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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It is ambiguous as to whether or not the slaad and mind flayer can fly or is it the beholder only.
They can all fly (30ft), but only the beholder has 'hover', which is a feature that makes flying safer as you will not fall from the sky if knocked prone.
Since (hover; beholder) applies to fly, that means both should be true. If hover is beholder only, then it should be (hover [beholder]). In 2014 edition, it was fly 30 ft. (hover)(beholder) which indicated that fly was beholder only.
I'd like to get an official "sage advice" ruling on this.
It's worth pointing out that none of the actual Slaad stat blocks have any flying capability. 5.5e Mind Flayers do, but it's very limited and a much shorter range than the spell's stat block.
For that reason alone it seems unlikely that the intent was for the fly speed to apply to all three forms.
pronouns: he/she/they
Yes, I suppose if they are using the semicolon to split the hover and beholderkin phrases to imply that they both apply equally to the fly speed, then it would be only the beholderkin which can fly.
Pretty terrible choice of punctuation and formatting either way.
That's why I want clarification.
Only the Beholderkin can fly, and it can hover as well. The semicolon is a standard way to separate two sentences or items that are distinct but closely linked.
There is a similar usage in the spell Summon Elemental which gives Burrow, Fly, and Swim speeds to the Earth, Air, and Water Elementals respectively.
Thx for the info! I didn't notice that Air Elementals had the same syntax. Case closed.