D&D 5E What am I missing?

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

During play the monk in the party decided he wanted to try to stun a construct they were battling. No way, I thought. But constructs do not list stunned as one of the conditions they are immune to.

So I kept digging and there are many more monsters where I was surprised to see you could stun them.

Like a ghost.

Really?

Am I missing something?

 

[GameOgre]

I'm stunned at this news!

 

[Mercule]

Interesting. I'm surprised, but can rationalize it as the Monk doing such a fierce attack that it staggers the construct, throwing it off balance, momentarily.

Still seems weird, but I can get there from here -- if I squint.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

I am stunned as well.

It sort of makes sense that maybe an attack was so devastating that the construct energy flow was disrupted or it was staggered...and maybe the ghost's grip on this plane was disrupted for a moment.

 

[shadowoflameth]

If the monk has something supernatural going on, it doesn't have to make empirical sense. There are monks that can make their fists glow with holy power can punch through walls. Let them stun the ghost or construct.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

I'm stunned at this news!

I see what you did there.

I guess this is another case of old edition/system knowledge coming through.

 

[BoldItalic]

To my mind, Stunning Strike isn't so much a physical effect as a mystical one that interferes directly with the target's mental ability to choose its next action. So no reason it shouldn't work on a construct, a ghost or any other creature that has any kind of awareness.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I had a similar head scratching experience with my wizard. We were making our escape away from a horde of oozes and I threw down a Web in a choke point. I mostly did it for the difficult terrain aspect as I thought that their fluid-like nature would render them immune to being held in place by them. But it turns out that oozes aren't immune to the restrained condition. It's easy to just say "It's magic, I ain't gotta explain anything" but it was still a bit weird.

 

[Mercule]

I had a similar head scratching experience with my wizard. We were making our escape away from a horde of oozes and I threw down a Web in a choke point. I mostly did it for the difficult terrain aspect as I thought that their fluid-like nature would render them immune to being held in place by them. But it turns out that oozes aren't immune to the restrained condition. It's easy to just say "It's magic, I ain't gotta explain anything" but it was still a bit weird.

OK. I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, putting a gelatinous cube into a figure-4 is crazy. On the other, webs are sticky.

I guess that, if I throw a spoonful of pudding (chocolate or otherwise) at a strip of flypaper, it's going to slough off, leaving just a bit behind.

 

[Oofta]

Stunning strike is a supernatural ability and also a pretty rare ability in the overall scheme of things.

From a game design standpoint unlike 4E, there aren't that many ways to get status effects like this. Therefore I assume it simply wasn't worth the effort (or word count) to go through and list every possible status that could possibly apply.

I don't have a problem with a stunned golem or ghost. They still have at least a spark of intellect and consciousness that can be disrupted.

Put another way, would it bother you if these creatures hadn't been immune to stun in previous editions?

As far as the web stopping an ooze ... I think that's a DM's call on how the magic of web works. They can squeeze through tight spaces and cracks so I would rule that there is little effect from a web (as you said, probably slowed) but other types of magical restraint might work.