D&D 5E Wind Walk and Grappled

[beaumontsebos]

Had a interesting scenario the other night during 19th-level game play.

The characters were in wind walk form scouring an area when enemies teleported next to them to attack.

One enemy managed to grapple one of the characters with an attack.

It took us a second to realize that the PC was totally screwed! Since they were in wind walk form, they could only dash... which meant they could not escape the grapple and could only sit there and take damage (as well as Charisma drain) for 10 rounds as they changed back to their normal form. The other PCs, also in wind walk form, could be of no help.

An effective way to kill off a 19th level character.

However, being a benevolent DM that I am, I made a ruling that in addition to Dash, a creature in wind walk form can also take the Escape action.

 

[Umbran]

Um...
While it isn't explicit that they are immune to grapple, they are in a gaseous form. You had someone who could grapple clouds?

 

[beaumontsebos]

IMO, If wind walk was supposed to make you immune to grapple, the spell would say so.

Does the spell wind walk give you the benefits of gaseous form?

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[billd91]

I guess we have an answer to "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?", or at least the line "How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?"

 

[LordEntrails]

IMO, If wind walk was supposed to make you immune to grapple, the spell would say so.

Does the spell wind walk give you the benefits of gaseous form?

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Goes to show you, even JC is not infallible when it comes to making a ruling at a table.

 

[Seramus]

IMO, If wind walk was supposed to make you immune to grapple, the spell would say so.

I think it's more likely the detail was overlooked, and then they were stuck defending it. One cannot fill the book with wording for every possibility, like how the book never mentions being unconscious while you sleep.

 

[kigmatzomat]

The spell says affected creatures "assume a gaseous form". Ignoring the spell of the same name, a gas has no surface and can only contained by an air-tight container.

Unless the grappler is a tupperware golem, they can't prevent a gas from moving.

 

[Umbran]

IMO, If wind walk was supposed to make you immune to grapple, the spell would say so.

Does the spell wind walk give you the benefits of gaseous form?

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Even if we take Mr. Crawford as always 100% correct (ha!), and the rules always 100% dependable in their content (also ha!), we need to be careful about what he says:

"The spell does not also give you the effects of the gaseous form spell. Whenever the rules confer the effects of a spell, the rules are explicit about that fact." - J. Crawford

We aren't talking about conferring the effects of a spell. We are talking about it conferring an effect that would seem reasonable given the spell description.

What is the purpose of stipulating that the character is in a gaseous form if that form has no impact on play whatsoever?

Rulings, not rules, and all that, hey what?

 

[Clint_L]

IMO, If wind walk was supposed to make you immune to grapple, the spell would say so.

There's a time and a place for common sense. How did you describe the PC being grappled? Did the enemy have some kind of vacuum cleaner, perhaps?

RAW sometimes leads to nonsensical situations like this. As DM, you always have the prerogative to overrule RAW. In fact, that's the primary rule of D&D.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You have two choices here: Either you can't grab a cloud, or the spell doesn't actually turn them all that cloud-like. (I suppose that a third choice is to shru and allow obvious nonsense to occur - it's only a game, after all!)

Under a lot of situations, I would probably keep to the rules and make up my own fluff - ie. they turn into a flying corporeal creature with superficial cloud-like aesthetic and not really the "gaseous form" described by the spell.

But in this case? I'm more likely to go the other way and say "you can't grab them".

The important difference would be if they were already doing cloud-like things in the story before they ran into the encounter, then that's what the story we were telling was about, so that's what's going on.