I never thought of Magic Missile being the "He's down: Finish Him Off!" spell.JC has made a bit of a habit of confusing people with Magic Missile. I believe he ruled both that it was 3 separate concentration saves if hit by 3 magic missiles and that it was only a single death save vs all 3 of those missiles (or it may have been the other way round).
There was a reason why the Wizard, that invented the Shield spell, came up with it specifically for scenarios like this.For those of you that like Magic Missile as a Concentration breaker, what about Death Saves? Someone mentioned it earlier, but I don't think anyone answered.
If there is a couple characters down, can the big bad finish one off with two missiles and give the other two fails? Or do they both just get two fails?
I don't think it was to develop a personal reaction spell to use when you are already unconscious to prevent death saves.There was a reason why the Wizard, that invented the Shield spell, came up with it specifically for scenarios like this.
Is there any other instance where the rules of a spell or attack specifically call out the damage as "simultaneous"? I feel like that must be trying to tell us something, even if the rules don't make it clear.
My inference was that it's another way of saying you have to designate targets all at once. That you can't choose to allocate more missiles to a given target after seeing the effect.I don't know. I mean, the Rules Glossary has a section on Simultaneous Effects, but it doesn't seem particularly relevant to this situation.
"If two or more things happen at the same time on a turn, the person at the game table—player or DM—whose turn it is decides the order in which those things happen. For example, if two effects occur at the start of a player character’s turn, the player decides which of the effects happens first."
It could just be telling us that the missiles all strike their targets at the same time rather than one after the other. Also if one target is further away than another, the missiles still strike at the same time. Stuff like that ...