Even later, but I would like to leave here a reflection of mine.
Detect Magic won't help to detect the presence of magic in the area for creatures like the Invisible Stalker or a Poltergeist. These kinds of monsters have the trait:
And AFAIK that invisibility is a feature of the creature, and is not defined as magical.
In the case of the Invisible Stalker, detect magic would detect them irrelevant of if the creature is invisible or not, since the creature itself is magical and is actively under the effects of a spell. If a creature were not magical and it's method of turning invisible were not magical then detect magic would not pick up anything tho, which I were I think you were trying to go with this one.
Why would you think that the invisible stalker is inherently magical? It's an elemental and is naturally invisible. It doesn't use any spell effects.
Detect Magic doesn't specify that it only interacts with spells, though. Verbatim it reads "For the duration, you sense the presence of magic within 30 feet of you. If you sense magic in this way, you can use your action to see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any." An elemental is very reasonably a "magical creature" by default, but ultimately there's no RAW one way or the other for this interaction, it's a DM call.
Where would you draw the line?
Beasts no, but everything else in D&D yes?
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"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?"
Even later, but I would like to leave here a reflection of mine.
Detect Magic won't help to detect the presence of magic in the area for creatures like the Invisible Stalker or a Poltergeist. These kinds of monsters have the trait:
And AFAIK that invisibility is a feature of the creature, and is not defined as magical.
In the case of the Invisible Stalker, detect magic would detect them irrelevant of if the creature is invisible or not, since the creature itself is magical and is actively under the effects of a spell. If a creature were not magical and it's method of turning invisible were not magical then detect magic would not pick up anything tho, which I were I think you were trying to go with this one.
Why would you think that the invisible stalker is inherently magical? It's an elemental and is naturally invisible. It doesn't use any spell effects.
Detect Magic doesn't specify that it only interacts with spells, though. Verbatim it reads "For the duration, you sense the presence of magic within 30 feet of you. If you sense magic in this way, you can use your action to see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any." An elemental is very reasonably a "magical creature" by default, but ultimately there's no RAW one way or the other for this interaction, it's a DM call.
Where would you draw the line?
Beasts no, but everything else in D&D yes?
I'd know it when I saw it; like I said, the description gives no RAW, so it's up to DM interpretation.
Even later, but I would like to leave here a reflection of mine.
Detect Magic won't help to detect the presence of magic in the area for creatures like the Invisible Stalker or a Poltergeist. These kinds of monsters have the trait:
And AFAIK that invisibility is a feature of the creature, and is not defined as magical.
In the case of the Invisible Stalker, detect magic would detect them irrelevant of if the creature is invisible or not, since the creature itself is magical and is actively under the effects of a spell. If a creature were not magical and it's method of turning invisible were not magical then detect magic would not pick up anything tho, which I were I think you were trying to go with this one.
Why do you think an invisible creature isn't inherently immune to detection by generic spells? There's a reason specific things like the See Invisibility & True Seeing spells and Truesight sense exist. A 1st level spell isn't going to do it.
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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.
More to the point, Detect Magic does specifically require the creature or object be visible. So I'll grant that it's no good as a counter to always-on invisibility. There is still room for it reacting to sufficiently magical creatures, as adjudicated by the DM.
It's challenging for me to defend the idea that Elementals, as creatures, are inherently magical.
This is the description from the Monster Manual:
Elementals are creatures native to the elemental planes. Some creatures of this type are little more than animate masses of their respective elements, including the creatures simply called elementals. Others have biological forms infused with elemental energy. The races of genies, including djinn and efreet, form the most important civilizations on the elemental planes. Other elemental creatures include azers, invisible stalkers, and water weirds.
Some elementals are energy (fire, water, earth, wind), and others are more complex creatures from the elemental planes, but not magical per se.
Also, if those creatures were magical, could Dispel Magic potentially affect them in some way? I'd rather not delve too deeply into this theoretical question.
Even later, but I would like to leave here a reflection of mine.
Detect Magic won't help to detect the presence of magic in the area for creatures like the Invisible Stalker or a Poltergeist. These kinds of monsters have the trait:
And AFAIK that invisibility is a feature of the creature, and is not defined as magical.
In the case of the Invisible Stalker, detect magic would detect them irrelevant of if the creature is invisible or not, since the creature itself is magical and is actively under the effects of a spell. If a creature were not magical and it's method of turning invisible were not magical then detect magic would not pick up anything tho, which I were I think you were trying to go with this one.
Why would you think that the invisible stalker is inherently magical? It's an elemental and is naturally invisible. It doesn't use any spell effects.
because of the fluff text under the creature description, mentions several times that the invisible stalker is summoned and in a few places says the elemental disappears if the spell ends, such as:
When it is defeated or the magic that binds it expires, an invisible stalker vanishes in a gust of wind.
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
It is I feel important to note, Detect Magic will not show an aura around it but the creature can still be "detected" via the spell. There is a difference between being detected and being seen, after all. this means you'd know there is something magical in the radius of your detect magic but you wouldn't specifically know that it is an invisible stalker, merely that there is something magical.
It's challenging for me to defend the idea that Elementals, as creatures, are inherently magical.
This is the description from the Monster Manual:
Elementals are creatures native to the elemental planes. Some creatures of this type are little more than animate masses of their respective elements, including the creatures simply called elementals. Others have biological forms infused with elemental energy. The races of genies, including djinn and efreet, form the most important civilizations on the elemental planes. Other elemental creatures include azers, invisible stalkers, and water weirds.
Some elementals are energy (fire, water, earth, wind), and others are more complex creatures from the elemental planes, but not magical per se.
Also, if those creatures were magical, could Dispel Magic potentially affect them in some way? I'd rather not delve too deeply into this theoretical question.
Dispel Magic is a non sequitur; that spell explicitly only interacts with other spells, whereas Detect Magic uses more general language.
More to the point, Detect Magic does specifically require the creature or object be visible. So I'll grant that it's no good as a counter to always-on invisibility. There is still room for it reacting to sufficiently magical creatures, as adjudicated by the DM.
The spell description has two parts. You sense magic with in 30' of you, and, if you sense magic in this way, you can use your action to to see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any. So you could sense that something that is magically invisible is within 30' of you, although you would not be able to see an aura, because the creature or object is not visible. You would require See Invisibility or True Seeing to see it. So Detect Magic does have some utility against invisibility, but it is limited.
I think the two parts are compatible. The way you sense magic might be described by the DM as you having a feeling there is magic within range, even if you can't place it. That fits within RAW and still allows the ambiguity of not being able to locate or see the aura emanating from the creature or object that is not visible to you.
EDIT: The way I can see this playing out at the table might be something like this:
Player: I cast detect magic. Do I notice anything? DM: You cast the spell and immediately get a sense of magic somewhere nearby, though looking around the room, you cannot pinpoint its origin. Player: I would like to carefully search the room to try to get more information. DM: ok, make a perception check.
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
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?"
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
I mean, you can absolutely remove one with Dispel Magic or AMF if they were summoned by a spell; it would seem to follow that the spell would register to Detect Magic as well. But, again, ultimately that spell is very soft and open-ended, so there’s little to no hard RAW on how it interacts with any specific example of a fantastic creature, object, or effect.
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
I mean, you can absolutely remove one with Dispel Magic or AMF if they were summoned by a spell; it would seem to follow that the spell would register to Detect Magic as well. But, again, ultimately that spell is very soft and open-ended, so there’s little to no hard RAW on how it interacts with any specific example of a fantastic creature, object, or effect.
You can only Dispel Magic on things that are currently affected by a spell.
"Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range. Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends."
If cast on a summoned creature it does nothing. If cast on a spellcaster currently concentrating on a summon spell then it can end the summon spell.
However, spells like Animate Dead or Find Familiar are instantaneous. There is no on-going magic effect. In one case, undead creatures are created and in the other a spirit in the form of an animal that follows your instructions is created. Neither of these are affected by dispel magic nor would they be noticed by Detect Magic since there is nothing "magical" in the D&D sense about undead, or a fey/celestial/fiend spirit, or dragons or elementals for that matter.
A DM could rule an invisible stalker as an exception. Even though created by magic, an invisible stalker would not be magical if it could exist indefinitely but the description of the invisible stalker says "When it is defeated or the magic that binds it expires, an invisible stalker vanishes in a gust of wind." This description could indicate that an invisible stalker is a type of air elemental that is bound by a specific type of magic that can end. This would tend to indicate an ongoing magical effect (not instantaneous) that could be detected (though not disspelled since it isn't a spell).
Certain spells without concentration (after a certain time) like True Polymorph contain explicit language indicating that the effect persists until disspelled.
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
I mean, you can absolutely remove one with Dispel Magic or AMF if they were summoned by a spell; it would seem to follow that the spell would register to Detect Magic as well. But, again, ultimately that spell is very soft and open-ended, so there’s little to no hard RAW on how it interacts with any specific example of a fantastic creature, object, or effect.
You can only Dispel Magic on things that are currently affected by a spell.
"Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range. Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends."
If cast on a summoned creature it does nothing. If cast on a spellcaster currently concentrating on a summon spell then it can end the summon spell.
Regardless of the exact semantics related to where you're aiming Dispel Magic, the point stands that there is magic in play in the creature being where it is.
However, spells like Animate Dead or Find Familiar are instantaneous. There is no on-going magic effect. In one case, undead creatures are created and in the other a spirit in the form of an animal that follows your instructions is created. Neither of these are affected by dispel magic nor would they be noticed by Detect Magic since there is nothing "magical" in the D&D sense about undead, or a fey/celestial/fiend spirit, or dragons or elementals for that matter.
That's one possible interpretation of their interaction with Detect Magic, but it's equally valid that a being who owes its entire current existence to the casting of a spell would have have magical traces about it for Detect Magic to pick up on since, for the umpteenth time, there is no RAW definition of "magical" as used in the spell description, thus making the call almost entirely up to DM discretion.
Dispel Evil and Good seems like a spell capable of dealing with creatures that have an essence of magical energy, but that is just IMO the way it reads to me.
Despel Magic with regards to summoned creatures IMO would seem to end the creature/summoner relationship and cause interesting after effects, but that’s me.
What I wonder is how does Detect Magic work with Blindsense and Blindsight? ( blindsense has a 10ft radius, and blindsight can have up to 60ft, and both allow for invisible creatures to be seen. )
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
Defined where? I can not find where such a ruling has ever been made that a creature that is summoned by an on-going spell is not considered magical, I could for a creature summoned from an instantaneous spell like find familiar but that is clearly not the type of spell described in the fluff text, as it defines an on-going spell binding the creature then the spell must be on-going and the creature is still the result of a magical effect.
I'd say another test of if a creature is the result of a magical effect is, can it enter an antimagic field, a war horse from find steed can, a skeleton from animate undead can but a floating silver coin from animate objects can not. An invisible stalker can not enter an antimagic field, it would blink out of existence on entering one.
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
Defined where? I can not find where such a ruling has ever been made that a creature that is summoned by an on-going spell is not considered magical, I could for a creature summoned from an instantaneous spell like find familiar but that is clearly not the type of spell described in the fluff text, as it defines an on-going spell binding the creature then the spell must be on-going and the creature is still the result of a magical effect.
I'd say another test of if a creature is the result of a magical effect is, can it enter an antimagic field, a war horse from find steed can, a skeleton from animate undead can but a floating silver coin from animate objects can not. An invisible stalker can not enter an antimagic field, it would blink out of existence on entering one.
I think parity is being drawn between Detect Magic and Dispel Magic, which as I've previously pointed out is not in keeping with the descriptions of the two spells. Dispel Magic has a narrow, clearly defined target area, while Detect Magic is written in much more general and narrative terms.
I think parity is being drawn between Detect Magic and Dispel Magic, which as I've previously pointed out is not in keeping with the descriptions of the two spells. Dispel Magic has a narrow, clearly defined target area, while Detect Magic is written in much more general and narrative terms.
Dispel magic does not work on a lot of things that are magical, it only works on levelled spells, so it does nothing to assist a 1st level wild magic sorcerer that managed to turn themselves into a potted plant, despite that obviously being a magical effect. Clearly Dispel Magic is not a good basis for deciding what is or is not magical. Really Dispel Magic should be renamed to Dispel spell but I suspect partly due to heritage/d&d's legacy and the fact it sounds like "spell" is being said twice, it was probably decided against.
But yes, as you say, dispel magic and detect magic work on decidedly very different things and this discussion is about detect magic, not dispel magic! So this is probably enough of a tangent on that side of things.
Blindsight is considered a form of vision. Blindsense is not. So I would say blindsight would allow you to see the aura. Blindsense would not.
Is not the Rouge and Sorc feature granted at 14th level not the same as Blindsight 10ft that some creatures also have?
No, for the reason TexasDevin just laid out. If you read the feature, you'll see precisely what that feature does. It doesn't do anything other than what it says it does.
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Where would you draw the line?
Beasts no, but everything else in D&D yes?
"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
I'd know it when I saw it; like I said, the description gives no RAW, so it's up to DM interpretation.
Why do you think an invisible creature isn't inherently immune to detection by generic spells? There's a reason specific things like the See Invisibility & True Seeing spells and Truesight sense exist. A 1st level spell isn't going to do it.
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.
More to the point, Detect Magic does specifically require the creature or object be visible. So I'll grant that it's no good as a counter to always-on invisibility. There is still room for it reacting to sufficiently magical creatures, as adjudicated by the DM.
It's challenging for me to defend the idea that Elementals, as creatures, are inherently magical.
This is the description from the Monster Manual:
Some elementals are energy (fire, water, earth, wind), and others are more complex creatures from the elemental planes, but not magical per se.
Also, if those creatures were magical, could Dispel Magic potentially affect them in some way? I'd rather not delve too deeply into this theoretical question.
because of the fluff text under the creature description, mentions several times that the invisible stalker is summoned and in a few places says the elemental disappears if the spell ends, such as:
Thus we can infer an invisible stalker is always under the active effects of an on-going spell, it is not like find familiar or find steed where the spell ends the moment the creature is summoned but rather is an on-going spell like conjure animals or conjure minor elementals and the creature does not persist past the end of the spell like conjure elementals.
It is I feel important to note, Detect Magic will not show an aura around it but the creature can still be "detected" via the spell. There is a difference between being detected and being seen, after all. this means you'd know there is something magical in the radius of your detect magic but you wouldn't specifically know that it is an invisible stalker, merely that there is something magical.
Dispel Magic is a non sequitur; that spell explicitly only interacts with other spells, whereas Detect Magic uses more general language.
The spell description has two parts. You sense magic with in 30' of you, and, if you sense magic in this way, you can use your action to to see a faint aura around any visible creature or object in the area that bears magic, and you learn its school of magic, if any. So you could sense that something that is magically invisible is within 30' of you, although you would not be able to see an aura, because the creature or object is not visible. You would require See Invisibility or True Seeing to see it. So Detect Magic does have some utility against invisibility, but it is limited.
DM: You cast the spell and immediately get a sense of magic somewhere nearby, though looking around the room, you cannot pinpoint its origin.
Player: I would like to carefully search the room to try to get more information.
DM: ok, make a perception check.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Summoned and Conjured creatures are not magical. This has been defined previously.
"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
I mean, you can absolutely remove one with Dispel Magic or AMF if they were summoned by a spell; it would seem to follow that the spell would register to Detect Magic as well. But, again, ultimately that spell is very soft and open-ended, so there’s little to no hard RAW on how it interacts with any specific example of a fantastic creature, object, or effect.
You can only Dispel Magic on things that are currently affected by a spell.
"Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range. Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends."
If cast on a summoned creature it does nothing. If cast on a spellcaster currently concentrating on a summon spell then it can end the summon spell.
However, spells like Animate Dead or Find Familiar are instantaneous. There is no on-going magic effect. In one case, undead creatures are created and in the other a spirit in the form of an animal that follows your instructions is created. Neither of these are affected by dispel magic nor would they be noticed by Detect Magic since there is nothing "magical" in the D&D sense about undead, or a fey/celestial/fiend spirit, or dragons or elementals for that matter.
A DM could rule an invisible stalker as an exception. Even though created by magic, an invisible stalker would not be magical if it could exist indefinitely but the description of the invisible stalker says "When it is defeated or the magic that binds it expires, an invisible stalker vanishes in a gust of wind." This description could indicate that an invisible stalker is a type of air elemental that is bound by a specific type of magic that can end. This would tend to indicate an ongoing magical effect (not instantaneous) that could be detected (though not disspelled since it isn't a spell).
Certain spells without concentration (after a certain time) like True Polymorph contain explicit language indicating that the effect persists until disspelled.
Regardless of the exact semantics related to where you're aiming Dispel Magic, the point stands that there is magic in play in the creature being where it is.
That's one possible interpretation of their interaction with Detect Magic, but it's equally valid that a being who owes its entire current existence to the casting of a spell would have have magical traces about it for Detect Magic to pick up on since, for the umpteenth time, there is no RAW definition of "magical" as used in the spell description, thus making the call almost entirely up to DM discretion.
Dispel Evil and Good seems like a spell capable of dealing with creatures that have an essence of magical energy, but that is just IMO the way it reads to me.
Despel Magic with regards to summoned creatures IMO would seem to end the creature/summoner relationship and cause interesting after effects, but that’s me.
What I wonder is how does Detect Magic work with Blindsense and Blindsight? ( blindsense has a 10ft radius, and blindsight can have up to 60ft, and both allow for invisible creatures to be seen. )
Byte my shiny metal ass
Blindsight is considered a form of vision. Blindsense is not. So I would say blindsight would allow you to see the aura. Blindsense would not.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Defined where? I can not find where such a ruling has ever been made that a creature that is summoned by an on-going spell is not considered magical, I could for a creature summoned from an instantaneous spell like find familiar but that is clearly not the type of spell described in the fluff text, as it defines an on-going spell binding the creature then the spell must be on-going and the creature is still the result of a magical effect.
I'd say another test of if a creature is the result of a magical effect is, can it enter an antimagic field, a war horse from find steed can, a skeleton from animate undead can but a floating silver coin from animate objects can not. An invisible stalker can not enter an antimagic field, it would blink out of existence on entering one.
I think parity is being drawn between Detect Magic and Dispel Magic, which as I've previously pointed out is not in keeping with the descriptions of the two spells. Dispel Magic has a narrow, clearly defined target area, while Detect Magic is written in much more general and narrative terms.
Dispel magic does not work on a lot of things that are magical, it only works on levelled spells, so it does nothing to assist a 1st level wild magic sorcerer that managed to turn themselves into a potted plant, despite that obviously being a magical effect. Clearly Dispel Magic is not a good basis for deciding what is or is not magical. Really Dispel Magic should be renamed to Dispel spell but I suspect partly due to heritage/d&d's legacy and the fact it sounds like "spell" is being said twice, it was probably decided against.
But yes, as you say, dispel magic and detect magic work on decidedly very different things and this discussion is about detect magic, not dispel magic! So this is probably enough of a tangent on that side of things.
Is not the Rouge and Sorc feature granted at 14th level not the same as Blindsight 10ft that some creatures also have?
Byte my shiny metal ass
No, for the reason TexasDevin just laid out. If you read the feature, you'll see precisely what that feature does. It doesn't do anything other than what it says it does.