I'll admit I'm off the deep end of splitting hairs here. If you're all in agreement that a Rhinoceros that has Extra Attack can make two or more Gore attacks as part of the Attack Action, then for the sense of this thread, we can call it good enough and say that Artifice was right.
Nope. Again, your interpretation is obviously not the only one. Nothing in the text precludes the other interpretations presented here, including ones more inline with the physical phenomenon the rules are trying to portray.
My interpretation of what is RAI is certainly not the only one, and may or may not be the RAI that the authors had in mind. But the meaning of the words printed on the page are as plain as day. Each gore attack that hits is "a gore attack." Moving 20 feet straight towards an enemy is "20 feet straight toward a target". You just don't get to a restriction on Charge without adding in at least a few unwritten words ("a single gore attack" or "it's next gore attack" or "once per turn", something in that vein), while Artifice's interpretation requires literally nothing more than the words as they exist printed on the page.
If your theory of textual interpretation doesn't hinge on giving weight to the words that the author used and didn't use, or on trusting the author to have written what they meant to write, or on all necessary terms of a rule being written or referred to in that rule... then I just don't know that what you're doing can even be called textual interpretation at that point, versus houseruling/reinterpreting.
There is a restriction there, you just refuse to read it. The rule literally says you must move 20' then hit with a gore attack. If you haven't done that exact thing, you don't get to add the 2d8. if you hit with an attack then hit with an attack, you haven't met the requirement to move then hit.
Again, that interpretation is as clear as day on the page. It says you must do A then B. B then B is not A then B.
Or treat it like boolean logic if you wish. Condition A is met by moving 20' Condition B is met by making a gore attack. Meeting A more than once only gets you A = true. Meeting B more than once gets only B = true.
Neither of those perfectly valid interpretations requires anything but what is on the page.
Ah, I see. I'm reading "then" in the sense of "after that", while you're reading it as "at that moment and no later". Both of those are accepted definitions of "then," I guess I see your point that there could be some RAW ambiguity based on that.
Shucks! Guess we'll just have to argue forever and ever then about which is the better approach! :D
The Boolean thing doesn't work though, because there's nothing in that Charge description that suggests or says that C triggers on a single true/false for the round instead of whenever An and Bn are true. That's not a perfectly valid interpretation, without something else telling us that those types of abilities generally only trigger once per turn instead of once per valid attack (and indeed, experience shows us quite the opposite).
As far as the boolean thing goes, my point is the rule has a structure If (A and B) then C. A and B, and C can be interpreted as only true or false (they are in If then's afterall). Two trues for either A or B doesn't do anything for you except ensure that you have a true.
If I move 20' then 20' straight toward my target then hit with a gore, do I get to add 4d8 to that attack? If no, why not?
And I only invented this argument because ArtificeMeal insisted that he was treating it as boolean logic, that it had to be that once the 20' was met, it was met. The obvious logical extension of that is then once "a gore attack" is made then that part is met too.
Except that abilities aren't set up as True/False states, they're set up as If/Then causality. Its been a long time since I took Logic, so I'm sure I'm using terms wrong here, but it's the difference between saying "if your heart is pumping, then you are alive" (if A is true, then B is true) and "if you have a heart, and it beats, then your blood will circulate" (if A is satisfied and B is satisfied, then C will result).
Nothing about "the target takes an extra 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage" works as a state. Takes 2d8 damage when? How often? It does work as an event/result though. When? When A and B are satisfied. How often? Once for each unique A and B configuration.
Putting aside which interpretation you prefer, you get what I'm saying about it not being a True/False flag, it's a causality chain, right?
I think I could follow that, but still, then according to that interpretation then to get 2x(2d8) you'd have to charge twice, that is use all 40' in two 20' segments. If A and B must be satisfied twice, then satisfying just B twice wouldn't be enough. To use your own words, "Once for each unique A and B configuration."
Hmm, I was all hot to trot to find a different clear-cut ability that works like [if A once] and [if B multiple times] then [C multiple times]... but holy crap am I having trouble finding one. Take Monk's Stunning Strike:
When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike. The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned until the end of your next turn.
It's punctuated a little differently, but "if A (you hit with a melee weapon attack), and then B (spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike), then C (they must succeed on a Con save or be stunned)." Can one A with multiple B's trigger multiple C's? Nah, I'd certainly agree with you there.... probably by leaning on "When" to force A and B to be simultaneous, and re-phrasing B as "you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike" really means "you can spend 1 ki point to make that hit a stunning strike." But now I'm off relying on unwritten language to my dirty work, which I don't think is good at all.
I'm having a real crisis of faith here, ooof. Must I concede defeat, or can anyone throw me a lifeline an example of an ability where you set it up with A once, and then trigger it with B multiple times?
I'm having a real crisis of faith here, ooof. Must I concede defeat, or can anyone throw me a lifeline an example of an ability where you set it up with A once, and then trigger it with B multiple times?
Well, there's lots of explicit cases (use a buffing ability, it affects every subsequent strike) but I assume that's not the kind of thing you're looking for.
I actually did look at some monsters to see some other ideas. It seems that it is very common that if a creature has charge and multiattack, the multiattack feature specifies only one of the attacks that can trigger the charge. The one exception that I've found so far is the gold-forged sentinel. Nothing in it is any more clear than this situation though. In fact, the wording of the charge is quite similar even though it obviously was written with the intent of having multiple attacks available.
Edit: maybe also the lord of blades, though I don't have access to that one.
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend, to a maximum of 6d8.
Yeah, that's another great example of the same issue presented by the Monk's Stunning Strike. Either "when you hit..." is doing the extra work to make this an A+B simultaneous situation (which Bees thinks "then" was sufficient to do for the Rhino)... or Divine Smite is just another great example of a feature clearly telling us that A+B=C generally requires both a unique A and unique B every time you want a unique C. I'm willing to concede that I can't find a great way to argue that Stunning Strike and Divine Smite work one way, but Charge works a different way, without any clear rule language to pin that on.
I think it is another example where verbatim RAW doesn't match with the average person's logical expectations of a situation. Both the RAW and logical expectation assumes the extra damage is coming from momentum. RAW pretty much allows us to imagine that if we move 20 ft in a straight line for momentum, we could use circular motion to swing around our target to pick an angle of approach, ending by actually hitting the target with Gore and getting the Charge bonus. Logical expectation notes that turning generally drops speed and momentum, thus a straight run up and attack are in order.
As far as multiple Gores that get bonus damage from a single Charge goes, I don't see anything that supports that idea.
Lastly I would like to formally introduce a second usage for the Wangrod Defense. Not only should it apply to those claiming "that's what my character would do" when making all other players miserable but, also to those individuals who use RAW arguments to play Devil's Advocate against the most likely interpretation of a rule in favor of one that is theoretically, possible.
As far as the boolean thing goes, my point is the rule has a structure If (A and B) then C. A and B, and C can be interpreted as only true or false (they are in If then's afterall). Two trues for either A or B doesn't do anything for you except ensure that you have a true.
If I move 20' then 20' straight toward my target then hit with a gore, do I get to add 4d8 to that attack? If no, why not?
And I only invented this argument because ArtificeMeal insisted that he was treating it as boolean logic, that it had to be that once the 20' was met, it was met. The obvious logical extension of that is then once "a gore attack" is made then that part is met too.
Ether you charged 20 feet in a straight line towards the target, or you did not. There is no middle ground and the rules makes no distinction between meeting that requirement once, twice, or However many times, the effect remains the same.
I think it is another example where verbatim RAW doesn't match with the average person's logical expectations of a situation. Both the RAW and logical expectation assumes the extra damage is coming from momentum. RAW pretty much allows us to imagine that if we move 20 ft in a straight line for momentum, we could use circular motion to swing around our target to pick an angle of approach, ending by actually hitting the target with Gore and getting the Charge bonus. Logical expectation notes that turning generally drops speed and momentum, thus a straight run up and attack are in order.
The Gore trait comes with no flavour text, the extra damage might for the sake of argument come from an divine blessing, through electrical energy charged up during that movement or represent the user getting pumped up and their adrenaline going. The Only thing suggesting that it is from preserved momentum as opposed to any other thing is the name of the abillity and the fact that it is a rhino, an mundane animal known for ramming into targets with its horns, it is implied, it is intended but it is not written, and RAW we can sucsessfully perform a charge in a context where it would intuitively not make and sense for any momentum to remain, for instance an halfling could take an ready action so that as soon as a creature moves within 5 feet of them to move through that creatures space. Now when you charge up to them, they immedeatly move through your space to a space adjacent to you but directly behind you instead, you would still benefit from charge when you attack the halfling even if your movement and momentum is in the opposite direction to your attack, this trait does not conform to such harsh limitations as "logic" and "physics"
Lastly I would like to formally introduce a second usage for the Wangrod Defense. Not only should it apply to those claiming "that's what my character would do" when making all other players miserable but, also to those individuals who use RAW arguments to play Devil's Advocate against the most likely interpretation of a rule in favor of one that is theoretically, possible.
I do not see how such behavior would detract from the experience of others as long as you and your DM come to a conclusion about how you are gonna interpret the rule that is so important to your character prior to the session starting and you respect the DM's decission once it is made, even if you disagree with it.
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
ArtificeMeal, get over it. You are taking a particular reading that is lenient to your intended use. There are certainly other valid interpretations of "you must do this then this" or whether "a" can mean "each" or "one of." If you can't understand that then, again, I'm not sure if you have business telling me that I'm wrong in my interpretation.
The requirement for moving 20 feet in a straight line and successfully making a Gore attack are a singular clause. They are not independent. It is not a toggled conditional that rolls forward into the rest of your turn. It is a closed loop. You get one damage bonus, on one Gore attack, for one Charge. You must then repeat the entire sequence if you wish to charge & gore an additional time.
Like Wolf said (and I'm not trying to be rude), get over it. You're smarter than that, and this isn't the hill to die on.
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.
fine, i can at the very least see where you are coming from and it feels kinda pointless to argue any further, i have said what i have to say, you have said what you have to say, an consensus has been reached, no more debate is necessary.
That being said you could still as an 5th level barbarian in this build pick up the mobile feat and have an ally cast haste on you, giving you an doubled movement speed for an total speed of 120 feet and three attacks per turn, letting you move the prerequisite 20 feet so that you may gain charge on all three, instead of defying logic by quantum-preserving momentum, you may simply defy logic with the sheer speed by whom you continually ram into your opponent, even if by this point more productive uses of concentration are available
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I have come up with a thesis on rule reading. There are 3 important prerequisite points of knowledge:
The rules are written in natural language. Often they don't stand up to a very close legalistic reading because the words were simply not chosen that carefully.
The rules sometimes describe things that one might understand outside of 5e.
The rules aren't trying to trick you -- this one was an idea I got from Jeremy Crawford, but I can't be bothered for finding a source right now. It might have come from a video anyway.
The combination of 2 and 3 means that one can probably figure out what the rules intend in many cases. Taking that idea with point 1, if one can figure out what is intended by the rule and it is conceivable that the rule could be interpreted that way then there are a couple of options: A) at worst that interpretation can't be discounted or B) at best that is how the rule actually works.
That being said you could still as an 5th level barbarian in this build pick up the mobile feat and have an ally cast haste on you, giving you an doubled movement speed for an total speed of 120 feet and three attacks per turn, letting you move the prerequisite 20 feet so that you may gain charge on all three, instead of defying logic by quantum-preserving momentum, you may simply defy logic with the sheer speed by whom you continually ram into your opponent, even if by this point more productive uses of concentration are available
Doubled movement with Mobile would only be 100. What charge are you talking about?
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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?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
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Nope. Again, your interpretation is obviously not the only one. Nothing in the text precludes the other interpretations presented here, including ones more inline with the physical phenomenon the rules are trying to portray.
My interpretation of what is RAI is certainly not the only one, and may or may not be the RAI that the authors had in mind. But the meaning of the words printed on the page are as plain as day. Each gore attack that hits is "a gore attack." Moving 20 feet straight towards an enemy is "20 feet straight toward a target". You just don't get to a restriction on Charge without adding in at least a few unwritten words ("a single gore attack" or "it's next gore attack" or "once per turn", something in that vein), while Artifice's interpretation requires literally nothing more than the words as they exist printed on the page.
If your theory of textual interpretation doesn't hinge on giving weight to the words that the author used and didn't use, or on trusting the author to have written what they meant to write, or on all necessary terms of a rule being written or referred to in that rule... then I just don't know that what you're doing can even be called textual interpretation at that point, versus houseruling/reinterpreting.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
There is a restriction there, you just refuse to read it. The rule literally says you must move 20' then hit with a gore attack. If you haven't done that exact thing, you don't get to add the 2d8. if you hit with an attack then hit with an attack, you haven't met the requirement to move then hit.
Again, that interpretation is as clear as day on the page. It says you must do A then B. B then B is not A then B.
Or treat it like boolean logic if you wish. Condition A is met by moving 20' Condition B is met by making a gore attack. Meeting A more than once only gets you A = true. Meeting B more than once gets only B = true.
Neither of those perfectly valid interpretations requires anything but what is on the page.
Ah, I see. I'm reading "then" in the sense of "after that", while you're reading it as "at that moment and no later". Both of those are accepted definitions of "then," I guess I see your point that there could be some RAW ambiguity based on that.
Shucks! Guess we'll just have to argue forever and ever then about which is the better approach! :D
The Boolean thing doesn't work though, because there's nothing in that Charge description that suggests or says that C triggers on a single true/false for the round instead of whenever An and Bn are true. That's not a perfectly valid interpretation, without something else telling us that those types of abilities generally only trigger once per turn instead of once per valid attack (and indeed, experience shows us quite the opposite).
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I am not arguing that you cannot interpret it your way. I am arguing that everyone does not have to, because there ARE other ways to interpret it.
As far as the boolean thing goes, my point is the rule has a structure If (A and B) then C. A and B, and C can be interpreted as only true or false (they are in If then's afterall). Two trues for either A or B doesn't do anything for you except ensure that you have a true.
If I move 20' then 20' straight toward my target then hit with a gore, do I get to add 4d8 to that attack? If no, why not?
And I only invented this argument because ArtificeMeal insisted that he was treating it as boolean logic, that it had to be that once the 20' was met, it was met. The obvious logical extension of that is then once "a gore attack" is made then that part is met too.
Except that abilities aren't set up as True/False states, they're set up as If/Then causality. Its been a long time since I took Logic, so I'm sure I'm using terms wrong here, but it's the difference between saying "if your heart is pumping, then you are alive" (if A is true, then B is true) and "if you have a heart, and it beats, then your blood will circulate" (if A is satisfied and B is satisfied, then C will result).
Nothing about "the target takes an extra 9 (2d8) bludgeoning damage" works as a state. Takes 2d8 damage when? How often? It does work as an event/result though. When? When A and B are satisfied. How often? Once for each unique A and B configuration.
Putting aside which interpretation you prefer, you get what I'm saying about it not being a True/False flag, it's a causality chain, right?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I think I could follow that, but still, then according to that interpretation then to get 2x(2d8) you'd have to charge twice, that is use all 40' in two 20' segments. If A and B must be satisfied twice, then satisfying just B twice wouldn't be enough. To use your own words, "Once for each unique A and B configuration."
Hmm, I was all hot to trot to find a different clear-cut ability that works like [if A once] and [if B multiple times] then [C multiple times]... but holy crap am I having trouble finding one. Take Monk's Stunning Strike:
It's punctuated a little differently, but "if A (you hit with a melee weapon attack), and then B (spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike), then C (they must succeed on a Con save or be stunned)." Can one A with multiple B's trigger multiple C's? Nah, I'd certainly agree with you there.... probably by leaning on "When" to force A and B to be simultaneous, and re-phrasing B as "you can spend 1 ki point to attempt a stunning strike" really means "you can spend 1 ki point to make that hit a stunning strike." But now I'm off relying on unwritten language to my dirty work, which I don't think is good at all.
I'm having a real crisis of faith here, ooof. Must I concede defeat, or can anyone throw me a lifeline an example of an ability where you set it up with A once, and then trigger it with B multiple times?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Well, there's lots of explicit cases (use a buffing ability, it affects every subsequent strike) but I assume that's not the kind of thing you're looking for.
I actually did look at some monsters to see some other ideas. It seems that it is very common that if a creature has charge and multiattack, the multiattack feature specifies only one of the attacks that can trigger the charge. The one exception that I've found so far is the gold-forged sentinel. Nothing in it is any more clear than this situation though. In fact, the wording of the charge is quite similar even though it obviously was written with the intent of having multiple attacks available.
Edit: maybe also the lord of blades, though I don't have access to that one.
Weak Sauce.
Lvl 11 Paladin with greatsword.
Divine Smite
Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon’s damage. The extra damage is 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 5d8. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend, to a maximum of 6d8.
2d6 + 2d8 +2d6 +2d8 + 2d6 +2d8 +2d6 + 2d8 +2d6 + 3d8 + 2d6 +3d8 + 2d6 + 3d8 + 2d6 + 4d8 + 2d6 + 4d8 + 2d6 +4d8 +2d6 in one turn.
Go.
REALLY?!
"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
Yeah, that's another great example of the same issue presented by the Monk's Stunning Strike. Either "when you hit..." is doing the extra work to make this an A+B simultaneous situation (which Bees thinks "then" was sufficient to do for the Rhino)... or Divine Smite is just another great example of a feature clearly telling us that A+B=C generally requires both a unique A and unique B every time you want a unique C. I'm willing to concede that I can't find a great way to argue that Stunning Strike and Divine Smite work one way, but Charge works a different way, without any clear rule language to pin that on.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I think it is another example where verbatim RAW doesn't match with the average person's logical expectations of a situation. Both the RAW and logical expectation assumes the extra damage is coming from momentum. RAW pretty much allows us to imagine that if we move 20 ft in a straight line for momentum, we could use circular motion to swing around our target to pick an angle of approach, ending by actually hitting the target with Gore and getting the Charge bonus. Logical expectation notes that turning generally drops speed and momentum, thus a straight run up and attack are in order.
As far as multiple Gores that get bonus damage from a single Charge goes, I don't see anything that supports that idea.
Lastly I would like to formally introduce a second usage for the Wangrod Defense. Not only should it apply to those claiming "that's what my character would do" when making all other players miserable but, also to those individuals who use RAW arguments to play Devil's Advocate against the most likely interpretation of a rule in favor of one that is theoretically, possible.
Ether you charged 20 feet in a straight line towards the target, or you did not. There is no middle ground and the rules makes no distinction between meeting that requirement once, twice, or However many times, the effect remains the same.
The Gore trait comes with no flavour text, the extra damage might for the sake of argument come from an divine blessing, through electrical energy charged up during that movement or represent the user getting pumped up and their adrenaline going. The Only thing suggesting that it is from preserved momentum as opposed to any other thing is the name of the abillity and the fact that it is a rhino, an mundane animal known for ramming into targets with its horns, it is implied, it is intended but it is not written, and RAW we can sucsessfully perform a charge in a context where it would intuitively not make and sense for any momentum to remain, for instance an halfling could take an ready action so that as soon as a creature moves within 5 feet of them to move through that creatures space. Now when you charge up to them, they immedeatly move through your space to a space adjacent to you but directly behind you instead, you would still benefit from charge when you attack the halfling even if your movement and momentum is in the opposite direction to your attack, this trait does not conform to such harsh limitations as "logic" and "physics"
I do not see how such behavior would detract from the experience of others as long as you and your DM come to a conclusion about how you are gonna interpret the rule that is so important to your character prior to the session starting and you respect the DM's decission once it is made, even if you disagree with it.
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
ArtificeMeal, get over it. You are taking a particular reading that is lenient to your intended use. There are certainly other valid interpretations of "you must do this then this" or whether "a" can mean "each" or "one of." If you can't understand that then, again, I'm not sure if you have business telling me that I'm wrong in my interpretation.
The requirement for moving 20 feet in a straight line and successfully making a Gore attack are a singular clause. They are not independent. It is not a toggled conditional that rolls forward into the rest of your turn. It is a closed loop. You get one damage bonus, on one Gore attack, for one Charge. You must then repeat the entire sequence if you wish to charge & gore an additional time.
Like Wolf said (and I'm not trying to be rude), get over it. You're smarter than that, and this isn't the hill to die on.
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.
fine, i can at the very least see where you are coming from and it feels kinda pointless to argue any further, i have said what i have to say, you have said what you have to say, an consensus has been reached, no more debate is necessary.
That being said you could still as an 5th level barbarian in this build pick up the mobile feat and have an ally cast haste on you, giving you an doubled movement speed for an total speed of 120 feet and three attacks per turn, letting you move the prerequisite 20 feet so that you may gain charge on all three, instead of defying logic by quantum-preserving momentum, you may simply defy logic with the sheer speed by whom you continually ram into your opponent, even if by this point more productive uses of concentration are available
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I have come up with a thesis on rule reading. There are 3 important prerequisite points of knowledge:
The combination of 2 and 3 means that one can probably figure out what the rules intend in many cases. Taking that idea with point 1, if one can figure out what is intended by the rule and it is conceivable that the rule could be interpreted that way then there are a couple of options: A) at worst that interpretation can't be discounted or B) at best that is how the rule actually works.
Doubled movement with Mobile would only be 100. What charge are you talking about?
"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