D&D (2024) What Spell Sage Advice (& Descriptions) are you afraid won't be "fixed"?

[Horwath]

Sound volume of Verbal components of spells.

 

[pukunui]

In a sci-fi / D&D cross-over it would make an interesting Turing style test. If you're wondering about a portable computer with an AI on it, have someone pick it up and hit them with a fireball. If the portable computer isn't hurt, it’s just an object. If it is melted to slag it was a creature.

In one of my games, the players encountered a mimic disguised as a door. For a while afterward, they would eldritch blast doors to see if they were objects (no effect) or mimics (damage applied).

 

[Staffan]

Speaking of magic missile, the nonsense about using one d4+1 damage roll for all the missiles.

 

[CapnZapp]

This makes me wonder about what Sage Advice has been particularly egregious. My "favorite" of what I've seen is that See Invisible (and the like) still lets the invisible thing have advantage attacking you and gives you disadvantage to attack them:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/145072-invisible-and-blinded-conditions

It boggles the mind anyone could think that's a good ruling. Obviously when a condition is negated, it no longer applies. If they wanted Invisibility to still provide benefits even when defeated, they need to say so in the spell description. Just relying on technicalities in the rules language is an awful approach. Adding a sidebar explaining the naughty word-up thinking doesn't improve this. The solution here is for Crawford & Co to stop trying to make rules-lawyering come off as a good thing. It's not and they're wrong. Until such time, just ignore Sage Advice, since it hinders more than it helps.

 

[CapnZapp]

Speaking of magic missile, the nonsense about using one d4+1 damage roll for all the missiles.

Obviously you roll one d4 per missile, so with five missiles you roll five dice. Anything else is just foolish nonsense.

 

[CapnZapp]

In terms of spell descriptions, and the sage advice emphasizing they can only target what they say they can, another is that someone wrapped in toilet paper when hit by a fireball might be burnt to a crisp, but the toilet paper will be just fine.

The Sage really needs to learn when the only way to win is to not play, it seems.

Not saying anything, and not drawing attention to the absurdities of reading the rules as if a flawless reality simulator, is the only play.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yeah, if I use 5 magic missiles, is it one attack that does 5d4+5 or five attacks that deal 1d4+1 each? This is important for a lot of things, not the least of which is concentration- is it 5 checks or one?

Forcing the target to make five Concentration rolls is clearly abusive, so: one attack (with five dice).

(All these answers assume you don't have time for nonsense. If you like absurd rules lawyering, knock yourself out, but don't expect me to respond)

 

[CapnZapp]

Eh...... I guess it is as bad as that!

Who says you must listen? If it makes your games more enjoyable for the rules to make sense, ignore it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Who says you must listen? If it makes your games more enjoyable for the rules to make sense, ignore it.

Oh, don't worry! Having my experience playing D&D when all actual rules were more ... guidelines, I have no problem ignoring or changing things that don't work.

And if a fireball can't ignite toilet paper, that's a rule that doesn't work (IMO).

Now, I assume the intent of the ruling was to avoid the 1e situation of "get hit by a fireball, all your stuff has item saving throws and you lose a bunch of it." Which is fine. I have no problem ignoring that in 5e.

But I cannot suspend my disbelief so hard that tissues become magically immune to fireball.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The Sage really needs to learn when the only way to win is to not play, it seems.

Not saying anything, and not drawing attention to the absurdities of reading the rules as if a flawless reality simulator, is the only play.

We know that... and Jeremy knows that. But so many people out there never did know that and still constantly asked and asked and asked about all these ridiculous rules scenarios, despite the repeated statements of "It's your game, you can make a ruling that fits your table". A statement that everybody seemingly ignored or just didn't want to hear and thus wouldn't stop asking for clarifications anyway. And as a result... Jeremy would tend to answer the questions as bare-boned as possible. If the rule said something specifically, he told people that what was written down in the book is what it said... even if he (and other people) probably thought by that point the rules could have been written better. But because they had already made a company decision to not write pages upon pages of errata to fix the rules intention of every single thing like they had in 4E... what was written down was what the "official" decision was.

And players could either use that "official WotC decision" if using "official" rules meant that much to them... or they could do exactly what Jeremy and the rest of WotC wanted, and just made up and used rules changes they wanted that made more sense to them and their table-- to Hell with what WotC wrote down in their books.

Unfortunately, and with a grand sigh from all those involved... too many players still went with the former, regardless of how much they disliked the results. Better to use "official" rules that they hated so they didn't have to explain themselves to anyone else, then make their own corrections to rules they didn't agree with and then have to talk to their fellow players to justify their changes.