Sorcerers Apprentice
Hero
It's not game breaking, read my post above.
If a 60' radius area of half speed and damage every turn for enemies doesn't break a melee focused combat encounter in your game, then I don't know how you're playing.
It's not game breaking, read my post above.
Thunderclap's range entry says 'Self (5-foot radius)'.
Why, conceptually, should Distant Spell work with one but not the other?
Any spell which creates an aura or burst centred on you which affects 'individual creatures within an area with a radius of X', can also be written that it affects 'individual creatures within X range of you'. It is a distinction without a difference.
No, the don't. They have a range and an area of affect. It's just that they use the rather odd convention of listing the AoE in brackets after the range, rather than having a separate AoE line. This is more obvious on D&D Beyond, where they add a symbol for the type of AoE to the brackets.
Arial Black said:Thunderclap's range entry says 'Self (5-foot radius)'.
Where? It doesn't say that in any of my references.
In Xanthar's Guide Thunderclap reads Range: 5 feet.
On D&D Beyond Thunderclap reads Range/Area: 5 feet.
I have a 5e spell app on my phone; that's what I referenced for the range entry for thunderclap as 'Self (5-foot radius)'. The app says this spell appears in Elemental Evil and Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
Checking my hardbacks:-
Princes of the Apocalypse (I think it and Elemental Evil are two names for the same thing, but I could be wrong. I own PotA but not EE) has the range entry for thunderclap as 'Self (5-foot radius)' on p240.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything has the range as '5 feet' on p168.
It's hardly surprising that the writers use these terms interchangeably, since they both result in exactly the same creatures being affected whichever way they are written!
And now you say D&D Beyond has something else meaning the exact same thing! Further evidence of a distinction without a difference.
You think that 'It becomes different when some individual creatures can be excluded'? Let's see:-
They really messed this up. Area of Effect and Range should have been seperate lines.
On the contrary.
Princes of the Apocalypse came out a bout 3 years before Xanthar's Guide. So between those two publications Thunderclap was deliberately changed. You can tell the change is deliberate because (a) cut-and-paste means it's a lot easier to leave things the same and (b) a similar change was made in two official sources.
If something is identical in meaning, there is no point in going to the trouble of changing it.
Ergo, we can conclude that WotC does not consider Range: 5' identical in meaning to Range: Self (5').
Ergo, we have to conclude that Thunderclap was deliberately changed so that it can benefit from Distant Spell, making it work consistently with Sword Burst and Word of Radiance.
I expect that that since Distant Spell and Thunderclap (et al) are weaksauce on their own, WotC wanted them to synergise.
Word of Radiance. Similar to Thunderclap apart from it doesn't hit targets the caster chooses not exclude, or anything within range that the caster cannot see (e.g. invisible). It's functionally a pbaoe but actually separate rays shoot out and hit each valid target within range. Since they are separate rays, it does not make sense to exclude it from Distant Spell. But, since Thunderclap is functionally similar, it makes no sense to exclude that either.
Distant Spell does not inherently exclude pbaoes (it relies on the bracket notation to indicate what is excluded), and the changes made to Thunderclap indicate that is working as intended, not an error.
Also, what does 'pbaoe' stand for?