So in last adventure my monk gets attacked by an assassin with a crossbow bolt. It does a certain amount of piercing damage and also poison damage. My question is whether if the monk can reduce the piercing attack damage to 0 via his deflect missile ability the rules say they catch the missile. Could this be interpreted to mean that since there was no piercing damage my monk should also be spared the poison damage?
If the weapon states it does both Piercing and Poison damage then the weapon deals both of those damages simultaneously. Deflect missiles would affect the amount as a whole, if it's reduced to 0 then there is no damage dealt. If it's not reduced to 0 it would be up to the DM to determine which damage type was inflicted and how much.
if the weapon states it does Piercing damage and then requires a DC to save vs poison it's different. The Deflect Missiles would only affect the Piercing damage, if the damage is reduced to 0 then it's a catch. The DC save is where it gets tricky, the DM could rule that it's a topical poison so the DC needs to be made because the poison got on the skin, or the DM could rule that no save is necessary because the poison must enter the blood stream and since it did no damage that couldn't happen.
Listen to the above poster for details, but in general Poison Damage as part of a missile comes only if the missile hits. If Deflect Missile gets the original weapon damage down to 0, you catch it. In other words it doesn't hit, so the Poison Damage wouldn't be triggered.
At my table, I would have ruled that no poison damage would be dealt. This is because to me, if you reduced the damage to zero and catch it than the poison wouldn't have triggered...
Plus the rule of cool, I would kinda feel like a dick DM if my monk caught a bolt and I was like, well you are poisoned still so take that... Don't try to be badass. lol
So in last adventure my monk gets attacked by an assassin with a crossbow bolt. It does a certain amount of piercing damage and also poison damage. My question is whether if the monk can reduce the piercing attack damage to 0 via his deflect missile ability the rules say they catch the missile. Could this be interpreted to mean that since there was no piercing damage my monk should also be spared the poison damage?
I see two possible answers to this question.
If the weapon states it does both Piercing and Poison damage then the weapon deals both of those damages simultaneously. Deflect missiles would affect the amount as a whole, if it's reduced to 0 then there is no damage dealt. If it's not reduced to 0 it would be up to the DM to determine which damage type was inflicted and how much.
if the weapon states it does Piercing damage and then requires a DC to save vs poison it's different. The Deflect Missiles would only affect the Piercing damage, if the damage is reduced to 0 then it's a catch. The DC save is where it gets tricky, the DM could rule that it's a topical poison so the DC needs to be made because the poison got on the skin, or the DM could rule that no save is necessary because the poison must enter the blood stream and since it did no damage that couldn't happen.
Listen to the above poster for details, but in general Poison Damage as part of a missile comes only if the missile hits. If Deflect Missile gets the original weapon damage down to 0, you catch it. In other words it doesn't hit, so the Poison Damage wouldn't be triggered.
At my table, I would have ruled that no poison damage would be dealt. This is because to me, if you reduced the damage to zero and catch it than the poison wouldn't have triggered...
Plus the rule of cool, I would kinda feel like a dick DM if my monk caught a bolt and I was like, well you are poisoned still so take that... Don't try to be badass. lol
I would also rule that if deflect missile brought the piercing damage to zero the monk would not suffer the poison damage.