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Sage Genesis posted:But the action is an attack though? It's a melee spell attack. Or do you mean the capital-A-Attack action? he means capital-A Action.
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Dec 27, 2015 01:36
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quote:The touch of your shadow-wreathed hand can siphon life force from others to heal your wounds. Make a melee spell attack against a creature within your reach. On a hit, the target takes 3d6 necrotic damage, and you regain hit points equal to half the amount of necrotic damage dealt. Until the spell ends, you can make the attack again on each of your turns as an action. It's the second bolded part that's in question, right? I thought I'd compare it to other similar spells. The only other spell I can find to compare that a) is Concentration, b) makes Melee Spell Attacks and c) uses Actions is Flame Blade. quote:You evoke a fiery blade in your free hand. The blade is similar in size and shape to a scimitar, and it lasts for the duration. If you let go of the blade, it disappears, but you can evoke the blade again as a bonus action. You can use your action to make a melee spell attack with the fiery blade. On a hit, the target takes 3d6 fire damage. The flaming blade sheds bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an additional 10 feet. I agree that the straight reading is that neither of these can be used for Opportunity Attacks, but why the extra "on each of your turns" wording on Vampiric Touch? Sage Advice Compendium quote:Can you use a melee spell attack to make an opportunity attack? The bolded parts here implies that as long as the effect isn't produced at the same time that the spell is cast (ie, Flame Blade and Vampiric Touch as opposed to Shocking Grasp), then you can make an opportunity attack with it. I can't see why this needs to be clarified unless it's supposed to overwrite those two spell descriptions.
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Dec 27, 2015 01:40
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What about a spell like flame blade? It's essentially the same as VT, would you allow an OA using it? I'm pretty sure I would at my table. It's nonsensical not to. Edit: beaten by one post on flame blade, but the point still stands. Your dork is already cat, the LA is essentially a punch (VT) or a swing of an already existing magical sword.
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Dec 27, 2015 01:46
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Sage Genesis posted:But the action is an attack though? It's a melee spell attack. Or do you mean the capital-A-Attack action? Ordinarily, when you can do something as an attack (that is, taking the attack action you get one or more attacks, or with an off-hand when two weapon fighting, or any other situations that grant you an attack), it says you can do it as an attack. So it's unusual for an ability to say you can make an attack as an action on your turn, since that is different from the sorts of wordings that are frequently used in 5E and which would allow you to do it as an OA and since it specifies "on your turn", this seems extremely straightforward. The phrase "on your turn" has been used since at least 3E to denote things that can't be done as an OA and 5E isn't any different on that score. I would not even really say that the text of VT is evidence of how awful !!!NATURAL LANGUAGE!!! is, but rather the logical result of having a book so poorly written. This question is very straightforwardly answered by the text, but the rest of the book is so bad it's not really outside the realm of possibility that you're still supposed to be able to do this as an OA. For me, the question is not "can VT be used as an OA" since without a clear and concise answer from wizards, it seems inarguable that it cannot be. The question is "can VT be used twice in a turn by a level 5 fighter". Because that's where the action/attack dichotomy becomes important.
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Dec 27, 2015 01:48
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Gerdalti posted:What about a spell like flame blade? It's essentially the same as VT, would you allow an OA using it? It's not the same- VT is unique in that it is a melee spell ability that (A) is not cast as a melee spell attack and (B) expressly declares in its text that the attack component must be done as an action on your own turn. No other spell is like this. This is a good reason why the text shouldn't be trusted, but there's no question about what the text says.
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Dec 27, 2015 01:49
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I'd be more inclined to let an EK do it than I would a wizard, so it probably boils down to my role preferences (and belief that EKs need all the help they can get).
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Dec 27, 2015 02:00
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Reading the two definitions The flame blade creates a weapon that you can make an attack with, while concentrating on vampiric touch gives you a power which is : on your turn use an action to cast vampiric touch which is a melee spell attack.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:01
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30.5 Days posted:It's not the same- VT is unique in that it is a melee spell ability that (A) is not cast as a melee spell attack and (B) expressly declares in its text that the attack component must be done as an action on your own turn. No other spell is like this. This is a good reason why the text shouldn't be trusted, but there's no question about what the text says. Again, I agree that there's no question about what the text says, but... it's a weird thing for it to say. Does Flame Blade specifying you can use your action mean that it also can't be used as an OA? If so, why the extra wording on Vampiric Touch? Can VT be used on each of your attacks if you have multiple attacks, or does it replace them all with a single "make the vampiric touch attack" action? Is the same thing true of Flame Blade, since it says "you can use your action to make a melee spell attack with the fiery blade" rather than "you can make melee spell attacks with the fiery blade"? Does anything let you take an action other than on your turn? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 27, 2015 02:02
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Elfgames posted:Reading the two definitions The flame blade creates a weapon that you can make an attack with, while concentrating on vampiric touch gives you a power which is : on your turn use an action to cast vampiric touch which is a melee spell attack. I guess you could maybe argue that all spells in your repertoire give you a power which is: on your turn use an action to cast whatever. So the general rule that you can always instead cast melee spell attacks as an OA, as defined in that Sage Advice article, applies here? You know, general overriding specific. Like you do.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:03
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 My guess is that the wording is "odd" with VT because it is an Action to cast it, whereas Flame Blade is a Bonus Action. Flame Blade doesn't need the rider of making an attack as part of the spell, because you can BA cast it, then Action attack. VT needs that odd language to let you attack on the first round you have it. I think this is being nitpicky and rule of cool is that if you are weilding a magic sword of fire, or a fist of shadow, you should obviously be able to strike out with those like you would with a regular sword or fist on an OA. Quick Edit: The people who wrote this books should be fired. Natural language is loving stupid. Give us proper keywords and sane rules.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:11
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First off, for the sake of clarity, "1 Action" really means "1 Standard Action", with players getting movement, 1 Standard Action, and 1 Bonus Action on their turn, and then 1 Reaction per round outside of their turns. Flame Blade is worded the way it is so that you can you can use your Bonus Action to cast Flame Blade, and then use your Standard Action to make a melee attack with it on the same turn that you cast Flame Blade, but you can also choose to use your Standard Action to do something else. With Vampiric Touch, casting it requires a Standard Action, but you have to (as in mandatory) make a melee spell attack with it as part of the casting action. You can't not attack as you cast it, but it does mean your Bonus Action is free to be used for something else. On subsequent turns when you still have the spell maintained via Concentration, you can make further melee spell attacks as Standard Actions. Personally, I'd allow you to make OAs with either of these spells, but I don't have anything to back that up with besides it feels right and works off the principle of having a big ol' buff icon over your character's head that modifies what they're attacking with. Going by the rules, you either cannot make OAs with it, or at the very least you can only make OAs with it if you already previously cast the spell on your turn and are just maintaining it via Concentration.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:18
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You can't OA with the fire sword because if you swing it too fast it's like waving your hand through a flame and you don't do any damage. Also, you are a wizard and can't swordfight for poo poo.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:18
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Gerdalti posted:Quick Edit: The people who wrote this books should be fired. They probably were.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:29
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goatface posted:You can't OA with the fire sword because if you swing it too fast it's like waving your hand through a flame and you don't do any damage. You're never going to actually cast Flame Blade since it's a druid spell. You're going to use the slot it was in to fuel your ability to be a nigh-unkillable bear. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 27, 2015 02:30
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On the topic of the writing of these books being less-than-stellar, the spell statblocks don't tell you which classes a spell belongs to, nor do they have a line for declaring which saving throw is to be used and what the effects are for a successful save.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:41
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Gerdalti posted:Quick Edit: The people who wrote this books should be fired. Natural language is loving stupid. Give us proper keywords and sane rules. Really Pants posted:They probably were. That is Wizards SOP, yes.
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Dec 27, 2015 03:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:First off, for the sake of clarity, "1 Action" really means "1 Standard Action", with players getting movement, 1 Standard Action, and 1 Bonus Action on their turn, and then 1 Reaction per round outside of their turns. I have to think there are a couple people in this thread being willfully obtuse about this. Like pretty much all/most of you have been following NEXT/5e long enough to know that this is the parlance used for 5e's action economy, yet when corner cases like this one come up, suddenly everybody's like, "but what IS an action?? is it ANY action?" :iamafag: Both of these things are a loving (standard) action  Do not pass GO, do not take ~The Attack Action~ with your level 5 fighter to make this attack multiple times.  If something takes "an action" it doesn't use "one of your attacks" (this is the language used for things like Shove, Grapple, and various BM Maneuvers.) This isn't that hard.
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Dec 27, 2015 05:23
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P.d0t posted:I have to think there are a couple people in this thread being willfully obtuse about this. Like pretty much all/most of you have been following NEXT/5e long enough to know that this is the parlance used for 5e's action economy, yet when corner cases like this one come up, suddenly everybody's like, "but what IS an action?? is it ANY action?" :iamafag: To be fair I had to check multiple spells to make sure that they also used the same convention, because holy poo poo why would you not call it a Standard Action in a game where "Standard Action" and "any of the two types of Actions" are things that need to be different and distinct.
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Dec 27, 2015 05:33
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Is it really that much of a stretch to believe that people are wondering what the actual intent of the phrase "you can make the attack again on each of your turns as an action" is? In a game where "an extra action" and "a bonus action" are two completely separate things? e: In this case, the difference is between "the attack... as an action" and "the attack action", and it's exactly the sort of thing that keeps tripping up half the people I play with. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Dec 27, 2015 |
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Dec 27, 2015 05:42
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A funny thing happens when you look up "action" and "bonus action" and "extra action" in the index. There are also separate entries for "attack" and "Attack action" and "Extra Attack." I mean, it's a simple problem of them using words like "spell" and "attack" for more than one thing. It's a poor use of jargon, because calling something "an attack" and something else "the attack action" will confuse some people, but it's not like they literally called them the same thing and gave them different meanings. Like, in a homebrew I did, PCs got Encounter Powers and Encounter Reserves, and apparently that makes people think those things are interchangeable and are the same thing but they're not. Why people come to this conclusion, I will probably never understand. Like, the idea that an author used a different word for the same thing and it got missed in editing is a pretty poor assumption to make.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:20
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P.d0t posted:Like, in a homebrew I did, PCs got Encounter Powers and Encounter Reserves, and apparently that makes people think those things are interchangeable and are the same thing but they're not. Why people come to this conclusion, I will probably never understand. Like, the idea that an author used a different word for the same thing and it got missed in editing is a pretty poor assumption to make. This actually makes sense though: the two phrases share a common word, but as whole phrases they're entirely distinct. 5e does that thing where "action" is both an Action and half of the phrase "Bonus Action", which is much more easily misconstrued.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:25
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The attack from Vampiric Touch isn't an attack action, although it consumes the same action as an attack action would. You could get an attack action and the attack from Vampiric Touch as actions in the same turn if you had an extra action (but not a bonus action) on top of your action.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:38
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AlphaDog posted:The attack from Vampiric Touch isn't an attack action, although it consumes the same action as an attack action would. You could get an attack action and the attack from Vampiric Touch as actions in the same turn if you had an extra action, but not if you had a bonus action instead. Yes, but you can't use a Fighter's attack action to use 3 vampiric touches. You can either use Attack action A: and attack 3 times, or Attack Action S: and use the spell attack, you also can't use it as a part of an opportunity attack because that isn't a capital A Action, meaning you can't replace it with the spell attack. I mean yes it's confusing because they threw away 4e's keywords with the bathwater but I'm beginning to get tired of the rules lawyers trying to break 5e's system even more than it already is.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:43
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Kurieg posted:Yes, but you can't use a Fighter's attack action to use 3 vampiric touches. You can either use Attack action A: and attack 3 times, or Attack Action S: and use the spell attack, you also can't use it as a part of an opportunity attack because that isn't a capital A Action, meaning you can't replace it with the spell attack. You can't use the Fighter's attack action to get 3 vampiric touches because the VT attack isn't an attack action. I'm trying to say that "this action with which you are attacking is not the same as an attack action" is fundamentally unclear language and will definitely confuse at least some of the people I play with. I understand how the rules interact in this case and why it's phrased like it is, but that doesn't mean that I think it will be immediately obvious to everyone.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:50
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What if a fighter/mage used Action Surge, could they Vampiric Touch twice?
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Dec 27, 2015 08:23
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Skellybones posted:What if a fighter/mage used Action Surge, could they Vampiric Touch twice? Depends on your definition of "an"
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Dec 27, 2015 08:30
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AlphaDog posted:You can't use the Fighter's attack action to get 3 vampiric touches because the VT attack isn't an attack action. They should have used "standard action" instead of "action" and "basic attack" instead of "attack" (w/r/t The Attack Action) You get to level 5 as a Fighter, you can make 2 basic attacks as a standard action. Anytime you can make a basic attack, you can choose to Shove or Grapple instead. I think that basically covers the rules, no? I don't fundamentally disagree that the wording will confuse some people, but I don't think it will confuse the vaunted ~target audience~, aside from the ones who do this: Kurieg posted:rules lawyers trying to break 5e's system even more than it already is.
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Dec 27, 2015 08:37
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P.d0t posted:They should have used "standard action" instead of "action" and "basic attack" instead of "attack" (w/r/t The Attack Action) Yes, sure. They also should have used something other than either "bonus" or "extra" (or both) actions for those two things. Instead of "Extra Action" say "another Standard Action". Instead of Bonus Action, maybe say "Special Action" - it's one per turn and it's nonstandard additional thing you get to do based on the power/spell that grants it. It turns this: The attack from Vampiric Touch isn't an attack action, although it consumes the same action as an attack action would. You could get an attack action and the attack from Vampiric Touch as actions in the same turn if you had an extra action (but not a bonus action) on top of your action. into this: The attack from Vampiric touch uses your Standard Action. You could get a Basic Attack and the attack from Vampiric touch in the same turn if you had another Standard Action. You don't even need the "neither of these things is a Special Action" clarification because there's no way anyone's going to confuse "another Standard Action" with "a Special Action".
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Dec 27, 2015 09:51
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I mean, you can make an RPG that uses ~*~natural language~*~, you just have to be consistent. And consistency takes effort. And 5e, well...
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Dec 27, 2015 14:15
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AlphaDog posted:The attack from Vampiric Touch isn't an attack action, although it consumes the same action as an attack action would. You could get an attack action and the attack from Vampiric Touch as actions in the same turn if you had an extra action (but not a bonus action) on top of your action. The RAW basically says "VT uses your action" so I don't understand why it needs to further be clarified that "you can't also do a different thing that uses your action (i.e. the Attack action) if you use the VT action." This is really basic action economy stuff. Like, you're basically saying "it's an attack that uses your action, so it is fair for people to think that it counts as an Attack Action" when the Attack Action and the VT action are pretty straightforwardly different things that don't go together. VT is an action that does a specific attack; so is the Attack Action. The fact that they have the same cost in the action economy should tell you all you need to know. Like, is your whole problem the "Bonus Actions aren't bonus Actions" thing? Because that seems to be the bush you're beating around.
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Dec 28, 2015 04:16
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His problem is that the wording is goddamn bonkers poo poo for what should be a really simple concept.
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Dec 28, 2015 06:50
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Bonus Actions aren't bonus Actions and Actions with which you Attack aren't Attack Actions, this is really basic stuff and I can't see why you have a problem with it. Is what I'd say to a new player who I didn't want to come back.
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Dec 28, 2015 08:22
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AlphaDog posted:Is what I'd say to a new player who I didn't want to come back. You're not a new player, but I'm cool if you want to do the second part. I hear a lot of folks like 4e, it's even got its own thread.
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Dec 28, 2015 08:45
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Ah yes, 5e -- noted "edition for everyone, including new players." It's not like Mearls ever told certain demographics of people to not bother playing it. It can be confusing but it isn't unlearnable. That's my point; I'm not actually saying "I can't see why you have a problem with it" to a new player, I'm saying it to you, because I know you have played every edition under the sun and have probably seen worse use of jargon. Like, at the end of the day, there's a pretty clear indication of how the rules are supposed to function, which may be the "meets minimum standards" mark of RPG design.... oh wait no, this is D&D we're talking about.
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Dec 28, 2015 08:46
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I think that a lot of these rulesmanship issues would be smoothed over if it was made clear that it's group consensus and not a specific book passage that's going to provide the answer to questions about how A Thing is supposed to work. I still wouldn't design a game like that, but at least the underlying assumption would be there. Put it in with the core statement right after "d20 + modifiers vs target number"
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Dec 28, 2015 09:06
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P.d0t posted:Ah yes, 5e -- noted "edition for everyone, including new players." It's not like Mearls ever told certain demographics of people to not bother playing it. I understand what you're saying. I understand how the action economy works. My very first post on this topic had the phrase "I agree that the straight reading is that neither of these can be used for Opportunity Attacks". I've played enough different games to know the sorts of things that are going to confuse people, and it's this kind of thing. I've also seen the bonus/extra and Attack / Attack Action thing come up in actual play and it pisses me off that it's worded in such as way that people are getting confused, because it's easy enough to think of a way to word is so that this would never happen. Hello Sailor posted:You're not a new player, but I'm cool if you want to do the second part. I hear a lot of folks like 4e, it's even got its own thread. Hello Sailor posted:4e struck me as trying to emulate an MMO when I read through some of the PHB. The idea of "tabletop MMO" left a sufficiently bad taste in my mouth that I could never get interested in it. 
Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Dec 28, 2015 |
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Dec 28, 2015 09:30
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P.d0t posted:Ah yes, 5e -- noted "edition for everyone, including new players." It's not like Mearls ever told certain demographics of people to not bother playing it. This sums it up pretty well - the wording is godawful but the intent can be surmised by a basic understanding of the action economy and not-quite-actual-keywording framework. THAT SAID....if one of my players got really into the moment and was role playing the poo poo out of their vampiric touch attacks I'd let it slide as long as it was cool, possibly talking with the group after the session about the way the rules are (probably) supposed to interact. I'm not going to let a lovely ruleset make my game suck. gently caress Mike Mearls forever.
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Dec 28, 2015 09:30
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Hello Sailor posted:4e struck me as trying to emulate an MMO when I read through some of the PHB. The idea of "tabletop MMO" left a sufficiently bad taste in my mouth that I could never get interested in it. Hahaha you're an intensely stupid person.
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Dec 28, 2015 09:34
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Ryoshi posted:Hahaha you're an intensely stupid person. Come on, you know he's got a point. 4E has...levels, hit points, armor class and saving throws. Just like OD&D, AD&D, D&D3E and all the other bullshit MMO clones we've seen over the years. Come to think of it, I loving wish more RPG's were designed with an MMO mindset. At least they usually try to give some thought to working math and game balance.
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Dec 28, 2015 10:18
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Comrade Koba posted:Come to think of it, I loving wish more RPG's were designed with an MMO mindset. At least they usually try to give some thought to working math and game balance. 
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Dec 28, 2015 10:21
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