D&D 5E Spells, Targetting, and Glass Windows

[TiQuinn]

Agreed, but at the same time I think that the opinion of the person who is in charge of the rules and was specifically the lead on the PHB where these rules are found, should inform the discussion on unclear parts of the rules.

Except that there were times that Mike Mearls disagreed with him on some of these rules and interpreted things differently, which occasionally came out in interviews. Had it been Mearls providing the Sage Advice, we’d have had a different perspective, so even though Crawford liked to pose things authoritatively, even amongst the lead designers there were different interpretations.

FWIW, I listened to that podcast multiple times years ago, and I get why he interprets it that way, and I get it for the sake of consistency. But I found his attempts to explain how that magical edge case worked narratively to be quite less than convincing. His design style has always been a bit lawyerly for me, and not to my liking.

 

[Oofta]

Man I wish people would stop repeating "rulings not rules" as if it were an excuse for the 1000 page ruleset to have failed to account for some basic stuff.

"Rulings not rules" is totally acceptable for your slim, concise game meant to empower the GM to tell a story at the players.

We've had these arguments for every edition of D&D. Almost as if coming up with rules for a fairly complex game is not a simple task and people like to argue.

Personally I think the rule is clear, if people want to rule otherwise that's fine as well.

 

[Oofta]

Except that there were times that Mike Mearls disagreed with him on some of these rules and interpreted things differently, which occasionally came out in interviews. Had it been Mearls providing the Sage Advice, we’d have had a different perspective, so even though Crawford liked to pose things authoritatively, even amongst the lead designers there were different interpretations.

FWIW, I listened to that podcast multiple times years ago, and I get why he interprets it that way, and I get it for the sake of consistency. But I found his attempts to explain how that magical edge case worked narratively to be quite less than convincing. His design style has always been a bit lawyerly for me, and not to my liking.

Mearls tended to say how he ran the game, not what the best interpretation was.

 

[TiQuinn]

We've had these arguments for every edition of D&D. Almost as if coming up with rules for a fairly complex game is not a simple task and people like to argue.

Personally I think the rule is clear, if people want to rule otherwise that's fine as well.

Yeah, I can appreciate that it’s not easy, but I also think if one is going to claim “rulings, not rules” then don’t create rules that need the level of precise parsing that targeting has in 5th edition.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, I can appreciate that it’s not easy, but I also think if one is going to claim “rulings, not rules” then don’t create rules that need the level of precise parsing that targeting has in 5th edition.

I think it's just the nature of the loose simulationist nature of D&D along with trying to avoid super technical game speak.

There are other approaches to games of course, some more restrictive and others that don't even really try other than perhaps group consensus. But with D&D's approach? There are always going to be edge cases.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think it's just the nature of the loose simulationist nature of D&D along with trying to avoid super technical game speak.

There are other approaches to games of course, some more restrictive and others that don't even really try other than perhaps group consensus. But with D&D's approach? There are always going to be edge cases.

It’s not the worst edge case in the world, to be fair. I can count on one hand in all the years of me playing 5e how many times the window situation came up in my games.

 

[Hriston]

In my original reply to @Hriston I mentioned that while I agree with them that RAW total cover requires concealment, in my opinion that was not RAI, which lead to referring back to Crawford.

I misinterpreted you then because, while I understood that you agreed a transparent pane of glass does not conceal a target, you also seemed to be saying it was "clear" from context that concealment is not required for total cover according to the rules, which of course is false. It wasn't clear to me you were talking about intent, which I assume is what was written since, as I said, it would have been trivial to change the language with the errata, and it was not.

 

[Reynard]

We've had these arguments for every edition of D&D. Almost as if coming up with rules for a fairly complex game is not a simple task and people like to argue.

Personally I think the rule is clear, if people want to rule otherwise that's fine as well.

3.5 was a much more complete ruleset. It actually gave DCs for actions and explained the exceptions.

 

[Oofta]

3.5 was a much more complete ruleset. It actually gave DCs for actions and explained the exceptions.

Except the DCs were largely meaningless, they gave the illusion of specificity. If I wanted a wall that was difficult, but possible, for the PCs to climb I looked at the wall table to figure out how to describe the wall to get appropriate DC.

That, and there were never-ending additions trying to plug the holes and patch exceptions. Even then there were plenty of arguments and edge cases.

 

[briggart]

I misinterpreted you then because, while I understood that you agreed a transparent pane of glass does not conceal a target, you also seemed to be saying it was "clear" from context that concealment is not required for total cover according to the rules, which of course is false. It wasn't clear to me you were talking about intent, which I assume is what was written since, as I said, it would have been trivial to change the language with the errata, and it was not.

I could have been clearer. And to be fair, it’s possible that being aware of Crawford discussion of RAI influenced how I interpreted the “context” I was referring to.