What? No you haven’t. In 5E, I don’t see any example of there being a meaningful distinction between suffering a condition and suffering the EFFECT of that condition anywhere else. To draw that as a line with rule significance, in this and only this instance, doesn’t seem supported, and feels like singling out Fungal Body for special (mid)treatment.
What? No. You haven't proved that the rule that is actually written in a particular way means something else than what is written. You only offer that it is the only instance of it. So what? There are many rules that are written in such a way that the phrasing only appears once.
There is no rule that says anything either way on what (if anything) “effectively blinded” means that “blinded” doesn’t. All we have are the examples of other times “effectively x” are used, and I can’t find a single one where “effectively x” isn’t for all intents and purposes “x.”
treating “effectively blinded” as “blinded” does not violate any rule as written, leads to no absurd results, gives players the benefit of their high level class features when not specifically required not to, and treats similar scenarios (darkness, opaque fog, Wall of Sand, being swallowed, and being smothered) as having the same effect. It’s good rule interpretation praxis on all accounts, and I haven’t seen an argument against it so far that doesn’t boil down to “its unusual, so I hate it.”
Treating "effectively blinded" as you would in idiomatic English doesn't break anything, whereas your interpretation does lead to problematic obscurement/darkness rules. This is where I think your argument is in bad faith; you are just arguing because you think this little interaction is so clever that you must be right. The problem is that in order for it to work, you have to ignore words or mangle their usages.
In fact, treating "effectively blinded" as you would under idiomatic English (under the effects of blindness without the condition applied to you) fixes this weird interaction that is obviously not intended. All you have to do is read like an average reader would, and the problem magically fixes itself.
I guess your sense of idiomatic English is just different from mine. Ah well, the camps are drawn, I’ll leave it to the reader from here, unless you care to start drawing some new arguments from the actual rules text to support your views, as I have tried to do.
Tell me truthfully, if a character were wearing a blindfold or a sack over their head, would you be splitting hairs over whether they are “blinded” or “effectively blinded” while it’s on their head? Wouldn’t it seem like a distinction without a difference, especially since monsters like the Rug of Smothering impose Blinded when wrapped around a character’s head?
While I agree that the RAW wording of being "blinded" by a Rug of Smothering supports your argument about splitting hairs over whether they are “blinded” or “effectively blinded”, that is a far cry from the example you want to use it for to prove your point.
You tell me if there is a difference between having a heavy sack over your head(blinded), or having blinders on when you look left or right(effectively blinded when you look left or right). That is closer to the original example, and by your arguments, you would demand to be able to see through the physical blinders.
You know what, sure. We obviously do have very different ways of reading English, and that is probably fine. If you don't want the game to make logical sense in favor of it making linguistic sense to you in this one way for this singular usage of a word, you can certainly play that lesser restoration can remove foliage between you and what you're looking at.
I do completely disagree on what is good rule interpretation praxis. First, eliminating words from rules that you prefer not to interpret is terrible rule reading. Lets not pretend treating "effectively blind" as "blind" is anything more. Secondly, we are interpreting natural language rules, which often means there can be multiple interpretations without clearly defined terms. In that case, insisting on a single possible interpretation that doesn't make sense based on one possible definition of a word that has others is again, bad rule reading. It would be like saying 'effectively' only can mean 'impressively' and then trying to interpret rules from there; or for another example, taking the meaning of 'spell' to be 'a short period of time' and requiring that every use in the rulebooks made sense with that definition. It is obvious what the problem is in these situations.
I will continue to use "effectively" as 'in effect but not in cause' or 'actually but not officially' in this case. If you didn't know that usage before, this rule would indeed be confusing. Refusing to interpret the rule with the new information that you've gained seems... counterproductive.
If Lesser Restoration removing foliage is the only unintended consequence you can find, I have good news for you! It wouldn’t work, since the spell provides no immunity from Blind, so regardless of whether the recipient had a brief “blip” of super sight, they would continue to be blinded as to that area on every subsequent moment that they continued to look in that direction!
What? No. You haven't proved that the rule that is actually written in a particular way means something else than what is written. You only offer that it is the only instance of it. So what? There are many rules that are written in such a way that the phrasing only appears once.
There is no rule that says anything either way on what (if anything) “effectively blinded” means that “blinded” doesn’t. All we have are the examples of other times “effectively x” are used, and I can’t find a single one where “effectively x” isn’t for all intents and purposes “x.”
treating “effectively blinded” as “blinded” does not violate any rule as written, leads to no absurd results, gives players the benefit of their high level class features when not specifically required not to, and treats similar scenarios (darkness, opaque fog, Wall of Sand, being swallowed, and being smothered) as having the same effect. It’s good rule interpretation praxis on all accounts, and I haven’t seen an argument against it so far that doesn’t boil down to “its unusual, so I hate it.”
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Treating "effectively blinded" as you would in idiomatic English doesn't break anything, whereas your interpretation does lead to problematic obscurement/darkness rules. This is where I think your argument is in bad faith; you are just arguing because you think this little interaction is so clever that you must be right. The problem is that in order for it to work, you have to ignore words or mangle their usages.
In fact, treating "effectively blinded" as you would under idiomatic English (under the effects of blindness without the condition applied to you) fixes this weird interaction that is obviously not intended. All you have to do is read like an average reader would, and the problem magically fixes itself.
I guess your sense of idiomatic English is just different from mine. Ah well, the camps are drawn, I’ll leave it to the reader from here, unless you care to start drawing some new arguments from the actual rules text to support your views, as I have tried to do.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
While I agree that the RAW wording of being "blinded" by a Rug of Smothering supports your argument about splitting hairs over whether they are “blinded” or “effectively blinded”, that is a far cry from the example you want to use it for to prove your point.
You tell me if there is a difference between having a heavy sack over your head(blinded), or having blinders on when you look left or right(effectively blinded when you look left or right). That is closer to the original example, and by your arguments, you would demand to be able to see through the physical blinders.
You know what, sure. We obviously do have very different ways of reading English, and that is probably fine. If you don't want the game to make logical sense in favor of it making linguistic sense to you in this one way for this singular usage of a word, you can certainly play that lesser restoration can remove foliage between you and what you're looking at.
I do completely disagree on what is good rule interpretation praxis. First, eliminating words from rules that you prefer not to interpret is terrible rule reading. Lets not pretend treating "effectively blind" as "blind" is anything more. Secondly, we are interpreting natural language rules, which often means there can be multiple interpretations without clearly defined terms. In that case, insisting on a single possible interpretation that doesn't make sense based on one possible definition of a word that has others is again, bad rule reading. It would be like saying 'effectively' only can mean 'impressively' and then trying to interpret rules from there; or for another example, taking the meaning of 'spell' to be 'a short period of time' and requiring that every use in the rulebooks made sense with that definition. It is obvious what the problem is in these situations.
I will continue to use "effectively" as 'in effect but not in cause' or 'actually but not officially' in this case. If you didn't know that usage before, this rule would indeed be confusing. Refusing to interpret the rule with the new information that you've gained seems... counterproductive.
If Lesser Restoration removing foliage is the only unintended consequence you can find, I have good news for you! It wouldn’t work, since the spell provides no immunity from Blind, so regardless of whether the recipient had a brief “blip” of super sight, they would continue to be blinded as to that area on every subsequent moment that they continued to look in that direction!
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.