Cereal Nommer @ CerealNommer @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

Your RPG StackExchange answer admits near the end “[…]as written, Tricksy Darkness has no effect because it doesn’t explicitly mention preventing nonmagical illumination, it’s logical to assume that it was intended to do something[…]“ The assumption that it should do something is the basis for the author’s claim that it blocks non-magical light.

Magical darkness behaves exactly like normal darkness in 2014 5e and 2024 5e, unless other rules modify its behavior. By default, it doesn’t block line of sight, darkvision, magical light, or even non-magical light unless something specifically says it does, like in the darkness spell for instance.

That all said, Tricksy wouldn’t do anything if it didn’t block nonmagical illumination, so it’s reasonable to run it as though it does.

That’s my point. It never says it blocks even non-magical illumination, so therefore, does functionally nothing.

And running it as though it doesn’t block nonmagical darkness results in nonsensical behavior. You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches.

You’re in a torchlit chamber and use the ability - now there’s a cube of darkness, blocking the light of all four nonmagical torches nothing. Just illuminated by torchlight until a rule update does something other than make it bigger to fix the issue.

But Umbral Sight works with normal darkness too, and if it doesn't prevent magical or non-magical light from illuminating it, people don't have to rely on darkvision to see them in that magical darkness (if it's illuminated by anything). At least the Hallow darkness effect prevents illumination, so that does work for Gloom stalkers, but this is quite literally useless.

Hiding the spell and the action it takes are kind of superfluous to the jumping rule that says "[...] each foot you clear on the jump costs a foot of movement."

Update: We finished the campaign last night on Friday the 13th (9/13/24). We all got out alive, with the majority of our loot, from the 23rd level, at level 19 (334411 XP 😁), but opted not to fight Halaster in the condition we were in.

All the information is on the task.

But you'd have to go outside the walls to get to the turrets. And you're in a situation where you have someone who can cast 8th level spells. I'm not sure this advice is sound. 🤨

You don't even need to homebrew. Spell scrolls exist. It's not unreasonable to think a spell scroll of mighty fortress would be stored away for safekeeping somewhere for a long time before the PCs find it. 👍🏻

Still better than the 50,000 gp construction cost and 400 days for a "Keep or small castle" using Building a Stronghold. Actual time spent on labor amounts to a minute per week for a high enough level wizard.

Well, technically it doesn't say your connecting walls have to be straight, just 80 feet long. Not exactly sure how you're going to make them connect up into a hexagon or star out of "four turrets with square bases, each one 20 feet on a side and 30 feet tall, with one turret on each corner", but if you've got a diagram I'd love to see it. 😆

The spell mighty fortress is very specific about the size and shape of the castle it makes, but not about where walls are connected. Both are 120' square areas with four 20' turrets connected by 80' walls, but the second one you get more interior space and can access your turrets without leaving the outer walls.

You can make it permanent if you cast it 53 times, and by the time you hit level 15, 500gp for a week of downtime with comfort and security is occasionally worth it. Our druid/cleric regularly casts greater restoration rather than wait for me to prepare remove curse the next morning.

No. The worst is when, their attempts to thwart you don't stop you from executing the plan, but do stop the plan from working, and then they blame you for your infeasible scheme failing— like they all knew it would.

Well, at least they promised that rumors of a planned $30 subscription fee weren't true.

I mean this site is hardly the big budget Triple-A title equivalent of D&D. It'd be more like if the new version of Twitter/𝕏 did that.

Yeah, that's not exclusionary, nor does it have any bearing on the two sentences necessary for the meme combo. In any other circumstance everyone would rightfully be calling BS on that kind of cherry-picking.

If someone were claiming:

"Well it specifically says favored enemy and you made friends with Bob's Orc character last session, so you no longer have advantage to track him."

or:

“Cavaliers also learn how to guard those in their charge from harm, […]“ You’re not the boss of this noble you’re escorting so you’re Protection reaction doesn’t work to save him.

they would be derisively ignored. And rightly so.

A statement explaining you can use the following ability for this typical use case, does not mean “THIS IS THE ONLY USE FOR THE FOLLOWING ABILITY! THIS USE AND NO OTHER!!“

You trigger after you take damage but before you fall unconscious, like numerous other triggers in the game. I just used the Strength Before Death example because it shows even without magic there's enough time to squeeze a whole ass turn in between those two events.

Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.

They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲

It actually does say you can choose if you move, several things about when you can choose to move, and lots of stuff about when you can’t move or how much it cost you to move, or to move in certain ways, but you’re correct that (unless you’re using the Variant: Playing on a Grid) the game rules never specifically say the character moving gets to choose where they move, only how far.

Of note; certain game effects, such as the frightened condition, or the effects of spells like dissonant whispers or confusion can limit, enhance or control certain aspects of a character’s movement that might need to be wordier if a specific blanket general rule explicitly said players can choose where to move.

Also of note; The example given in the rule for using the Ready action if “you choose to move up to your speed” (emphasis mine) is “If the goblin steps next to me, I move away.” This example implies that you do at least choose which direction, at least in general, you’re moving when you choose how much to move, even if you don’t get to choose exactly where to move to.

Another noteworthy rule; Becoming Lost under the Wilderness Survival section clearly indicates a circumstance where the characters do not decide where to move, but the do determine a desired direction and a successful ability check allows them to move in that direction.

Certain exceptions apply; for instance, some means of movement such as the spell dimension door do allow to choose exactly where to move, (certain restrictions apply,) or if a creature is an independent mount is “it moves and acts as it wishes.” (Being an exception based game certain rules may contradict that creature’s wishes, such as the rule that says you can move up to your speed on your turn.)