D&D 5E Warlock and Repelling Blast

[Noctem]

I have to admit that is why I kept watching. At about page 10 or so I started to wonder if Noctem snuck into Ovinomancer's and Ariel's house and defecated in their fish tank.

omg...

 

[Xvartslayer]

How else to explain the hostility? Okay, maybe it was the ice trays in the freezer. I wasn't there.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Honestly, at this point I'm on page 40 and the whole thing is a trainwreck, so...

At the beginning, as someone who wanted to know what the RAW and RAI were (we were already playing with RAF), Noctem took the time to outline, step-by-step how it works, and was later validated by the devs (and confirmed our groups' RAF = RAI). I appreciated the effort as someone looking for the official rules. Arial Black, and later yourself, started taking things in odd directions and it looked, from where I'm sitting as someone who knows not a one of you, like the negative attitude towards Noctem was based largely on the fact that he was shown to be right by Crawford.

Nope. I agreed pretty quickly with what Crawford said. I ran with than and explored the ramifications, toying with the dispel idea before discarding it (and arguing with Arial about it). My main point of contention has been the bit about readied action timing, which, looking back, took something like 5 pages from my first question to when Noctem actually addressed it. In the meantime, he accused me of being in league with Ariel and since I thought like Ariel he wouldn't talk to me. This was after I had just argued with Ariel's POV, so... yeah. I felt misconstrued by Noctem quite often.

And I remained perfectly respectful, even patient, though being thoroughly dismissed and trivialized for asking about issues unresolved (and still unresolved). I think it's a good point to resolve whether or not, since EB is sequential, if you can have an RA go off in between blasts. I can see multiple arguments for and against, but I don't know what Noctem's argument is aside from 'no, you can't, because you can't interrupt actions.' I've been trying to find out where he gets that from for, oh, 30 pages now.

The (purposeful?) misconstruing of what he would state, and the hyper picking apart his statements came next...and he was just a guy who took the time to answer a question. No, he's not perfect...does he need to say it? Really?

This confuses me. Why does Noctem get your benefit of the doubt but I don't?

I have to admit that is why I kept watching. At about page 10 or so I started to wonder if Noctem snuck into Ovinomancer's and Ariel's house and defecated in their fish tank.

Heck, back on page 10 I was still very polite. Wasn't until after 20 I started getting snippy.

 

[Eric V]

Doesn't the rule on Readied actions say the trigger must be completed first?

 

[Zorku]

Note for Ovino: make sure you read this over thoroughly before you start writing up a reply. It might become a big waste of time otherwise.

Huh? You quote the section on casting a spell, okay, good. Then you quote the section on making an attack, okay, still good. Then you say that the attack action and the spell action are different, cool, onboard. Then you say something very weird. Does that mean something?

I guess I can make it easier to follow:
When a baby fighter grows up he gets extra attacks.
Everybody likes extra attacks, but it takes a whole action to cast a spell, so the wizard grows up and is sad.
But wait, even though his spells take a whole action to cast we can just make them bigger and then everyone is happy!

Um, no one's yet claimed that the additional eldritch blast bolts are like extra attacks.

Seebs seems to think they are, as there's no 'rules for making an attack' that are relevant here if we're not talking about multiple attacks.

They are simple spell attacks, made in sequence, one after the other, using the 'make an attack' rules.

If you'll be so careful as to include the caveat that these multiple attacks are a single casting of a spell then I think I'm on board.

The question is, if they are separate and subsequent attacks, and you ready an action to do something if attacked, then your readied action, by the wording in the RA section, means that you react immediately upon the resolution of your trigger but before anything else happens. Normally, for other attacks, that would mean that you get to react between attacks. For the eldritch blast, it's a bit trickier, and there's no clear explanation if the attacks are separate effects of the cast a spell action or if they are inseparable and integral to it.

They're not simultaneous unless stated so and you can react to w/e in the middle of -the action- that it is a part of. There's no confusion here.

Cool, most of use stopped arguing about dispel magic many pages ago. We all agreed that you can't dispel in the middle of the spell. We can add you to the 'agree on this bit' list, then?

No, because you all agreed wrong and that wasn't what I was talking about. I'm sure you have no problem with casting dispel in the middle of someone casting a spell that takes an hour to complete.

Um, yeah, I don't think anyone has argued otherwise for some time. Certainly not at this point of the conversation. Everyone currently involved has said this exact thing multiple times. Thanks for the recap?

You've already shown me how difficult you find it to keep up when I list all of the steps. Do you really want me to start only implying the logic?

I pointed out, what, three strawmen that were clearly strawmen,

Strawman. Or you didn't read my post. I'll let you admit to the option that is the best fit.

as no one had advanced the arguments he was arguing against. So, there's those, nice and wrapped up. I also had an appeal to authority, where Noctern refused to provide his reasoning and instead deferred to the devs.

That's not an appeal to authority fallacy.

If that's wrong, explain what's up there, as I'm pretty sure it's not wrong.

Stop focusing on the what and look at the why.
"WHY doesn't the logic work when you say 'authority x says so therefore it is so'?" Because, right there, authority means expert. You've committed an equivocation fallacy here, or to follow what I preach: You tried to use "an individual cited or appealed to as an expert" in place of "persons in command," or equivalent definitions. This is much akin to complaining about when the supreme court decides what laws actually mean.

Substituting a reference to an authority instead of making an argument is exactly what an appeal to authority is.

Wrong again. The fallacy is a substitution of what may simply be opinion in place of fact. There is no fallacy for refusing to show your work on a math problem.

Are you sure you're as skilled here as you think you are?

To the greatest degree possible yes. I'm not going to waste even more time delineating the limits of certainty but by all indications I appear to have about an decade of thoughtful reflection about logic over you. That doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own, but the mistakes I just pointed out should add some weight to my assessment of myself.

Also, do you know Noctern? I find it exceptionally odd that you'd take time to call out my less than a handful of fallacy calls where I also provided exactly why I thought they were fallacies as somehow egregious when Nocty has been spamming bad macros of fallacies, often entirely without any merit, yet you fail to mention them at all? Heck, he did it in the post immediately before I used fallacies. That's just weird.

I've addressed this since my post. What I said about fallacies is really directed at everyone.

What?! Who's saying this? Who are you rebutting?
seebs. They didn't bother to use quotations so in that post I didn't either.

What? Why did you quote me, here.

Same reason I just mentioned seebs. Somebody asked me who said something.

You're right, AMF doesn't have any language pertaining to instantaneous effects. It does have language that affects all spells, including instantaneous ones, though. So you couldn't AMF off the slow from a ray of frost by wandering through because it's the nondispellable effect of an instantaneous spell, but the only way it wouldn't stop the remaining bolts from an eldritch blast (if it could indeed go up in the middle of them, which is debateable) is if the casting of the spell is already done and the lazorz are just the effect remaining. Given the effect is described as a magical bolt of energy, though, I'd be hard pressed to say that it could exist at all in an AMF for any reason, like, ever.

Ooh, is that another scarecrow?
You're absolutely right about the lasers inside of an AMF. Good thing I already agreed.
I'll admit a mistake now though: I neglected the line about spells not being able to be cast, so I retract all statements pertaining to that. I was treating it as if the spell could still be cast, just without manifesting any effect- more like the beholder's antimagic cone in older editions.

Most recent example of what? Man, a bunch of your stuff seems to be missing important information that would make it make sense. Instead of working on quoting more people, you should work on fully forming your statements so the things you do quote and the points you're trying to make come across. Cause I've gotta say, I'm not getting the point of why you're saying what your saying. I figure there is a point, but it's missing from your posts. Looking forward to a more clear statement of intent from you. Cheers!

If you weren't so busy feeling antagonized, you might have realized that statements that don't seem to pertain to you... don't pertain to you. Instead of playing iron chef and chopping that entire post into little slices that you still didn't understand you could have left all four items in the list together and simply asked who I was responding to. That clears up your same question all three times you asked it. If you'd made some strong declaration about the 3rd entry I could see plucking it out from the rest, but you seem to have thought that I was talking about the lasers existing within the sphere.

Whee, contention.
Now, I don't particularly care where you may feel insult during any of this. I may be abrasive, but I don't think I've ever used attacks against your character in place of arguments, so we can nip ad homs preemptively. If there's some uncertainty about the fallacies I pointed out, or you think that some non-rhetorical question I asked has an answer that will change how I'm looking at this, I'd be cool with not performing another iteration of quotation julienne. I'm only paying attention in that my inbox will notify me about being quoted, so I'm leaving it to you to decide if this is still important.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Note for Ovino: make sure you read this over thoroughly before you start writing up a reply. It might become a big waste of time otherwise.
I guess I can make it easier to follow:
When a baby fighter grows up he gets extra attacks.
Everybody likes extra attacks, but it takes a whole action to cast a spell, so the wizard grows up and is sad.
But wait, even though his spells take a whole action to cast we can just make them bigger and then everyone is happy!


Seebs seems to think they are, as there's no 'rules for making an attack' that are relevant here if we're not talking about multiple attacks.

Odd, the rules for making an attack are exactly the same whether it's one or more -- you do the same thing, and if you have another attack, you do it again, spell or weapon.

If you'll be so careful as to include the caveat that these multiple attacks are a single casting of a spell then I think I'm on board.

They're not simultaneous unless stated so and you can react to w/e in the middle of -the action- that it is a part of. There's no confusion here.

Maybe not with you, but Noctem is insisting that you cannot do this. He bases his argument on immediately after maybe not meaning right after.

No, because you all agreed wrong and that wasn't what I was talking about. I'm sure you have no problem with casting dispel in the middle of someone casting a spell that takes an hour to complete.

Actually, yeah, because you can't dispel a spell that's being cast. Dispel doesn't target spells, so until the spell is complete there's nothing there to dispel. Counter, sure, but dispel's now a weird beast.

You've already shown me how difficult you find it to keep up when I list all of the steps. Do you really want me to start only implying the logic?

It's not your lists I find difficult, it's the missing parts that make them not make sense.

Strawman. Or you didn't read my post. I'll let you admit to the option that is the best fit.

Um, no. You referred to fallacies, plural. Those are fallacies. It's not a strawman to talk about exactly what you said. Now, if you didn't mean those, great, but that's not clear from your post and I don't read minds. I did also go on to address the other one, so it's a poor strawman that ends up addressing your argument and some other related things that could be, but weren't clearly, meant to be excluded.

That's not an appeal to authority fallacy.


Stop focusing on the what and look at the why.
"WHY doesn't the logic work when you say 'authority x says so therefore it is so'?" Because, right there, authority means expert. You've committed an equivocation fallacy here, or to follow what I preach: You tried to use "an individual cited or appealed to as an expert" in place of "persons in command," or equivalent definitions. This is much akin to complaining about when the supreme court decides what laws actually mean.

This has been covered, admitted, and apologized for.

Wrong again. The fallacy is a substitution of what may simply be opinion in place of fact. There is no fallacy for refusing to show your work on a math problem.

Fallacies are false arguments that render a conclusion invalid. In that case, substituting an appeal to authority in place of a (valid) argument is a fallacy. I grant that the valid was implied in my statement, but it should be easy to figure that I wasn't implying substitution for an invalid argument. That said, comparing a logical argument to a math problem is a bad analogy.

To the greatest degree possible yes. I'm not going to waste even more time delineating the limits of certainty but by all indications I appear to have about an decade of thoughtful reflection about logic over you. That doesn't mean a whole lot on it's own, but the mistakes I just pointed out should add some weight to my assessment of myself.

Well, you certainly like to assume.

I've addressed this since my post. What I said about fallacies is really directed at everyone.

I didn't see you address my question. I'll go look again.

Ooh, is that another scarecrow?

Strawman? No, it's not. It was an attempt to understand your argument. It might be a failed attempt, but it was not an intentional replacement.

You're absolutely right about the lasers inside of an AMF. Good thing I already agreed.
I'll admit a mistake now though: I neglected the line about spells not being able to be cast, so I retract all statements pertaining to that. I was treating it as if the spell could still be cast, just without manifesting any effect- more like the beholder's antimagic cone in older editions.

It was unclear that you agreed. Probably because of the additional error, I assumed you had both wrong. This was uncharitable of me.

If you weren't so busy feeling antagonized, you might have realized that statements that don't seem to pertain to you... don't pertain to you. Instead of playing iron chef and chopping that entire post into little slices that you still didn't understand you could have left all four items in the list together and simply asked who I was responding to. That clears up your same question all three times you asked it. If you'd made some strong declaration about the 3rd entry I could see plucking it out from the rest, but you seem to have thought that I was talking about the lasers existing within the sphere.

Dude, you quoted me, and no one else. You didn't mention anyone. The arguments you were making were hard to understand because they lacked any context. You really shouldn't be pushing the burden of a misunderstanding for an out of context post that quotes that person.

Whee, contention.
Now, I don't particularly care where you may feel insult during any of this. I may be abrasive, but I don't think I've ever used attacks against your character in place of arguments, so we can nip ad homs preemptively. If there's some uncertainty about the fallacies I pointed out, or you think that some non-rhetorical question I asked has an answer that will change how I'm looking at this, I'd be cool with not performing another iteration of quotation julienne. I'm only paying attention in that my inbox will notify me about being quoted, so I'm leaving it to you to decide if this is still important.

You can't just lampshade ad homs, man. If you think that I might be insulted by your choice of words (and further don't care), that's pretty strong evidence right there that an ad hom took place. Specifically, where you reference your understanding of logical fallacies by questioning the amount of knowledge I have instead of stating your particulars. That makes that an argument based, in part, on me and my attributes. That's an ad hom. It may not be fallacious, but it is an ad hom. I don't know how long you've actually spent pondering logical fallacies, but I've had college coursework on dialectic (and still not above the occasional error) and have debate experience. Plus about 20 years of arguing on the internets. It tends to come up.

 

[ryan92084]

So its largely agreed ( I think arial is the lone dissenter) that

1. the attacks are sequential
2. each ray can push (including out of range of the subsequent rays)
3. dispell magic can't target spell itself just the effects of the spell
4. the original question has been answered

The only avenue of discussion left seems to be whether you can ready an action for between the rays or not. While I don't think there is a RAW answer (as trigger is defined mainly by examples) the twitter RAI is yet to be firmly established therefore its still worth a bit of discussion.

Personally I wouldn't allow a reaction to individual rays mainly because that isn't how mage slayer functions. If a feat largely based around a character trained to take advantage of a caster's distraction can't get a reaction between rays I wouldn't allow any one else to either. As a secondary point the rule book is silent on rules about the caster being attacked/pushed out of sight mid spell resolve which I take to mean that it isn't an intended possibility. Readying an action to a spell for me means after the effects not before or between (outside of actions that specifically call out other timing).

Obviously this is just my personal ruling and other DMs are free under the current RAW to go a different route without even having to invoke rule 0.

 

[Noctem]

[MENTION=6802559]ryan92084[/MENTION]

The only thing I'll point out is that a lead dev has stated that you can push someone out of range of Eldritch Blast after the first attacks which would make it no longer a valid target mid resolution for further attacks. this also reinforces the notion that targeting is done when you make the attacks and not before or whatever weird scheme was presented in the thread and that attacks are done in sequence one after the other. You attack, push and then the target is outside the range of your next attacks meaning you can't target it again. But you CAN target any other legal target within range, just not the one you pushed out of range. Which imo makes perfect sense. So this should also apply to any other spell with multiple attacks that have extra effects (pushing in this case), you can make your target no longer valid for further attacks in various ways, so be careful!

 

[ryan92084]

@ryan92084

The only thing I'll point out is that a lead dev has stated that you can push someone out of range of Eldritch Blast after the first attacks which would make it no longer a valid target mid resolution for further attacks. this also reinforces the notion that targeting is done when you make the attacks and not before or whatever weird scheme was presented in the thread and that attacks are done in sequence one after the other. You attack, push and then the target is outside the range of your next attacks meaning you can't target it again. But you CAN target any other legal target within range, just not the one you pushed out of range. Which imo makes perfect sense. So this should also apply to any other spell with multiple attacks that have extra effects (pushing in this case), you can make your target no longer valid for further attacks in various ways, so be careful!

I believe this statement to be true but also irrelevant to the discussion of reactions. I will add it to the general consensus portion.

 

[Noctem]

I believe this statement to be true but also irrelevant to the discussion of reactions. I will add it to the general consensus portion.

Agreed.