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Rutibex posted:No they don't need to be magic, they already have a Ki system they just need to give it much better options: Or another way you can say this is: Ki already is punch magic and just needs much better options. Toplowtech posted:The current "spend ki" system is poo poo yeah. I think the monk should be an a-la-carte monk techniques menu, you gain new abilities every few level and you can assign your total ki pool each short rest to a weighted by ki cost power(the stronger the ability the higher the cost). Once this is done, you can use those assigned abilties as many time as you want. It would allow you to have various power settings depending on your total ki level, like being at lower level (5 ki to assign) wouldn't allow you to have stunning strike(4 point) and high mobility powers (2 point) so you would need to make choices. In my dream 6E, Monks gain ki points for doing cool martial arts stuff (flurries, dodges, athletic and acrobatic feats, just taking an action to focus or meditate) and then spend those points to activate their extra cool magic-y stuff like Wuxia run-flying, punching through stones, and/or Bender powers. Make it feel sort of like you're putting together combos in a fighting game.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:43
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downtimejesus posted:This season's players guide says this: "Whenever you could gain a level (even if you decline), you may rebuild any aspect of your character.", so its even more flexible now. Nice, well then yeah just Respec at level up.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:04
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PeterWeller posted:Or another way you can say this is: Ki already is punch magic and just needs much better options. 3.5 edition Tome of Battle had the perfect D&D monk. Too bad about the rest of 3rd edition
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Jan 10, 2022 20:33
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My hot take is that the reason monks always suck is because they don't fit at all into the overall theme of the game (fantasy northern Europe) so the designers never quite know what to do with them. The designers don't want to make them too good because "where did your character learn kung fu" and "why doesn't everyone know kung F fu" is always going to be a thorny question in world building based off of European tropes.
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Jan 10, 2022 20:40
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Just pretend that Christian monasteries taught martial arts instead of literacy
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Jan 10, 2022 21:14
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Elephant Parade posted:Just pretend that Christian monasteries taught martial arts instead of literacy Why can't it be both? After all, who else would have both a comprehensive repository of martial arts manuals and the ability to read them? re: previous edition talk - 3.5 had both swordsage and psychic warrior that succeeded at conceptually being Monk But Good, and elements of both got rolled into the actual 4e monk class, which by then was Monk And Good.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:22
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The nobility slowly lose their monopoly on power as more and more commoners learn to do a flying bicycle kick
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Jan 10, 2022 21:22
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Elephant Parade posted:Just pretend that Christian monasteries taught martial arts instead of literacy Can they still make booze though?
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Jan 10, 2022 21:22
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Cthulu Carl posted:Can they still make booze though? How else would they have developed Drunken Fist techniques?
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Jan 10, 2022 21:24
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PeterWeller posted:In my dream 6E, Monks gain ki points for doing cool martial arts stuff (flurries, dodges, athletic and acrobatic feats, just taking an action to focus or meditate) and then spend those points to activate their extra cool magic-y stuff like Wuxia run-flying, punching through stones, and/or Bender powers. Make it feel sort of like you're putting together combos in a fighting game. funny, this is how it works in pathfinder 2e
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Jan 10, 2022 21:32
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100YrsofAttitude posted:As long as I can kill a dragon by punching them in the jaw I’m happy. Maybe they don’t work but I don’t want to have to use a blade or magic if I can help it. Knowing kung fu is too much fun. My monk was the only one to survive Tyranny of Dragons and did more damage to Tiamat than the rest of the party combined, so I can't complain about monk efficacy.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:35
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Dienes posted:My monk was the only one to survive Tyranny of Dragons and did more damage to Tiamat than the rest of the party combined, so I can't complain about monk efficacy. Yeah Monks actually do really well against most big bads, and frankly most people who play them seem to really enjoy their character. Maybe they just have a bit more ... Wisdom.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:44
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pog boyfriend posted:the problem with monks is they are suboptimal but also extremely cool and people want to play them. this is also the problem with ranger Rangers don't seem(?) bad with all the help they have from Tasha's, although I would love to be corrected on that point. I am currently running a Gloomstalker Ranger (archer style, currently at level 3), and the Gloomstalker seems to be a pretty powerful kit, at least so far. It encourages multiclassing to Fighter for action surge, but what Martial Character doesn't want action surge? I do need a way to reliably get into a dark zone though, to really take advantage of Umbral Sight.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:28
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Dienes posted:My monk was the only one to survive Tyranny of Dragons and did more damage to Tiamat than the rest of the party combined, so I can't complain about monk efficacy. Honestly, I don't see what the issue is with them. I don't have the experience to say they are bad now. When we play (just hit lvl 4) I feel a bit "weak". I don't hit as hard as anyone else, but I hit consistently and I'm doing between 8 and 13 damage on a regular basis whereas everyone is go hard or go home. I also don't get hit. IF I do get hit I nearly die. I tend to run on a Life System as opposed to Hit points because I'm fragile, where I only get 2 lives or so before I die, but we've got two healers that are quick to get me out of the danger zone. Since a short rest gets me back the Ki I have I can run into danger without as much fear as others who run on spell slots that disappear for the full day, and our DM is encounter happy. I have my small issues with him. He enjoys throwing us in particularly tough situations to the point that if it's going too well he will deus ex machina an extra challenge to keep us on our toes. I've noticed however that he won't outright kill us either because he wants to have his fun too so it will go both ways if necessary. Plus he is very generous on rewards so whatever. I have no point of reference so it's good enough for me. I get to describe my acrobatic moves, cribbed from beat 'em up games, and we all have a good time. I only barely considered a ranger when thinking of what to make but if I were to make a new character I'd probably make another monk to try out a different subclass. I'm very happy with Drunken Master, they all just look drat cool. To get a taste for magic in another game I'm trying out I made a druid. The fellow is terrific but the class still hasn't wowed me yet, and it's not the druid's fault, I just like being more physical but becoming a beast didn't speak to me as much, so I went Circle of Stars, which adds some delightful flavor. I'm not kidding I love this character, I just don't find the class to be as interesting to play. I'll enjoy it I'm sure, but there's nothing like being a monk in my very limited experience.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:54
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Azathoth posted:My hot take is that the reason monks always suck is because they don't fit at all into the overall theme of the game (fantasy northern Europe) so the designers never quite know what to do with them. The designers don't want to make them too good because "where did your character learn kung fu" and "why doesn't everyone know kung F I don't think it's because Monks don't fit into the general setting. The fantasy northern Europe aspect is only skin deep, and published settings have been answering those questions for decades. I think the problem is Monks can be hard to fit into the part of the game where you progress by finding and looting ever more powerful magical stuff. Arivia posted:funny, this is how it works in pathfinder 2e That's cool, another reason for me to eventually take a look at PF2E.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:02
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PeterWeller posted:I don't think it's because Monks don't fit into the general setting. The fantasy northern Europe aspect is only skin deep, and published settings have been answering those questions for decades. I think the problem is Monks can be hard to fit into the part of the game where you progress by finding and looting ever more powerful magical stuff. I mean they can use equipment like certain weapons and any number of movement and non-armor AC enhancers, but yeah, when you're eschewing armor and weapons this makes for a very reasonable point.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:04
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PeterWeller posted:I don't think it's because Monks don't fit into the general setting. The fantasy northern Europe aspect is only skin deep, and published settings have been answering those questions for decades. I think the problem is Monks can be hard to fit into the part of the game where you progress by finding and looting ever more powerful magical stuff. Yeah, that's a fair point. My thinking in saying "Fantasy Northern Europe" is an emphasis on armor and bladed weapons for combat, which makes it really tough to explain how you punch someone to death who is wearing full plate.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:08
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Drewjitsu posted:Rangers don't seem(?) bad with all the help they have from Tasha's, although I would love to be corrected on that point. Yeah, the Tasha's optional bits really build out Ranger into something worthwhile. Swarmkeeper and Fey Wanderer are pretty awesome, too. I don't think there's any danger of building something broken with Ranger but it's very easy to be strong and capable now.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:13
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Yeah, the Tasha's optional bits really build out Ranger into something worthwhile. Swarmkeeper and Fey Wanderer are pretty awesome, too. I don't think there's any danger of building something broken with Ranger but it's very easy to be strong and capable now. My current campaign has a level 10 swarmkeeper ranger and while they're not broken like our barbarian, they hold their own against the rest of the party.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:15
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Azathoth posted:Yeah, that's a fair point. My thinking in saying "Fantasy Northern Europe" is an emphasis on armor and bladed weapons for combat, which makes it really tough to explain how you punch someone to death who is wearing full plate. I mean if we're going with 'realistic' ideas about plate armor then we should probably acknowledge based on what we know that a lot of fights between plate wearing people devolved into grapples and there are a lot of images of them punching each other  But more than that, Monks are magical and in a magical setting. They're always people who have used some kind of supernatural techniques to strengthen their bodies and perform impossible feats. I dunno why we have a hard time accepting that versus the wizard throwing fire around. Or hell the wizard doing the same thing but less efficiently with buff spells.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:15
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Azathoth posted:My current campaign has a level 10 swarmkeeper ranger and while they're not broken like our barbarian, they hold their own against the rest of the party. I lied I've also considered making a the barbarian who is part beast or something. Again I just want to not have to use a weapon. Bows are ok, hence the passing interest in rangers I guess, but even that was all about using the pet first and foremost.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:18
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tbh monks running off of psionics or arcane magic cheapens them for me. those are valid options, but my personal preference is for them to achieve their brand of superhumanity through spiritualist traditions, esoteric physical practices, secret martial arts, and so on. obviously you can frame those things as means of tapping into psionics or magic, but again, I feel like that only cheapens and demystifies them in the same way classifying a dragon's breath as "magic" and letting it be dispelled cheapens dragons.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:33
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Zore posted:I mean if we're going with 'realistic' ideas about plate armor then we should probably acknowledge based on what we know that a lot of fights between plate wearing people devolved into grapples and there are a lot of images of them punching each other I think think there's a degree of Orientalism at play in how the class has historically been presented mechanically: "Yes the monk is a magic fight man with magic fists, but he's also an ASIAN magic fight man with magic fists, so the magic he uses is all mysterious and different from the stuff the wizard is throwing around and thus must work in a completely different mechanical subsystem..."
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Jan 10, 2022 23:38
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KingKalamari posted:I think think there's a degree of Orientalism at play in how the class has historically been presented mechanically: "Yes the monk is a magic fight man with magic fists, but he's also an ASIAN magic fight man with magic fists, so the magic he uses is all mysterious and different from the stuff the wizard is throwing around and thus must work in a completely different mechanical subsystem..." weirdly 3e was pretty good at this, monks were a separate class but none of the mechanics were actually separate or different. it's just Wis-based supernatural abilities, they had a different style but nothing super Orientalist in the class chassis in and of itself.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:41
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KingKalamari posted:I think think there's a degree of Orientalism at play in how the class has historically been presented mechanically: "Yes the monk is a magic fight man with magic fists, but he's also an ASIAN magic fight man with magic fists, so the magic he uses is all mysterious and different from the stuff the wizard is throwing around and thus must work in a completely different mechanical subsystem..."
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Jan 10, 2022 23:42
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Elephant Parade posted:I mean, Asia had different spiritual traditions from Europe. I don't think trying to model that is necessarily Orientalist, though the execution might be D&D's monk is not really based in any actual research about Asia though, it's all stereotypes about martial arts from David Carradine through 80s/90s ninja movies (Len Kabasinski style) and so on. It's an adaptation of an Orientalist (in the common Internet idea of it being about how the West interacts with the Far East and cultural ideas there) discourse in and of itself, and it's really difficult to say that ISN'T Orientalist.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:47
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Elephant Parade posted:tbh monks running off of psionics or arcane magic cheapens them for me. those are valid options, but my personal preference is for them to achieve their brand of superhumanity through spiritualist traditions, esoteric physical practices, secret martial arts, and so on. obviously you can frame those things as means of tapping into psionics or magic, but again, I feel like that only cheapens and demystifies them in the same way classifying a dragon's breath as "magic" and letting it be dispelled cheapens dragons. KingKalamari posted:I think think there's a degree of Orientalism at play in how the class has historically been presented mechanically: "Yes the monk is a magic fight man with magic fists, but he's also an ASIAN magic fight man with magic fists, so the magic he uses is all mysterious and different from the stuff the wizard is throwing around and thus must work in a completely different mechanical subsystem..."
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Jan 10, 2022 23:48
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Honestly, I don't see what the issue is with them. I don't have the experience to say they are bad now. When we play (just hit lvl 4) I feel a bit "weak". I don't hit as hard as anyone else, but I hit consistently and I'm doing between 8 and 13 damage on a regular basis whereas everyone is go hard or go home. When people rag on Monks it's mostly from a damage standpoint. If that sort of thing is something you want to read more about, here's a big dumb effortpost: As someone who played a Monk through three tiers of play, in my opinion where you're at at level 4 is pretty much the sweet spot for Monks in terms of relative strength in your party. All the other martials are only swinging once while you're getting multiple attacks per turn, so it feels like the monk is super cool and different. However, this is going to even out next level when you and the other martials get Extra Attack. Assuming all attacks hit, their average damage per round will double while yours will only increase by about 40%, and then theirs will keep rising higher and higher as they get more abilities while yours will effectively stay more or less the same, forever. The fighter will get maneuvers or other subclass features that deal lots of damage, the rogue's sneak attack will keep scaling, the ranger will get spells and other stacking damage bonuses, the paladin will get stronger divine smites and more spell slots to use them. For you, every five or so levels your martial arts die will increase. This is an average of one extra point of damage per hit. When the party is level 10+, enemies have HP in the hundreds, and your allies will all be rolling handfuls of d6's and d8's per attack, while your average damage will effectively be more or less the same as was back at level 5. You'll also get Stunning Strike, which is great fun when it lands, but the more the levels climb the higher the monsters' Con saves will be and the more likely they'll be to save. You can try to help this by using your ASIs to pump your Wisdom, but doing so neglects your Dex, so now you're less likely to hit with your attacks and when you do you do less damage. Also, even attempting a Stun will burn a ki point, so that's one less time you can use your Flurry of Blows until the next rest so oops your average damage per round is even lower now. For the flippy acrobatic Kung Fu flavor, monk is outstanding, so if that's what you care about them absolutely have a great time! What people are saying is, mechanically it's a good distance behind the rest of the martial classes when it comes to the amount of damage it puts out, which is more or less valid of an argument depending on what you want out of a class and the style of game at your table, so ymmv 
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Jan 11, 2022 00:07
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Arivia posted:D&D's monk is not really based in any actual research about Asia though, it's all stereotypes about martial arts from David Carradine through 80s/90s ninja movies (Len Kabasinski style) and so on. It's an adaptation of an Orientalist (in the common Internet idea of it being about how the West interacts with the Far East and cultural ideas there) discourse in and of itself, and it's really difficult to say that ISN'T Orientalist. Infinite Karma posted:Yeah... we've got arcane magic and divine magic and primal magic and psychic magic and monstrous magic and spirit magic and bestowed/tainted magic that are all available to various characters in various ways, and can have a bunch of in-fiction ways of describing them even when the rules describe identical effects. Why are Monks the ones who are ??? MYSTERIOUS but Warlocks and Druids and Bards and Barbarians are perfectly explicable?
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Jan 11, 2022 00:20
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Arivia posted:D&D's monk is not really based in any actual research about Asia though, it's all stereotypes about martial arts from David Carradine through 80s/90s ninja movies (Len Kabasinski style) and so on. It's an adaptation of an Orientalist (in the common Internet idea of it being about how the West interacts with the Far East and cultural ideas there) discourse in and of itself, and it's really difficult to say that ISN'T Orientalist. I suppose you're right to some degree but aren't they also kinda based on stuff from China in the 70's-80's like Fist of the White Lotus, Kid with the Golden Arm, 5 Deadly Venoms etc?
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Jan 11, 2022 00:27
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Arivia posted:D&D's monk is not really based in any actual research about Asia though, it's all stereotypes about martial arts from David Carradine through 80s/90s ninja movies (Len Kabasinski style) and so on. It's an adaptation of an Orientalist (in the common Internet idea of it being about how the West interacts with the Far East and cultural ideas there) discourse in and of itself, and it's really difficult to say that ISN'T Orientalist. Now I want a Daoist monk class that specializes in making alchemical potions
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Jan 11, 2022 00:28
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Moose King posted:When people rag on Monks it's mostly from a damage standpoint. That's fair I guess. It just takes them far too long to feel as effective as you'd like huh. The game is ultimately about that, killing things with big numbers. Sure there's roleplay and flavor, but maybe the core is still the action. I feel there must be a place for a monk. I'm planning on being able to soften up mobs so others can AOE while I just dodge out of the way. I feel like that's a way I can really be useful on a battle field aside from just stunning strike. I want to get Crusher to be able to keep enemies trapped in thorns and the like while I dance around it not giving a gently caress. Grab attention while they whiff at me and I redirect strikes onto other mobs. I'm not huge on numbers go up so I think it'll be ok but it's definitely a fair critique.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:36
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imagine dungeons posted:I suppose you're right to some degree but aren't they also kinda based on stuff from China in the 70's-80's like Fist of the White Lotus, Kid with the Golden Arm, 5 Deadly Venoms etc? My understanding is that the OD&D/1e monk was Gygax and friends watching Carradine's Kung Fu. That changes little during that edition. 2e, like with other non-core classes, has a mess of different versions, but the "classic" monk really doesn't appear for most of the edition until SKR's The Scarlet Brotherhood, and that's a specifically retrospective approach that's just "gygax with some updated mechanics." And then when you get to 3e it gets pretty diverse and I can believe that the people working on the 3e monk did look at other inspiration but it was by and large just "watch martial arts stuff" from White dudes in Seattle looking at that as a genre, not a specific examination of martial arts films that are originally Chinese versus American or whatever. You've got direct inspiration from The Drunken Master, absolutely.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:39
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Arivia posted:My understanding is that the OD&D/1e monk was Gygax and friends watching Carradine's Kung Fu. That changes little during that edition. 2e, like with other non-core classes, has a mess of different versions, but the "classic" monk really doesn't appear for most of the edition until SKR's The Scarlet Brotherhood, and that's a specifically retrospective approach that's just "gygax with some updated mechanics." And then when you get to 3e it gets pretty diverse and I can believe that the people working on the 3e monk did look at other inspiration but it was by and large just "watch martial arts stuff" from White dudes in Seattle looking at that as a genre, not a specific examination of martial arts films that are originally Chinese versus American or whatever. You've got direct inspiration from The Drunken Master, absolutely. Yeah, I suppose you’re right on the origin of it. At least they’ve expanded upon it somewhat in the subsequent years.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:46
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When I played Kensei Monk I felt like I didn't have a lot of options in combat and most of my turns came down to running up to things and hitting them and sometimes stunning them and nothing else. My DM claims that if I had wanted to I could have attempted to do things like grappling to achieve battlefield control effects like Judo throwing them around but I never actually was told this so I switched to my Wizard; plus the one time I tried to do something clever and climbed up onto a dragon that was doing bombing runs on us like I was playing Shadow of the Colossus it just made me easier to hit and didn't inconvenience the dragon at all. Which discouraged me from trying to do creative kungfu things with Monk. If there's ever a new campaign where I feel tempted to try Monk I might give it another go if its clear to me before hand that I have more options than what the rules say per se but on its face it never really worked out to what I wanted to do in my head. I wanted to be like this super mobile DPS striker to weave in and out of enemy crowds to take out their squishies especially since I could also fly being Dragonborn with wings but this only ever ended up with me completely surrounded and overwhelmed by all the enemies I'm now in the middle of (and also inadvertently made it harder for our wizards to fire ball the clump of enemies). e to add: IIRC Europe has a rich history of martial arts going all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:07
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Mechanically monk could benefit from Way of the Open Hand's features just being baseline, but I feel like that could be said about a lot of the Martial classes and their "vanilla" subclasses.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:18
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Arivia posted:My understanding is that the OD&D/1e monk was Gygax and friends watching Carradine's Kung Fu. That changes little during that edition. 2e, like with other non-core classes, has a mess of different versions, but the "classic" monk really doesn't appear for most of the edition until SKR's The Scarlet Brotherhood, and that's a specifically retrospective approach that's just "gygax with some updated mechanics." And then when you get to 3e it gets pretty diverse and I can believe that the people working on the 3e monk did look at other inspiration but it was by and large just "watch martial arts stuff" from White dudes in Seattle looking at that as a genre, not a specific examination of martial arts films that are originally Chinese versus American or whatever. You've got direct inspiration from The Drunken Master, absolutely. If we wanted to get really pedantic, an argument could be made for a six degrees of separation situation between the original monk and 70s/80s Hong Kong action films: The original Kung Fu tv series was itself basically an attempt to adapt the emerging wave of 1970s chopsocky concept for a western audience and, if the reports of Bruce Lee's widow are believed, was heavily based on a concept originally developed by Lee himself. While the initial genesis of the Monk in 1st edition was directly based on the tv series, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some 1970s Hong Kong cinema snuck in there by osmosis, given that the timeframe for the class' creation in Gygax's home game would have been right in the midst of the 70s kung fu craze and Gygax openly admits the class was based on hazy at best recollections of the tv series. This is, of course, not to undermine or contest your original point, I just don't get very much opportunity to flex the weirdly specific knowledge I have about the creation of this tv show I never watched...
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Jan 11, 2022 01:54
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Bottom Liner posted:The problem is that all that movement doesn't mean much in most encounters and all those attacks aren't going to hit very hard. Monk has cool flavor but the numbers are just terrible. Either you're discussing the generic monk, or you never have outdoor encounters in your campaign. Being able to move 65 feet up to someone, attack, and then move 65 feet back is the equivalent of being untouchable in many encounters outdoors. Or indoors, if space permits. Hasted, the Alt/Monk can make two spear attacks, Booming Blade, and two unarmed strikes. That's a potential of 5d10 + 2d8 +23 damage, for an average of 59.5 damage; not L11 paladin output, or Great Weapon Master output, but respectable. I only assumed a single +1 weapon for magic; if you picked up an Eldritch Claw tattoo, you're doing another point per unarmed strike and can add 1d6 force to every hit. I suppose I could add the Hunter's Mark spell to the appropriate spell list. which stacks up another 5d6 potential damage. But I'm not expecting Paladin-levels of damage output here. Moose King posted:You'll also get Stunning Strike, which is great fun when it lands, but the more the levels climb the higher the monsters' Con saves will be and the more likely they'll be to save. You can try to help this by using your ASIs to pump your Wisdom, but doing so neglects your Dex, so now you're less likely to hit with your attacks and when you do you do less damage. Also, even attempting a Stun will burn a ki point, so that's one less time you can use your Flurry of Blows until the next rest so oops your average damage per round is even lower now. I wonder if it would be a viable solution to decouple Stunning Strike from ki entirely and replace it with an X times per short rest? The question is what X should be to keep monks viable without making them too good at locking down a single foe for a whole combat. Somewhere in the 3-5 range? Clearly the uses should increase with level as those saves are going to get better and better on opponents. Malpais Legate posted:Mechanically monk could benefit from Way of the Open Hand's features just being baseline, but I feel like that could be said about a lot of the Martial classes and their "vanilla" subclasses. I found my Open Hand monk was almost always trying to knock prone to get advantage; that certainly helps the monk, but the superstar melee classes benefit much more from advantage, so it boosts them as much or more. Class comparisons often ignore these synergies, though, and assume PCs aren't operating as a unit. Monks are finesse characters, concentrating on delivering a smaller amount of damage to a precise point on the battlefield while being hard to pin down. You put yourself in the right place to make a clutch move. That makes them much easier to play poorly than most of the other classes, and more vulnerable to various kinds of encounter design: if you're in a megadungeon and every encounter is "monsters or PCs hold a 5' doorway" being a monk will suck. My limited sense is that certain classes work much better or worse depending upon campaign-specific factors like battlefield size or number of short rests; if you're doing theater of the mind, monks get more powerful, and if you're always using a very restrictive map they are going to have problems (barring picking up Misty Step or being a higher-level Shadow Monk).
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Jan 11, 2022 02:05
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Elephant Parade posted:Just pretend that Christian monasteries taught martial arts instead of literacy That's kind of what my DM did in his homebrew. Clerics serve the living/active gods while Monks are dedicated to the memories of the dead/ascended gods as well as the elemental planes. Paladins can go both ways.
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Jan 11, 2022 02:34
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pog boyfriend posted:it is an issue with rule wording because you have to ignore the writing in the book(there is no other provided definition of spells), all retained legacy information from previous editions, and trust jeremy crawfords statements on twitter implicitly to disprove it. i dont trust sage advice as far as i can throw it... but with that said -- i do think you have a very compelling argument here after reading other posts crawford made, and if they had said more clearly something to the tune of "in 5th edition effects are only considered spells if they explicitly call themselves spells and have spell levels" with a chart delineating different categories of magical effects it would be a better written game. but either way if someone told me "sorry, you cant dispel their potion effect because it isnt actually a spell" i would still politely excuse myself from the game but i would at least now that you posted this think they are being a stickler for RAW and running a game in a way i dont find interesting Sorry I'm late to this discussion about Dispel Magic on potions (catching up after being away over the break), and I'm just a lurker who doesn't post often... but I have played a lot of 5e and I think it's crazy that people can't tell the difference between "a spell" and "magic". Magic is something that is everywhere in the world (including the Weave, but not exclusively), a spell is something that uses the Weave to create an effect. A spell is a type of magic, but that doesn't mean all magic comes from a spell This is not ambiguous in the rules, either. This sentence has been analysed a lot, let's look at it again PHB posted:A spell is a discrete magical effect, a single shaping of the magical energies that suffuse the multiverse into a specific, limited expression" Infinite Karma posted:In terms of being able to interact with various effects and abilites, Dispel Magic lets you cancel out various magical effects which are typically represented by discrete spalls. This is a crazy interpretation. The description for Dispel Magic specifically mentions "Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends" not any "spell effect or any magic". It is never designed to let you cancel out "various magical effects". As for the difference between spells and magic rarely made, that's crazy too. There are heaps and heaps of things that are "magic" but aren't "spells". Here are a few: I have a magical dagger +1. Can dispel magic remove the +1? No. A dragon can magically breath acid. Does dispel magic remove the dragon's ability to use its breathweapon? No. My wizard is getting attacked by a skeleton. Is the skeleton animated by magic? Yes. Can the wizard cast "dispel magic" to stop animating the skeleton? No. My rogue fails a CON save against a medusa's gaze attack. She is magically turned to stone. Does "Dispel Magic" return the rogue to normal? No, the DMG explicitly says "Greater restoration or similar" is required, and Dispel Magic (3rd level, works on spells) is not similar to Greater Restoration (5th level, 100gp, works on conditions). If they were similar, there's not a single use for Greater Restoration, since Dispel Magic would work on everything and be easier and cheaper. Had a stat lowered by a draining attack? Oh no worries, it's a magical draining, so just cast Dispel Magic, no need for Greater Restoration, despite that being one of the specific uses for the spell. There are heaps and heaps of things that are magic but aren't spells. Potions of Giant Growth are just one of them. If you think it shouldn't be, and that it's actually a spell, I ask you this... can you Counterspell someone drinking a potion to stop it working? Counterspell also works on spells, just like Dispel Magic. The spells are quite similar, one works on spells as they're being cast, the other works on spell effects after they've been cast. But the idea of casting counterspell on someone drinking a potion seems... idiotic. I've DMd and played hundreds of games with this interpretation and never had anyone try to Counterspell a potion, nor have I had anyone interpret Dispel Magic as the people in this thread. Even Jeremy Crawford seems pretty clear on the rules and his explanations haven't swayed people in this thread, just because it messes with their headcanon. 
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Jan 11, 2022 02:35
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