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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6773510" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Back on topic...It has been asserted that the word 'instantaneous' does not mean in 5E what it means in RL; that it is a defined piece of game-specific jargon...I disagree. But since I recognise that simply typing "You're wrong, I'm right, read the rules and if you disagree with my interpretation then I'll ignore you" would not be productive, for the sake of argument I'll explore the idea that 'instantaneous' is nothing but jargon, and that we don't need to know what the word means IRL to know what it means in 5E because we can look at the 'definition' of the word on p203....Hmmm. Where is the game-jargon definition of 'instant'? There isn't one. Well, how are we expected to know what a word means if it doesn't have a definition in the PHB?How, indeed. Perhaps, in an edition that prides itself on using 'natural language', they expect us to know what 'instant' means (even if, inexplicably, they expect us to totally ignore what 'instantaneous' means).They must expect us to use the RL definition  of 'instant', because they haven't provided an alternative game-jargon definition.We also know that it refers to 'instantaneous', and we also know that it must refer to a 'span of time', because the word refers to the 'duration' of a spell, which is defined on p203 as the length of time a spell persists.So, when referring to a span of time, what does 'instant' mean. Choose any English dictionary you like.Literally, it refers to an infinitely short, but non-zero, span of time. This time-span, being infinitely short, is by definition indivisible. If you can do something, observe its effects, then do something else in relation to that observation, then that time-span cannot be described as an 'instant'. The consequences of an event being instantaneous is that it is already over by the time any response to it can be made.However, I understand that 'natural language' doesn't always use literal definitions. Okay. So, how is 'instant' used (when referring to a span of time) in more casual speech?Simply put, it's about the 'instant' coming and going too quickly to matter in the time-frame of the general events in question. For example, from the time-frame of the 13.8 billion year life-span of our universe (give-or-take a week), a single day can be thought of as an 'instant', but a single day cannot be thought of as an 'instant' when waiting for the kettle to boil.I shoot a laser pistol at my enemy. Although he could avoid my aim, he cannot dodge the beam of light once I've pulled the trigger, because the beam travels at the speed of light. Although we know that light does not travel instantaneously, we can think of it that way because at our frame of reference it might as well be. There is no way that a human could dodge a well-aimed beam of light from 10 feet if he only started to dodge after the beam was already on its way. We can safely describe the beam as 'instantaneous' in casual language, even though we know that light does not literally travel instantaneously.But what if we change the frame of reference? Imagine I'm shooting my laser at The Flash. The Flash can actually see, move and react faster than the speed of light! To him, the beam is not instantaneous! To him, he could sing the national anthem and still have plenty of 'time' to dodge the beam.Where does this leave us? Although I can accept that 'instant' may not be meant literally, it still must refer to a span of time that is so small that creatures in the game cannot react to it until that instant is over. This is why p203 says that instantaneous spell can't be dispelled because the magic exists only for an instant.Given that, it might also be the case that instantaneous beams are not literally simultaneous, but they must be so nearly simultaneous that they might as well be. An analogy that has been used in this thread is a machine gun. It's certainly true that a single machine gun fires its bullets sequentially, not simultaneously. A single squeeze of the trigger may fire, say, four bullets, and this may happen so quickly in our frame of reference that we could reasonably describe that single squeeze and its four bullets as 'instantaneous', too quick to respond to until it's too late. However, this is just as true for the shooter as it is for the victims! If a single squeeze 'instantaneously' fires four bullets, then the shooter has no time to see what damage the first does before deciding who to target with the next. The second bullet is already out of the barrel, aimed at the target he chose before he even squeezed the trigger.Of course, the shooter could very easily fire each bullet one-at-a-time, waiting to see what each did before deciding who to shoot next. But if he does this, the whole process of shoot-look-shoot-look-shoot-look-shoot cannot be described as instantaneous!  If the shooter has time to react between shots, so does everyone else.We know from p203 that there is no time to react to the first bullet for an instantaneous effect, because the magic exists only for an instant.With instantaneous spells, the entire spell effect exists only for a single instant, not four instants over the course of an action that could be interrupted with a readied dispel. The game already has a spell that uses this model: call lightning lets you call instantaneous bolts of lightning several times within its duration, but the spell itself does not have an instantaneous duration; if it did then the entire spell will be come and gone in a single instant, along with the druid's ability to call bolts of lightning.Now, if someone could condense that into 140 characters and Tweet it to JC....</blockquote>

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