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<blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 6773532" data-attributes="member: 61529">Consider the description of fireball. You cast the spell. The ball streaks towards the specified point. If you are mistaken about your beliefs (such as, if there's an object between you and the point you picked), it detonates early.So the magic clearly exists for some span of time. Not a long span of time, but a span of time. &quot;Instantaneous&quot; does not seem to me to have any particularly detailed chronological meaning past &quot;once the spell has been resolved, there is no longer magic to be dispelled&quot;. It is entirely consistent with that to imagine a spell where you point your finger four times, and each time you point your finger, a beam fires from your finger. Each beam exists only for the barest fraction of a second, but it could take you as much as a second to point your finger... But the &quot;magic&quot; exists only briefly.In short, it doesn't have to be &quot;so fast that you can't react&quot;, only &quot;so fast that you can't complete a significant reaction, like spellcasting, in response to it&quot;.Although actually, this gives us a really interesting test case. Consider that we've already gotten pretty clear statements from the devs that a readied action can occur between multiple attacks. So imagine a fighter with four attacks, and 3hp left. You ready an action to attack him if he attacks you. He attacks you. His first attack is made. Your readied action now happens, as the trigger (&quot;he attacks you&quot;) is complete. You hit him. He falls down. He does not get his other three attacks.Can you do that to a warlock using eldritch blast? It seems to me that if the attacks granted by the spell are sequential, you can. That seems like it would be a really good question to ask the rules people, because it gets to the heart of the matter: Are these attacks actually sequential, or implicitly simultaneous?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="seebs, post: 6773532, member: 61529"] Consider the description of fireball. You cast the spell. The ball streaks towards the specified point. If you are mistaken about your beliefs (such as, if there's an object between you and the point you picked), it detonates early. So the magic clearly exists for some span of time. Not a [b]long[/b] span of time, but a span of time. "Instantaneous" does not seem to me to have any particularly detailed chronological meaning past "once the spell has been resolved, there is no longer magic to be dispelled". It is entirely consistent with that to imagine a spell where you point your finger four times, and each time you point your finger, a beam fires from your finger. Each beam exists only for the barest fraction of a second, but it could take you as much as a second to point your finger... But the "magic" exists only briefly. In short, it doesn't have to be "so fast that you can't react", only "so fast that you can't complete a significant reaction, like spellcasting, in response to it". Although actually, this gives us a really interesting test case. Consider that we've already gotten pretty clear statements from the devs that a readied action can occur between multiple attacks. So imagine a fighter with four attacks, and 3hp left. You ready an action to attack him if he attacks you. He attacks you. His first attack is made. Your readied action now happens, as the trigger ("he attacks you") is complete. You hit him. He falls down. He does not get his other three attacks. Can you do that to a warlock using eldritch blast? It seems to me that if the attacks granted by the spell are sequential, you can. That seems like it would be a really good question to ask the rules people, because it gets to the heart of the matter: Are these attacks actually sequential, or implicitly simultaneous? [/QUOTE]

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