I don't know. Even in law, where these sorts of legalistic interpretations make sense, there are standards of scrutiny which rely on a reasonable person's judgement. I used "obvious" not to mean that everyone can figure it out -- apparently we wouldn't need this thread if that were the case -- but to mean a reasonable person is more likely than not to be able to figure it out. Something doesn't have to be obvious to everyone to be obvious.
The feat should probably get the errata... that spell is in the Basic Rules and shows up in so many places.
How would you errata the feat to fix it? The "problem" text, if someone chooses to see it as a problem, is in the spell. The feat already tells you it's good out to 60 feet.
Clunkily. Clunky wording begets clunky working.
If you already know this spell, its range (inclusive of its serviceable distance) increases by 30 feet when you cast it.
WotC could easily have written the feat with something like this but, as they didn't, fixing the mage hand text provide a more elegant solution.
I don't know. Even in law, where these sorts of legalistic interpretations make sense, there are standards of scrutiny which rely on a reasonable person's judgement. I used "obvious" not to mean that everyone can figure it out -- apparently we wouldn't need this thread if that were the case -- but to mean a reasonable person is more likely than not to be able to figure it out. Something doesn't have to be obvious to everyone to be obvious.
It's obvious, when a spell has a range of 30 ft and a text saying that "... The hand vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet away from you", that there is a likely association between the two. What people then do with that obvious interpretation is up to them.
Saying the 30 feet mentioned in the spell description is wholly distinct from the spell's actual 30 foot range may as well be arguing that the 20 foot radius in the spell description for fireball is wholly distinct from the...well, I would hope my point has been made. Both are part of the spell description. Both are equally valid.
I will say that the 'extra' mention of 30 feet in the mage hand description is likely because of this in the Range section of Casting a Spell in the PHB:
Range
The target of a spell must be within the spell's range. For a spell like magic missile, the target is a creature. For a spell like fireball, the target is the point in space where the ball of fire erupts.
Most spells have ranges expressed in feet. Some spells can target only a creature (including you) that you touch. Other spells, such as the shield spell, affect only you. These spells have a range of self.
Spells that create cones or lines of effect that originate from you also have a range of self, indicating that the origin point of the spell's effect must be you (see “Areas of Effect” later in the this chapter).
Once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise.
Without that limiter, mage hand in theory could be cast within the 30 foot range and then moved out past it -- and since the caster can move after casting it, saying "it has to stay within 30 feet of the caster" was the simplest addition to the description
Which doesn't really impact whether changing the range to 60 feet should also change the "effective range" within which the hand can operate around the caster, but does explain why mage hand says what it says
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Askatu, hyperfocused vedalken freedom fighter in Wildspace (Zealot barb/Swashbuckler rogue/Battle Master fighter) Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I don't know. Even in law, where these sorts of legalistic interpretations make sense, there are standards of scrutiny which rely on a reasonable person's judgement. I used "obvious" not to mean that everyone can figure it out -- apparently we wouldn't need this thread if that were the case -- but to mean a reasonable person is more likely than not to be able to figure it out. Something doesn't have to be obvious to everyone to be obvious.
I think we're long past the point where we can reasonably compare the rules to legalese. They're written in a conversational tone, using natural language, not in ultra-precise terms. This does still require some critical thinking, but nothing any more than a 12 year old should be capable of.
If the range of the spell has been extended to 60 feet, it makes no sense for the spell to still vanish out past 30 feet. It needs to function out past 30 feet for that extension to matter. We can all call it sloppily written because it doesn't adhere to our standards, but the reality may simply be that our standards are too exacting.
The mage hand cantrip contains the description "The hand vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet away from you..."
WotC should be aware of their ability to add a great many buffs and nerfs to a wide range of things in a great many ways and keeping to one point of reference could have kept things simple.
It could have been simpler, at least for pedants like us, if they had said something like "The hand vanishes if it is ever beyond its range distance away from you."
Yep. I don't think that many people beyond this discussion will be greatly affected by the texts.
My guess is that the primary impact of the RAW/RAI disconnect in the text of the feat vs the text of the spell will be people concluding that the Distant Spell metamagic should work on the spell, whereas prior to Tasha's, the implication was that the spell was worded that way specifically to prevent Distant Spell from working on it usefully. It's common and typical for the playerbase to conclude, when analyzing a unique rules interaction that seems bizarre, that WOTC intended the interaction and so we keep it. Once we have at least two interactions, as we now have here, it becomes much more possible to work out what was intentional and what was accidental. In my experience, 90% of it is accidental.
It can also take more than two, of course. We now have two instances of casting a spell through an object - Artillerist Artificers and Spirits Bards - but we're no closer to figuring out what it means to cast a spell through an object. The more evidence we get, the more coherently we can try to figure out what WOTC was thinking when they wrote the rules.
the implication was that the spell was worded that way specifically to prevent Distant Spell from working on it usefully.
There was no such implication. There may have been an bafflingly wrong-headed inference by certain segments of the player base tho
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Wait, what!?! Why would they deliberately make a mistake??? I don't think you have understood the discussion fully.
I'm asking what evidence you have that this is a mistake.
Some duration-based spells can be moved beyond their casting range (for example Spiritual Weapon). Some can't (for example, mage hand). Why do you think some of these are in error but not others?
I read a lot of arguments like this thread, where arguments often boil down to "the rules don't do what I want, therefore the rule authors must have made a mistake." I'm saying that sometimes it's not a mistake on the author's part, it's that they deliberately wrote the rule that way, perhaps to prevent the situation argued about.
Wait, what!?! Why would they deliberately make a mistake??? I don't think you have understood the discussion fully.
I'm asking what evidence you have that this is a mistake.
Some duration-based spells can be moved beyond their casting range (for example Spiritual Weapon). Some can't (for example, mage hand). Why do you think some of these are in error but not others?
I read a lot of arguments like this thread, where arguments often boil down to "the rules don't do what I want, therefore the rule authors must have made a mistake." I'm saying that sometimes it's not a mistake on the author's part, it's that they deliberately wrote the rule that way, perhaps to prevent the situation argued about.
The evidence here of a possible mistake is in an apparent contradiction. If the spell cannot persist past a certain distance from the spellcaster, then it's not possible to double its range without also increasing that effective distance. Which has led some to the notion that the spell can be cast out to a distance of 60 feet and also immediately cancels itself because it cannot exist that far from the spellcaster. Functionally, the spell's range hasn't been doubled. Which means the feat either contains incorrect language (either unnecessary or not enough), or the feat is wrong because it wasn't suitably future-proof.
If we assume that there was no mistake, then it means all the above interpretations are incorrect. And people generally have an aversion to admitting when they might be wrong.
Wait, what!?! Why would they deliberately make a mistake??? I don't think you have understood the discussion fully.
I'm asking what evidence you have that this is a mistake.
Some duration-based spells can be moved beyond their casting range (for example Spiritual Weapon). Some can't (for example, mage hand). Why do you think some of these are in error but not others?
I read a lot of arguments like this thread, where arguments often boil down to "the rules don't do what I want, therefore the rule authors must have made a mistake." I'm saying that sometimes it's not a mistake on the author's part, it's that they deliberately wrote the rule that way, perhaps to prevent the situation argued about.
We can be pretty certain that at least one of the feat or the spell is a mistake because RAW the feat has a wasted bullet point - setting Mage Hand's range to 60 feet has no use-case and they could have just not printed that bullet point and had the same feat. In fact, I haven't seen anyone in this thread argue otherwise - the general consensus is that a mistake was made, although different people might well disagree on what the correct text would say.
Saying the 30 feet mentioned in the spell description is wholly distinct from the spell's actual 30 foot range may as well be arguing that the 20 foot radius in the spell description for fireball is wholly distinct from the...well, I would hope my point has been made. Both are part of the spell description. Both are equally valid.
I will say that the 'extra' mention of 30 feet in the mage hand description is likely because of this in the Range section of Casting a Spell in the PHB:
Range
The target of a spell must be within the spell's range. For a spell like magic missile, the target is a creature. For a spell like fireball, the target is the point in space where the ball of fire erupts.
Most spells have ranges expressed in feet. Some spells can target only a creature (including you) that you touch. Other spells, such as the shield spell, affect only you. These spells have a range of self.
Spells that create cones or lines of effect that originate from you also have a range of self, indicating that the origin point of the spell's effect must be you (see “Areas of Effect” later in the this chapter).
Once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise.
Without that limiter, mage hand in theory could be cast within the 30 foot range and then moved out past it -- and since the caster can move after casting it, saying "it has to stay within 30 feet of the caster" was the simplest addition to the description
Which doesn't really impact whether changing the range to 60 feet should also change the "effective range" within which the hand can operate around the caster, but does explain why mage hand says what it says
If a spell's effect is limited by it's range, it will specifically say so. Compared to a spell like Witch Bolt, the Mage Hand vanishing distance has no association with range specifically. It only has similar distance, which could have been more or less just as well.
I'm asking what evidence you have that this is a mistake.
Some duration-based spells can be moved beyond their casting range (for example Spiritual Weapon). Some can't (for example, mage hand). Why do you think some of these are in error but not others?
I read a lot of arguments like this thread, where arguments often boil down to "the rules don't do what I want, therefore the rule authors must have made a mistake." I'm saying that sometimes it's not a mistake on the author's part, it's that they deliberately wrote the rule that way, perhaps to prevent the situation argued about.
So you didn't understand the discussion then...
If they intentionally wrote Mage Hand with a fixed "vanish" distance to stop effects that increase its range to affect its "vanish" distance then they really shouldn't have written a Feat that increases the range of Mage Hand as that becomes a completely non-functional line of text. And considering that the Feat was written several years after when Mage Hand was written that feels like a clear mistake.
If they instead intended for the "vanish" distance of Mage Hand to be able to be affected by effects that increase its range then they should have used its range as the distance instead of a fixed number. As Mage Hand came first I see this as less of a mistake and more of an oversight/poor future proofing (though Distant Spell was around at the time).
Regardless of their intentions there is a poor interaction between the language of Mage Hand and the language of the Feat. To say "it was deliberate" and end it at that seems like a ludicrous position to take to me.
We can be pretty certain that at least one of the feat or the spell is a mistake because RAW the feat has a wasted bullet point - setting Mage Hand's range to 60 feet has no use-case and they could have just not printed that bullet point and had the same feat. In fact, I haven't seen anyone in this thread argue otherwise - the general consensus is that a mistake was made, although different people might well disagree on what the correct text would say.
No mistake was made. If you think it is written wrong you've read it wrong.
The range is normally 30ft. The feat extends the range to 60ft. The functional range is now 60ft. If something would cause it to wink out at 30ft it doesn't because the range is now 60ft so it can reach 60ft.
I suspect that, if WotC had a small fraction of the attention to detail of contributors here, this debate wouldn't be needed. One way or another they would have made at least one of their texts clear.
The range is normally 30ft. The feat extends the range to 60ft. The functional range is now 60ft. If something would cause it to wink out at 30ft it doesn't because the range is now 60ft so it can reach 60ft.
Except there is no rule that supports that. The designers know how to write spell descriptions that keep using a spells range as the limit for its continuing effects because they have done so (Witch Bolt for example) but Mage Hand isn't worded like that.
Prior to the Telekinetic Feat I would have said for sure that Distant Spell wouldn't have any effect on Mage Hand but after the Feat I have to conclude that they intended differently. I'm fine playing according to that intention but I really think they should clean up the language.
The range is normally 30ft. The feat extends the range to 60ft. The functional range is now 60ft. If something would cause it to wink out at 30ft it doesn't because the range is now 60ft so it can reach 60ft.
Except there is no rule that supports that.
This is false.
I understand what meaning you think it had, but you came away with an incorrect understanding of what the rules phrases say regarding this interaction. That is understandable and natural, sometimes things can have slightly different interpretations. You just have happened to adopt the incorrect one.
Range. This is the limit of how far away the spell effect can go. But, once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise. Mage Hand is one of those exceptions. It is limited by its range even after being cast.
The designers know how to write spell descriptions that keep using a spells range as the limit for its continuing effects because they have done so (Witch Bolt for example) but Mage Hand isn't worded like that.
The wording is entirely coherent and 100% fine as is. You just misunderstand what spell ranges are and do. They limit the range of the spell during casting only. Unless the spell description specifies otherwise, like mage hand's does.
Prior to the Telekinetic Feat I would have said for sure that Distant Spell wouldn't have any effect on Mage Hand but after the Feat I have to conclude that they intended differently. I'm fine playing according to that intention but I really think they should clean up the language.
Prior to TK you'd have been wrong. Distant Spell increases the spell's range. So... its effect... can go further.
There seems to be an attempt here to overcomplicate something very simple. If an ability increases a spell's range the range: is increased.
The range is normally 30ft. The feat extends the range to 60ft. The functional range is now 60ft. If something would cause it to wink out at 30ft it doesn't because the range is now 60ft so it can reach 60ft.
Except there is no rule that supports that. The designers know how to write spell descriptions that keep using a spells range as the limit for its continuing effects because they have done so (Witch Bolt for example) but Mage Hand isn't worded like that.
Prior to the Telekinetic Feat I would have said for sure that Distant Spell wouldn't have any effect on Mage Hand but after the Feat I have to conclude that they intended differently. I'm fine playing according to that intention but I really think they should clean up the language.
Range. This is the limit of how far away the spell effect can go. But, once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise. Mage Hand is one of those exceptions. It is limited by its range even after being cast.
Except that Mage Hand doesn't use the spell's range as the limit in the description, it uses a fixed number.
Mage Hand A spectral, floating hand appears at a point you choose within range. The hand lasts for the duration or until you dismiss it as an action. The hand vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet away from you or if you cast this spell again.
Some spells, like Witch Bolt, instead limits its continual effects to staying with in the spells range.
Witch Bolt A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, forming a sustained arc of lightning between you and the target. Make a ranged spell attack against that creature. On a hit, the target takes 1d12 lightning damage, and on each of your turns for the duration, you can use your action to deal 1d12 lightning damage to the target automatically. The spell ends if you use your action to do anything else. The spell also ends if the target is ever outside the spell’s range or if it has total cover from you.
And I have a hard time seeing how the difference in how those spells are written isn't (wasn't) meant to mean an real in-game difference in how they work.
There are other spells, like Faithful Hound, that also uses a fixed number in the description of its continual effect. Would you say that those are also affected by an effect that increases the spell's range? If Yes, to what distance? And if No, why? (they are formatted in the same way that Mage Hand is).
Faithful Hound You conjure a phantom watchdog in an unoccupied space that you can see within range, where it remains for the duration, until you dismiss it as an action, or until you move more than 100 feet away from it.
From my perspective, yes WotC made an error in how they wrote the description for Mage Hand, but an understandable one given that the Feat came later. Oversight is probably a more reasonable way to see it, rather than error.
The point that seems to be lost on some though, is that if the intent of the rule is clear AND the effect of the interpretation on the fun had by players is clear, just interpret the rule in what is clearly the right way (i.e. if you take it literally and it breaks, and a range extension doing nothing is clearly broken, don't take it literally). Above all else, D&D and other RPGs are played for fun. House rules exist for a reason, though I don't think this even qualifies as a house rule. This is just a case of accepting the mistake as written, correcting it in play, and having fun as a consequence.
To each their own, but I know how I'll be letting one of my players treat this range extension - the way the writers intended (even if that isn't the way it was written).
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I don't know. Even in law, where these sorts of legalistic interpretations make sense, there are standards of scrutiny which rely on a reasonable person's judgement. I used "obvious" not to mean that everyone can figure it out -- apparently we wouldn't need this thread if that were the case -- but to mean a reasonable person is more likely than not to be able to figure it out. Something doesn't have to be obvious to everyone to be obvious.
Clunkily. Clunky wording begets clunky working.
If you already know this spell, its range (inclusive of its serviceable distance) increases by 30 feet when you cast it.
WotC could easily have written the feat with something like this but, as they didn't, fixing the mage hand text provide a more elegant solution.
It's obvious, when a spell has a range of 30 ft and a text saying that "... The hand vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet away from you", that there is a likely association between the two. What people then do with that obvious interpretation is up to them.
I will say that the 'extra' mention of 30 feet in the mage hand description is likely because of this in the Range section of Casting a Spell in the PHB:
Without that limiter, mage hand in theory could be cast within the 30 foot range and then moved out past it -- and since the caster can move after casting it, saying "it has to stay within 30 feet of the caster" was the simplest addition to the description
Which doesn't really impact whether changing the range to 60 feet should also change the "effective range" within which the hand can operate around the caster, but does explain why mage hand says what it says
Active characters:
Askatu, hyperfocused vedalken freedom fighter in Wildspace (Zealot barb/Swashbuckler rogue/Battle Master fighter)
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think we're long past the point where we can reasonably compare the rules to legalese. They're written in a conversational tone, using natural language, not in ultra-precise terms. This does still require some critical thinking, but nothing any more than a 12 year old should be capable of.
If the range of the spell has been extended to 60 feet, it makes no sense for the spell to still vanish out past 30 feet. It needs to function out past 30 feet for that extension to matter. We can all call it sloppily written because it doesn't adhere to our standards, but the reality may simply be that our standards are too exacting.
The mage hand cantrip contains the description "The hand vanishes if it is ever more than 30 feet away from you..."
WotC should be aware of their ability to add a great many buffs and nerfs to a wide range of things in a great many ways and keeping to one point of reference could have kept things simple.
It could have been simpler, at least for pedants like us, if they had said something like "The hand vanishes if it is ever beyond its range distance away from you."
Yep. I don't think that many people beyond this discussion will be greatly affected by the texts.
My guess is that the primary impact of the RAW/RAI disconnect in the text of the feat vs the text of the spell will be people concluding that the Distant Spell metamagic should work on the spell, whereas prior to Tasha's, the implication was that the spell was worded that way specifically to prevent Distant Spell from working on it usefully. It's common and typical for the playerbase to conclude, when analyzing a unique rules interaction that seems bizarre, that WOTC intended the interaction and so we keep it. Once we have at least two interactions, as we now have here, it becomes much more possible to work out what was intentional and what was accidental. In my experience, 90% of it is accidental.
It can also take more than two, of course. We now have two instances of casting a spell through an object - Artillerist Artificers and Spirits Bards - but we're no closer to figuring out what it means to cast a spell through an object. The more evidence we get, the more coherently we can try to figure out what WOTC was thinking when they wrote the rules.
There was no such implication. There may have been an bafflingly wrong-headed inference by certain segments of the player base tho
Active characters:
Askatu, hyperfocused vedalken freedom fighter in Wildspace (Zealot barb/Swashbuckler rogue/Battle Master fighter)
Green Hill Sunrise, jaded tabaxi mercenary trapped in the Dark Domains (Battle Master fighter)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I'm asking what evidence you have that this is a mistake.
Some duration-based spells can be moved beyond their casting range (for example Spiritual Weapon). Some can't (for example, mage hand). Why do you think some of these are in error but not others?
I read a lot of arguments like this thread, where arguments often boil down to "the rules don't do what I want, therefore the rule authors must have made a mistake." I'm saying that sometimes it's not a mistake on the author's part, it's that they deliberately wrote the rule that way, perhaps to prevent the situation argued about.
The evidence here of a possible mistake is in an apparent contradiction. If the spell cannot persist past a certain distance from the spellcaster, then it's not possible to double its range without also increasing that effective distance. Which has led some to the notion that the spell can be cast out to a distance of 60 feet and also immediately cancels itself because it cannot exist that far from the spellcaster. Functionally, the spell's range hasn't been doubled. Which means the feat either contains incorrect language (either unnecessary or not enough), or the feat is wrong because it wasn't suitably future-proof.
If we assume that there was no mistake, then it means all the above interpretations are incorrect. And people generally have an aversion to admitting when they might be wrong.
We can be pretty certain that at least one of the feat or the spell is a mistake because RAW the feat has a wasted bullet point - setting Mage Hand's range to 60 feet has no use-case and they could have just not printed that bullet point and had the same feat. In fact, I haven't seen anyone in this thread argue otherwise - the general consensus is that a mistake was made, although different people might well disagree on what the correct text would say.
If a spell's effect is limited by it's range, it will specifically say so. Compared to a spell like Witch Bolt, the Mage Hand vanishing distance has no association with range specifically. It only has similar distance, which could have been more or less just as well.
So you didn't understand the discussion then...
If they intentionally wrote Mage Hand with a fixed "vanish" distance to stop effects that increase its range to affect its "vanish" distance then they really shouldn't have written a Feat that increases the range of Mage Hand as that becomes a completely non-functional line of text. And considering that the Feat was written several years after when Mage Hand was written that feels like a clear mistake.
If they instead intended for the "vanish" distance of Mage Hand to be able to be affected by effects that increase its range then they should have used its range as the distance instead of a fixed number. As Mage Hand came first I see this as less of a mistake and more of an oversight/poor future proofing (though Distant Spell was around at the time).
Regardless of their intentions there is a poor interaction between the language of Mage Hand and the language of the Feat. To say "it was deliberate" and end it at that seems like a ludicrous position to take to me.
No mistake was made. If you think it is written wrong you've read it wrong.
The range is normally 30ft. The feat extends the range to 60ft. The functional range is now 60ft. If something would cause it to wink out at 30ft it doesn't because the range is now 60ft so it can reach 60ft.
I got quotes!
I suspect that, if WotC had a small fraction of the attention to detail of contributors here, this debate wouldn't be needed. One way or another they would have made at least one of their texts clear.
Except there is no rule that supports that. The designers know how to write spell descriptions that keep using a spells range as the limit for its continuing effects because they have done so (Witch Bolt for example) but Mage Hand isn't worded like that.
Prior to the Telekinetic Feat I would have said for sure that Distant Spell wouldn't have any effect on Mage Hand but after the Feat I have to conclude that they intended differently. I'm fine playing according to that intention but I really think they should clean up the language.
This is false.
I understand what meaning you think it had, but you came away with an incorrect understanding of what the rules phrases say regarding this interaction. That is understandable and natural, sometimes things can have slightly different interpretations. You just have happened to adopt the incorrect one.
Range. This is the limit of how far away the spell effect can go. But, once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise. Mage Hand is one of those exceptions. It is limited by its range even after being cast.
The wording is entirely coherent and 100% fine as is. You just misunderstand what spell ranges are and do. They limit the range of the spell during casting only. Unless the spell description specifies otherwise, like mage hand's does.
Prior to TK you'd have been wrong. Distant Spell increases the spell's range. So... its effect... can go further.
There seems to be an attempt here to overcomplicate something very simple. If an ability increases a spell's range the range: is increased.
I got quotes!
Well said.
Except that Mage Hand doesn't use the spell's range as the limit in the description, it uses a fixed number.
Some spells, like Witch Bolt, instead limits its continual effects to staying with in the spells range.
And I have a hard time seeing how the difference in how those spells are written isn't (wasn't) meant to mean an real in-game difference in how they work.
There are other spells, like Faithful Hound, that also uses a fixed number in the description of its continual effect. Would you say that those are also affected by an effect that increases the spell's range? If Yes, to what distance? And if No, why? (they are formatted in the same way that Mage Hand is).
Except, again, the fact that the description of Mage Hand doesn't say that it uses the spell's range for its continual effect.
As I've said before, I'm fine playing according to the intention showed in the Telekinetic Feat but I really think they should clean up the language.
This thread is something else.
From my perspective, yes WotC made an error in how they wrote the description for Mage Hand, but an understandable one given that the Feat came later. Oversight is probably a more reasonable way to see it, rather than error.
The point that seems to be lost on some though, is that if the intent of the rule is clear AND the effect of the interpretation on the fun had by players is clear, just interpret the rule in what is clearly the right way (i.e. if you take it literally and it breaks, and a range extension doing nothing is clearly broken, don't take it literally). Above all else, D&D and other RPGs are played for fun. House rules exist for a reason, though I don't think this even qualifies as a house rule. This is just a case of accepting the mistake as written, correcting it in play, and having fun as a consequence.
To each their own, but I know how I'll be letting one of my players treat this range extension - the way the writers intended (even if that isn't the way it was written).