Most magic items that cast spells change the DC and they don't use this verbiage - Wand of Fear, Wand of Fireballs, Instrument of the Bards .....
D&D 5E (2024) Using Action Surge to cast spells in 2024
- Thread starter ECMO3
- Start date
Most magic items that cast spells change the DC and they don't use this verbiage - Wand of Fear, Wand of Fireballs, Instrument of the Bards .....
Yes exactly, MOST and you don't take the Magic Action when you use any of the things I mentioned above to cast a spell with a casting time of one action.
You take a different kind of action for all those examples - a Bonus Action or an Attack Action, or in the cast of a contingent spell you take no action at all. I think Ready a spell is just like these examples.
mamba
Legend
yeah, all the ones with casting time ‘action’, see the exceptions, namely ‘but some spells require a Bonus Action, a Reaction, or 1 minute or more’
The exception is not Ready, it is based on the casting time. Otherwise it would say something about the spells with casting time action using the Magic action most of the time, not that most spells require it
BenjaminPey
Explorer
You seem quite sure you got the right reading and if it works for you and your table, go ahead!
It just seems super rules-lawyery to me, requiring a very careful sparsing of each magic objects' verbiage each time you use them in order to juice out a quite specific interaction based on missing words, and not explicit rules. It adds nothing to the fiction nor the feel of the game, it says nothing about what actually happens, just a use of keywords to clip behind the wall or something like that. So I'll keep ruling that in order to use a magic item, you have to make a magic action, unless it is explicitly ruled out, and that the action surge is built to prohibit doubling up on magic, because I feel doing otherwise would be a good way for us to spend our gaming time reading rules, rather than playing.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Exceptions do not indicate a lack of requirement. The exceptions you list specifically spell out how the exceptions work. Unlike Ready Action which says to cast it as normal, which means the Magic Action. There is no specific carve out that says Ready Action is an exception, no matter how badly you might want it to be there.
It says Magic Action to cast the spells that are unchanged, yes. The abilities of the Demonomicon that are not identical to spells are not cast.
1) the entrapment ability is not a spell, but requires a Magic Action.
2) the ensnarement ability is not a spell or activated ability, but passively modifies a specific spell the owner is casting via the Magic Action.
3) the spells in the book are all cast using the Magic Action.
Where is the inconsistency with what @BenjaminPey said?
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Right. The others are Reaction spells and Bonus Action spells. Those are fewer than the Magic Action spells, so most use the Magic Action. Ready Action never plays into it.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
People are bending over backwards to twist things so that the "work around" works. Just make a ruling people. If you want it to work, just make it work. You don't need to invent "work arounds."
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Don’t even need a ruling. It absolutely just works as written, and I believe as intended.
Yall are just cagey about any interpretation in which phrasing is important, but this is WotC we’re talking about. Even when they try to write in “natural language” they can’t help but make it function technically.
