In today's session, the sorcerer cast a careful fireball that also hit a stunned ally. Careful metamagic meant the ally automatically made the DEX save. Stunned condition meant he automatically failed the DEX save. I thought about it for a moment and then just told the stunned ally to roll the saving throw, which is the one thing that both situations definitely do not call for, but it seemed fair and everyone at the table shrugged.
This is definitely a rather rare interaction, but I would say that careful spell metamagic is more specific than the stunned condition on the specific beats general rule scale.
This is definitely a rather rare interaction, but I would say that careful spell metamagic is more specific than the stunned condition on the specific beats general rule scale.
They seem to be the same. Auto pass, Auto fail, just like Advantage and Disadvantage. I would have done the same as TexasDevin.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
Hmm. I think I would have ruled the auto-succeed trumps the auto-fail. It is more specific in that Stunned makes you fail ALL Dex saves, while Careful Casting makes you succeed THIS Dex save. Also, Stunned means you can't possibly dodge anything no matter how dextrous you are - while Careful casting means that (whatever your dexterity) dodging is irrelevant since the spell dodged you.
If you can't make a call in time (your call was pretty fine too) then the other option is to let the player(s) choose.
According to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, page 77, or here, "If two or more things happen at the same time on a character or monster’s turn, the person at the game table — whether player or DM — who controls that creature decides the order in which those things happen."
As such, since "auto succeed" and "auto fail" happen simultaneously, the character whose turn it is (the caster of Fireball in this case) decides which happens first (which I imagine makes the other effect moot).
The way I play it out is to look at the sequence of events and resolve them in the order they've been applied:
Creature was stunned: Auto-Fail DEX THEN Careful Spell is added to AoE spell: Auto-Succeed DEX
In this case the Careful Spell happened after the Stunned condition, the creature is omitted from the spell. It's micromanaging the events of a 6 second window of events, but it helps manage events like this.
However, the idea of a cancellation of bonuses, similar to Dis/Advantage, does sound like a neat way of handling it as well.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with having those cancel out. However, the RAW way to handle the interaction is auto-success. Careful Spell uses a resource to accomplish, is being performed by someone notStunned (may be trivial, but it helps to put in context of who is doing what to whom), and applies a specific effect to a specific event.
The Sorcerer made it so that the Fireball wouldn't hit the ally (at full force), not so that the ally would become un-Stunned. The real question would be whether the ally had the Evasion feature or not. Without that, they still take half damage from the Fireball.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
The wording of Careful Spell is just bad. Many spells allow you to simply pick targets that are unaffected by your spell. This may not be RAW for the RAW arguers out there, I'm pretty sure it's RAI though. The caster basically already decided to warp their spell or shield the character from it's effects and you want the stunned condition to basically undo the caster's efforts and attract the spells damage like a magnet?
The wording of Careful Spell is just bad. Many spells allow you to simply pick targets that are unaffected by your spell. This may not be RAW for the RAW arguers out there, I'm pretty sure it's RAI though. The caster basically already decided to warp their spell or shield the character from it's effects and you want the stunned condition to basically undo the caster's efforts and attract the spells damage like a magnet?
I disagree completely:
Careful Spell
When you cast a spell that forces other creatures to make a saving throw, you can protect some of those creatures from the spell’s full force. To do so, you spend 1 sorcery point and choose a number of those creatures up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one creature). A chosen creature automatically succeeds on its saving throw against the spell.
It's quite clear that this feature is not intended to be automatic complete avoidance.
If it were intended that way, the last line would read, "A chosen creature is unaffected by the spell."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
True. My actual point however, was in agreement to your post. The caster already established what level of damage the ally would be subjected to. Having it do anything more, simply makes no sense and takes the characters ability away.
Aah, my misunderstanding. It read to me like you were in favor of Careful Spell being automatic total avoidance.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
For those of you saying careful spell would give the auto-pass, why would a fully capable PC have the same chance as one lying on the ground stunned?
Because that's literally the entire point of Careful Spell?
The PC being hit isn't the one shaping the effect. The Sorcerer is casting the spell in such a way as to not fully affect the other PC.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Aah, my misunderstanding. It read to me like you were in favor of Careful Spell being automatic total avoidance.
I explained myself poorly while complaining about the wording of Careful Spell, irony. In some cases, Careful Spell would cause total avoidance. An example would be Careful Spell Ice Knife in regards to the area of effect shard explosion cold damage.
Stunned means you can't possibly dodge anything no matter how dextrous you are - while Careful casting means that (whatever your dexterity) dodging is irrelevant since the spell dodged you.
The real weirdness comes when you apply Evasion to the mix. :p
Rogue is stunned, paralyzed, perhaps also prone for good measure. As written, getting hit by a Careful Spell Fireball allows him to apply Evasion and avoid all damage.
Of course, contrary to how the Evoker's Sculpt Spells ability works (which fully prevents damage by itself), I'd expect that's when a DM will step in and say "you can't really apply your 'instinctive agility' after that green tentacle mouth thing belched on you".
The rogue will still prefer to be in sorcerer's fireball in all other circumstances, though. Sorcerers can apply Careful Spell to creatures without needing to see them. :p
The real weirdness comes when you apply Evasion to the mix. :p
Rogue is stunned, paralyzed, perhaps also prone for good measure. As written, getting hit by a Careful Spell Fireball allows him to apply Evasion and avoid all damage.
Of course, contrary to how the Evoker's Sculpt Spells ability works (which fully prevents damage by itself), I'd expect that's when a DM will step in and say "you can't really apply your 'instinctive agility' after that green tentacle mouth thing belched on you".
The rogue will still prefer to be in sorcerer's fireball in all other circumstances, though. Sorcerers can apply Careful Spell to creatures without needing to see them. :p
That's actually a good example where RAW should probably not be applied. I agree with the conclusion: the rogue should take half-damage.
(although it'd be fun to determine why exactly, i wouldn't be as sure if they were just stunned, here it's Paralyzed that does it for me)
Stunned means the character is incapacitated (can take no action or reaction) and can't move. How exactly would they nimbly dodge out of the way if they are completely unable to move?
I would argue that "incapacitated" and "unable to move" are two different things. I see a stunned character as someone dazed and disoriented, so I would still let them apply their Evasion feature, as the spell was already shaped to avoid them, and they still have some form of instinct/reflexes to maybe jump cover themselves and jump a bit out of the way.
Paralyzed is a different thing, and I would not let them apply Evasion, since there's indeed no possibility for them to "dodge out of the way".
That would probably be my ruling. Not saying it's the right or correct one, but it fits the way I see things and I can see myself describing this to my players, and I think they would find it fair.
In today's session, the sorcerer cast a careful fireball that also hit a stunned ally. Careful metamagic meant the ally automatically made the DEX save. Stunned condition meant he automatically failed the DEX save. I thought about it for a moment and then just told the stunned ally to roll the saving throw, which is the one thing that both situations definitely do not call for, but it seemed fair and everyone at the table shrugged.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
This is definitely a rather rare interaction, but I would say that careful spell metamagic is more specific than the stunned condition on the specific beats general rule scale.
They seem to be the same. Auto pass, Auto fail, just like Advantage and Disadvantage. I would have done the same as TexasDevin.
"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
Hmm. I think I would have ruled the auto-succeed trumps the auto-fail. It is more specific in that Stunned makes you fail ALL Dex saves, while Careful Casting makes you succeed THIS Dex save. Also, Stunned means you can't possibly dodge anything no matter how dextrous you are - while Careful casting means that (whatever your dexterity) dodging is irrelevant since the spell dodged you.
If you can't make a call in time (your call was pretty fine too) then the other option is to let the player(s) choose.
According to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, page 77, or here, "If two or more things happen at the same time on a character or monster’s turn, the person at the game table — whether player or DM — who controls that creature decides the order in which those things happen."
As such, since "auto succeed" and "auto fail" happen simultaneously, the character whose turn it is (the caster of Fireball in this case) decides which happens first (which I imagine makes the other effect moot).
The way I play it out is to look at the sequence of events and resolve them in the order they've been applied:
Creature was stunned: Auto-Fail DEX
THEN
Careful Spell is added to AoE spell: Auto-Succeed DEX
In this case the Careful Spell happened after the Stunned condition, the creature is omitted from the spell. It's micromanaging the events of a 6 second window of events, but it helps manage events like this.
However, the idea of a cancellation of bonuses, similar to Dis/Advantage, does sound like a neat way of handling it as well.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with having those cancel out. However, the RAW way to handle the interaction is auto-success. Careful Spell uses a resource to accomplish, is being performed by someone not Stunned (may be trivial, but it helps to put in context of who is doing what to whom), and applies a specific effect to a specific event.
The Sorcerer made it so that the Fireball wouldn't hit the ally (at full force), not so that the ally would become un-Stunned. The real question would be whether the ally had the Evasion feature or not. Without that, they still take half damage from the Fireball.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
The wording of Careful Spell is just bad. Many spells allow you to simply pick targets that are unaffected by your spell. This may not be RAW for the RAW arguers out there, I'm pretty sure it's RAI though. The caster basically already decided to warp their spell or shield the character from it's effects and you want the stunned condition to basically undo the caster's efforts and attract the spells damage like a magnet?
I disagree completely:
It's quite clear that this feature is not intended to be automatic complete avoidance.
If it were intended that way, the last line would read, "A chosen creature is unaffected by the spell."
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
True. My actual point however, was in agreement to your post. The caster already established what level of damage the ally would be subjected to. Having it do anything more, simply makes no sense and takes the characters ability away.
Aah, my misunderstanding. It read to me like you were in favor of Careful Spell being automatic total avoidance.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
For those of you saying careful spell would give the auto-pass, why would a fully capable PC have the same chance as one lying on the ground stunned?
"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
Because the spell dodged them?
Because that's literally the entire point of Careful Spell?
The PC being hit isn't the one shaping the effect. The Sorcerer is casting the spell in such a way as to not fully affect the other PC.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I explained myself poorly while complaining about the wording of Careful Spell, irony. In some cases, Careful Spell would cause total avoidance. An example would be Careful Spell Ice Knife in regards to the area of effect shard explosion cold damage.
I too agree with this paradigm.
The real weirdness comes when you apply Evasion to the mix. :p
Rogue is stunned, paralyzed, perhaps also prone for good measure. As written, getting hit by a Careful Spell Fireball allows him to apply Evasion and avoid all damage.
Of course, contrary to how the Evoker's Sculpt Spells ability works (which fully prevents damage by itself), I'd expect that's when a DM will step in and say "you can't really apply your 'instinctive agility' after that green tentacle mouth thing belched on you".
The rogue will still prefer to be in sorcerer's fireball in all other circumstances, though. Sorcerers can apply Careful Spell to creatures without needing to see them. :p
That's actually a good example where RAW should probably not be applied. I agree with the conclusion: the rogue should take half-damage.
(although it'd be fun to determine why exactly, i wouldn't be as sure if they were just stunned, here it's Paralyzed that does it for me)
Click to learn to put cool-looking tooltips in your messages!
Stunned means the character is incapacitated (can take no action or reaction) and can't move. How exactly would they nimbly dodge out of the way if they are completely unable to move?
I would argue that "incapacitated" and "unable to move" are two different things. I see a stunned character as someone dazed and disoriented, so I would still let them apply their Evasion feature, as the spell was already shaped to avoid them, and they still have some form of instinct/reflexes to maybe jump cover themselves and jump a bit out of the way.
Paralyzed is a different thing, and I would not let them apply Evasion, since there's indeed no possibility for them to "dodge out of the way".
That would probably be my ruling. Not saying it's the right or correct one, but it fits the way I see things and I can see myself describing this to my players, and I think they would find it fair.
Click to learn to put cool-looking tooltips in your messages!