Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[deaddmwalking]

Um yes. Zero references to thrown items retaining giant size.

So you're going with a less permissive ruling for the spell than the description because you hate fun???

The spell indicates that you are able to use your equipment 'effectively'. It also refers you to the damage chart in the DMG. It does not exclude thrown weapons; it does not refer to another spell such as enlarge person.

But let's explore this for a moment.

Option 1 The designers expect that you have access to the spells in the SRD and are sufficiently familiar with all of them that you'd realize, without prompting, to consult the full text of enlarge person before running this spell exactly according to the description (ie, not adding additional restrictions on thrown weapons).

I don't think that's a strong argument. Around 40% of the Player's Handbook is spell descriptions. Having an exhaustive understanding of every single spell and the implications each one has on each other spell is simply ridiculous. In any case, there's a well-established precedent to use the phrasing "This spell functions like X, except..." Clearly, they did not reference enlarge person in that way. Consequently, it appears that they do not think that this spell functions like enlarge person in a meaningful enough way to use the redirect reference.

Option 2 The designers understand that Enlarge Person is not included in this book, and therefore a 'this spell functions like' redirect to another source seemed too burdensome.

This is another weak argument. In that case, they would have included the relevant text. They would have included language potentially copy/pasted from Enlarge Person specifying that projectile weapons and thrown weapons work exactly the same way as enlarge person. Failure to do creates a very obvious discrepancy between the way the spell is described (and what is beneficial to the players) - it's nerfing a spell that doesn't need it for no other reason than to be consistent with an underlying metaphysics that has never been articulated.

Option 3 The designers forgot that ranged spells exist.

This would certainly be consistent with 'your attacks' failing to include 'ranged attacks' in the blink description. In that case, you're literally arguing that the designers provided misleading text that you're supposed to be educated enough to avoid. Attacks doesn't mean all attacks; the designers were too stupid to realize there was potential confusion and they never decided to fix it.

Option 4 Spells do what they say they do.

Sometimes they appear consistent, sometimes they don't. Because there isn't a strong universal metaphysics for magic, sometimes things work 'strangely'. Again - an example of this. If I have a willing sexual partner fellating me while I have fire shield up, despite the fact that they have their mouth around my cock, they're safe from the flames. If an assassin (or jealous lover) stabs me in the back, they flames deal damage to them, but don't harm my sexual partner. If my partner is 'rough' but it doesn't constitute an attack, they're safe. If they get so rough that I'd potentially take damage, they suddenly are burned by the flames. Please note that it is not possible to have a consistent 'magical flame' that works this way. There are a lot of other 'inconsistencies' with fire magic that we could cover in depth - the way to avoid it is simply reconcile yourself to spell descriptions doing exactly what they say they do - even it is kinda dumb.

If personal-range spells persist on objects after they leave their owner's person, barring the duration naturally ending or the spell description explicitly saying otherwise, what consequences must we consider?

Potentially?

In the case of Giant Size, there might be times where it would be beneficial that dropped items remain sized for you. If you were dropping an item that you intended to use again, it'd be inconvenient if you couldn't pick it up. On the other hand, if you wanted to give your companion your weapon to use, it would be inconvenient that it wouldn't immediately resize to normal. If two people were both using the spell and passing equipment back and forth it would definitely matter if it resized at the end of the duration, immediately, at the end of the round, or some other basis. Ultimately, you hit a number of 'undefined' errors in situations you could imagine. Most of them are unlikely to occur frequently enough in a game to cause major problems.

You could potentially distinguish spells that specifically include your equipment and those that don't. In that case, invisibility becomes an exception to the general rule (as explained in the rules text).

I don't think that it necessarily causes problems. If you do exactly what the spell says you do and don't do things that spell doesn't say it does, you're usually fine. If the spell description doesn't give you guidance (the way blink, enlarge person, invisibility, giant size, ethereal jaunt and other spells do, I recommend making a decision that is as permissive as possible to the players, assuming the consequences aren't campaign breaking.

Edit - Minor clarity

[Kaelik]

the caster will never be left on the ethereal plane. objects he brought with him might though.

Imagine writing this and not realizing you are saying there is a 20/50%/one roll for every fucking item you have on you chance that when the duration ends the caster ends up naked on the material plane while all his weapons, armor, clothes, magic items, backpack, ect. all fall/float endlessly on the ethereal plane forever.

[Kaelik]

I see DeadDM is back to claiming that vague non explicit things stripped of context obviously and solely can mean the specific thing he wants them to mean.

[deaddmwalking]

I see DeadDM is back to claiming that vague non explicit things stripped of context obviously and solely can mean the specific thing he wants them to mean.

So you're saying that you would rule that thrown weapons do reduced damage like Enlarge Person? You're jumping on the 'I don't want Players to have Nice Things' wagon?

Really?

[Username17]

Fact One: You don't actually care about Giant Size, and couldn't even remember its name.
Fact Two: No one in any game you have ever played or will ever play is an 11th level Wu Jen, and you have never seen Giant Size cast and will never see it cast.
Fact Three: The only time Giant Size is ever used under any circumstances is in extremely specialist melee combat builds. No one uses it for ranged combat, because it gives a massive bonus to Strength and a significant penalty to Dexterity.

It literally does not make any difference what happens when people under the effects of Giant Size use Bows, because the situation never comes up. The fact that you don't know that and think that tugging on the heart strings about what kind of damage die a 12th level spellcaster would hypothetically use with a weapon they aren't proficient with and don't care about is simply underlining how obscure a spell this is and how much no one fucking cares about it. Including you.

Again and still: this is obviously not a good faith argument and you should consider stuffing it up your ass. You don't care what happens when people cast Giant Size to the point that you clearly have no idea what the spell does or even what it's called. This is not a good faith argument. It is an argument of desperation and misdirection.

-Username17

[erik]

Pretty sure he was thinking of the pathfinder spell and now is trying to pivot in embarrassment.

Edit incidentally. Janni. What a fuckin stupid monster. It has several different ways to kite and your only defense is to let it run out of arrow even if it doesn’t kite ethereally. Unless it has unlimited arrows with its damage per round it isn’t a threat to a level 4 party even if it fires from ethereal. So it is just annoying.

[deaddmwalking]

There is no 'bad faith' here. This whole conversation came up because someone asked for an answer to a rules-based question. I provided a rules-based answer. I specifically references the text of the relevant spell descriptions. Following that, I was told that I was wrong because there is no miss chance for ranged attacks. I pointed out that such an interpretation was inconsistent with the spell text, specifically:

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

I was told that this spell description either omitted the word melee or could be understand to mean except ranged attacks. Since it does not say either of those things, I did not find that argument credible.

Instead I was told that if I read the spell descriptions of enlarge person and invisibility that I would CLEARLY see the underlying logic that an item that becomes unattended is no longer affected by the spell and therefore ranged attacks can't have a miss chance even though blink says that they do.

If there is such a clear underlying logic, it appears that blink is establishing a specific exception for itself because 'your attacks' obviously includes 'ranged' attacks - they're defined as a subset of attacks.

You're right that I don't care enough about giant size enough to remember if it is size or form or body or growth. I actually do like the spell, but I remember it as 'the giant spell next to the picture of the giant wu-jen in Complete Arcane. I brought it up specifically because it is so similar to enlarge person. Effectively, both spells do the same thing - they make you bigger. Notably, they have different text regarding how that affects your attacks.

I do want to emphasize this next point. The fact that the spell talks about weapons/equipment and doesn't include an aside about thrown weapons is hugely significant. If it had a section on thrown weapons explaining specifically how it was different than enlarge person, THIS SPELL could be taken as a special exception to the general rule. Instead, it simply treats all weapon attacks the same - and nobody who plays D&D would think that you could reasonably disregard that entire class of spells.

Frank - I am specifically going to call you out on a 'bad faith' argument. The Wu-Jen is proficient with all simple weapons. Just about every arcane character uses a crossbow. The wu-jen is also proficient with javelins and darts which are thrown weapons. You can't dismiss this argument for a lack of proficiency. And of course, any claim that 'nobody uses it' is not a refutation. They could. In fact, wu-jen makes an interesting choice for a gestalt character, and while that is an 'optional rule', it doesn't change the way OTHER rules work. Since the spell exists, it's important to know how it works if someone opts to use it. If I were a player in your game, I'd expect to be able to deal damage with thrown weapons exactly as the spell describes.

So put up or shut up - would you rule in my favor, or do you hate fun?

[Kaelik]

It's worse than that, because if you use a bow with Giant Size there is ALREADY a rule that says that damage for projectile size for bows is based on the size of the bow, not the arrow, so the only case being "nerfed" by advocating for the same consistent understanding of spell targets we've been arguing for this whole time is some dude who THROWS JAVELINS out to 150ft while having a -10 penalty to hit, even though he has 60ft range with a Glaive at no penalty.

Also you know.... it's a gotcha about a claim I never made.

If DeadDM hadn't descended into such a deep well of bad faith, I suppose someone trying to gotcha me for a comment I've never made or supported would be weird. But it's basically what I expect from this discussion at this point.

I was told that this spell description either omitted the word melee or could be understand to mean except ranged attacks. Since it does not say either of those things, I did not find that argument credible.

Step 1 to having a real conversation would be for even a SINGLE FUCKING ONE OF YOU IDIOTS to even ONCE actually state our position accurately.

[deaddmwalking]

Pretty sure he was thinking of the pathfinder spell and now is trying to pivot in embarrassment.

I hate to double post - but this was posted after I responded to Frank.

First of all, you asked for one spell that dealt with this. Mission fucking accomplished.

I was 100% fully aware of the spell that I was referencing. The first time I mentioned the spell (Post # 515242) I not only wrote the name correctly, I provided a citation. Go ahead and check - the post hasn't been edited.

Further, any confusion on my part - real or imagined - does not change what the spell says in 3.5. Rather than assuming I'm confused, you should address the substance of the article.

Oh wait, you can't.

This is an argument on the internet. I don't expect to change anyone's mind. I don't expect anyone to admit that they were wrong. I don't care about what anyone chooses to do in their own games, so if you have an interpretation that you like, I encourage you to use it - house rules actually make the game better because they can be designed to suit each individual group's taste. But for those that actually do care about the RAW - even if just to decide if they want to make a change - I think I've laid out more than clearly what the description of blink actually says and that such a reading isn't inconsistent with all other spells.

[Omegonthesane]

I'm going to cut you off there, because the 3.5 rules were not intended to be parsed by experts and applied in a court of law. They were intended to be parsed at a surface level by laymen who had never seen any wider context. The correct interpretation of Blink is not the interpretation that requires understanding of D&D physics because most players and most refs are not expected to understand D&D physics.

That's not how constitutions or statutes are written either. Interpreting texts as a process doesn't require, and in fact is mostly practiced, on things not created by people aiming for the Court's attention.

But sure, keep telling me how D&D is different, so in D&D the correct way to interpret things is to ignore context.

D&D is different. It's meant to be a game. Often a game you play while drunk. A game founded on the principle that specific trumps general. If a general rule implies that a spell does not do the thing it categorically says it does do, then for this one situation the general rule can eat a dick until the specific rule stops applying. 3.5 D&D is literally founded on the principle that general context is overridden by specific rules.

So yes the correct reading of how a spell works is to ignore context.

"Spells do what spells say they fucking do" is not a torturous interpretation. "All DMs have to read not only the core books but enough supplementary material to gain a deep understanding of secret, or at least unstated, rules which override printed rules" is a torturous interpretation.

It is not obvious. It is not intuitive. It does not quickly and logically follow from the idea that personal spells generally stop affecting equipment when equipment stops being part of you, because no matter what the general rule is, the specific rule is that Blink has a 20% miss chance for ranged attacks.

Contrariwise "Wizards' daily spell limits are not actually literally daily but refresh after 8 hours rest and 15 minutes spell prep" is the intuitive and correct interpretation of the text that is actually on the page, "daily" only makes sense as a statement of how often they think you'd actually rest for 8 hours. and as has been pointed out it takes a torturous reading of the rules to try to block the Frank Cheat.

[virgil]

Edit incidentally. Janni. What a fuckin stupid monster. It has several different ways to kite and your only defense is to let it run out of arrow even if it doesn’t kite ethereally. Unless it has unlimited arrows with its damage per round it isn’t a threat to a level 4 party even if it fires from ethereal. So it is just annoying.

A janni archer can reasonably be expected to have at least one quiver to their name, two or three if they're actually going to use this maneuver. Enough arrows for the whole party is possibly iffy, but ~2 PCs killed per quiver doesn't make it NBD.

Someone wondered whether released items have to be truly instant when they stop benefiting from the personal-range spell. If it lasts through the action, thus both having a 20% miss chance & being returned to the material after being let go, would that be badwrongfun?

Personally, I'm trying to figure out the consequences of either direction for how attended objects are treated when released, as a general rule. Spells like invisibility/enlarge aren't a concern, as they have specific text concerning the status of released objects. One general concern with the 'spells persist' camp is leaving behind objects that can be used for voodoo-range dispel checks. Besides maybe that, it seems like you get fewer issues if you have it be a general rule that separation doesn't end a spell's duration on attended objects.

[erik]

On the contrary I think it would be a fine house rule to say that Blink continues to affect items after they are tossed/fired/dropped. Having flasks and arrows blinking all over the battlefield tickles my funny bone.

I think the discussion started out with major bad faith vibes when DeadDm said he wouldn’t accept a FAQ or web clarification article before one was even produced. He walked it back but the taint remained. That colored the whole discourse.

I think there is some ambiguity and I haven’t found a rules of the game article to clinch it either way. It seems reasonable to me that once objects are not a part of your person they no longer receive benefit from personal spells. Many personal spells explicitly state this. Using those examples as argument that any personal spells that don’t explicitly state it is just as weak as arguments that rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights do not exist. That’s a bad argument.

I believe that Blink’s miss chance clause was ill defined since it left a known discrepancy between how all the other personal spells worked and asked for a better example... and the best you have is an obscure spell on an obscure class that if it is corroborating at all is even worse of an example than Blink since you need to really, really, really want it to reach the conclusion that it works differently than Enlarge. Heck look at the 3e version and it wasn’t even supposed to grow weapons. I find something suspect and something even worse is being used as an example. Even if I did accept Blink working as some here think it does, I’d still say you are smoking crack on Giant Size being different from Enlarge in that aspect.

Fuck. Autocorrect on my phone must have been reset. It is total shit and I’ve had to rewrite almost every word three times.

[deaddmwalking]

There have been a lot of accusations of 'bad faith' - particularly leveled at me. I want to respond to them.

I initially claimed and I have maintained that each spell description is supposed to provide enough information to run the spell. The 'specific' rule for each spell description trumps any 'general' rule when the two are in conflict. Since that has been my position, it puts a high standard on a web article. The implication was that there was a web article about planar travel that would make everything clear. Please note, despite how trivial this article is to provide, nobody has done so yet. Since I have not seen the article, I was unwilling to accept that it's existence was sufficient proof about how blink works. If it specifically had text to the effect of 'the following is a clarification of blink', I would have absolutely accepted it as valid, at least if it was from an authoritative source. A web article penned by Frank outside of any official capacity at WotC would not make qualify.

Insisting that any evidence have sufficient quality is a necessary precursor to defend myself against 'goal shifting'. For example, I provided an example of a spell that is consistent with a description of thrown weapons dealing damage based on the size of the wielder. I provided that example pages ago, but once people actually engaged with the spell, they have attempted to discredit it as a valid example. Frank, for instance, hasn't said that the spell does what I claim it does (thrown weapons do damage based on the size of the wielder). If he does, it means that there are exceptions to a general rule about objects leaving your possession immediately losing the benefit of spells with a duration and he would have to accept that his interpretation of blink is incorrect. Likewise, if he says that the spell is 'secretly modified' by enlarge person, he is 'stealth nerfing' an exploit that a clever player discovered. Refusing to weigh in - pretending the spell was never printed - is him trying to have his cake and eat it too.

But I'm willing to play this game. If the spell I have provided as a counterexample (chosen specifically because of the similarity to enlarge person and specifically because the text regarding weapon damage is different), I remain confident that I can find other examples that imply things 'leaving your person' persist at least long enough to fulfill the spell description (that would not be possible if they immediately lost the benefit of the spell). If giant size isn't sufficient for you for reasons, can you please clearly explain them so I can provide an example that avoids those concerns?

[Kaelik]

A game founded on the principle that specific trumps general. If a general rule implies that a spell does not do the thing it categorically says it does do, then for this one situation the general rule can eat a dick until the specific rule stops applying. 3.5 D&D is literally founded on the principle that general context is overridden by specific rules.

So yes the correct reading of how a spell works is to ignore context.

You cited a canon of statutory construction as being important to D&D to argue that....... interpreting D&D is not like interpreting laws.

Great argument you got going there. So again, as someone who's official job is to be the kind of person who argues about statutory canons and their appropriate application, take it from me, that's now how that one works. You don't say "specific trumps general, so I don't have to read the rest of the statute to understand what this means, I get to be a literal idiot."

"Spells do what spells say they fucking do" is not a torturous interpretation. "All DMs have to read not only the core books but enough supplementary material to gain a deep understanding of secret, or at least unstated, rules which override printed rules" is a torturous interpretation.

Seriously, can a single one of you idiots accurately state our position on this issue? Literally just one of you?

[Kaelik]

Personally, I'm trying to figure out the consequences of either direction for how attended objects are treated when released, as a general rule. Spells like invisibility/enlarge aren't a concern, as they have specific text concerning the status of released objects. One general concern with the 'spells persist' camp is leaving behind objects that can be used for voodoo-range dispel checks. Besides maybe that, it seems like you get fewer issues if you have it be a general rule that separation doesn't end a spell's duration on attended objects.

There's some bullshit you can do like turning anything into an invulnerable object by handing it to some schlup you cast Temporal Stasis on, or basically letting Sequester target infinite objects because you target a person holding them all.

But for my money, the best dumb edge case is that Contingency spells have to "effect" "you" when they go off, so you can pick up a twig, cast Contingency with "when this twig is broken, [some fucking aoe spell] cast centered on the twig." And then you can hand your suicide bomb to a summoned critter or whatever.

[merxa]

Why would you be able to remove an item from someone under the effects of temporal statis?

Can you explain how sequester could target infinite objects?

Finally what part of this phrase:

"The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person" would allow a bomb to go off far away from you?

You also seem to believe that after you cast a spell it will continue to effect new targets as you pick up items, an interpretation I've never heard before.

As far as summarizing the opposing argument... It's all over the place with various rhetorical appeals, but the strongest version is that spells with target 'you' don't effect unattended objects and that as soon as an object goes from 'you' to 'unattended' then any magical effects cease to function.

As I wrote, way in the beginning of my first post, there is no such general rule. It just doesn't exist.

Again, does anyone disagree, can you cite any such general rule?

When you cast a spell you determine targets etc, you don't keep track if the spell remains valid after you cast it. Anyone want to tell me if bless stops working suddenly if you're no longer an ally? Does dimensional anchor cease functioning if you go outside the range?

I'm used to spell effects persistenting until their duration ends.

So far no one has replied to my question about astral projection, are archers just completely fucked? Apparently Archer is not a valid character concept at high level.

[Kaelik]

Finally what part of this phrase:

"The spell to be brought into effect by the contingency must be one that affects your person" would allow a bomb to go off far away from you?

The part where the spell is AoE, so it effects the twig, and the twig is inexplicably also you.

As far as summarizing the opposing argument... It's all over the place with various rhetorical appeals, but the strongest version is that spells with target 'you' don't effect unattended objects and that as soon as an object goes from 'you' to 'unattended' then any magical effects cease to function.

As I wrote, way in the beginning of my first post, there is no such general rule. It just doesn't exist.

Again, does anyone disagree, can you cite any such general rule?

When you cast a spell you determine targets etc, you don't keep track if the spell remains valid after you cast it. Anyone want to tell me if bless stops working suddenly if you're no longer an ally? Does dimensional anchor cease functioning if you go outside the range?

It's actually amazing. It's like fucking mana from heaven watching you people repeatedly demonstrate you don't understand.

So far no one has replied to my question about astral projection, are archers just completely fucked? Apparently Archer is not a valid character concept at high level.

I think the issue is that Astral Projection is a really long spell with lots of sometimes contradictory clauses, but definitely does give you infinite consumable magic items, so literally no one cares enough to actually go read it to answer your question.

[merxa]

Do you have a learning disability I should be more sensitive to because what the fuck did your response even answer?

[GnomeWorks]

Seriously, can a single one of you idiots accurately state our position on this issue? Literally just one of you?

...so, what is your position, then?

[Kaelik]

Seriously, can a single one of you idiots accurately state our position on this issue? Literally just one of you?

...so, what is your position, then?

I've stated it pretty clearly multiple times. I'm not sure why posting it again is supposed to magically pierce bad faith here.

I just find it endlessly entertaining that every single time someone on team literal idiot tries to explain what they are arguing against, it's always wrong and a their version is directly contradicted by what we've been saying.

[virgil]

Judging by how Kaelik has been making references (such as scrolls not burning in the plane of fire when handed between two adventurers who both have fire resistance), it looks like he expects objects picked up to acquire any active buffs of the new wielder. So Wu Jen Antman picks up a stick & sees it instantly enlarge with him, druids in ape form can't wield weapons because they are instantly get melded into their form, etc?

[deaddmwalking]

Team idiot (that's me, among others) holds that spells do what they say they do. What 'must' happen is not nor must it be defined. If blink said you had a 20% miss chance because rematerializing was distracting, I'd accept that. If they said you had a 20% miss chance because 'fuck you flask rogues' I'd accept it. And if 20% miss chance is impossible once you accept that items immediately materialize after you drop them then I don't accept that is what happens. If I did, paradox. The spell would say to do something and not do something at the same time. Since the spell description is the highest authority for a particular spell, immediate materialization must not be what happens. I don't actually care what does happen - as far as I can tell it is not defined. As I said pages ago, a consistent metaphysics would be an improvement but it is not and never has been a feature of D&D.

Spells do what they say they do and they don't do things that they don't say they do.

[tussock]

The only reason making an exactly equivalent argument about a rock and blink is taken remotely seriously by anyone is that throwing a rock while blinking "feels like an exploit."

You can drop things when you are in the air. That is expected. There are rules for the range penalties, proficiencies, and damage by object weight and height.

You cannot attack the material plane when you are ethereal. That is explicitly forbidden in every case it appears in the book, and usually forbidden multiple times per case. It's even forbidden in the fucking Blink spell!

[erik]

My internet keeps shitting out, so I'll make it quick. A legit counter-example would be something that explicitly states that an item can become an unattended object and still remain affected by a personal spell. So, Shapechange. It explicitly states that separated equipment and body parts do not revert to original form. Much better counter-example than Giant Size. It is a 9th level spell on par with magnets and shit, so maybe it could break the rules, but there it is.

I'd forgotten about Shapechange but kept working down the list til I got one. So that's enough that I'm open to considering that personal spells can sometimes affect unattended objects afterward. It's sloppy rules writing that they qualified several spells but left some up in the air.

[maglag]

It's sloppy rules writing that they qualified several spells but left some up in the air.

3.5 has sloppy rules writing? How dare you suggest such an heresy?