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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Different people. I never specified anything about what feels sensible, just what the rules actually say.
Fair point. And yes, like you said, many swallowing creatures have Blindsight. The Tarrasque is a well-known example. Giant Frogs don't, though. But I don't think matters. Even if we don't consider the fact that swallow actions often explicitly give Total Cover to swallowed creatures, it can easily be inferred by the fact that there are several layers of fully encasing solid surfaces between a creature's own stomach and the outside of its body (I can't believe I even need to point that out)... And as we all know, Blindsight doesn't see through Total Cover.
The rules actually say that an Unseen Attacker has advantage.
As for whether or not an attacker is unseen -- that is generally determined by the DM as you've pointed out. The DM has to make a ruling about that based on the specific situation that is occurring in the game and there are plenty of edge cases that exist. The DM will use various rules such as Line of Sight, Heavily Obscured areas, and so on for guidance and then ultimately the DM just has to make a ruling about whether or not a creature can be seen. Whether or not there is an actual rule about whether or not a creature can see inside of its own stomach is beside the point because of course it cannot. If a DM claimed to be making a RAW-based ruling and tried to then justify the ruling by saying that the creature can see inside of its own stomach, then I would strenuously object. If a DM instead admitted that he would prefer to make a non-RAW ruling for this situation such that applying both advantage and disadvantage remains disadvantage instead of canceling out in this case and asked us to just go with it then of course that's fine. But "how would I rule it" is a different conversation than "what is the RAW". The OP was specifically looking for a RAW answer.
Yeah, but being swallowed doesn't actually provide total cover against the swallowing monster (I think I've only once used a swallowing monster, and I don't think the character who got swallowed ever tried to attack the worm, so...).
RAW all the modifiers cancel out even if it doesn’t make the best sense.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
RAW: you are correct (discussed here).
RAI: if the writer's intended that they likely would've mentioned it (instead of just mentioning the two conditions that grant disadvantage). It seems like it didn't occur to them.
Either interpretation is fine.
Incidentally, and this is a house rule, I generally consider touch to provide the effect of sight, so you can cast spells that require sight if you're touching (outside of swallow, usually only applies to grapples). This does help a spellcaster who is trapped, as it means that you can, for example, magic missile the creature.
I've seen a couple of people argue that the Total Cover mentioned in swallow actions doesn't apply to the swallowing creature. If that was true, the creature could still reach you with their bites/tail/claws while you are inside them, which is ridiculous.
This Total Cover is given to make clear that while inside a swallowing creature, you are safe from their other attacks. If might seem stupid to say it like "a creature isn't outside itself", but it sounds just as stupid to imply that it can reach and see inside itself.
If you agree that it can't target or reach inside itself, then you've just described Total Cover.
It's also RAW. You're free to think it's dumb, but you can't pick and choose -- you can dislike the way the DM ruled, but it's no more wrong than the way you want it to work.
It's not the only RAW. It all comes from an interpretation of what "outside" means in that context. And RAW, every part of the creature that is not their stomach is outside their stomach. That includes tail, jaws, and claws. That's also RAW. That's the problem with RAW, there are often several ways of reading the exact same sentence. Just because we're having a RAW discussion, doesn't mean that only 1 reading is valid.
Yeah, but it doesn't say "outside the stomach". It says "outside the creature".
The thing is that, even RAI, I don't think it holds up...
One thing that 2024 has made clear is that the designers wanted less text, not more. So arguments like "if the devs wanted this, they would have written it" are rarely valid.
2024 Dual Wielder feat if one of my favorite examples of that. This feat is pretty much useless on its own, but shines when used with Nick. I've seen other DMs argue that you can't get an extra attack with you "main" weapon by combining a Nick "off-hand" weapon with this feat because even if it's RAW, this combination was likely not intended, and it's an exploit, and so on. But considering that this is the only case where 2024 Dual Wielder is actually beneficial, it's clear to me that this is very much the intent behind the rewriting of this feat in 2024, even though the feat itself doesn't mention Nick in any way. And don't get me started on all the texts that has been removed from 2024 spells that effectively don't change anything to what these spells do. My point is: just because the devs didn't explicitly mention something, doesn't mean they didn't think of it or didn't intend for it.
The Unseen Attacker and Target rule has always been a black sheep in the games I've played. It's the reason why nobody attacks with disadvantage when attacking to or from inside a Darkness spell or a Fog Cloud (without special senses). Yes, you can't see where your attacks go, but your enemies to don't them coming. That's why the disadvantage cancels out.
I feel like every DM hates this rule and jumps at the first opportunity to ignore it, but it's important for the balance of the game.
Being swallowed is already a shitty enough situation for the player that on top of that you'd have them miss 80% of their attacks as they're trying to get out. Insisting that being they're hindered from being surrounded by the monster's flesh but ignoring the fact that it also makes it pretty much impossible to miss your target. That's not a fair way to rule the game.
Swallow is by no means a shitty situation; most of the time swallow whole is a lousy power that the monster should probably not use.
This is another one of those discussions where the concept being discussed doesn't need to be written in the rules because it's just part of the default assumptions that need to exist as a framework that the rules are built upon. Like, gravity exists by default and functions similar to our real world. Or that rain is a substance that is mainly water as opposed to, say, cats and dogs. So there might be a rule which discusses how the general combat rules might be altered in the presence of rain, but that only makes any sense if we can all agree on what the term "rain" generally means, for example. That's part of the framework to use so that actual rules can be written.
In this case, we should assume that by default creatures cannot see through solid objects. From there we can create rules such as the Line of Sight rule where if such objects are arranged in a certain way then we may or may not be able to see into a certain space. But that rule is written based on the above assumption that creatures cannot see through certain things. For the task in question, we do not have to find a written rule which fits exactly to our scenario of attempting to see into our own stomach. We should already just assume that the rules assume that we all agree that by default a creature cannot see through solid objects.
Now, perhaps a creature might have something written into their Stat block that creates a Trait. Something like:
X-ray vision. The [ whatever creature ] can see through solid objects.
In that case, a specific rule is created that alters our assumptions. Another example is the spell description for Reverse Gravity. There aren't really any general rules for gravity -- those are assumed. But that spell explicitly causes gravity to behave contrary to expectations.
In this discussion, there isn't any reason to believe that the swallowing creature can see within its own stomach. By default, it should be assumed that it cannot, since by default creatures cannot see through solid objects. Therefore, the swallowed creature is Unseen.