Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Kaelik]

Your argument that it conflicts with the rules is ungrounded.

You might as well argue that people can't cast Astral Projection from a metaplane.

[deaddmwalking]

Your argument that it conflicts with the rules is ungrounded.

Kaelik,

You're a lawyer. I'm surprised at you. Blink says your attacks have a 20% miss chance. It does not say the miss chance doesn't apply to missile weapons.

Under 'attack', both melee attacks and ranged attacks are included. Ergo, the miss chance applies to all attacks, barring errata or evidence to the contrary.

Like, the question is 'how do the rules work', and I answered based on citations of the rules. I'm hearing, 'WAH, they shouldn't work LIKE THAT'. And maybe the shouldn't. There are a lot of rules that ought to be changed to make the game better. But people shouldn't disregard what the original rules are. If virgil plans on doing whatever he wants, it doesn't matter what the rules say. If he's trying to be consistent with generally agreed houserules, he should be explicit about what houserules are in play.

If I were his DM, I would say flask rogues have a 20% miss chance while blinking. I would say this is because the spell description says that he does. If he tried to use ethereal jaunt as a way to snipe at people within 60 feet of him I would say he cannot - the spell indicates that attacks work normally against people on the ethereal plane, so I would rule that a projectile or thrown weapon works exactly as it would if two people were on the material plane. As a player, if he felt that my ruling were incorrect, I would invite him to present evidence to that effect. If he felt that my ruling was correct but the game would be improved by allowing ethereal creatures to target material creatures with effective immunity, I would consider it.

Personally, I don't see much reason to allow Xill to use their dual-wielded long-bows from the ethereal plane. As a CR 6 encounter, I don't expect that PCs at 6th level would have a counter.

The logical extension of attacks from the ethereal manifesting immediately in the material are troubling - explaining why it doesn't apply to a Xill seems problematic. A detailed explanation for the differences between Planewalk (Su) and Ethereal Jaunt might be helpful to elucidate a distinction, but I can't seem to find something like that.

[virgil]

explaining why it doesn't apply to a Xill seems problematic. A detailed explanation for the differences between Planewalk (Su) and Ethereal Jaunt might be helpful to elucidate a distinction, but I can't seem to find something like that.

One has a duration. The other doesn't. How is that problematic or even difficult?

[deaddmwalking]

explaining why it doesn't apply to a Xill seems problematic. A detailed explanation for the differences between Planewalk (Su) and Ethereal Jaunt might be helpful to elucidate a distinction, but I can't seem to find something like that.

One has a duration. The other doesn't. How is that problematic or even difficult?

You're claiming that there is a secret rule that explains that a spell with a duration that applies to both a creature and the equipment they carry that any equipment dropped automatically 'loses' the spell at instant speed and that the effects of that can be determined accurately even across planar boundaries. If such a rule exists, someone should be able to cite it.

It doesn't require a 'creative' interpretation of blink to adjudicate a 20% miss chance for melee and ranged attacks - that's just doing what the spell description says. How is that problematic or even difficult?

[Username17]

A detailed explanation for the differences between Planewalk (Su) and Ethereal Jaunt might be helpful to elucidate a distinction, but I can't seem to find something like that.

Are you for real? Are you retarded?

OK, let's walk through this real fucking slow. What happens when you successfully dispel planewalk? What happens when you successfully dispel ethereal jaunt?

The answer obviously is "nothing" for planewalk because it's an instantaneous effect that has no ongoing effect to dispel and "you revert to the material plane" for ethereal jaunt because it's an ongoing effect with a fucking duration. This isn't very complicated. If an ongoing spell ends, its effects stop being active. Because that is what it means for an effect to be ongoing, you fucking idiot.


Now I am not going to pore through 14 year old Rules Of The Game articles to find the part where they confirm that personal spells stop applying to objects that stop being attended. Because that's fucking obvious, and you're seriously demanding 14 year old web articles. For fuck's sake.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

Let's take this real slow.

Blink includes rules text that says your attacks (which appears to include ranged attacks) suffer a 20% miss chance.

Some spells indicate that items you drop while under the effect of the spell immediately lose the benefit. Blink is not one of them.

If there is a rule that contradicts the rules text included in the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the SRD, and it's not easily accessible, I don't know if it counts. Heck, Skip's 'rules of the game' probably shouldn't be trusted to overwrite the rules as written.

You say that a dropped item ceases to be ethereal because it no longer benefits from the spell. I say the description of the spell indicates it applies to all of your equipment for the full duration of the spell, in agreement with the rules text. If you drop your shield on the ethereal plane, it stays on the ethereal plane until the duration of the spell expires. If you fire an arrow, it stays on the ethereal plane until the duration of the spell expires.

If that's not a correct reading of the rule (even though it is 100% consistent with the written text description of the spell), you should have a textually supported counter argument.

This simply appears to be a case where the rules as written disagree with your head-canon and you're unable to set aside the mind-caulk long enough to realize.

[erik]

Ugh. I was attempting the pointless mission of finding the web article (pointless, since ddmw already says he doesn't care if it exists because it disagrees with his head-canon) and I ran into an article where they were testing Dev chops... I read some of Mike Mearls' answers and now my brain is full of fuck all the way up to where my hair used to be.

[Kaelik]

deaddm, tell me, this is very important, what do "the rules" say happens when you cast blink, pick up an object, and then put down an object.

Now, go read Astral Projection, now tell me, what do "the rules" say about if you planeshift to some other fucking plane, then cast Astral Projection?

That you are surprised that I'm not being a literal word idiot and I'm a lawyer shouldn't surprise you, because being a literal word idiot is rejected by literally all lawyers and judges, and claiming "the rules" say something because part of a sentence deprived of context says something that could mean that, or could not is not how people do law.

Reading things in context is important, and in context, it's pretty clear that spells don't effect things they don't effect, so effects of the spell can't apply to things that are not targets of it, like things that are not attended items.

[deaddmwalking]

Ugh. I was attempting the pointless mission of finding the web article (pointless, since ddmw already says he doesn't care if it exists because it disagrees with his head-canon) and I ran into an article where they were testing Dev chops... I read some of Mike Mearls' answers and now my brain is full of fuck all the way up to where my hair used to be.

It's not that a web article couldn't settle this, but quality and accessibility matter. If the article covers my personal house-rules or is written by someone with a track record of clearly misunderstanding those rules and applying them inconsistently, I wouldn't necessarily find that convincing.

Blink literally says your attacks have a 20% miss chance.

Any claim that it means something other than it says should be able to provide textual evidence. A claim that there are areas of the rules that are undefined doesn't really help either. If your claim is 'rules aren't clear, make up your own' then you still have to recognize that you are (by necessity) outside of the rules as written.

Both the spell description of blink and ethereal talk about making attacks in those conditions. If ranged attacks work differently than melee attacks, failing to include that exception is a pretty egregious oversight. Spell descriptions like invisibility and enlarge person specifically address objects dropped (and in the case of enlarge person ranged attacks).

The Gaming Den is usually good with reading comprehension. Outside of blink is there anyone who thinks the statement 'your attacks suffer a 20% miss chance' shouldn't apply to both melee and ranged attacks?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Blink literally says your attacks have a 20% miss chance.

Outside of blink is there anyone who thinks the statement 'your attacks suffer a 20% miss chance' shouldn't apply to both melee and ranged attacks?

You keep (somewhat desperately) repeating this, but it's not actually true. It only says that if you leave out some words. Specifically, the second half of the sentence that's an explanatory function call to how ethereality works. That you are repeatedly omitting such obviously relevant text while pretending to be a textual legalist is such obvious bullshit that I'm amazed anyone is bothering to engage you on the subject.

[deaddmwalking]

Blink literally says your attacks have a 20% miss chance.

Outside of blink is there anyone who thinks the statement 'your attacks suffer a 20% miss chance' shouldn't apply to both melee and ranged attacks?

You keep (somewhat desperately) repeating this, but it's not actually true. It only says that if you leave out some words. Specifically, the second half of the sentence that's an explanatory function call to how ethereality works. That you are repeatedly omitting such obviously relevant text while pretending to be a textual legalist is such obvious bullshit that I'm amazed anyone is bothering to engage you on the subject.

It's not desperation. Like I'm just really surprised people are claiming that the spell description doesn't mean what it says without offering a source beyond 'everyone knows it works like this.

But for your sake, the text regarding your attacks says:

Likewise, your own attacks have a 20% miss chance, since you sometimes go ethereal just as you are about to strike.

If the Surpreme Court were looking at this sentence the way they do the 1st Amendment, they would refer to the half before the sentence as 'operative' and the other half as 'explanatory' (or 'prefatory if they put it first').

Again, that sentence is very clear in an 'operative' fashion. The person who is blinking has a 20% miss chance to "their own attacks". I think everyone in this thread 100% agrees that this applies to melee attacks. It's not that I'm misreading the text or that blink doesn't give a miss chance. Instead, everyone other than me claims that there is an exception for projectile and thrown weapons that is not stated (even though it would be relevant) but can be derived from a clear series of precepts being applied.

If that's true, someone should lay out what those precepts are.

Like, if you came to this board and told me your GM was unfairly enforcing a 20% miss chance on your blinking flask rogue I'd ask for an explanation for why they shouldn't. If 'everyone knows' that a dropped item always 100% of the time loses the benefit of a spell with a duration when dropped, there should be evidence for it. I've looked and looked and looked and I can't find it. If you assert it exists, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that you provide a citation to it. How do you know it says what you think it does if you haven't read it in 14 years? What would it take for you to consider that you might be wrong?

The thing I've always appreciated about the Gaming Den is the posters here discuss what the books say rather than how people interpret them. I feel like I'm talking to Benoist here. It's really unsettling.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Finding the article was actually pretty easy, I just don't understand what my motivation would be to present it when you've already made it very clear in advance that you'll use special pleading to reject the content. In the future, you may want to save the dismissive rhetoric until after you've seen the cite, it'll make you seem less obviously bad-faith.

[Kaelik]

If the Surpreme Court were looking at this sentence the way they do the 1st Amendment, they would refer to the half before the sentence as 'operative' and the other half as 'explanatory' (or 'prefatory if they put it first').

Actually, literally the only time the Supreme Court has ever done that, the entire legal community called it a bullshit hack lie for political gain.

Because that's how interpretation actually works. You read all of it and understand the context. In this case, the context is that "you" refers to you and your attended items, which is to say, not things that aren't on your person.

If 'everyone knows' that a dropped item always 100% of the time loses the benefit of a spell with a duration when dropped, there should be evidence for it. I've looked and looked and looked and I can't find it. If you assert it exists, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that you provide a citation to it. How do you know it says what you think it does if you haven't read it in 14 years? What would it take for you to consider that you might be wrong?

So your new official position is that spells actually work on things they aren't cast on. Yeah.... you sure aren't digging deep into a hole to avoid admitting you were wrong.

[Shrapnel]

This is a long shot, but I remember there being an indie tabletop war game back in the early 2000s that used action figures for combat. The figures were given stats according to their appearance/equipment based on guidelines and mutual agreement.

It's not Toy War, there was another one that was at least a slightly more robust book. Does anyone have a better memory of this random indie thing?

Heroclix? Attacktix?

Those are the two toy-based games I'm aware of...

[erik]

Is there anywhere an example of a personal spell affecting an object after it becomes an unattended object?

It doesn't for invisibility.
It doesn't for polymorph suite.
It doesn't for enlarge/reduce.

[deaddmwalking]

On the contrary, if the article is available, I'll be happy to read it and weigh in on whether I think it speaks to ranged attacks and blink. As far as dismissive rhetoric I think it's fair to be up front about a high standard of evidence. I've seen people like Frank dismiss the pronouncements of 'the Sage' as obviously wrong - do it would have to be an authoritative source. For the record, I would accept a Sage Advice article as acceptable evidence to permit it in my games.

As far as consistent fantasy physics go, I think having a clear rule is also worthwhile. If invisibility posits that the spell ends for dropped objects and blink does not, for my own fantasy physics I'd want to answer that question consistently - I think the game is better if you do. From that perspective, eliminating the miss chance for ranged weapons is a sensible house rule, but I granted that a page ago. Having thought about it, I think it's probably better if a spell that applies to you and your equipment persists through the full duration to dropped items. That would mean if you were carrying something when you turned invisible and you dropped it, it would remain invisible. If you picked something up while blinking or invisible, it wouldn't be subject to the spell. The object you pick up wouldn't start blinking or turn invisible, just like a medium longsword would stay medium if you picked it up while you were enlarged. In the case of invisibility you could still conceal an invisible object by concealing it within an invisible object because I think that keeps some interesting adventuring possibilities available, but in any case I would be applying a consistent approach to spells that have an inconsistent description and genesis.

I've called claims that the miss chance doesn't apply 'mind-caulk' because they're an attempt to make the rules consistent. They'd be better if they were. But the truth is that they are not. Re-writing the rules to enhance consistency is still re-writing the rules - by definition 'house rules'.

If Virgil's question is whether you can use ranged attacks on material creatures while ethereal, the answer is pretty clearly 'no'. You can attack ethereal creatures normally. That's what the rules say.

If you change the rules, the answer is pretty clearly 'if that's what you want'. I'd agree that if you rule that a projectile stops blinking and immediately enters the material plane, it is consistent with that ruling to allow someone casting ethereal jaunt to attack material creatures with thrown or projectile weapons.

Appeals to popularity and personal attacks won't change my mind. Since my understanding is based on the text of the printed rule, I'm looking for an explanation or clarification of the rules. Errata would work. A rules of the game article would work. A sage advice article would work. An official guide to understanding planar magic would work. A reference to a 3.5 published book and page number would work. Even though the 'core books' have precedent over 'Races of' or 'Environment' books or the monster deep drives like 'Draconomicon', I'd take that. Hell, at this point I'm practically willing to accept any evidence. Like even if I don't find it personally convincing, it will do a lot to restore my opinion of the quality of the posters here.

Let me make it super-easy. If you don't think that Blink's miss chance should apply to ranged attacks, what is that based on?

Cited one source that I can look at. If it's a web article I want a link. If it's something else I want a title and page number. That's easy enough that maglag can do that even when he's wrong.

[Kaelik]

"You just have to assume without any evidence of any kind that spells effect things besides their targets. Why won't anyone present me with any evidence that this isn't true?"

Blink
Transmutation
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round/level (D)

That's the rule. Blink targets you. Arrows and flasks somewhere over there are not you, so Blink doesn't do anything to them.

This is literally what was explained to you from the beginning.

[Omegonthesane]

That's the rule. Blink targets you. Arrows and flasks somewhere over there are not you, so Blink doesn't do anything to them.

This is literally what was explained to you from the beginning.

The surrounding context of other spells with Range: Personal indicates that "You" encompasses "yourself and all your equipment" and not just your body. Your clothes don't stay visible when you cast Invisibility, or burst when you cast Enlarge Self.

Arrows that are on your person when you cast Blink are part of "You" when the spell is cast and are therefore affected by the spell.

The fact that Enlarge Person feels the need to specify

Any enlarged item that leaves an enlarged creature’s possession (including a projectile or thrown weapon) instantly returns to its normal size

heavily implies that there is not a general rule of magic in which, unless stated otherwise, anything that was part of You when a spell targeting You is cast ceases to be affected by the spell when it ceases to be part of You.

After all, Charm Person doesn't stop working when the charmed person ceases to be within Short range of the caster.

Is there anywhere an example of a personal spell affecting an object after it becomes an unattended object?

It doesn't for invisibility.
It doesn't for polymorph suite.
It doesn't for enlarge/reduce.

The point of contention here is the notion that because Blink has a 20% miss chance for ranged attacks which is caused by you potentially being sent to the ethereal by Blink at the moment of impact, and this 20% applies to ranged attacks, that therefore your arrows must still be phasing in and out of the ethereal until the moment of impact. Because if they returned to the Material the moment they left your possession, ranged attacks would not have a miss chance under Blink.

[Thaluikhain]

Erm...ok, I could well be reading this totally wrong.

But, from my reading, the effect of Blink is to rapidly "move" you from the Material to the Ethereal plane and back again.

If unattended items aren't affected by personal spells, wouldn't that mean that they'd just be left behind in whichever plane you were when they stopped being affected and not be Blink-ed anymore? Same as if you dropped something while flying, it's no longer flying with you, but already has traveled somewhere.

Unless I'm totally wrong about thinking about going to the Ethereal plane in terms of movement.

[merxa]

There is no general rule for unattended objects losing their spell effects.

Specific spells like invisibility describe what happens, and that seems true for most spells but not all of them. Some spells like ethereal jaunt seem to indicate otherwise. Astral project treats unattended objects differently.

If you rule that objects lose their magical effects when they leave your person then you get results like the flask rogue which seem cool I guess. But you could also have people enchant their armor with Etherealness which lasts essentially all day and then fire arrows with near impunity. Perhaps that is also cool, but that doesn't seem to be what was intended by the spell description for ethereal jaunt.

[Username17]

There is no general rule for unattended objects losing their spell effects.

wat.

OK, quick question: if you have fireshield running, you and all the attended objects of you are surrounded by fire that burns everything else. The air in your fucking lungs is attended while it's in your lungs and unattended once it leaves your mouth on expiration.

Is your contention that people with fireshield spew a high velocity cloud of doom out of their fucking mouths every time they breath out? I'm just wondering how far up your own asshole you're willing to go to prevent Rogues from benefitting from one neat trick.

-Username17

[merxa]

"This spell wreathes you in flame and causes damage to each creature that attacks you in melee."

fireshield doesn't say anything about the items you're carrying, your weird analogy is bizarre.

Flask rogues are cool, it's a neat trick, but that also means donning a suit of armor with etherealness makes ethereal archers powerful assassins and it also means archers with astral projection are apparently worthless as they try to shoot their bow and the arrow vanishes, or I don't even know what made up rule you'll use to justify whatever bullshit you want.

Again, spells, like invisibility or reduce person, specify what happens to unattended objects after you cast a spell, but some spells don't and a plain reading makes it clear they don't suddenly become non-ethereal or non-astral because that would be bullshit, but if you need your bullshit so you can continue with your blinking flask rogue headcannon then go on keeping your head up your ass.

[Username17]

I'm just wondering how far up your own asshole you're willing to go to prevent Rogues from benefitting from one neat trick.

fireshield doesn't say anything about the items you're carrying, your weird analogy is bizarre.

That's... pretty far.

-Username17

[merxa]

I'm still waiting to hear what your cool flask rogue does when he is an astral projection.

Is your argument I don't care because it's a 9th level spell and who gives a fuck? Instead you'll make random claims about having my head up my ass? How about you engage with the actual rules and make an argument that's above the intelligence level of a 10 year old school boy.

[Omegonthesane]

I'm just wondering how far up your own asshole you're willing to go to prevent Rogues from benefitting from one neat trick.

fireshield doesn't say anything about the items you're carrying, your weird analogy is bizarre.

That's... pretty far.

-Username17

How so? The effect of the Fireshield is limited in scope, it doesn't even turn the weapons in your hands into flaming doom so why would it do any such thing to the air in your lungs.