D&D 5E Magic Missile vs. Mirror Image
Cognomen's Cassowary
First Post
Oh, shut up. You are not a victim, and I am not responsible for your behavior.
You're both acting like schoolchildren, but that's particularly inappropriate. Don't do that.
I honestly thought he was concerned about me, and I for one was touched by the gesture. I mean, I do have issues.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Correct. I'm the only one responsible for my behavior. YOU are responsible for YOURS and if YOU want me to respond to YOU in discussion, YOU need to cut out the insults and arrogance and engage civilly. Until then I'm not going to respond to your points.
Arial Black
Adventurer
I've seen you in many, many debates on this forum, and you're not always wrong, but you are wrong often enough that whenever I see your name attached to a post I start with the idea that you are going to be wrong again, based on my experience of your posts.
In nearly every case when your arguments are broken down in detail and shown to be wrong, unsupported, ill-thought-out, arbitrary, and dis-proved, you post something random, almost surreal. You then get replies that point out that your latest points don't make sense, and then you 'refuse to answer the points' because those people are being rude to you.
From an objective viewpoint, when you get to this stage of the debate it's a tacit admission that your position is unsupportable, but instead of saying so or giving up you just refuse to debate the points and find an excuse as to why, thereby never having to admit you are wrong.
And here we are in this debate. Your position has been thoroughly debunked, you have no winning card to play.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
My position is neither wrong, nor unsupportable. My position is that the spell does not make sense. This is true. My position is that given the way the spell is designed, that it should affect spell casters who target just the same as martial characters. That is also true. My position is that the spell should be re-written so that it makes sense, which I will do for my game. Those are not wrong or unsupportable positions.
I do love your argument that targeting a creature somehow doesn't target the creature, which is what happened when you argued that a spell that targets a creature doesn't target the body. The creature IS the body. How you "target" a creature without targeting the body is through area of effect spells like Fireball, not Magic Missile and Hold Person.
You guys have only "debunked" me through the use of the "Nuh uh!" argument, which fails on its face.
Arial Black
Adventurer
In may not make sense to you, but since is does make sense to plenty of people then it is not true to say, as a general statement, that it does not make sense.
If someone doesn't think that e = mc^2 makes sense then it may not make sense to them, but it doesn't follow that the equation itself doesn't make sense.
It may be true that this is your position, but we've pointed out that the spell already does affect casters and martials the same way! Both casters and martials who make an attack roll are subject to the spell, and neither casters nor martials are affected by the spell if they are not making an attack roll.
Not disputing your admission over not understanding the concept of the spell, but those who do understand it don't need a re-write.
'Target' and 'aim' are different things, both in real life and in the 5E rules. In the game you 'target' a creature simply by mentally choosing that creature. No roll is required. It is 100% certain.
Where you are going wrong (inadvertently or deliberately, it's hard to tell) is that you cannot or will not separate the two. You think that 'target' and 'aim at' are always synonyms.
When a politician 'targets' a certain constituency, he's not looking down the scope of a sniper rifle! When a caster (or martial for that matter) 'targets' a creature in 5E, they are just mentally choosing which creature they want to affect. Nothing more is required. If an archer or a caster is facing 20 enemies, neither has to roll to see if they 'target' the creature they want! They automatically 'target' the chosen creature with 100% certainty, whether or not the caster/archer needs to physically 'aim' at his chosen target.
We have provided rules quotes, arguments supporting our position, and explanations of the concept used by the 5E devs. Meanwhile, you've admitted that the 5E rules say what we said they did but since you have a different conceptualisation then any other conceptualisation must be 'wrong' and needs 'fixing' to match yours.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It doesn't affect them the same way. Suppose a martial PC and a caster walk into a room where a person with Mirror Image is already going. It's impossible for either one to know which image is the real person as they are all identical. There is no point where they can know which one is real. The fighter just has to swing and hope. The caster, despite having no ability to know which one to target, gets to target the real one anyway. That's not equal.
Target and aim are the same in real life.
tar·get
ˈtärɡət/
noun
1.
a person, object, or place selected as the aim of an attack.
synonyms: prey, quarry, game, kill
"eagles can spot their target from half a mile"
2.
historical
a small, round shield or buckler.
verb
1.
select as an object of attention or attack.
"two men were targeted by the attackers"
synonyms: pick out, single out, earmark, fix on; attack, aim at, fire at
"he was targeted by a gunman"
The same. That's what synonym means.
They are when it's used as a verb like D&D does.
But he is aiming at them, with an area "attack".
Arial Black
Adventurer
Caster and martial both 'target' (mentally choose) who they are trying to affect with 100% certainty. In each case the target is 'the guy with all the images'.
Caster and target are both equally unaffected by the images if they use a method of attack which does not require actual 'aiming' at their chosen target, and both are equally affected by the images if they use a method of attack which requires an attack roll.
Oh my goodness! You just did exactly the same thing when debating Cognomen's Cassowary! You Posted several dictionary definitions and ignored the ones that disproved your own claim!
Here, I said, "Where you are going wrong (inadvertently or deliberately, it's hard to tell) is that you cannot or will not separate the two. You think that 'target' and 'aim at' are ALWAYS synonyms." Then, you post a list of synonyms, one of which is a synonym of a literal, physical aiming like a sniper looking down a scope, and others which do not mean that!
In D&D, since it first appeared, creatures 'target=earmark' by mentally choosing. Some of those targeted must also be 'aimed at' by means of an attack roll, but some of those do not require being 'aimed' at all!
D&D literally always, throughout its existence, has used 'target' to mean 'earmark' with 100% certainty, which may or may not also require physically aiming at.
When a politician 'aims' to influence a target constituency he is not literally 'aiming' in the sense of looking down a sniper scope and requiring line-of-sight and good vision. He is 'aiming' in the sense of mentally choosing, 'earmarking', a group that he probably isn't even looking at.
In D&D, all that is required to 'target' a creature is that you can see the creature, you have a clear path to it, and it is within range of the thing you want to do.
Whether or not a creature has mirror image on, that creature can be seen. It looks like several copies of one creature. They literally cannot look different from each other! That is a creature you can see and 'target/earmark' for whatever you want to do, and if the thing you want to do does not require physically aiming at (attack roll) you simply do not need to know which is the real image, because you are affecting the 'creature' even if that creature has four images.
