Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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What doesn't?
I do not think you have interpreted it correctly as there is nothing about 5'
There is nothing about melee physical weapons. If you cast a weapon buff, it cannot be on your weapon as your weapon is not there.
I'm going to use a different spell entirely as an example of why this doesn't work.
Flame Blade conjures a blade of fire in your hand. It also gives instructions on its use: As a Magic action, you can make a melee spell attack with it. However, the spell's effect is limited to creating the blade. You can't treat the blade as being in the other space, and you can't grant it to another creature. It must be in your hand.
Booming Blade hits a similar snag. The spell has effects that are attached to the melee weapon attack. However, the target must still be within 5 feet of the melee weapon in use. The magic could transfer, but the physical attack cannot because the Gaze doesn't move anything but the actual magic through the connection and that attack isn't part of the magic, it's part of the activation.
Running really fast between targets is one valid interpretation of the flavor, sure, but not the only. It only says you vanish, make the melee attacks, then reappear either where you were or within 5 feet of one of the targets. There's no requirement that you have to strike them with the weapon, so Steel Wind Strike isn't relevant to the discussion at hand anyway, it's 100% different from the discussion's situation.
... "You brandish the weapon used in the spell's casting and make a melee attack with it against one creature within 5 feet of you."
And It's not a weapon buff. It's a spell that makes a melee attack within 5' of you. (Except with gaze, 'you' are where the gaze target is, so within 5' of that). It never limits it by reach, and indeed, the spell overrides and replaces the weapon's reach with the "within 5 feet" instruction. It only gets weird with Gaze, because replacing weapon reach with 5' when that's far from your physical body is strange, but not so strange as not to be explained by 'the magic did it'.
Again you still are not interpreting the Gaze rule. You don't make a melee attack as the the Gaze is to allow the origin of a spell be from another living organism. If the spell is with a weapon it does not work. The living subject has to be the one that makes the melee attack. That is why using your own words it "..****y gets weird" is happening. The Gaze is for Eldritch blast or dissont whispers or phantasmal force or the none warlock spells like magic missile or fireball. The way you are describing a melee attack spell, is not going to work.
The spell origin is at the subject, but the melee attack is not you, it is the living subject.
1. Generally I say no. That being said I can see an argument for if X is armed casting the spell from their location would trigger it on their weapon.
2. yes, making an attack whether its from a spell or a weapon breaks invisibility.
3. GM call, you don't automatically but giving advantage for trick maneuvers is allowed.
4. Same as 3 imo. If you are both unseen its clear advantage. And no impact on their invisibility.
5. yes.
I'm going to respond only to 1 as i was asking myself the same question. My verdict: it works perfectly well. And so i have just ruled as a DM with a player.
After using your bonus action to look through your familiar's the invocation says:
"and you can cast spells *as if you were in your space or the other creature's space* if the two of you are within 60 feet of each other."
The Echo Knight's Manifest Echo ability says something similar:
"When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves at least 5 feet away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature *as if you were in the echo's space.*"
Clearly we see abilities that are virtually the same.
We can get into an eternal discussion about the semantics of 'as if you were' but the fact is that the Echo Knight's ability lets you make an attack while you may not technically be there; however, your weapon is most definitely there to make an attack so we have to assume at least a figment of yourself is there to make it.
In case of Booming Blade /True Strike the weapon is part of the casting of the spell. First, you are mentally already in your familiar's space. And then, because of 'as if you were', you are casting the spell from your familiar's location, not your own position. Or as above, at least a figment of yourself is there to make the spell attack. If the Echo Knight's figment can then have their weapon available in the alt-location, we should assume that whatever your attacking with with GOTM is A) in two places at once B) temporarily displaced to the alt location when you brandish it.
3 more things:
-The Rule of Cool applies
- Warlocks use a magical weapon with POTB; this is a magical action. It fits flavourwise.
- If we want our players to diversify away from always using Eldritch Blast and showing them a way to do equivalent damage/cool combat strategy in a different way, we shouldn't be nitpicky. The warlock in question invests 2 invocations and a bonus action in this move. Inspire them to also apply agonising blast and repelling blast to booming blade and you have an incredibly cool alt-warlock build.
I'm a Large Variant Human Teacher. I have expertise in Persuasion& Performance but disadvantage on Constitution (Doors) checks
Casting spells and attacking with a melee/ranged weapon are not the same. The creature that is your origin of spells is not physically attacking. Chances are the creature also has a different Initiative as well. Gaze of two minds is a great way to cast spells with an origin that is not you. The creature can be invisible and they stay invisible while you cast spells. If you want to fight as a melee fighter, why bother with Gaze of two minds? You lose all sorts of advantages and it is costly from an invocation POV.
RAW, it really does work. The weapon cantrips are often extremely odd in their interactions with other mechanics, and this is one of them. The attack with the weapon is part of the spell. You can cast spells as if you're in the other creature's space. Therefore, you can cast this spell, which includes a weapon attack, as if you were in that space. If you were in that space, you could hit with the weapon attack.
Now, a GM is entirely within their rights to rule that it doesn't. I would myself. This is because the RAW ruling breaks the spells concept. But the concept is not the mechanics. The mechanics are abstract and generic.
The attack with the weapon is part of the resolution of the spell. The origin of the spell doesn't really matter - if the same spell was a buff you could cast on someone 60' away, it would still be limited by the fact that they can only attack those within weapon range of themselves.
Yes, exactly. This isn't magic weapon. You cast the spell, and as part of its resolution, you make a weapon attack. If you were in the other creature's space, you'd cast the spell and attack something within your weapon's reach from that space. Since you cast the spell as if you were in the creature's space, then that's how it works. Things do what they say, even if it feels weird.
Saying that it works some other way by RAW is like saying that if you cast destructive wave through Gaze, the effect ripples out from your location anyway.
(There are some not-immediately-obvious questions about how Gaze interacts with duration effects like spirit guardians, but that's a topic for a different thread.)
Can You buff a weapon that the creature has? I agree you can. But that is were it stops. You can't think/act and attack as the creature. The DM can, but not the PC. The creature has a different initiative as well. Can the creature even wield the weapon? These are reason that it does not make sense to be able to use those cantrip weapon buff spells via gaze of two minds.
Sure. It works, just not like you expect.
You cast the spell from a different space. However, you now have to make a weapon attack from your space according to the rules of the weapon attack. The Gaze of Two Minds doesn't change the weapon's reach which will be measured from your space and so it really doesn't do anything for you. The effect of the spell is that the caster makes a melee weapon attack. There is no spell effect that can originate from the other space. It's like saying, I am going to activate Gaze of Two Minds on Bob the Fighter and cast False Life to give Bob Temporary Hit Points. Gaze of the Two Minds can't change or displace a spell's effects on the caster.
Similarly, Vampiric Touch is restricted by reach which cannot altered by Gaze of Two Minds.
I don't think Gaze of Two Minds would affect which creature/space is targeted if trying to Counterspell the spell cast.
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Yes, I agree it doesn't make sense. That is a different question from "do the rules say you can?" When we're dealing with the interactions of hundreds of different abilities, sometimes they're gonna get weird. It's inevitable.
That's one of the reasons DMs exist. Because the better approach is not "this doesn't make sense, so clearly the rules don't say it" -- that leads to tortured rulings that bleed into other things. The correct approach is, "well, yes, it's technically correct, but no, because it breaks verisimilitude". And that's a table-level question.
So, when it says "you cast the spell as if you're in the other creature's space", it doesn't actually mean that. There are exceptions, which are not listed. The easy mental exercise of "how would this work if Bob the Warlock were standing exactly where Sue the Fighter is" becomes an exercise in "well, what parts of the spell effect aren't really part of the spell effect?"
That's unadjudicable. The spell effect is the spell effect.
You know, the more spells people bring into it, the more I'm convincing myself that I was wrong to say I'd exclude the weapon cantrips as a table ruling.
Why is it a problem that Bob the warlock, fifty feet away, pulls out his sword and swings it, and Alphonse the Orc gets hit by it? Is a displaced weapon strike really any harder to believe than Bob casting a spell, and a glowing mote shooting out from Sue the fighter to explode into a fireball? It's all magic. We tossed the laws of physics into the bin decades ago.
You're correct on this one. Despite the shenanigans, Bob is the caster and he is where he is.
But that's an orthogonal question.
The problem is that the spell doesn't displace the weapon and neither does Gaze of Two Minds. That's why the combo can't work the way you describe. If the spell displaced the weapon, like Zephyr Strike kind of does, it wouldn't be a problem. Zephyr Strike, even though it was dismissed as an invalid comparison earlier, would be fine measuring the ranges from the Gaze of Two Mind's target's space.
However, the spell effect doesn't do that. You make a weapon attack restricted by the reach or range of the weapon. The spells in question don't teleport the weapon. They don't teleport or otherwise provide the ammunition if the weapon requires it. The weapons are on the Caster's body and neither the spell effect nor Gaze of Two Minds change that. Gaze of Two Minds doesn't remove the requirement to use those weapons. You are stuck with making the attack originating from the caster's body because of the restrictions of the weapon.
You are injecting an effect into the combo that does not originate in the spell or Gaze of Two Minds.
Let me ask another question. Do you think that Gaze of Two Minds allows you to touch creatures as if you were in the invocation's target's space?
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Gaze doesn't displace the wizard, either. And yet it works.
All Gaze says is "you can cast spells as if you were in your space or the other creature’s space if the two of you are within 60 feet of each other." It places no other restrictions on the ability. As far as I'm concerned, that means that, RAW, you can cast any spell that way.
Part of this is whether we're trying to treat the rules as a mechanical simulation of reality. I'm not, because that way lies madness. If you have to pick over the details of every spell to decide whether or not it can work with Gaze, you're going to drag the game to a crawl.
And the rules don't tell you to do that. You're doing it to yourself. There's nothing in the rules to indicate that the proper way to resolve it isn't functionally "pick up the warlock, drop them on top of the other creature, resolve the spell, then put the warlock back". Really, I don't see another way to interpret "as if you were in the other creature's space".
Sure. Why not? If I were in the space, I could do it.
Quick quiz: which touch-range spells don't actually say you have to touch a thing, and should they be treated differently from those that do? If a spell says you make a melee spell attack, how does that count? How about the self-range spells? There's plenty of those that don't just affect you. If you cast Eyebite, does that work? Misty Step? Melf's Minute Meteors? Thunderwave?
While we're at it, what about spells from items? You're still casting them, but does it count? Does the type of item matter? Can you cast Fireball from a scroll? What about Lightning Bolt from a wand? How about something from an Enspelled Weapon?
The longer this goes the more im with jl8e on this. How about touch, how is delivering a touch spell different than a firebolt shooting from your hand. Then we start asking melf, eyebite etc and now it just starts becoming a pain in the ass to administer as almost every spell will have an argument for and against when the simple it just works answer is there.
It does not work. The longsword in your hand cannot make contact with an enemy 60 feet away from you.
You are claim it works because, but the spell does not do what you say it does and the ability does not do what you say it does. Neither change how weapon attacks work, like Manifest Echo does. Manifest Echo affects weapon attacks, not spell effects and Gaze of Two Minds affects spell effects and not weapon attacks.
No, you are injecting into the rules mechanics that the rules do not provide and defending it by inventing a problem that doesn't exist.
Does Gaze of Two Minds change who is holding the flame when you cast Flame Blade? No. Oh no! Look how long it took to adjudicate that! The travesty!
Gaze of Two Minds does not allow you to bypass basic requirements of the spell's effects. If I cast Absorb Elements, the caster is still the one protected, never the target of Gaze of Two Minds. If I cast True Strike the caster is affected and makes a melee attack, never the target of Gaze of Two Minds.
And here you go. Spells do what they say they do unless it's convenient for a rules discussion.
But Gaze of Two Minds doesn't change what space you are actually in. If you were in the space, then your casting would trigger a held action to attack when you cast a spell and I could make an attack against you via the Gaze of Two Minds' target's space. You want to resolve the spell casting as if you are in the target's square in order to make your argument work, right?
In that context, all that Gaze of Two Minds cares about is that you cast the spell, not what enables you to cast it, unless the casting method has additional restrictions. For example, if there was a hypothetical item that allows you to cast Cause Fear on the target of the attack when it hits, Gaze of Two Minds won't have an effect even though the spell would normally be eligible. Also, if the item itself casts the spell (in previous editions, sentient items could do this, but I can't think of any examples of this in 5e), Gaze of Two Minds could be used.
An Artificer's Spell-Storing Item would not work because the item does not allow you to cast a spell, only produce the spell effect and Gaze of Two Minds requires that you cast the spell.
You could cast Tenser's Floating Disk as a ritual and be fine.
How you cast it doesn't usually matter.
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I was talking about Gaze working. It doesn't displace the wizard, but it still does its thing. Why is it a bridge too far for it to displace a spell's effect when that effect includes a melee attack?
So, can you weapon cantrip through the Echo? (Assume you're a multiclass that can substitute cantrips.) How would that interact with Green-flame blade?
Anyway, echo knight is irrelevant. My point is that the weapon attack is part of the spell. If the spell is countered, the attack does not happen. How is it not part of the spell's effects?
And if it is part of the spell's effects, why is it not included in "as if you were at the other creature's location"? What specific text of the rules excludes it? And no, it's not the definition of reach. Echo knight, which I guess is vaguely relevant after all, gives us a clear example of displacing weapon attacks being permitted. Indeed, it uses "as if you were in the echo's space" when talking about displacing opportunity attacks.
Yes, Gaze doesn't specifically permit weapon attacks, but it doesn't enumerate what kinds of spells can be displaced. By default, that means all of them can. Now, there are plenty of spells where it doesn't matter where you are when you cast the spell, but the weapon cantrips aren't one of them. Sans something specifically exempting them from this kind of effect, we're in a specific-beats-general situation. Gaze says you can cast a spell as if you were at the other creature's location. True Strike is a spell, so you can cast it, and it has effects as if you were at the other creature's location. Since its effect is making a weapon attack, you can make that weapon attack as if you were at that location, which means your reach is measured from that location.
Is it weird? Of course it is. But "it's weird" still doesn't mean "it's not allowed".
Nobody ever said the target of Gaze makes the attack. You make the attack as if you were at their location.
I don't follow the point you're trying to make here. I can cast spells as if I'm in the other space. If that allowed a reaction attack, it would regardless of what spell I was casting. There's no gotcha here.
It is part of the spell, but it is still restricted by weapon attack rules in addition to the spell rules. Gaze of Two Minds doesn't affect the weapon attack rules at all. You still must use the weapon which is on your body and not displaced by Gaze of Two Minds because Gaze of Two Minds doesn't say it does that.
Does it displace the effects pf Flame Blade? No. The effect of the spell is not always able to be displaced. Weapon Cantrips are such spells because they require the physical presence of the weapon and, in some cases, the ammunition. You could potentially make the argument for using the Gaze of Two Minds' target to spot a target you couldn't otherwise see (perhaps they have Darkvision and you don't), but that is a separate matter and would likely impose disadvantage on the attack roll regardless of whether you were attacking via a weapon cantrip or a weapon without a spell.
Nothing about Gaze of Two Minds changes where the weapon is and therefore where its reach is measured from. Therefore you cannot stab someone 60 feet away from you by using Gaze of Two Minds. The target will never be in your weapon's reach.
The caster and their weapon are not moved by Gaze of Two Minds. The caster can never make a weapon attack from the space of Gaze's target.
You want to be in the space of the Gaze's target, with all of your equipment when you are casting the spell. Your argument is that because that's the case, you can swing a sword and hit anyone you like. If that's the case, they should be able to hit you back. Or, alternatively, you are not in the space with your equipment and your weapons cannot reach your target because they are still on your body up to 60 feet away.
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And the weapon attack rules say I can attack anybody within reach of
mythe other character's location.Anyway, if you're using the weapon attack rules, then what's the justification for saying that touch spells also can't be used?
I mean, Flame blade's casting can be displaced. It just doesn't matter. When you cast flame blade, you now have a flame blade. If I cast it as if I'm at Sue the fighter's location, I still have a flame blade.
That's not my argument. My argument is much more fundamental -- the game mechanic says I can substitute the location for casting a spell, therefore I can do that for any spell where my location matters. (And also those where it doesn't, but who cares about them?)
I'm not at that location; I can just use it. To use a programming metaphor, I have a pointer to that location. (Or a reference if you use those fancy newfangled languages that aren't made entirely of sharp edges and guns loaded with foot-seeking bullets. :)
And again, it doesn't necessarily make sense in the translation of mechanic to fiction -- that's why I advocated for GMs ruling it out.
It can be made to work in the fiction, but that's not relevant to the question of what the rules actually say.
(There's nothing fictionally wrong with me swinging my sword as part of a spell and the magic transmitting the effects of the blow along with the rest of the spell's effects. It's not really any more difficult to buy than me casting a lightning bolt and the bolt emerging from Sue the fighter's space.)
(There's also at least a somewhat plausible RAI argument, since we're well outside of what's implied by "gaze of two minds", but arguably, so is fireball.)