Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Whether or not it is exhaustive isn't relevant. Also, squinting hard enough to misread that particular sentence doesn't somehow make every other sentence vanish.
If you honestly believed that "A or B" can mean "A, B, both or neither" for this sort of phrasing, then you'd be insisting that True Strike with a Dagger was both a Melee and Ranged attack, that you could have Radiant/Slashing attacks, that monsters could be Fey/Humanoid, and so forth. Essentially, you're trying to argue that every sort of exclusive categorization in D&D - all of which use the same phrasing - are actually just overlapping properties - all of which explicitly state that they are non-exclusive properties.
I can assure you that I am wearing my glasses, so no need to squint. 🤓
However, I haven’t seen any other sentences that change my reading. Which ones are you referring to?
How I read the situation for True Strike does not change how I would read the other situations you describe: that’s a false inference.
(Interestingly, though, WoTC did actually experiment with dual creature types in the UA article where they first presented the Centaur and Minotaur in 5e: they were both Humanoid/Monstrosity. Thus, creature types aren’t necessarily exclusive: they have chosen not to assign more than one to any creature.)
This would be a really good point if there were anything, anywhere, in the D&D rules saying "An attack is a weapon attack or a spell attack".
I think the thing you're referring to is this sentence from chapter 1 of the Player's Handbook:
And what you're saying is that you believe it was the intention of the designers of the rules for this to serve as a definitive statement — the only such statement in the rules — that an attack cannot be both a weapon attack and a spell attack?
To be clear, I'm not even saying I think True Strike is supposed to be both; I'm just saying that it seems really weird to read that sentence as anything other than an introduction to a paragraph explaining how you roll damage for things. The idea that that sentence is meant to establish or define anything about rules concepts is bizarre.
pronouns: he/she/they
It's not just that particular sentence. It's that entire paragraph - which ends with explicitly calling out two different rules structures for the two different forms of attack. As well as every other sentence in the entirety of the rules which references attacks and damage. Heck, they even have charts display types of attacks as non-overlapping categories.
Can you find a single example, anywhere in the rules, of any statement that would lead you to believe something can be both a spell and a weapon? It would go a lot faster for you to find any rule, anywhere, that supports your interpretation rather than ask me to copy huge swathes of the PHB that support the idea that they're mutually exclusive categories.
I'm not asking you to do anything.
All I'm saying is that the question of whether True Strike should count as a weapon attack, a spell attack, or both does not have a clear answer in the rules, and that in the absence of an official ruling, there are several equally valid interpretations. The interpretation you're presenting is certainly one of those, but you're acting like it's clearly and obviously the only one anyone could possibly have.
pronouns: he/she/they
True Strike: "you make one attack with the weapon used in the spell’s casting". This is not 'ambiguous'. It is explicit text telling you it's a weapon attack.
If you had any remaining doubt: "The attack uses your spellcasting ability for the attack and damage rolls instead of using Strength or Dexterity.". Since spell attacks use your spellcasting ability and weapon attacks use Strength/Dexterity, the only way this line makes any sense is if the attack was a weapon attack.
To make the argument that it's 'ambiguous', you need to come up with some sort of support - any support at all - for an interpretation that conflicts with the actual text of the rules. So far, you've come up completely empty on that front.
Yes, I understand your position. I hope it works out well for you.
pronouns: he/she/they
No disagreement: True Strike is a Weapon Attack. However,
Spell Attack
A spell attack is an attack roll made as part of a spell or another magical effect. See also “Spells” (“Casting Spells”).
It also seems to meet that definition.
That might not be Rule As Intended. I fully accept that you might have inferred the intent of the rules and be playing it correctly. However, people carefully reading the rules can in good faith come to different conclusions that are supported by the text.
Spell Attacks and Weapon Attacks have specific, incompatible rules and are detailed in separate chapters.
Spell Attacks use your spellcasting ability. Weapon Attacks use Strength or Dexterity. While these can be modified in a variety of ways, they are explicit modifications from the baseline that acknowledge the underlying rule. A hybrid Spell/Weapon Attack can't exist without directly resolving this conflict (such a rule does not exist in any published material I've seen). In the case of True Strike, the attack cannot be a Spell Attack because it is (a) explicitly stated as a weapon attack and (b) explicitly stated as using Strength/Dexterity prior to modification by the spell and thus doesn't satisfy the conditions for 'Spell Attack'.
Similarly, Spell Damage does not add your ability modifier while Weapon Damage does (and Weapon Damage adds the wrong ability as well). Again, this can be modified by explicit rules but the absence of any rules for Spell/Weapon hybrid damage leaves this conflict unresolved. With True Strike, this is only helpful in verifying that a given lump of damage can either be 'spell' or 'weapon', not both simultaneously.
If we read nothing but True Strike's spell description, we might be confused about whether the additional d6's of Radiant damage is damage from the spell or damage from the weapon. Thus, the "can it critical?" question. If it can critical, it must be associated with the weapon attack roll - and thus be weapon damage. If it can't critical, it would be spell damage unrelated to the attack roll (other than being triggered by the successful attack).
To answer that question requires reading the rest of the rules to see how they phrase similar abilities - most notably Sneak Attack. We know that Sneak Attack damage can critical and it provides the template for all of the uses of 'extra' damage on an attack.
Simply pointing out one snippet of rules where it can be read both ways does not counter the rules where it cannot possibly read both ways. Every argument made to support the notion of a hybrid Spell/Weapon attack applies equally well to a hybrid Ranged/Melee attack or a hybrid Unarmed/Weapon attack - there are places in the rules where you might argument it's not clear but those unclear sections do not overrule the parts of the rules where it is absolutely clear that such hybrids do not exist.