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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7642146" data-attributes="member: 6799649">I can certainly accept that the way they chose to communicate which creatures can be affected by the spell was deliberately changed, while at the same time they did not change which creatures are actually affected.Sure there is: clarity. It makes sense that things that work the same way should be presented the same way, for clarity.Ergo, we can conclude that since WotC does consider that both ways mean the same creatures are affected, that they might as well take the opportunity to standardise their presentation of this style of spell.I find it unwarranted to conclude that WotC writes spell blocks worrying about Distant Spell!  Spirit guardians, similar to thunderclap, does not affect creatures the caster chooses to exclude. In fact, the spell description talks about 'they flit around you to a distance (i.e. 'range') of 15 feet'. Y'know, like you measure the range of each creature from the caster, in exactly the same way as you would measure the distance of a ray-type spell.Whether 'range: 5 feet' or 'range: self (5-foot radius) is the form used, they result in exactly the same creatures being affected, and this remains true even if the caster can choose to exclude some creatures from being affected.In fact, if they reprinted the PHB and changed the range entry of spirit guardians to 'range: 15 feet', nothing would change about how the spell works!Imagine one cleric was casting spirit guardians using 'range: self (15-foot radius)' and another cleric at the same table was casting the same spell using 'range: 15 feet', explain what difference it would make to which creatures are affected by the spell! We can already do this with the two versions of thunderclap.If there is no difference in the way the spell works in the game world (since they are not aware of D&D game mechanics), then why would Distant Spell interact differently? What could be the cause if a different interaction when there is no difference in function of the spell?Also, what does 'pbaoe' stand for?</blockquote>

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