I would like an official ruling not an opinion from a member unless said member works for WotC. Does the Rune Knight Cloud Rune feature quoted below apply to a natural 20?
“In addition, when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to invoke the rune and choose a different creature within 30 feet of you, other than the attacker. The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll. This magic can transfer the attack’s effects regardless of the attack’s range. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.”
Thanks, as you can imagine, part of why I chose to play this character was the opportunity to turn a crit hit back at an enemy. But rules like this should be more clear and not up to interpretation.
Our DM works hard, I love him to death so I always respect his rulings with no complaint but I do hate rules that should be absolutely irrefutable.
Why would it not apply to a natural 20?!? A crit is a hit, first and foremost. There’s really nothing ambiguous about it. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s RAW.
Sometimes fate blesses or curses a combatant, causing the novice to hit and the veteran to miss.
If the d20 roll for an attack is a 20, the attack hits regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC. This is called a critical hit, which is explained later in this section.
If the d20 roll for an attack is a 1, the attack misses regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC.
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal. To speed up play, you can roll all the damage dice at once.
For example, if you score a critical hit with a dagger, roll 2d4 for the damage, rather than 1d4, and then add your relevant ability modifier. If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue's Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well.
Cloud Rune. This rune emulates the deceptive magic used by some cloud giants. While wearing or carrying an object inscribed with this rune, you have advantage on Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks and Charisma (Deception) checks.
In addition, when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to invoke the rune and choose a different creature within 30 feet of you, other than the attacker. The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll. This magic can transfer the attack’s effects regardless of the attack’s range. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.”
Your request can't be answered. Even replies from someone who works at WotC are not considered official. All you can possibly get are opinions from other people who play the game (either players or DMs - who may or may not have any involvement with the game development let alone this one particular feature).
From the WotC SAC:
"Official Rulings Official rulings on how to interpret rules are made here intheSage Advice Compendium. A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an officialruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rulesquestions. The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone elseat Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they areadvice. The tweets of Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), the game’s principal rules designer, are sometimes apreview of rulings that appear here."
If you want any sort of "higher authority" - ask your DM - it is up to them anyway.
P.S. In my opinion, yes it should work for critical hits since all the rune requires is a creature "hit by an attack" and all a 20 does is guarantee a hit but it is up to your DM. (Who apparently thinks crits are a special case even though they are just hits like any other - with extra damage).
P.P.S. If I was running it then the rune would definitely work on crits since it increases the cool and fun factors - it is great when the players get to do something cool and using the cloud rune this way would be cool and fun.
I'm in agreement with IamSposta. The "Cloud Rune" ability would work with a Natural 20 as it's specific about transferring a "hit". Note also that it says "The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll"
It's actually a part of the "Cloud Rune" ability that it's not transferring the "hit" but changing the "target". So if you transfer a non-critical hit roll to a creature with a higher AC that wouldn't be hit by that roll, the hit would become a miss. This means that you can NOT watch an ally hit a minion with low AC and transfer it to another creature with a high AC and get an auto hit. Similarly, if they hit someone paralyzed with a roll less than 20 you likely know that it's automatically considered a critical hit even though it's not a natural 20, but they can't transfer that critical hit on a paralised creature to a non-paralised creature, as they're not transferring the "HIT" but transferring the "roll" to a new target.
So YES, Cloud rune can transfer a Natural 20 and the natural 20 will be used as the roll against the new target, automatically hitting it and causing critical damage unless that target has special abilities to ignore natural 20's or the specific damage type, etc.
I would like an official ruling not an opinion from a member unless said member works for WotC. Does the Rune Knight Cloud Rune feature quoted below apply to a natural 20?
“In addition, when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to invoke the rune and choose a different creature within 30 feet of you, other than the attacker. The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll. This magic can transfer the attack’s effects regardless of the attack’s range. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.”
Thanks, as you can imagine, part of why I chose to play this character was the opportunity to turn a crit hit back at an enemy. But rules like this should be more clear and not up to interpretation.
Our DM works hard, I love him to death so I always respect his rulings with no complaint but I do hate rules that should be absolutely irrefutable.
A natural 20 is an automatic hit. Nothing about the Cloud Rune's ability turns the hit into a miss, it just changes the target, so there's no conflict.
To echo what the others gave said, a natural 20 is still an attack roll that hits, and an attack roll that hit is what is being transfered.
That being said, if the DM begins to find it annoying that all his critical hits are being transfered, it is totally within his rights to stop announcing critical hits before damage is dealt.
I would like an official ruling not an opinion from a member unless said member works for WotC.
Then why are you here? We don't have those.
Does the Rune Knight Cloud Rune feature quoted below apply to a natural 20?
A natural 20 is a hit, so yes.
“In addition, when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to invoke the rune and choose a different creature within 30 feet of you, other than the attacker. The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll. This magic can transfer the attack’s effects regardless of the attack’s range. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.”
Thanks, as you can imagine, part of why I chose to play this character was the opportunity to turn a crit hit back at an enemy. But rules like this should be more clear and not up to interpretation.
It couldn't possibly be any clearer or less up to interpretation. It's incredibly unambiguous. The only thing I can think to add is to explicitly point out to you that you do not know when an attack hits if you if it was a critical hit or not - your DM tells you that you are hit, and then you decide to use the rune reaction or not, and then the DM rolls damage.
Our DM works hard, I love him to death so I always respect his rulings with no complaint but I do hate rules that should be absolutely irrefutable.
This one is absolutely irrefutable, but your DM's fiat powers override the RAW in absolutely any situation. One benefit of your DM's house rule would be being able to find out when you are critically hit, which is ordinarily hidden information.
I'm in agreement with IamSposta. The "Cloud Rune" ability would work with a Natural 20 as it's specific about transferring a "hit". Note also that it says "The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll"
It's actually a part of the "Cloud Rune" ability that it's not transferring the "hit" but changing the "target". So if you transfer a non-critical hit roll to a creature with a higher AC that wouldn't be hit by that roll, the hit would become a miss. This means that you can NOT watch an ally hit a minion with low AC and transfer it to another creature with a high AC and get an auto hit. Similarly, if they hit someone paralyzed with a roll less than 20 you likely know that it's automatically considered a critical hit even though it's not a natural 20, but they can't transfer that critical hit on a paralised creature to a non-paralised creature, as they're not transferring the "HIT" but transferring the "roll" to a new target.
So YES, Cloud rune can transfer a Natural 20 and the natural 20 will be used as the roll against the new target, automatically hitting it and causing critical damage unless that target has special abilities to ignore natural 20's or the specific damage type, etc.
This does bring up the question of Advantage, though. If I have advantage to hit say, a paralyzed target and roll a 20 and a 2, and someone invokes their cloud rune, which roll do I use? The one that hit? Because it says to use the same roll, even though I would not normally have advantage to hit the new target, do I use the natural 20?
If that is the case, I could crit fish on a minion against whom I have advantage, and then turn that crit into a crit against the BBEG.
This does bring up the question of Advantage, though. If I have advantage to hit say, a paralyzed target and roll a 20 and a 2, and someone invokes their cloud rune, which roll do I use? The one that hit? Because it says to use the same roll, even though I would not normally have advantage to hit the new target, do I use the natural 20?
If that is the case, I could crit fish on a minion against whom I have advantage, and then turn that crit into a crit against the BBEG.
With Advantage/Disadvantage there isn't actually any ambiguity about which roll you use. For one, by the time a hit is determined a given roll must already been decided upon. For another, with Advantage your are required to use the higher roll and with Disadvantage you are required to use the lower roll.
About a year later to this, but I got a question that is somewhat similar and definitely on the topic of cloud rune. When does the Rune Knight have to declare the usage? Before or after the damage is known (and subsequently before or after it gets revealed that it was a crit, if the table uses hidden DM dice)?
About a year later to this, but I got a question that is somewhat similar and definitely on the topic of cloud rune. When does the Rune Knight have to declare the usage? Before or after the damage is known (and subsequently before or after it gets revealed that it was a crit, if the table uses hidden DM dice)?
You can activate the Cloud Rune after an attack hits and so long as you activate before the attack is resolved I don't see a problem with doing it while damage is being rolled. Once the damage is known, or even worse the outcome of said damage, the attack has been resolved and it is too late.
This is assuming however, that the attack roll and damage roll are made sequentially. It is not uncommon for them to be rolled simultaneously to help speed up combat, in which case it is essentially impossible to know if an attack hit or not before also knowing the damage.
In either case unless critical hits are simply not being declared if you know an attack hits then you should also know if it was a critical hit, because the attack roll has been made.
All that being said, human reaction time is a thing and if you are playing over the internet then latency is also a thing. So I wouldn't get too hung up on splitting this particular hair. I would just remind a player to be more proactive with this ability and keep an eye out for any bad habits forming. Particularly when playing online with tools to help automate rolls it can be hard for the most attentive player to react before the damage roll is made.
That being said, if the DM begins to find it annoying that all his critical hits are being transfered, it is totally within his rights to stop announcing critical hits before damage is dealt.
The only thing I can think to add is to explicitly point out to you that you do not know when an attack hits if you if it was a critical hit or not - your DM tells you that you are hit, and then you decide to use the rune reaction or not, and then the DM rolls damage.
I actually don't see any text in the rules within the PHB or the DMG that supports the procedure suggested in these statements. Can anyone quote something that supports this?
In the DMG, Chapter 8 -> Dice Rolling it is suggested that the DM has the option of rolling dice behind a screen, but nothing beyond that. Once the DM rolls the dice, if players cannot see the results then the obvious procedure is for the DM to communicate the value that was rolled. Typically, the DM does not "tell you that you are hit" -- the DM asks the Player if a certain modified die roll is enough to hit the player, who is tracking his own AC.
By rule, it is the value of the die roll along with appropriate modifiers that determines whether or not an attack hits and it is also the value of the die roll that determines whether or not an attack is a critical hit.
In the PHB, Chapter 9: Combat -> Making an Attack we have this procedure:
Resolve the attack. You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage
So, first you make the attack roll. Then you determine if it hits. Then you roll damage.
For the attack roll, and determining hits and misses, we have this from Combat -> Making an Attack -> Attack Rolls:
When you make an attack, your attack roll determines whether the attack hits or misses. . . . If the total of the roll plus modifiers equals or exceeds the target's Armor Class (AC), the attack hits.
and also from the same section -- Combat -> Making an Attack -> Attack Rolls:
Rolling 1 or 20
. . .
If the d20 roll for an attack is a 20, the attack hits regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC. This is called a critical hit, which is explained later in this section.
So, confirming that the value of the die roll is a natural 20 and therefore a critical hit is a part of the attack roll procedure and is part of the procedure for determining if the attack hits. By rule, I see no valid way for a DM to withhold this information prior to rolling for damage.
Much further into the Chapter and outside of the section called "Making an Attack" there is another major section called "Damage and Healing" where the rules for "Damage Rolls" are detailed. So, all of the above information is disclosed and fully resolved before moving on to the procedure for damage rolls.
About a year later to this, but I got a question that is somewhat similar and definitely on the topic of cloud rune. When does the Rune Knight have to declare the usage? Before or after the damage is known (and subsequently before or after it gets revealed that it was a crit, if the table uses hidden DM dice)?
According to the feature, the answer is "when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll". This is the trigger for your reaction. As explained above, at the end of the procedure for making an attack roll, the value of the attack roll is known and whether or not a natural 20 was rolled is also known (if a natural 20 was rolled then the final modified value of the attack roll is not necessarily known since a natural 20 is an automatic hit). This should be true whether or not the table uses hidden DM dice.
When you make your decision, the damage is not yet known as that has not yet been rolled. You also wouldn't necessarily know such things like the damage type, potential resistance / immunity, special effects such as inflicting Conditions or other effects and so on.
I would like an official ruling not an opinion from a member unless said member works for WotC. Does the Rune Knight Cloud Rune feature quoted below apply to a natural 20?
“In addition, when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to invoke the rune and choose a different creature within 30 feet of you, other than the attacker. The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll. This magic can transfer the attack’s effects regardless of the attack’s range. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.”
Thanks, as you can imagine, part of why I chose to play this character was the opportunity to turn a crit hit back at an enemy. But rules like this should be more clear and not up to interpretation.
Our DM works hard, I love him to death so I always respect his rulings with no complaint but I do hate rules that should be absolutely irrefutable.
Why would it not apply to a natural 20?!? A crit is a hit, first and foremost. There’s really nothing ambiguous about it. This isn’t just my opinion, it’s RAW.
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Your request can't be answered. Even replies from someone who works at WotC are not considered official. All you can possibly get are opinions from other people who play the game (either players or DMs - who may or may not have any involvement with the game development let alone this one particular feature).
From the WotC SAC:
"Official Rulings
Official rulings on how to interpret rules are made here in the Sage Advice Compendium. A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions.
The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. The tweets of Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), the game’s principal rules designer, are sometimes a preview of rulings that appear here."
If you want any sort of "higher authority" - ask your DM - it is up to them anyway.
P.S. In my opinion, yes it should work for critical hits since all the rune requires is a creature "hit by an attack" and all a 20 does is guarantee a hit but it is up to your DM. (Who apparently thinks crits are a special case even though they are just hits like any other - with extra damage).
P.P.S. If I was running it then the rune would definitely work on crits since it increases the cool and fun factors - it is great when the players get to do something cool and using the cloud rune this way would be cool and fun.
I'm in agreement with IamSposta. The "Cloud Rune" ability would work with a Natural 20 as it's specific about transferring a "hit". Note also that it says "The chosen creature becomes the target of the attack, using the same roll"
It's actually a part of the "Cloud Rune" ability that it's not transferring the "hit" but changing the "target". So if you transfer a non-critical hit roll to a creature with a higher AC that wouldn't be hit by that roll, the hit would become a miss. This means that you can NOT watch an ally hit a minion with low AC and transfer it to another creature with a high AC and get an auto hit. Similarly, if they hit someone paralyzed with a roll less than 20 you likely know that it's automatically considered a critical hit even though it's not a natural 20, but they can't transfer that critical hit on a paralised creature to a non-paralised creature, as they're not transferring the "HIT" but transferring the "roll" to a new target.
So YES, Cloud rune can transfer a Natural 20 and the natural 20 will be used as the roll against the new target, automatically hitting it and causing critical damage unless that target has special abilities to ignore natural 20's or the specific damage type, etc.
A natural 20 is an automatic hit. Nothing about the Cloud Rune's ability turns the hit into a miss, it just changes the target, so there's no conflict.
To echo what the others gave said, a natural 20 is still an attack roll that hits, and an attack roll that hit is what is being transfered.
That being said, if the DM begins to find it annoying that all his critical hits are being transfered, it is totally within his rights to stop announcing critical hits before damage is dealt.
Then why are you here? We don't have those.
A natural 20 is a hit, so yes.
It couldn't possibly be any clearer or less up to interpretation. It's incredibly unambiguous. The only thing I can think to add is to explicitly point out to you that you do not know when an attack hits if you if it was a critical hit or not - your DM tells you that you are hit, and then you decide to use the rune reaction or not, and then the DM rolls damage.
This one is absolutely irrefutable, but your DM's fiat powers override the RAW in absolutely any situation. One benefit of your DM's house rule would be being able to find out when you are critically hit, which is ordinarily hidden information.
This does bring up the question of Advantage, though. If I have advantage to hit say, a paralyzed target and roll a 20 and a 2, and someone invokes their cloud rune, which roll do I use? The one that hit? Because it says to use the same roll, even though I would not normally have advantage to hit the new target, do I use the natural 20?
If that is the case, I could crit fish on a minion against whom I have advantage, and then turn that crit into a crit against the BBEG.
With Advantage/Disadvantage there isn't actually any ambiguity about which roll you use. For one, by the time a hit is determined a given roll must already been decided upon. For another, with Advantage your are required to use the higher roll and with Disadvantage you are required to use the lower roll.
Here are the rules regarding Advantage and Disadvantage: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/using-ability-scores#AdvantageandDisadvantage
Also I will add to the unanimous opinion that Critical Hits are Hits and can be redirected by a Rune Knight's Cloud Rune.
About a year later to this, but I got a question that is somewhat similar and definitely on the topic of cloud rune. When does the Rune Knight have to declare the usage? Before or after the damage is known (and subsequently before or after it gets revealed that it was a crit, if the table uses hidden DM dice)?
You can activate the Cloud Rune after an attack hits and so long as you activate before the attack is resolved I don't see a problem with doing it while damage is being rolled. Once the damage is known, or even worse the outcome of said damage, the attack has been resolved and it is too late.
This is assuming however, that the attack roll and damage roll are made sequentially. It is not uncommon for them to be rolled simultaneously to help speed up combat, in which case it is essentially impossible to know if an attack hit or not before also knowing the damage.
In either case unless critical hits are simply not being declared if you know an attack hits then you should also know if it was a critical hit, because the attack roll has been made.
All that being said, human reaction time is a thing and if you are playing over the internet then latency is also a thing. So I wouldn't get too hung up on splitting this particular hair. I would just remind a player to be more proactive with this ability and keep an eye out for any bad habits forming. Particularly when playing online with tools to help automate rolls it can be hard for the most attentive player to react before the damage roll is made.
I actually don't see any text in the rules within the PHB or the DMG that supports the procedure suggested in these statements. Can anyone quote something that supports this?
In the DMG, Chapter 8 -> Dice Rolling it is suggested that the DM has the option of rolling dice behind a screen, but nothing beyond that. Once the DM rolls the dice, if players cannot see the results then the obvious procedure is for the DM to communicate the value that was rolled. Typically, the DM does not "tell you that you are hit" -- the DM asks the Player if a certain modified die roll is enough to hit the player, who is tracking his own AC.
By rule, it is the value of the die roll along with appropriate modifiers that determines whether or not an attack hits and it is also the value of the die roll that determines whether or not an attack is a critical hit.
In the PHB, Chapter 9: Combat -> Making an Attack we have this procedure:
So, first you make the attack roll. Then you determine if it hits. Then you roll damage.
For the attack roll, and determining hits and misses, we have this from Combat -> Making an Attack -> Attack Rolls:
and also from the same section -- Combat -> Making an Attack -> Attack Rolls:
So, confirming that the value of the die roll is a natural 20 and therefore a critical hit is a part of the attack roll procedure and is part of the procedure for determining if the attack hits. By rule, I see no valid way for a DM to withhold this information prior to rolling for damage.
Much further into the Chapter and outside of the section called "Making an Attack" there is another major section called "Damage and Healing" where the rules for "Damage Rolls" are detailed. So, all of the above information is disclosed and fully resolved before moving on to the procedure for damage rolls.
According to the feature, the answer is "when you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you is hit by an attack roll". This is the trigger for your reaction. As explained above, at the end of the procedure for making an attack roll, the value of the attack roll is known and whether or not a natural 20 was rolled is also known (if a natural 20 was rolled then the final modified value of the attack roll is not necessarily known since a natural 20 is an automatic hit). This should be true whether or not the table uses hidden DM dice.
When you make your decision, the damage is not yet known as that has not yet been rolled. You also wouldn't necessarily know such things like the damage type, potential resistance / immunity, special effects such as inflicting Conditions or other effects and so on.