"You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
The spell's text makes clear that the attack comes through the hand, not from the caster. Nothing is going on in the space between the caster and the target anymore. Like with Spiritual Weapon, the spell attack is made from the spell's earlier effect rather than the caster. Which means there is no cover.
I definitely come down on the side of the "creating a skeletal hand" bit as being merely flavor text.
That flavor is beside the point when it comes time to actually roll. I argue the fact that it's still a *ranged* spell attack (despite the flavor saying the hand is in the same space as the target) supports the fact that it has to obey the same cover/LOS rules any other ranged spell attack would have to make.
"You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
The spell's text makes clear that the attack comes through the hand, not from the caster. Nothing is going on in the space between the caster and the target anymore. Like with Spiritual Weapon, the spell attack is made from the spell's earlier effect rather than the caster. Which means there is no cover.
Spiritual Weapon doesn't ignore cover. If you want a clear-cut case of this, have your DM make you a level 11 Swarmkeeper to fight.
Line of effect one (caster to point of origin) must respect cover to place the hand. So no cover, half cover, and 3/4 are ok, but Total cover blocks it.
once created, line of effect two (hand to enemy creature) must respect cover to make the attack. It’s unlikely you’d ever have total cover against something in your same space, but there may be some special reason why you could still have half or 3/4... usually will be no cover though.
So:respect line of effect 1 to place effect, respect line of effect 2 to make attack, ususally won’t have to deal with cover at all for line of effect 2.
The rules are very clear. If it requires a ranged attack roll, spell/physical, cover applies unless the text specifically says otherwise. Everything else is flavor text.
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Remember there are Rules as Written (RAW), Rules as Intended (RAI), and Rules as Fun (RAF). There's some great RAW, RAI, and RAF here... please check in with your DM to determine how they want to adjudicate the RAW/RAI/RAF for your game.
Citation for the premise that a spell’s description is not rule text? Because I’ve never read anything like that, but HAVE read the parts of Chapter 10 that tell you to read a spell description to understand what it targets and how, which I quoted earlier...
Good rule of thumb: if your understanding of anything in 5E is dependent upon ignoring printed language in that rule/feature, you’re probably misunderstanding that rule/feature.
Chill Touch explicitly describes creating a magical effect in a space, and then using that effect to make an attack against a creature in that space. If your understanding of the spell relies upon pretending that it DOESNT do that, and instead fires a projectile from the caster? You’re deliberately misreading the spell, and turning it into Fire Bolt or something else.
Chill touch calls for a ranged spell attack, not a melee spell attack (unlike spiritual weapon). This suggests to me that the attack is coming from the caster, so cover between the caster and the target matters.
"You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
If you are really picky here, the above sentence can be interpreted even funnier:
First part is "You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range." So, OK, there is a skeletal hand in the enemies space.
Second part following that is "Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave." So, this is then a ranged spell attack made by the caster against the target with "the chill of the grave". Nothing here says, that the ranged attack is made with the skeletal hand.
If you are that specific with every line of text in the spell discription, then this is also up for interpretation and not even close to clear as a statement, that you can ignore cover.
That would involve disregarding a following sentence, which shows that a hit is represented by the hand grabbing them.
This isnt hard. The spell does what it says. You aren’t ignoring cover, you’re paying attention to what two points the line is drawn between (the hand and the enemy), and checking for cover there. That’s normal stuff, no different than how you use a Spiritual Weapon.
That would involve disregarding a following sentence, which shows that a hit is represented by the hand grabbing them.
This isnt hard. The spell does what it says. You aren’t ignoring cover, you’re paying attention to what two points the line is drawn between (the hand and the enemy), and checking for cover there. That’s normal stuff, no different than how you use a Spiritual Weapon.
Next sentence is "On a hit, the target takes 1d8 necrotic damage, and it can’t regain hit points until the start of your next turn.", only then comes the rather vague "Until then, the hand clings to the target."
Still not so clear, that the hand is doing the attack.
Further, the big difference I see here to Spiritual Weapon is, that Spiritual Weapon is a melee spell attack. Same should be true for Chill Touch, if the hand is actually attacking from the targets space.
While awkward, I can reconcile that attacking with the hand is a ranged attack and the spiritual weapon is a melee attack, for balance or other reasons or even just arbitrary whim by the authors. (Very) short range ranged attacks do pop up in some places, such as nets. But I can’t condone reading the spells straightforward language that a hand is created, an attack is made, and the hand grasps on a hit to mean anything other than... the attack is being made with the hand, rather than some other undescribed force. That’s ridiculous.
If you want to bend over backwards to make a disingenuous tortured reading of the spell’s plain language, purely to support your contra-textual belief that there’s a projectile attack originating from the caster buried somewhere in a spell that describes otherwise, be my guest. But don’t pretend you aren’t out on a rather thin limb while doing so, which a reasonable reader might decline to follow you out on.
Chill Touch creates a hand in the space of a creature within range from where originate ranged spell attack against it, rather than the opposite side of it and therefore there’s no cover, but disadvantage may apply by making ranged attack in close combat though.
Ranged Attacks in Close Combat: Aiming a ranged attack is more difficult when a foe is next to you. When you make a ranged attack with a weapon, a spell, or some other means, you have disadvantage on the attack roll if you are within 5 feet of a hostile creature who can see you and who isn’t incapacitated.
Joking aside this is exactly why the natural language aspects of 5e need to go away in the next edition....it only seems to create problems that should not have existed in the first place. 99% sure that the RAI of the spell was to be affected by cover just like all other ranged attack spells but thanks to poor wording it creates a problem that should not exist.
Ultimately the way 5e handles it is "DM gets to decide" and thats how it is ruled. It just encourages DMs to make the call for the table...right, wrong, or indifferent.
To this day i still don't understand why they decided to change Chill Touch from a melee touch spell attack to a ranged one. They took the expression throwing pounches to the letter i guess ☺
If it ignores cover on the argument that the attack comes from the hand, then, barring crossbow expert, the attack is at disadvantage because the ranged attack is coming from a source within melee range of the target.
that is not AT ALL how that works, see Plague’s rule quote above. Disadvantage would accrue when the character makes a ranged attack while standing 5 feet from an enemy, not from a ranged attack targeting a close enemy.
That's what he means by saying that if one says there's no possible cover due to the attack origin's location (target), then there's disadvantage. On the other hand, if one says there's cover due to the attack origin's location (you), then there's no disadvantage.
No, that is incorrect. The player is making a ranged attack. The player is not distracted by a nearby enemy. Thus,, no disadvantage. The hand is just being used to make an attack, it is not itself a character that can get spooked by nearby enemies.
"You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
The spell's text makes clear that the attack comes through the hand, not from the caster. Nothing is going on in the space between the caster and the target anymore. Like with Spiritual Weapon, the spell attack is made from the spell's earlier effect rather than the caster. Which means there is no cover.
I definitely come down on the side of the "creating a skeletal hand" bit as being merely flavor text.
That flavor is beside the point when it comes time to actually roll. I argue the fact that it's still a *ranged* spell attack (despite the flavor saying the hand is in the same space as the target) supports the fact that it has to obey the same cover/LOS rules any other ranged spell attack would have to make.
Spiritual Weapon doesn't ignore cover. If you want a clear-cut case of this, have your DM make you a level 11 Swarmkeeper to fight.
Line of effect one (caster to point of origin) must respect cover to place the hand. So no cover, half cover, and 3/4 are ok, but Total cover blocks it.
once created, line of effect two (hand to enemy creature) must respect cover to make the attack. It’s unlikely you’d ever have total cover against something in your same space, but there may be some special reason why you could still have half or 3/4... usually will be no cover though.
So:respect line of effect 1 to place effect, respect line of effect 2 to make attack, ususally won’t have to deal with cover at all for line of effect 2.
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The rules are very clear. If it requires a ranged attack roll, spell/physical, cover applies unless the text specifically says otherwise. Everything else is flavor text.
Remember there are Rules as Written (RAW), Rules as Intended (RAI), and Rules as Fun (RAF). There's some great RAW, RAI, and RAF here... please check in with your DM to determine how they want to adjudicate the RAW/RAI/RAF for your game.
There’s no such thing as “flavor text” in spells, just lazy rule reading. A spells description matters, see Chapter 10.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Citation for the premise that a spell’s description is not rule text? Because I’ve never read anything like that, but HAVE read the parts of Chapter 10 that tell you to read a spell description to understand what it targets and how, which I quoted earlier...
Good rule of thumb: if your understanding of anything in 5E is dependent upon ignoring printed language in that rule/feature, you’re probably misunderstanding that rule/feature.
Chill Touch explicitly describes creating a magical effect in a space, and then using that effect to make an attack against a creature in that space. If your understanding of the spell relies upon pretending that it DOESNT do that, and instead fires a projectile from the caster? You’re deliberately misreading the spell, and turning it into Fire Bolt or something else.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Chill touch calls for a ranged spell attack, not a melee spell attack (unlike spiritual weapon). This suggests to me that the attack is coming from the caster, so cover between the caster and the target matters.
Don't know if I'm allowed to link to it here, but here is what Jeremy Crawford said on the subject on Twitter.
""Is Chill Touch affected by cover since it requires a ranged spell attack?" Yes, spell attacks are subject to cover."
"You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
If you are really picky here, the above sentence can be interpreted even funnier:
First part is "You create a ghostly, skeletal hand in the space of a creature within range."
So, OK, there is a skeletal hand in the enemies space.
Second part following that is "Make a ranged spell attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave."
So, this is then a ranged spell attack made by the caster against the target with "the chill of the grave". Nothing here says, that the ranged attack is made with the skeletal hand.
If you are that specific with every line of text in the spell discription, then this is also up for interpretation and not even close to clear as a statement, that you can ignore cover.
That would involve disregarding a following sentence, which shows that a hit is represented by the hand grabbing them.
This isnt hard. The spell does what it says. You aren’t ignoring cover, you’re paying attention to what two points the line is drawn between (the hand and the enemy), and checking for cover there. That’s normal stuff, no different than how you use a Spiritual Weapon.
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Next sentence is "On a hit, the target takes 1d8 necrotic damage, and it can’t regain hit points until the start of your next turn.", only then comes the rather vague "Until then, the hand clings to the target."
Still not so clear, that the hand is doing the attack.
Further, the big difference I see here to Spiritual Weapon is, that Spiritual Weapon is a melee spell attack. Same should be true for Chill Touch, if the hand is actually attacking from the targets space.
While awkward, I can reconcile that attacking with the hand is a ranged attack and the spiritual weapon is a melee attack, for balance or other reasons or even just arbitrary whim by the authors. (Very) short range ranged attacks do pop up in some places, such as nets. But I can’t condone reading the spells straightforward language that a hand is created, an attack is made, and the hand grasps on a hit to mean anything other than... the attack is being made with the hand, rather than some other undescribed force. That’s ridiculous.
If you want to bend over backwards to make a disingenuous tortured reading of the spell’s plain language, purely to support your contra-textual belief that there’s a projectile attack originating from the caster buried somewhere in a spell that describes otherwise, be my guest. But don’t pretend you aren’t out on a rather thin limb while doing so, which a reasonable reader might decline to follow you out on.
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Chill Touch creates a hand in the space of a creature within range from where originate ranged spell attack against it, rather than the opposite side of it and therefore there’s no cover, but disadvantage may apply by making ranged attack in close combat though.
Ranged Attacks in Close Combat: Aiming a ranged attack is more difficult when a foe is next to you. When you make a ranged attack with a weapon, a spell, or some other means, you have disadvantage on the attack roll if you are within 5 feet of a hostile creature who can see you and who isn’t incapacitated.
Natural Language Strikes Again!!
Joking aside this is exactly why the natural language aspects of 5e need to go away in the next edition....it only seems to create problems that should not have existed in the first place. 99% sure that the RAI of the spell was to be affected by cover just like all other ranged attack spells but thanks to poor wording it creates a problem that should not exist.
Ultimately the way 5e handles it is "DM gets to decide" and thats how it is ruled. It just encourages DMs to make the call for the table...right, wrong, or indifferent.
To this day i still don't understand why they decided to change Chill Touch from a melee touch spell attack to a ranged one. They took the expression throwing pounches to the letter i guess ☺
that is not AT ALL how that works, see Plague’s rule quote above. Disadvantage would accrue when the character makes a ranged attack while standing 5 feet from an enemy, not from a ranged attack targeting a close enemy.
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That's what he means by saying that if one says there's no possible cover due to the attack origin's location (target), then there's disadvantage. On the other hand, if one says there's cover due to the attack origin's location (you), then there's no disadvantage.
No, that is incorrect. The player is making a ranged attack. The player is not distracted by a nearby enemy. Thus,, no disadvantage. The hand is just being used to make an attack, it is not itself a character that can get spooked by nearby enemies.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.