D&D 5E Wall of Force

[Helldritch]

There is a spell that does block all spells. This is prismatic wall. The prismatic wall loses power as you destroy its layers. Each layers offers a protection from certain type of spells. The indigo protection prevents spells from being cast through the wall. The orange layers prevents magical ranged attack. This spell is supposedly much more powerful than wall of force but the interpretation where the wall of prevents spells from being cast into it makes the wall of force much more powerful than a 9th level spell. This interpretation does not hold the line if you compare what the two spells can do..

A fire ball would not pass the wall of force, magic missile would be blocked as well. But charm person, blight, cloudkill, a summoned elemental, a sacred flame and any other related spells would pass. The wall prevents anything from passing through it. It does not prevent things to appear inside of it! The only spell that does that is a 9th level spell and it is prismatic wall. Prismatic wall will allow a melee to come to the caster yes. But the risks are high and it is entirely possible that the enemy trying to pass will die. And nothing prevents the caster to cast a thunderwave forcing the perpetrator to start again...

There is a difference between line of sight, clear path, and points of origin. For creation spell, the point of origin the area you have chosen. Some effects will radiate from that point. Spell descriptions really matters.

 

[Oofta]

Well, this is getting to the point of "neener-neener-I'm-right-you're-wrong" so I'll just state my reasoning for rulings on a couple of things.

Line of effect means just that. Do you have a clear line with nothing between you and the target? No? Does the spell specifically override that requirement? No? You can't target.

I don't care whether the line is blocked by a pane of glass, bullet proof glass, wall of force or a mountain. A fireball has no concussive force behind it to break glass although glass may melt or crack because of the heat. A thunderwave will break glass and potentially harm anyone behind the glass because it is a physical concussive wave that affects physical objects.

Being able to see the target is an additional qualification to the spell, it does not override in and of itself the need for line of effect. You can cast fireball into the darkness with the hopes of catching enemies in it's area of effect, you can't magic missile the darkness.

Line of effect can be blocked by any number of things including other creatures. Person in a crowd you want to cast a spell on? Could you target them with a physical attack? You can target them with spells if they meet all the other requirements. But what if it's a halfling in a crowd of humans? A crowd of stone giants? A wall of stone made to look like giants? If you don't have a direct line to them you can't target them unless the spell says otherwise.

It's a simple rule, easy to interpret and implement. I think it's also the cleanest interpretation of the rules.

As far as Crawford and Sacred Flame ... I simply disagree. The spell may come from the heavens but by his logic if it comes from the heavens then it violates all other logic without explicitly saying so. If the point of origin is the heavens, does that mean if you're in the underdark that it penetrates several miles of rock? Why would that spell and only that spell be the exception to the rule that has no explicit exception to the general rule? Or are we to assume that "the heavens" is somehow a different plane of existence? Blech.

Last, but not least, run it any way you want.

 

[Gadget]

For "line of effect" or "clear path" to apply, we have to believe the Wall provides "total cover" for targeting purposes. If the wall does not provide total cover, then "line of effect" or "clear path" are meaningless because you can see your target.

So no, total cover has nothing to do with stopping objects. Concealment is the issue. And while the term didn't get defined in 5E, it's a common word that means "hidden from sight."

Further, we can't duck behind the "clear path" argument because that's the same thing. P203: "To target something you must have a clear path to it, so it can't be behind total cover."

Once again, we get into the unfortunate natural language of 5e. If cover was merely concealment, there would be no need for both terms in the game. Let's look at some more language that 5e uses in a similar manner:

The Barkskin spell - "...and the target’s AC can’t be less than 16, regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing."

Many people (including Mearls, iirc) interpreted this as the AC benefit provided by the spell overriding (or not overriding, if the armor provided an AC of 16 or greater) the armor portion of AC, but stacking with things like cover and a shield. The Sage ruled otherwise, clearing up the intent of the sloppy language used in the spell.
This is where 5e relies heavily on DM rulings to cover for its loose language. Imho, cover and concealment are two different things, which usually overlap a great deal, but not always and RAI, total cover can be provided while still visible.

 

[Oofta]

Unfortunately there will always be arguments and lack of consensus about wording.

For example in 3.5 I had a dwarf that used acrobatic charge to get in close without provoking opportunity attacks. He also had boots of flying so he would use the feat in combination with flying to get in close. Then someone at the game day I attended decided that the words "You may only Tumble as part of a normal move." meant moving on the ground, not flying.

It was just a minor annoyance, but my dwarf had used a lot of resources to get to that point - I remember being (very mildly) annoyed because the rules changed on me over a reading of the rules that to me was just odd.

So when people complain about the "poor wording" of 5E, I just shrug and say that every edition has had poor wording here and there according to some people.

 

[DM-Rocco]

The spells you mention have an explicit, specific overrides to the general rule. The fact that they specifically spell out that they go through solid objects kind of proves my point. IMHO there's a big difference between the spell stating that it specifically works differently than the general rule and having to read through every spell to see that one has a "streak of light coming from your pointing finger" and another has a hand appearing.

Again, Dimension Door has a target of self.

In any case, I've stated why I rule the way I rule. I think it's consistent with the rules not to mention easy and simple. Feel free to run it differently.

Much like dave2008 I think I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Just to throw a wrench into the works though, Dimension Door may have a target of self, but you still have to choose a destination. Sure, you can see through the Wall of Force to pick a location, but can you "travel" through the magical barrier to get there?

 

[Oofta]

Much like dave2008 I think I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Just to throw a wrench into the works though, Dimension Door may have a target of self, but you still have to choose a destination. Sure, you can see through the Wall of Force to pick a location, but can you "travel" through the magical barrier to get there?

Sure. Same as misty step, teleport, teleportation circle and probably a few others. The target is still "You teleport yourself" and possibly one other person.

Note, of course there are a couple of spells that block all teleportation such as forbiddance. But a wall whether made of force or a brick won't stop d-door.

 

[Teemu]

I don't think this was mentioned yet, but the Sacred Flame cantrip can be cast through total cover as long as you can see the target. "The target gains no benefit from cover for this saving throw." Jeremy Crawford talked about spell targeting in an official podcast about three years ago. Start listening at 36:30 for the part about Sacred Flame. He says that Sacred Flame is an exception to the "clear path to the target" rule. The intent of the spell is that the cleric is calling down radiant flame from above, so it can't be blocked by cover. He gives the specific example of casting it through a window. I didn't re-listen to the whole Sage Advice section, but there might be other information relevant to this discussion.

Which means that if you can catch all your enemies within a wall of force and also have access to sacred flame, you can spam the cantrip and kill them all safely. What fun.

 

[Helldritch]

If you allow teleport and misty steps to work for getting inside the wall of force then I'll serve you your own explanation.

Summoning and creation spells do not target the wall, they target an effect or creature and bring it where you can see in a certain range. Just like your teleport, you can consider that the elemental was teleported from the outerplane to the place that is inside the wall of force. The same with cloudkill where you create noxious fumes and teleport them right where you want within the allowted range.

I know you will rule it any way you want it. But you are restricting a lot of spells for no gain in game play. You are reducing the power of Prismatic wall and augmenting the power of Wall of force beyond the intended purpose. And what about Glove of invulnerability whose purpose is exactly to protect you from spells? No need for that spell, we have the allmighty wall of force. I really respect you and your positions, but this one is stretched out to the limits. The intended purpose of wall of force is to imprison a threat or to block passage so you can flee. There are many ways to bypass the Wall of force and they exist for a reason.

To rule as you do, you have to take into account what other spells are doing and their level. If a lower level spell becomes more powerful than a spell 5 levels higher or simply only 1 spell level in doing the same job or a similar one, something is wrong.

But we'll have to agree that we will disagree on our respective views on spells.

 

[Oofta]

If you allow teleport and misty steps to work for getting inside the wall of force then I'll serve you your own explanation.

Summoning and creation spells do not target the wall, they target an effect or creature and bring it where you can see in a certain range. Just like your teleport, you can consider that the elemental was teleported from the outerplane to the place that is inside the wall of force. The same with cloudkill where you create noxious fumes and teleport them right where you want within the allowted range.

I know you will rule it any way you want it. But you are restricting a lot of spells for no gain in game play. You are reducing the power of Prismatic wall and augmenting the power of Wall of force beyond the intended purpose. And what about Glove of invulnerability whose purpose is exactly to protect you from spells? No need for that spell, we have the allmighty wall of force. I really respect you and your positions, but this one is stretched out to the limits. The intended purpose of wall of force is to imprison a threat or to block passage so you can flee. There are many ways to bypass the Wall of force and they exist for a reason.

To rule as you do, you have to take into account what other spells are doing and their level. If a lower level spell becomes more powerful than a spell 5 levels higher or simply only 1 spell level in doing the same job or a similar one, something is wrong.

But we'll have to agree that we will disagree on our respective views on spells.

Let's see. Does summon monster target "self"? Does it specifically state override the "clear path to the target" requirement? No on both counts. It does add the additional requirement that you have to be able to see the target location.

So no. Crawford has unofficially confirmed the ruling and the intent of the spell, although I disagree with Sacred Flame because it's not consistent with what is otherwise a clear and concise rule. Prismatic Wall does a whole heck of a lot more than block spells. Whether it's worthy of a 9th level spell is a different discussion.

Feel free to rule differently.

But seriously .... how often does this come up? A couple of times per campaign? It's useful in some niche scenarios but it's pretty rare.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I go for a simple rule of thumb: If you can't shoot an arrow¹ at any part of the target then it has total cover from you. Total cover blocks line of effect which blocks spells (unless they say otherwise, like sacred flame or fireball).

Stone wall? Stops an arrow, so total cover. Pane of glass? Stops an arrow², so total cover. Target is inside a gelatinous cube? Total cover. Paper partition wall? Doesn't stop an arrow, so no cover (though it may block sight, which is a completely different topic).

_
¹ If you are now saying, "But arrows can arch and go over cover." then please Gibbs-slap yourself and reread the word "simple".

² Yes, I know this depends on the thickness and material of the glass, but I don't care. The key word is "simple".