Off the top of my head without looking up the rules, I know that 2014 Twinned Spell ceases to work completely if creatures can be both Creatures and Objects. Why?
Twinned Spell can only be applied to a spell that can only ever possibly target a single creature. If something can affect creatures and objects, it can't be twinned. For example, anything that affects 1 creature and any objects its carrying. Can't be twinned
If we take the rules as not implying Creature and Object are mutually exclusive, but there are zero explicit examples of them being co-applicable, then any Creature could at any time also be an Object. We don't know because the rules don't explain how Creature/Object superposition works
Any Twinned Spell eligible spell would also, by extension, be able to target an Object because that Creature it can target could also be an Object
Therefore Twinned Spell ceases to function in all cases
There is absolutely nothing in the wording of 2014 Twinned Spell that suggests it would "cease to function" if it could target a creature that was also an object. In fact, it doesn't reference objects at all, even to exclude them
Twinned Spell
When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self, you can spend a number of sorcery points equal to the spell’s level to target a second creature in range with the same spell (1 sorcery point if the spell is a cantrip).
To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level. For example, magic missile and scorching ray aren’t eligible, but ray of frost and chromatic orb are.
All Twinned14 cares about is that the spell has one target, and that the target is a creature. Whatever other categories the target might fall into are irrelevant
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Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Some [REDACTED] discussion about how a killed creature ceases to be a creature?
Let's look at the spell Revivify, Reincarnate, Resurrection, True Resurrection they all require a dead creature as a target and not an object.
Probably someone watched videos on YouTube about how a bard of the College of Creation can create objects, so he creates dead bodies and then revives them. Nonsense that is picked up by those who are just starting to play DND.
Notes: We don't disparage people who are beginners to D&D. Everyone starts from somewhere.
I'm going to be going off of the 2014 rules, as that is what I have full access to.
To your first point, "We know that Creatures have hit points and [dead creatures] don't have hit points, and a non-living thing is an Object", this isn't entirely true. Dead creatures don't have hit points, but a lack of hit points wouldn't make it an Object explicitly, as Objects do have hit points. The DMG gives examples for Object AC's and HP. Interestingly, we can see in the table in the DMG where it gives examples for the AC of objects includes "bone" with an AC of 15. If bone has a listed suggested AC, it must also have Hit Points (as what would be the point of being able to hit the bone with an attack if you couldn't damage it?). So because a [dead creature] explicitly has no hit points, it can't purely be an object, because objects do have hit points.
To your first point, "We know that Creatures have hit points and [dead creatures] don't have hit points, and a non-living thing is an Object", this isn't entirely true
I stated three things:
Creatures have hit points - check, this is true, there is no creature that doesn't have hit points, unless you can point to something in the game that is called a creature and doesn't have hit points, either directly through it's own stat block, or indirectly through instruction to use another stat block or to say it has an arbitrary number of hit points
Dead creatures don't have hit points - check, also explicitly true from the rules quote that says "A dead creature has no Hit Points" referenced here
Non-living thing is an object - check, also referenced in the same post where the rules say "An object is a nonliving, distinct thing"
Literally all the things I said where entirely true. Also my point was not "Objects don't have hit points", my point was "Creatures must have hit points and if a creature doesn't have hit points, it's no longer living and non-living things are objects per the rules". So the whole "Objects can have hit points" is a misdirect. Also if we're going from the 2014 rules, the rules for improvised weapons literally describe a "dead goblin" as an object.
To your second point, that "The rules explicitly say non-living things are Objects. Ergo a [dead creature] is an Object, hence not a Creature," this is also not entirely true. There are many examples of non-living things that fall under the Creature category, such as Constructs (Animated Armor for instance) and Undead (zombies, ghosts, etc). They are animated or puppeted by magic or the vengeful soul of a once-living creature, but they are assuredly not "living". And the definition for Creature being "Any being in the game, including a player’s character, is a creature." does not state that the "being" must be living. As far as I can see, there is no definition of "being" in D&D, and we can already see that non-living Creatures are "beings" (Animated Armor, Ghost, etc), so "being" cannot have the requirement of "living".
Constructs and undead are not non-living, as weird as that may seem. Life in the context of D&D doesn't mean "organic functions". A zombie at 1/10 hit points is alive. A zombie at 0/10 hit points is dead. Constructs are not Objects, they are Creatures.
Sorry, I'm not trying to be antagonistic or annoying or pedantic. I think the rules just aren't really written as well as they could be, and I've always had an issue with the "dead creatures aren't creatures anymore" concept. I understand we are trying to parse common language AND rules language, and it is just made more difficult by the fact that in the 2014 rules (and 2024, from what I can tell), they simply aren't quite as detailed as they should be.
So lets look at the argument piece by piece:
Creatures must have hit points and
if a creature doesn't have hit points, it's no longer living and
non-living things are objects per the rules
Point 1: This is never stated in the rules. Creatures we encounter all have hit points, however if we say outside of what is written in the rules (the rules only ever describe a creature as a "being", with no further definition of what constitutes a "being") that a creature must have hit points and then say a dead creature isn't a creature because it doesn't have hit points, then that is circular, as it is only true if we believe a dead creature is not a creature because it doesn't have hit points. Confusing, yes, but basically we're using our assumption on the status of the [dead creature] to define a creature as something that is not a dead creature, so of course we get that outcome. Sorry if I'm not explaining that well.
Point 2: This is probably mostly true, however technically we aren't given a definition for "living", we are only given a definition for "dead". Some spells use the term "revives", some use "returns to life", although the "Dead" definition does say "returns to life" as well. For the sake of argument, I'll say I agree that a Dead creature is not living and has no hit points (not "0 hit points", but no hit points).
Point 3. Non-living things are objects per the rules. This is actually backwards. Per the rules, Objects are non-living things. We can definitively say that by the rules ALL Objects are non-living things. However we cannot say that All non-living things are objects. In fact, we KNOW this isn't true, because the 2024 rules state that "Composite things, like buildings, comprise more than one object", and therefor a building is NOT an object but I think we would agree it is an unliving thing. The 2014 rules state something similar, "For the purpose of these rules, an object is a discrete, inanimate item like a window, door, sword, book, table, chair, or stone, not a building or a vehicle that is composed of many other objects." To be fair here, I'm not sure if the "For the purpose of these rules" portion means purely for the rules of damaging objects, or for the purpose of D&D rules as a whole, but the 2024 rules are much simpler and don't include that language. But from the rules we can see that there are non-living things that are NOT classified as objects.
I think in reality, looking at the rules, a dead creature really has to be something between Creature and Object, or both.
Also, when you said "Alternatively, any spell that only targets Creatures ceases to work because that Creature could also be an Object. That's a nonsensical rabbit hole that appears if you don't treat Creature and Object as mutually exclusive." that isn't actually true, because if a spell said it "targets a creature", then a thing that is a creature would be able to be targeted, regardless of if it was anything else. But also I think the argument wasn't that ALL creatures would also be objects, but that a [dead creature] might be something that is both.
If a creature was also an object, the spell would be targeting either one creature and one object or one creature/object.
There's nothing in the rules to suggest one "creature/object" would be an invalid target
Is it a creature? Is that creature the only thing the spell is targeting? If the answer to both questions is Yes, it's eligible to be Twinned. Regardless of whether it's a "creature/creature" or "creature/object" or "creature/whatchamacallit"
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Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
means that all healing magic (Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and even Lay on Hands) don't work on a creature, sorry object, making death saving throws.
I know it's not your intent, but the whole "sorry object" thing comes across as quite patronising and rude, especially when it's not accurate to my argument. A creature at 0/X hit points still has hit points as the game trait. It just has 0 of them. Once they fail 3 death saves, they "lose" that game trait and go from being at 0/X HP to just not having "Y/X HP" attribute at all. This is explicitly stated in the rules.
No it is not. The rules says that a dead creature "has no Hit Points", it does not say that it has no hit point feature/trait at all. It could just as well mean that it has zero of its hit points left, this is after all a set of rules that the designers have repeatedly told us is written using natural language.
Either way, something that exclusively targets X to the exclusion of all non-X cannot target something that is X+Y because X != X+Y
This is purely something you've invented, Davyd. There is nothing in the rules supporting it
In fact, I would say the rules support -- that dead creatures are considered objects, but also that resurrection spells indisputably target dead creatures and explicitly still refer to them as creatures -- is completely in the opposite direction, that something can very much be a creature and an object at the same time without that affecting whether it's an eligible target for something that targets "creatures"
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
means that all healing magic (Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and even Lay on Hands) don't work on a creature, sorry object, making death saving throws.
I know it's not your intent, but the whole "sorry object" thing comes across as quite patronising and rude, especially when it's not accurate to my argument. A creature at 0/X hit points still has hit points as the game trait. It just has 0 of them. Once they fail 3 death saves, they "lose" that game trait and go from being at 0/X HP to just not having "Y/X HP" attribute at all. This is explicitly stated in the rules.
No it is not. The rules says that a dead creature "has no Hit Points", it does not say that it has no hit point feature/trait at all. It could just as well mean that it has zero of its hit points left, this is after all a set of rules that the designers have repeatedly told us is written using natural language.
It even says that a dead creature "cannot regain hit points" until revived, meaning that it has a hit point feature, but being dead prevents regaining any.
And the argument that because all objects are non-living things means that all non-living things are objects is a logical fallacy (fallacy of the converse). i.e. "All squares have 4 sides" does not mean that all 4-sided shapes are squares.
I've noticed that Davyd's posts have all mysteriously disappeared this morning.
I don't think they "mysteriously disappeared", I think he deleted them because he doesn't want to engage in the conversation further, and we should respect that. Not saying you weren't respecting that, just for anyone else noticing the deleted posts.
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There is absolutely nothing in the wording of 2014 Twinned Spell that suggests it would "cease to function" if it could target a creature that was also an object. In fact, it doesn't reference objects at all, even to exclude them
All Twinned14 cares about is that the spell has one target, and that the target is a creature. Whatever other categories the target might fall into are irrelevant
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Some [REDACTED] discussion about how a killed creature ceases to be a creature?
Let's look at the spell Revivify, Reincarnate, Resurrection, True Resurrection they all require a dead creature as a target and not an object.
Probably someone watched videos on YouTube about how a bard of the College of Creation can create objects, so he creates dead bodies and then revives them. Nonsense that is picked up by those who are just starting to play DND.
Sorry, I'm not trying to be antagonistic or annoying or pedantic. I think the rules just aren't really written as well as they could be, and I've always had an issue with the "dead creatures aren't creatures anymore" concept. I understand we are trying to parse common language AND rules language, and it is just made more difficult by the fact that in the 2014 rules (and 2024, from what I can tell), they simply aren't quite as detailed as they should be.
So lets look at the argument piece by piece:
Point 1: This is never stated in the rules. Creatures we encounter all have hit points, however if we say outside of what is written in the rules (the rules only ever describe a creature as a "being", with no further definition of what constitutes a "being") that a creature must have hit points and then say a dead creature isn't a creature because it doesn't have hit points, then that is circular, as it is only true if we believe a dead creature is not a creature because it doesn't have hit points. Confusing, yes, but basically we're using our assumption on the status of the [dead creature] to define a creature as something that is not a dead creature, so of course we get that outcome. Sorry if I'm not explaining that well.
Point 2: This is probably mostly true, however technically we aren't given a definition for "living", we are only given a definition for "dead". Some spells use the term "revives", some use "returns to life", although the "Dead" definition does say "returns to life" as well. For the sake of argument, I'll say I agree that a Dead creature is not living and has no hit points (not "0 hit points", but no hit points).
Point 3. Non-living things are objects per the rules. This is actually backwards. Per the rules, Objects are non-living things. We can definitively say that by the rules ALL Objects are non-living things. However we cannot say that All non-living things are objects. In fact, we KNOW this isn't true, because the 2024 rules state that "Composite things, like buildings, comprise more than one object", and therefor a building is NOT an object but I think we would agree it is an unliving thing. The 2014 rules state something similar, "For the purpose of these rules, an object is a discrete, inanimate item like a window, door, sword, book, table, chair, or stone, not a building or a vehicle that is composed of many other objects." To be fair here, I'm not sure if the "For the purpose of these rules" portion means purely for the rules of damaging objects, or for the purpose of D&D rules as a whole, but the 2024 rules are much simpler and don't include that language. But from the rules we can see that there are non-living things that are NOT classified as objects.
I think in reality, looking at the rules, a dead creature really has to be something between Creature and Object, or both.
Also, when you said "Alternatively, any spell that only targets Creatures ceases to work because that Creature could also be an Object. That's a nonsensical rabbit hole that appears if you don't treat Creature and Object as mutually exclusive." that isn't actually true, because if a spell said it "targets a creature", then a thing that is a creature would be able to be targeted, regardless of if it was anything else. But also I think the argument wasn't that ALL creatures would also be objects, but that a [dead creature] might be something that is both.
There's nothing in the rules to suggest one "creature/object" would be an invalid target
Is it a creature? Is that creature the only thing the spell is targeting? If the answer to both questions is Yes, it's eligible to be Twinned. Regardless of whether it's a "creature/creature" or "creature/object" or "creature/whatchamacallit"
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
No it is not. The rules says that a dead creature "has no Hit Points", it does not say that it has no hit point feature/trait at all. It could just as well mean that it has zero of its hit points left, this is after all a set of rules that the designers have repeatedly told us is written using natural language.
This is purely something you've invented, Davyd. There is nothing in the rules supporting it
In fact, I would say the rules support -- that dead creatures are considered objects, but also that resurrection spells indisputably target dead creatures and explicitly still refer to them as creatures -- is completely in the opposite direction, that something can very much be a creature and an object at the same time without that affecting whether it's an eligible target for something that targets "creatures"
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It even says that a dead creature "cannot regain hit points" until revived, meaning that it has a hit point feature, but being dead prevents regaining any.
And the argument that because all objects are non-living things means that all non-living things are objects is a logical fallacy (fallacy of the converse). i.e. "All squares have 4 sides" does not mean that all 4-sided shapes are squares.
[Redacted]
I don't think they "mysteriously disappeared", I think he deleted them because he doesn't want to engage in the conversation further, and we should respect that. Not saying you weren't respecting that, just for anyone else noticing the deleted posts.