D&D (2024) What 5e Sage Advice Answers Do You Want Included/Changed in 5.5?

Cadence · Aug 22, 2022

So, a lot of sage advice has accrued over the past 8 years.
Which, if any, of the rulings stick out in your mind as things that should definitely be included in the rules?
Which, if any, of the rulings stick out as being ones that should be swatted down and changed?

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The one that annoys me most is the ruling on invisibility, that see invisible and the like only deals with the first bullet point in the invisible condition (being able to see them) and not the second (disadvantage). So even if you can see the invisible creature you still get disadvantage trying to hit it and it has advantage trying to hit you.

D&D: Invisibility Doesn't Work The Way You Think It Does

Invisibility is a powerful combat advantage. But it doesn't work the way you think it does. Let's unravel invisibility in 5th Edition.

www.belloflostsouls.net

The one about invisible things still being lit up if they're invisible, but not hurting the invisibility also seems really odd (but I might be convinced on this one).

billd91 · Aug 22, 2022

I'd like to see less of the RAW interpretation and more of the design notes take on Sage Advice. I want to read what they were thinking in why they defined the rule that way, how it would be used/should work and not that nitpicky BS aspect of whether or not see invisibility explicitly says it removes the advantage/disadvantage aspects of invisibility.

Krachek · Aug 22, 2022

Each Sage advice is a flaw in term of game design.
Each time the Devs need to make a comment for a rule, it show some flaws in rule writing.
So the actual Sage advices are pretty useful to write the one DnD.

Cadence · Aug 22, 2022

Krachek said:
Each Sage advice is a flaw in term of game design.
Each time the Devs need to make a comment for a rule, it show some flaws in rule writing.
So the actual Sage advices are pretty useful to write the one DnD.

So you would say that everything that's been in a sage advice should get a revision for clarity (at least) in 5.5?

Parmandur · Aug 22, 2022

I recall that Jeremy Crawford said several years ago in a Sage Advise livestream with Bart Carroll that he had a working document based on the Sage Advice Compendium of how he would rewrite the core rules.

I fully expect thst everything in the existing Compendium will be worked into the core rulebooks, either whole cloth or as the basis for a rewrite of rules text.

Ruin Explorer · Aug 22, 2022

Cadence said:
So you would say that everything that's been in a sage advice should get a revision for clarity (at least) in 5.5?

I definitely would.

Especially where the Sage Advice was eye-rolling-inducingly bad stuff that felt like it escaped from MtG adjudication.

Cadence · Aug 22, 2022

Ruin Explorer said:
I definitely would.

Especially where the Sage Advice was eye-rolling-inducingly bad stuff that felt like it escaped from MtG adjudication.

What was your biggest eye-roll?

Ruin Explorer · Aug 22, 2022

Cadence said:
What was your biggest eye-roll?

Oh god, I struggle to remember most of it because Sage Advice is routinely so bad (and this isn't a 5E thing, it's a D&D thing - it was even worse in 2E, there they often straight up got the rules wrong). There's the classic horror show of "Melee Attack with a Weapon vs Attack with a Melee Weapon", jesus that was bad. There was a ton of bad stuff around targeting spells that just felt anti-imagination 100% MtG card game bollocks. Barkskin can't benefit from a shield was magnificently dumb. Shield Master was some "technically correct, the best kind of correct" idiocy that didn't make the game better.

Honestly after Shield Master I think a lot of people just said "Ok, whatever, that's just like, your opinion man" to Sage Advice in 5E, which had previously been well-regarded.

Here's a truly amazing one that would make most groups overrule the DM if he said something like that: Can I Revify a killed zombie?