Ravnodus, I am well aware that if there are no rules written (and even if there are sometimes) then what happens is at the DM’s disgression. Of course once that is said the question is how does the DM decide? He can simply pul, it out of his butt . Science, properly understood and used provides a better guide. Yes there are times in the game where magic at least seemingly trumps science, and there are places in the written rules that short circuit the science for ease of play (think falling damage) but in general the world MUST FOLLOW SCIENCE as only if it is pretty much a science based clone of our science based world can we, the players understand it well enough to play in it. The biggest problem I have seen is that most players especially younger ones don’t really understand science and when and how to apply it properly. This is a battle I’ve been fighting since 1985 as a HS science teacher (bio, chem, physics, earth sci, engineering) and fully expect to fight til I die. So how can we use science properly in this situation?
As Ravnodus pointed out a raw arc of current from my hands to anything and back with enough voltage and current to do major damage should also fry at least my hands and probably myself unless properly shielded. This shielding could take many forms: A) a magically created faraday suit that shelters me for the duration of the spell. B) a magically created insulator stack similar to what we see on power lines. C) a warping of space around my hands so that currents are redirected back out without ever actually contacting me. D) a relativistic distortion of space that even modern science hasn’t fully figured out that disasters the energy over a large amount of space scrunched down in to a small distance via a Star Trek like warped space. the truth is the spell and rules don’t tell us how but they do tell us that something like this is present since I am not hurt by the normal casting of the spell.
so next, what do we know about electricity (lightning) and water? A) water is a very good conductor - if something electrical drops into the tube or shower with water and you present the currents will flow through you. At best you will get a tingly shock if the voltage and currents are low, at worst you will be electrocuted (fried from the inside out) as the currents overload your nerves and brain burning out your built in nervous system/electric circuit. B) the electric shock spreads evenly throughout the body of water so the larger it is and the further away something is from the point of impact. So if lighting hits a large puddle on a field so someone in the outfield near the impact point may be badly injured while someone further away along a side fence may only feel a shock and tingle like touching a doorknob on a cold morning. So what options can I offer my DM as possibilities? The spell calls for a spell attack against a creature and if I hit an arc of current between me (shielded) and the foe (unshielded) causing him damage. So … 1) I cast the spell and then miss my attack roll and the spell fizzles as it hits the water (whether I have 1or more foes) 2) cast and miss but get the DM to give me advantage because the witchbolt (2D12) bursts into a ball of lightning that does hit my target and the other 3 creatures in the room in the water and they (the other 3 and maybe my target - DM decision -) get a save for half damage. Given that the charge is spreading and weakening maybe the DM rules that the target and nearest other foe take full damage on a fail while those further away take half damage on a fail. Maybe not. 3) cast and hit but the DM rules the charge spreads out creating half a ball of lightning in the water doing damage as in 2 above but the spell then fails and no arc returns. 4) cast and hit and the DM rules the current burns thru the water to hit the target then bursts into an expanding ball hitting the others as in 2&3 above but No arc returns. 5) cast and hit as in 3, but the charge doesn’t go ball lightning and instead makes the full connection returning to me without harming me and then back again each round until a minute has passed or I end concentration on it. All of these are viable science based results that also follow the game rules.
There are a couple of other things here that got glossed over in the physics discussion 1) Falling damage and things like acrobatics skills and the monk’s slow fall ability -you are quite right that this ignores physics (for the most part) to determine the damage you need to know the distance then calculate the instantaneous velocity at the moment of impact vi=(t x 9.8 m/s/s), but the monk’s slow fall will change this depending on level. Then you have to determine the kinetic energy of the subject at the instant of impact (1/2 mv2), then how long it took them to stop - your acrobatics roll basically turns this from a fraction of a second into 6 seconds and next to last how quickly your energy was dissipated during the landing and finally how much force this acceleration exerted on you and how much damage that did. Hell I teach physics and I don’t want to do all that - 1D6/10’ fall with ruled outs for slow fall and making acrobatics rolls? DONE, by the way I actually survived about a 35-40’ fall like that because I made my acrobatics roll and rolled out safely on the landing.
2) full damage at 0-10 feet and half damage at 10-20’: electricity but also most other damages actually would follow an inverse square law so at 0 it would be full damage then dropping off to some value at 10’ and to 1/4 that value at 20’. But again getting exact amounts of damage is not quick math ( welcome to calculus) so the full damage- half damage rules make a decent rough approximation and speed up the game tremendously so I’m all for them.
Please keep in mind that 5e is not as rules-heavy as D&D 3.5, and doesn't strive to be a simulation of the world.
Probably the best way to envision how Witch Bolt works, going by the spell description, is as a 30-foot-long cable with a clamp or hook on the end that attaches to the target creature if you succeed on the attack, delivering the initial lightning damage. After that it stays hooked onto the target, and so long as you hold onto the cable and the target doesn't move out of range, you can deliver another shock with your next turn, and so forth.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
Ravnodus, I am well aware that if there are no rules written (and even if there are sometimes) then what happens is at the DM’s disgression. Of course once that is said the question is how does the DM decide? He can simply pul, it out of his butt . Science, properly understood and used provides a better guide. Yes there are times in the game where magic at least seemingly trumps science, and there are places in the written rules that short circuit the science for ease of play (think falling damage) but in general the world MUST FOLLOW SCIENCE as only if it is pretty much a science based clone of our science based world can we, the players understand it well enough to play in it. The biggest problem I have seen is that most players especially younger ones don’t really understand science and when and how to apply it properly. This is a battle I’ve been fighting since 1985 as a HS science teacher (bio, chem, physics, earth sci, engineering) and fully expect to fight til I die. So how can we use science properly in this situation?
As Ravnodus pointed out a raw arc of current from my hands to anything and back with enough voltage and current to do major damage should also fry at least my hands and probably myself unless properly shielded. This shielding could take many forms: A) a magically created faraday suit that shelters me for the duration of the spell. B) a magically created insulator stack similar to what we see on power lines. C) a warping of space around my hands so that currents are redirected back out without ever actually contacting me. D) a relativistic distortion of space that even modern science hasn’t fully figured out that disasters the energy over a large amount of space scrunched down in to a small distance via a Star Trek like warped space. the truth is the spell and rules don’t tell us how but they do tell us that something like this is present since I am not hurt by the normal casting of the spell.
None of those would protect you.
A) Spells like shocking grasp demonstrate that electricity in 5e behave exactly the opposite as you're (correctly) suggesting it should here (If we're talking IRL physics).
B/C/D) This would prevent the electricity from discharging entirely, blocking it from leaving your hands.
You'd have to briefly be immune to the damage of electricity, being somehow transmuted in construction and/or characteristic so as to be rendered immune to the harm that much electrical energy would render as it exits you.
so next, what do we know about electricity (lightning) and water? A) water is a very good conductor - if something electrical drops into the tube or shower with water and you present the currents will flow through you. At best you will get a tingly shock if the voltage and currents are low, at worst you will be electrocuted (fried from the inside out) as the currents overload your nerves and brain burning out your built in nervous system/electric circuit.
Technically water is an insulator, actually. Water with sufficient dissolved impurities, on the other hand, is a conductor true. And, electricity is often fatal without "overloading your nerves and brain burning out your built in nervous system/electric circuit". Even an extremely tiny current directly through your heart is enough to be absolutely fatal. It wouldn't even need to leave a burn. The type of electrical discharge enough to "burn out" your nervous system is going to cause actual burnt flesh, at a minimum, at the entry and exit points.
All that is sorta getting ahead of ourselves anyway because we still haven't establish what exactly is causing this electrical bolt of energy coursing from our hands and into the intended victim. If you wanna break this down in an IRL physics sort of way we need to establish what is even happening at the base-line effect of the spell before we go mixing in extra variables.
We are creating, within ourselves, some deep wellspring of electrons, and/or creating within our target a deep absence of them. This would be necessary for creating this sort of targeted and sustained discharge between us and the victim... even arcing through the air to our target so long as they're within 30ft of us. Now, that'd require about 27 million volts to gap 30ft of open air. That... is a pretty big ask. What is far more likely is that the spell is also creating a conductive pathway through the air for the energy to discharge across as well as creating the energy vacuum in our target.
So why does that matter for how it interacts with water?
Well. If the spell must create a conductive pathway for the energy to flow across, the surrounding medium is entirely immaterial. You could cast this bad boy in outer space where there is nothing for the electrons to flow across because the spell is creating the path.
So what's that mean for how it'd interact with water? Well... long story short: It wouldn't interact with water at all.
The deeply negative vs positive charge, combined with an already perfectly suitable magically created conduit for the discharge is the only path the electricity can/would/should route through.
B) the electric shock spreads evenly throughout the body of water so the larger it is and the further away something is from the point of impact.
This is Only true if the path of discharge is seeking ground. For example, you put jumper cables on a battery and dip them into water... the electrical discharge does NOT spread out evenly throughout that body of water. It instead travels directly from one polarity to the other.
So if lighting hits a large puddle on a field so someone in the outfield near the impact point may be badly injured while someone further away along a side fence may only feel a shock and tingle like touching a doorknob on a cold morning. So what options can I offer my DM as possibilities?
Again, only because that electrical discharge is seeking ground. witch bolt behaves more like a sustained arc across the +/- terminals of a battery than like a lighting strike seeking ground.
The spell calls for a spell attack against a creature and if I hit an arc of current between me (shielded) and the foe (unshielded) causing him damage. So … 1) I cast the spell and then miss my attack roll and the spell fizzles as it hits the water (whether I have 1or more foes) 2) cast and miss but get the DM to give me advantage because the witchbolt (2D12) bursts into a ball of lightning that does hit my target and the other 3 creatures in the room in the water and they (the other 3 and maybe my target - DM decision -) get a save for half damage. Given that the charge is spreading and weakening maybe the DM rules that the target and nearest other foe take full damage on a fail while those further away take half damage on a fail. Maybe not. 3) cast and hit but the DM rules the charge spreads out creating half a ball of lightning in the water doing damage as in 2 above but the spell then fails and no arc returns. 4) cast and hit and the DM rules the current burns thru the water to hit the target then bursts into an expanding ball hitting the others as in 2&3 above but No arc returns. 5) cast and hit as in 3, but the charge doesn’t go ball lightning and instead makes the full connection returning to me without harming me and then back again each round until a minute has passed or I end concentration on it. All of these are viable science based results that also follow the game rules.
No they're not. The spell does exactly what it says it does. And there are perfectly solid "viable science based" explanations for why it would do exactly what it says it does.
TLDR: Witch Bolt is more like a taser gun with a 30ft wire. And, you can absolutely taser someone standing in a puddle.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Thank you for proving my points Ravnodus, and for giving me some additional possible scenarios to tempt my DM with once again magic can be pretty well explained by science and using it to figure out what happens when the rules aren’t clear is your best way to deal with such situations.
Lightning damage in water or underwater is not addressed in the 5e or 2024 PHB. However, it is addressed in the Lightning Jolt Action of the Giant Lightning Eel found in Tales of the Yawning Portal.
Lightning Jolt has a range of one creature within 5 feet outside of water or all creatures within 15 feet in a body of water. The target must make a CON Save, taking full damage on a fail and half damage on a success. If the target takes any damage, the target is Stunned until the end of the eel’s next turn.
Since Lightning Jolt is the closest to RAW we get, I’d say a reasonable modification to Lightning Jolt could apply in a general sense. Below is my proposed ruling:
If an Attack, Spell, Ability or Effect would deal lightning damage to one or more targets that are in a body of water, the Attack, Spell, Ability or Effect deals lightning damage to all other targets in the same body of water within 15 feet of the initial target(s). If the source of the lightning damage is a spell, each additional target must make a CON Save equal to the spell caster’s Save DC. Otherwise, each additional target must make a DC 12 CON Save. On a failed Save, the additional target is dealt the same damage as the initial target(s). On a successful Save, the additional target takes half as much damage.
I decided that the Stunned portion of Lightning Jolt was too powerful for a general case. I decided to leave that as the Giant Lightning Eel’s special case.
Ravnodus, I am well aware that if there are no rules written (and even if there are sometimes) then what happens is at the DM’s disgression. Of course once that is said the question is how does the DM decide? He can simply pul, it out of his butt . Science, properly understood and used provides a better guide. Yes there are times in the game where magic at least seemingly trumps science, and there are places in the written rules that short circuit the science for ease of play (think falling damage) but in general the world MUST FOLLOW SCIENCE as only if it is pretty much a science based clone of our science based world can we, the players understand it well enough to play in it. The biggest problem I have seen is that most players especially younger ones don’t really understand science and when and how to apply it properly. This is a battle I’ve been fighting since 1985 as a HS science teacher (bio, chem, physics, earth sci, engineering) and fully expect to fight til I die. So how can we use science properly in this situation?
As Ravnodus pointed out a raw arc of current from my hands to anything and back with enough voltage and current to do major damage should also fry at least my hands and probably myself unless properly shielded. This shielding could take many forms:
A) a magically created faraday suit that shelters me for the duration of the spell.
B) a magically created insulator stack similar to what we see on power lines.
C) a warping of space around my hands so that currents are redirected back out without ever actually contacting me.
D) a relativistic distortion of space that even modern science hasn’t fully figured out that disasters the energy over a large amount of space scrunched down in to a small distance via a Star Trek like warped space.
the truth is the spell and rules don’t tell us how but they do tell us that something like this is present since I am not hurt by the normal casting of the spell.
so next, what do we know about electricity (lightning) and water?
A) water is a very good conductor - if something electrical drops into the tube or shower with water and you present the currents will flow through you. At best you will get a tingly shock if the voltage and currents are low, at worst you will be electrocuted (fried from the inside out) as the currents overload your nerves and brain burning out your built in nervous system/electric circuit.
B) the electric shock spreads evenly throughout the body of water so the larger it is and the further away something is from the point of impact. So if lighting hits a large puddle on a field so someone in the outfield near the impact point may be badly injured while someone further away along a side fence may only feel a shock and tingle like touching a doorknob on a cold morning. So what options can I offer my DM as possibilities? The spell calls for a spell attack against a creature and if I hit an arc of current between me (shielded) and the foe (unshielded) causing him damage. So …
1) I cast the spell and then miss my attack roll and the spell fizzles as it hits the water (whether I have 1or more foes)
2) cast and miss but get the DM to give me advantage because the witchbolt (2D12) bursts into a ball of lightning that does hit my target and the other 3 creatures in the room in the water and they (the other 3 and maybe my target - DM decision -) get a save for half damage. Given that the charge is spreading and weakening maybe the DM rules that the target and nearest other foe take full damage on a fail while those further away take half damage on a fail. Maybe not.
3) cast and hit but the DM rules the charge spreads out creating half a ball of lightning in the water doing damage as in 2 above but the spell then fails and no arc returns.
4) cast and hit and the DM rules the current burns thru the water to hit the target then bursts into an expanding ball hitting the others as in 2&3 above but No arc returns.
5) cast and hit as in 3, but the charge doesn’t go ball lightning and instead makes the full connection returning to me without harming me and then back again each round until a minute has passed or I end concentration on it.
All of these are viable science based results that also follow the game rules.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
There are a couple of other things here that got glossed over in the physics discussion
1) Falling damage and things like acrobatics skills and the monk’s slow fall ability -you are quite right that this ignores physics (for the most part) to determine the damage you need to know the distance then calculate the instantaneous velocity at the moment of impact vi=(t x 9.8 m/s/s), but the monk’s slow fall will change this depending on level. Then you have to determine the kinetic energy of the subject at the instant of impact (1/2 mv2), then how long it took them to stop - your acrobatics roll basically turns this from a fraction of a second into 6 seconds and next to last how quickly your energy was dissipated during the landing and finally how much force this acceleration exerted on you and how much damage that did. Hell I teach physics and I don’t want to do all that - 1D6/10’ fall with ruled outs for slow fall and making acrobatics rolls? DONE, by the way I actually survived about a 35-40’ fall like that because I made my acrobatics roll and rolled out safely on the landing.
2) full damage at 0-10 feet and half damage at 10-20’: electricity but also most other damages actually would follow an inverse square law so at 0 it would be full damage then dropping off to some value at 10’ and to 1/4 that value at 20’. But again getting exact amounts of damage is not quick math ( welcome to calculus) so the full damage- half damage rules make a decent rough approximation and speed up the game tremendously so I’m all for them.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Please keep in mind that 5e is not as rules-heavy as D&D 3.5, and doesn't strive to be a simulation of the world.
Probably the best way to envision how Witch Bolt works, going by the spell description, is as a 30-foot-long cable with a clamp or hook on the end that attaches to the target creature if you succeed on the attack, delivering the initial lightning damage. After that it stays hooked onto the target, and so long as you hold onto the cable and the target doesn't move out of range, you can deliver another shock with your next turn, and so forth.
Helpful rewriter of Japanese->English translation and delver into software codebases (she/e/they)
None of those would protect you.
A) Spells like shocking grasp demonstrate that electricity in 5e behave exactly the opposite as you're (correctly) suggesting it should here (If we're talking IRL physics).
B/C/D) This would prevent the electricity from discharging entirely, blocking it from leaving your hands.
You'd have to briefly be immune to the damage of electricity, being somehow transmuted in construction and/or characteristic so as to be rendered immune to the harm that much electrical energy would render as it exits you.
Technically water is an insulator, actually. Water with sufficient dissolved impurities, on the other hand, is a conductor true. And, electricity is often fatal without "overloading your nerves and brain burning out your built in nervous system/electric circuit". Even an extremely tiny current directly through your heart is enough to be absolutely fatal. It wouldn't even need to leave a burn. The type of electrical discharge enough to "burn out" your nervous system is going to cause actual burnt flesh, at a minimum, at the entry and exit points.
All that is sorta getting ahead of ourselves anyway because we still haven't establish what exactly is causing this electrical bolt of energy coursing from our hands and into the intended victim. If you wanna break this down in an IRL physics sort of way we need to establish what is even happening at the base-line effect of the spell before we go mixing in extra variables.
witch bolt
We are creating, within ourselves, some deep wellspring of electrons, and/or creating within our target a deep absence of them. This would be necessary for creating this sort of targeted and sustained discharge between us and the victim... even arcing through the air to our target so long as they're within 30ft of us. Now, that'd require about 27 million volts to gap 30ft of open air. That... is a pretty big ask. What is far more likely is that the spell is also creating a conductive pathway through the air for the energy to discharge across as well as creating the energy vacuum in our target.
So why does that matter for how it interacts with water?
Well. If the spell must create a conductive pathway for the energy to flow across, the surrounding medium is entirely immaterial. You could cast this bad boy in outer space where there is nothing for the electrons to flow across because the spell is creating the path.
So what's that mean for how it'd interact with water? Well... long story short: It wouldn't interact with water at all.
The deeply negative vs positive charge, combined with an already perfectly suitable magically created conduit for the discharge is the only path the electricity can/would/should route through.
This is Only true if the path of discharge is seeking ground. For example, you put jumper cables on a battery and dip them into water... the electrical discharge does NOT spread out evenly throughout that body of water. It instead travels directly from one polarity to the other.
Again, only because that electrical discharge is seeking ground. witch bolt behaves more like a sustained arc across the +/- terminals of a battery than like a lighting strike seeking ground.
No they're not. The spell does exactly what it says it does. And there are perfectly solid "viable science based" explanations for why it would do exactly what it says it does.
TLDR: Witch Bolt is more like a taser gun with a 30ft wire. And, you can absolutely taser someone standing in a puddle.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Thank you for proving my points Ravnodus, and for giving me some additional possible scenarios to tempt my DM with once again magic can be pretty well explained by science and using it to figure out what happens when the rules aren’t clear is your best way to deal with such situations.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Lightning damage in water or underwater is not addressed in the 5e or 2024 PHB. However, it is addressed in the Lightning Jolt Action of the Giant Lightning Eel found in Tales of the Yawning Portal.
Lightning Jolt has a range of one creature within 5 feet outside of water or all creatures within 15 feet in a body of water. The target must make a CON Save, taking full damage on a fail and half damage on a success. If the target takes any damage, the target is Stunned until the end of the eel’s next turn.
Since Lightning Jolt is the closest to RAW we get, I’d say a reasonable modification to Lightning Jolt could apply in a general sense. Below is my proposed ruling:
If an Attack, Spell, Ability or Effect would deal lightning damage to one or more targets that are in a body of water, the Attack, Spell, Ability or Effect deals lightning damage to all other targets in the same body of water within 15 feet of the initial target(s). If the source of the lightning damage is a spell, each additional target must make a CON Save equal to the spell caster’s Save DC. Otherwise, each additional target must make a DC 12 CON Save. On a failed Save, the additional target is dealt the same damage as the initial target(s). On a successful Save, the additional target takes half as much damage.
I decided that the Stunned portion of Lightning Jolt was too powerful for a general case. I decided to leave that as the Giant Lightning Eel’s special case.