Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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What are you on about, Disagreeing is usually where the most fun is, as long as it doesn't drag on for pages. It's where we figure out what is actually right and wrong :D.
Sorry for the necropost, I'm coming back to this after a debate that ended up with someone just quoting this and say something along the lines of "Jeremy Crawford said it on Twitter, so it's the rule!"
Well... no. I gave a lot of credit to his Twitter posts in the past but over time I came to realize it was a mistake. Crawford's tweets aren't rules, and that particular tweet is 11 years old and didn't even concern 2024 rules. And we have much more recent erratas that say the exact opposite: Dispel Magic dispels spells and nothing else. Potion of Growth, Potion of Speed, Potion of Heroism... aren't affected by Dispel Magic unless the DM introduces an exception.
Among other tweets that we should really stop quoting is "Wall of Force gives total cover". I like Crawford but I'm sorry, that's a bad idea. It's basically duck tape so that Wall of Force can't be abused to trap an enemy and blast them with nonphysical spells. But it breaks a bunch of spells altogether, it breaks stealth (if cover isn't visual then I can hide behind a transparent glass panel, and if line of sight is an issue then the 3/4 cover requirement is useless and only line of sight matters), and it makes everything confusing and nonsensical. I'd rather make a house-rule to nerf Wall of Force than butcher the concept of Total Cover with this. By that definition I can't cast Charm Person to someone I see through a window... Nope.
The underlying problem is that the D&D rules use "cover" to model two different things: protection from being seen or detected, and protection from being hit by things. The actual definition of Cover only refers to the latter, but a bunch of other things (like the Hide action) effectively use it for the former. Combining these two things into one concept in the rules simplifies a lot of stuff, but it also leads to really weird consequences that you have to just ignore if you want certain things to make any sense.
pronouns: he/she/they
Traditionally there is a distinction made between cover and concealment, or between hard and soft cover, where one block attacks and the other blocks vision. Wall of force provides cover but not concealment.
However, that doesn't matter for most spells, because spells generally require 'a clear path to the target', and a path that goes through a wall of force is not clear. It does mean you can use misty step to go through a wall of force.
Isn't that what the tweet is saying? "... a potion can't be robbed of its magic by it" =~ "Potion of Growth, Potion of Speed, Potion of Heroism... aren't affected by Dispel Magic"
I think what Crawford is saying is that Dispel Magic can remove a spell effect that was granted by a potion someone has drunk, but what it can't do is turn a potion that hasn't been drunk into an inert non-magical beverage.
Versions of this spell in older editions of D&D did have the ability to (at least temporarily) suppress the magical capabilities of magic items, but the 5e/5.5e version does not, which is what he's trying to clarify there.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yes, and that's right because it's an ongoing spell on the target. So IMO, JC was right, both then (5e) and now (5.5e).
Much like dispel magic can dispel a spell cast by a scroll, but casting dispel magic on a scroll doesn't do anything.
What you're pointing out here is precisely why it doesn't work on potions. When you use a scroll, you're actually casting a spell. When you drink a potion, you use a consumable magic item that mimics the effect of a spell. But no spell is being cast, which means that there is no ongoing spell to dispel.
In fact, if these potions actually produced "ongoing spells", they would require concentration to maintain such spells. And they explicitly do not.
Not sure that there are zero potions that cast spells, but it's true that most potions do not cast an identifiable spell and thus RAW cannot be dispelled.
What we're talking about specifically is the handful of potions that say something like "you gain the effect of" and then reference a specific spell, such as the Potion of Speed or Potion of Mind Reading. The question is whether the effects of these potions count as spells that Dispel Magic can dispel.
It seems to me like these shouldn't be thought of as actually casting spells, and that the references to specific spells are just a shorthand to avoid having to reproduce all the effects of the spell in the item's description. However, there is a very confusing Sage Advice ruling here which seems to say that a potion that duplicates a spell requires Concentration if the spell requires Concentration, which might imply that intent is for these effects to actually be treated as spells.
pronouns: he/she/they
"Dispel Magic: Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range. Any ongoing spell of level 3 or lower on the target ends. For each ongoing spell of level 4 or higher on the target, make an ability check using your spellcasting ability (DC 10 plus that spell’s level). On a successful check, the spell ends."
This was written by a masochist. Its badly named. It doesnt dispel "magic". It can only end spells. The description starts off with a misleading statement, and doesnt even explain what it does in the first sentence.
Jeebus wotc why is the language of these rules so bad....
How about:
"Dissipate Spell: Attempt to end an ongoing spell effecting a creature, object, or terrain withn range. If the effecting spell is level 3 or lower, it automatically ends. Otherwise, make an ability check using your spellcasting ability (DC 10 plus the effecting spell’s level). On a successful check, the effecting spell ends."
And any other effect that the DM rules can be ended in that way. There are examples in modules... but no way a player has to know which things that are not spells are dispellable.
The reason for this one, specifically, is that the name is a holdover from earlier editions of the game (where it did have the capacity to dispel other kinds of magical effects) and Wizards of the Coast has long had a real problem with holding onto the names of old stuff without keeping their substance.
pronouns: he/she/they
Well, the name itself is an artifact from prior editions. Plus while it’s only guaranteed to work on spells, several campaign/adventure modules provide other phenomena that can be dispelled at particular points. The “magical effect” bit in the description is for if you want to dispel something like Bigby’s Hand or Spiritual Weapon- they aren’t creatures, nor are they technically objects.
I hope it doesn't bother you, but I wanted to reply in a different post for this.
Aside from the debatable Wall of Force, the spellcasting rules don't differentiate between transparent or opaque cover, only whether the target is behind Total Cover.
So this should be applied to all spells.
It works the same when making an attack:
Cover is just a degree of protection created by obstacles, and it doesn’t refer to "conceal" or "concealed" as in 5e. In 5.5e, those terms only appear in the Hide action and the Invisible condition.
This SAC entry does insist on the word "duplicates" which leads me to believe that only the effect is to be considered for these potions, and not the spell which produces said effect.
Now that I think about it, it seems clearer and clearer to me that the concept of "effect of a spell" does not constitute a spell unless a spell has actually been cast, even if the spell's effect normally requires concentration to be maintained.
When you drink a Bottled Breath, you have to maintain concentration on it (as per the SAC), but the spell's effect is just one part of what the potion does. It would make absolutely no sense to be able to cast Dispel Magic on you while you're still holding the breath, and it would make even less sense to suddenly be able to do it as soon as you exhale.
This item makes it pretty clear when a potion mentions that it duplicates a spell effect, it's merely so as to not copy-paste the description of the spell in question.
The only think that bothers me here is the concept of "clear path" :)
What on earth is a "clear path"? What's that supposed to mean? Clear for what? A path for what? Is a clear path a line that lets light and sound through? A clear path for the caster to move through? A clear path for the spell's effect? What if the spell doesn't have a projectile? How do you define the path of a Charm Person's effect?
EVERYTHING can be bent to do something different if the dm allows it. But you dont put that into every rule and every spell.
The spell description should reflect what the spell can do reliably. If a campaign module allows the spell to be bent in some weird way, you wouldnt put that in the core rule.
Good to know... :)
To me, "clear path" doesn't mean a see-through path, but one that's physically uninterrupted between you and your target.
A clear path is a path that does not have total cover, which means you can make an attack along that path. RAW, spells are treated as if they had a projectile unless the spell specifically states otherwise, it's just that the cover may not be visible. We know that it cannot be a line that lets light and sound through, because heavily obscured does not prevent spells from passing through unless the spell has a sight requirement.