Most of them are AoE spells, but Magic Missile is an exception - mainly because they wanted it to act like the iconic version of the spell which automatically hit. (In 4th edition you had to make attack rolls with Magic Missile.)

In this edition, Magic Missile is kind of a unique spell in that is targeted, but also acts like an AoE in some ways.

 

[Ristamar]

This wouldn't be the first time I think they've issued a weird ruling based on a literal yet non-obvious reading of the rules that comes as a surprise to most experienced players. Kind of makes me think they get backed into them rather than plan them.

Not unlike the unintended quirks and tricks that often emerge in video games, particularly fighting games. As long as they're not totally game breaking and patched out, they become part of the meta.

 

[Caliban]

Nothing you said gives any support to this ridiculous garbage ruling.

That's a really brilliant rebuttal. Hard to argue with such a well reasoned and logical point.

I appreciate that Crawford will not personally force me to roll 1d4 and multiply it, but I don't want to see any Tweet-waving idiots at my table acting like this is a reasonable interpretation of the written rules (eg in order stack damage bonuses, or whatever rules lawyer crap they come up with). I don't want to have to devote table time to making a 'house rule' that magic missile works like it did in 1e/2e/3e. I really wish such tweets were not being put out.

Everything I said gives support to the ruling.

Just because you personally don't like it and call it a "garbage ruling" (instead of actually refuting any part of it) - that doesn't change anything.

 

[delericho]

Magic Missile specifies simultaneous damage - Scorching Ray does not.

p196 says nothing about the damage being simultaneous or otherwise. It specifically says "if a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target..." Scorching ray is one spell.

The other problem with applying p196 to Magic Missile occurs if the missiles are divided unequally - if the Wizard sends two darts at the Ogre and one at the Goblin. If which case you "roll the damage once for all of them".

 

[Ristamar]

p196 says nothing about the damage being simultaneous or otherwise. It specifically says "if a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target..."

"...at the same time." You chopped it off the sentence like it's not even there.

Spells with multiple attack rolls like Scorching Ray and Eldritch blast to do not hit simultaneously. This was already established when it was clarified that Eldritch Blast with Repelling Blast can potentially knock a target out of range before the next beam from the same casting has a chance to hit.

 

[Caliban]

p196 says nothing about the damage being simultaneous or otherwise. It specifically says "if a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target..." Scorching ray is one spell.

The other problem with applying p196 to Magic Missile occurs if the missiles are divided unequally - if the Wizard sends two darts at the Ogre and one at the Goblin. If which case you "roll the damage once for all of them".

Conveniently, you cut off your quote just before the important bit. "...At the same time."

Hmm... I wonder what simultaneous means?

And yes, if you choose to use the Sage's interpretation, you would roll a single D4 and that would apply to every missile, no matter how many you apply to each target.

Or you could choose not to use the ruling and just a separate D4 for every missile. Personally, I give my players the option of using whatever they prefer and there have been exactly zero problems either way.

 

[billd91]

Rolling once and applying that to each missile, particularly with the evoker bonus, is problematic. And it seems Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford differ on interpretations:

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/487995399899074560
https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/557820938402947072?lang=en

In case you're wondering, the evoker bonus makes a pretty big difference if added per missile as Crawford would have it. For most AoE evocations, an 18-Int Wizard (and at 10th level, an 18 is hardly unreasonably) inflicts +4 hp per affected target, save for half. With magic missile, it's +4 per missile, no save. Cast at 9th level at one target, you can see an average of 82.5 points of damage with no save - and a full 25% of doing the max of 99 points. Contrast that with a 9th level fireball (53 points average, save for half) or 9th level cone of cold (58 points average, save for half) and extremely small chances of doing max damage.

That magic missile in the hands of an invoker is looking better all the time - but probably unintentionally.

 

[delericho]

"...at the same time." You chopped it off the sentence like it's not even there.

Crap. Yes, you're right. I managed to miss that. My apologies.

 

[Caliban]

That magic missile in the hands of an invoker is looking better all the time - but probably unintentionally.

Or possibly intentionally. It's an iconic spell, and only one wizard sub-class gets the bonus - the one that is supposed to be damage focused.

Plus magic missile is either focused on a single target or the damage is spread out over several targets, as opposed to a fireball or cone of cold which does all the damage to every target.

Or they could cast Meteor Swarm and do 40d6 to many, many targets...

I really don't know for sure though. I'm not one of the game designers.