What ls it? While making/reading This thread about a idea l had, the topic (well, mostly the topic maker(me)) got confused because some were saying its possible cause of the sage advice (linked in a edit to my post), while others were saying it wasn't possible because of the rule about only being able to cast more then one spell per TURN if you use a bonus action spell and a action cantrip.
The reason l made this thread is to ask: What exactly is sage advice? Like, how official is it? It's listed on the official site, and it's mentioned HERE that It counts as a official ruling, but does it "one up" official rules written in a official book? I know the dm has final say on rules, but which is more important, sage advice, or "RAW" from the /PHB/DMG?
In other words, is the "rules tier list" Dm-Books-Sage advice, or DM-SA-B?
Edit: keeping this up just because, but l think my answers will be found in the link above (really need to read things fully before posting, lol)
Edit 2: Ok, so it's something there for a Dm to choose to use, and is considered official. (So, basically homebrew with WotC's approval? Is that a good analogy? (A Commonly used part of the game, but entirely dependent on the DM's approval)
Different people have very strong feelings about what role the SAC has, and whether it should be referenced to answer what is "RAW" (rules as written in the rule books), "RAI" (rules as intended by the authors), or "RAF" (rules as fun, just good ideas for how to best resolve a situation).
Is it "official"? No doubt yes. It is "Official rulings on how to interpret rules." Great.
Is it "RAW"? No.
The SAC does not describe itself has containing "rules", only "rulings." Think of that like... the difference between a law, and an individual court case where a fact pattern was found to mean someone was guilty of breaking that law. A "rule" is "intentionally killing someone is murder." A "ruling" is "OJ Simpson was not guilty of murder for the death of his wife."
The SAC is not an "official rule book", or part of the "core rules" of 5th Edition. The SAC itself tells you this, in its very first paragraph "Rules References" which lists the PHB, MM, and DMG as the "three official rulebooks" of D&D.
The SAC itself describes that "a Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play." That is wholly unlike any language you'll find anywhere in the PHB or DMG or MM, which do not generally invite the DM to "determine whether to use" rules.
What do you do when it contradicts official rules written in an official rule book, what's more important? That's debatable
If you think that "RAW" is what matters, you should always take the rule book over SAC, and accept that the SAC and Jeremy Crawford sometimes seem to make some really poor calls.
If you think that "RAI" is what matters, you might want to trust the SAC over the rule book, since it's Jeremy Crawford's chance to tell you what "the D&D team meant when they wrote a certain rule." However, even some people that care about RAI don't accept that Jeremy Crawford or the SAC can always be trusted to know what RAI is, especially since JC seems to change his mind back and forth on certain rulings.
If you think that "RAF" is what matters, or that all that matters is how your DM and table want to play the game, then really you should just look at SAC with the same weight you give to other opinions you find on the internet, and your own. Its some ideas, from some folks who have played a lot of D&D, about how THEY recommend you play the game. That advice may be pretty good, but if it isn't a fit for your table, ignore it!
Keep in mind that the publisher can and does publish errata, which are formal corrections to the text found in the rule books. This errata should usually be what you find when you browse dndbeyond, but if you have printed books, your book may not match some errata that was published later. The SAC is not Errata, so some people (like myself) get very annoyed when the SAC tries to create rule language that isn't found in the books, or contradict language that is found in the books, without any formal errata having been released.
TLDR: For some people, if the SAC says something, that's the top of the tier. For others, the SAC is about as unimportant a book as you can imagine, on par with forum posts (or maybe even lower, since they're just presented as short assertions with no support or citation). Up to you and your group how you treat it.
What ls it? While making/reading This thread about a idea l had, the topic (well, mostly the topic maker(me)) got confused because some were saying its possible cause of the sage advice (linked in a edit to my post), while others were saying it wasn't possible because of the rule about only being able to cast more then one spell per TURN if you use a bonus action spell and a action cantrip.
The reason l made this thread is to ask: What exactly is sage advice? Like, how official is it? It's listed on the official site, and it's mentioned HERE that It counts as a official ruling, but does it "one up" official rules written in a official book? I know the dm has final say on rules, but which is more important, sage advice, or "RAW" from the /PHB/DMG?
In other words, is the "rules tier list" Dm-Books-Sage advice, or DM-SA-B?
Edit: keeping this up just because, but l think my answers will be found in the link above (really need to read things fully before posting, lol)
Sage Advice is equal in weight to any rulebook. Rules priority is:
DM > Errata to any official rules document > official rules document > anything that isn't an official rules document
So the SAC contradicting is exactly like when the PHB contradicts itself: all rules sources in question have the same priority, and your DM has to decide which, if any, rules to follow.
Sage Advice isn't rules. It's rulings, i.e. official guidance on how to interpret the rules. Sage Advice rarely contradicts the PHB; when it does, it's because Jeremy Crawford is a human being and can be wrong sometimes. More often, it's a clarification on what he and other designers meant when they wrote a rule with ambiguous language, or an official word on how things are intended to be interpreted. It's also there to address frequently asked questions, even if the rules themselves are quite unambiguous (like the bonus action spell question you yourself had).
the Sage Advice Compendium, which is an official WotC publication, with all the weight implied above.
this site, which compiles various "rulings" from official or official-ish D&D designers and other folk: https://www.sageadvice.eu/. It's not official, but it can sometimes be of help.
the Sage Advice Compendium, which is an official WotC publication, with all the weight implied above.
this site, which compiles various "rulings" from official or official-ish D&D designers and other folk: https://www.sageadvice.eu/. It's not official, but it can sometimes be of help.
Important to remember, SAC (#1) is a collection of selections from SA (#2), though the offerings from SA are rephrased/restated when added to the SAC, and occasionally something shows up in SAC that didn't first pass through SA. So saying "SA is unofficial and can be ignored, SAC is official and should be trusted" starts to ring hollow when you realize its the same damn opinion from the same guy (presumably).
It's unclear what vetting process an SA goes through to grow up to be part of SAC, because the SAC introduction is still written from the point of Jeremy Crawford talking in the first person about his SA tweets, though a couple years ago it had that intro paragraph added warning that SA and Jeremy's tweets aren't official like SAC is.
Is there an SAC committee (other rule authors? executives? website admins?) that approves and rewrites SA to create new SAC entries? Is SAC just the SA that Crawford is especially proud of and decides to add to the book while he's on the clock at work instead of tweeting from bed? Is SAC independent conclusions from someone else, which just happen to agree with SA but started elsewhere? Something else?
I am sure it is fairly rare that the SAC exactly contradicts a written rule because relatively few items make it into that compendium which is supposed to be written to provide clarification. If a given rule is unclear in the original rules, then there is no chance that the SAC contradicts it because no one can give a definitive reading of it without some clarification from the authors.
I can think of one right off the top of my head, I don't think it's that rare at all.
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....
Can a paladin use Divine Smite when they hit using an unarmed strike?
No. Divine Smite isn’t intended to work with unarmed strikes.
Divine Smite does work with a melee weapon attack, and an unarmed strike can be used to make such an attack. But the text of Divine Smite also refers to the “weapon’s damage,” and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon.
That's the kind of BS right there that really grinds my gears. Divine Smite isn't ambiguous or unclear, and SAC is directly contradicting the written PHB language by trying to patch in a new unwritten restriction.
Official rulings on how to interpret rules are made here in the Sage Advice Compendium. A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions.The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. The tweets of Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), the game’s principal rules designer, are sometimes a pre-view of rulings that appear here."
Two key points.
-The Sage Advice compendium is official rulings but an individual DM decides whether any or all of it applies to their game. They are free to choose otherwise. The Sage Advice Compendium is a document that outlines the Rules as Intended in terms of what the D&D design team had in mind when the rules were written or how they thought they would be best played.
-Any other source of information is not official and only constitutes advice including tweets from Jeremy Crawford or Mike Mearls or others. These can be informative. In many cases, the responses indicate how they might choose to run or resolve a situation in their own games. However, they are unofficial and represent in most cases an informed opinion by very experienced DMs. There are cases where these Sage Advice may disagree with the rules as written and other cases where the poster changed their mind over time and might run something differently now than when they first answered (thus giving apparently inconsistent results). The weight given to these answers depends on the individual reading them ... some folks treat them as "official" and others think of them as the advice described in the Sage Advice Compendium coming from an experienced DM but by no means the final word.
I can think of one right off the top of my head, I don't think it's that rare at all.
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....
Can a paladin use Divine Smite when they hit using an unarmed strike?
No. Divine Smite isn’t intended to work with unarmed strikes.
Divine Smite does work with a melee weapon attack, and an unarmed strike can be used to make such an attack. But the text of Divine Smite also refers to the “weapon’s damage,” and an unarmed strike isn’t a weapon.
That's the kind of BS right there that really grinds my gears. Divine Smite isn't ambiguous or unclear, and SAC is directly contradicting the written PHB language by trying to patch in a new unwritten restriction.
Don't really want to derail the thread but you are wrong on both counts. Unarmed strikes isn't weapons and thus there is no weapon damage to add to, so the PHB text is at the least unclear (and I wager most would see it as ambiguous too) and that also means there is no contradiction or new restriction.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see any good reason for that restriction to exist (and the SAC clearly doesn't mind if a DM ignores it) but the SAC didn't invent the restriction, it merely clarified that it exists.
If the PHB is unclear, then you can't tell me you are right. At least two other features do not at all mention "weapon's damage" when discussing added damage that might apply to any melee weapon attack, including those made without actual physical weapon equipment. You'd have to tell me "weapon's damage" has no meaning or is identical to "attack's damage" or "damage roll" to tell me that this is not ambiguous and a complete contradiction. On the other hand, if you take "weapon's damage" literally then the SAC entry is entirely correct.
Your example, CC, is one where there is at least ambiguity in your interpretation, which means that you can't give a definitive reading. Just because a SAC entry is based on some nuance that you don't think is important doesn't mean that someone else might not. If that means it is ambiguous it cannot be a complete contradiction.
the Sage Advice Compendium, which is an official WotC publication, with all the weight implied above.
this site, which compiles various "rulings" from official or official-ish D&D designers and other folk: https://www.sageadvice.eu/. It's not official, but it can sometimes be of help.
Important to remember, SAC (#1) is a collection of selections from SA (#2), though the offerings from SA are rephrased/restated when added to the SAC, and occasionally something shows up in SAC that didn't first pass through SA. So saying "SA is unofficial and can be ignored, SAC is official and should be trusted" starts to ring hollow when you realize its the same damn opinion from the same guy (presumably).
I don't know who run sageadvice.eu (SA #2), exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's not WotC. SA #2 isn't an official publication, and is instead just a collection of tweets (and maybe other public comms) of individuals, some of whom are WotC designers, who are probably not tweeting on company time.
SAC #1 is an official publication, produced by WotC. It's a compilation of official answers. Crawford both tweets and writes for SAC (for example), but he's not just curating his personal tweets into SAC. The same rulings showing up in both is almost certainly coincidence. Besides, SA #2 includes stuff from many people, some of whom don't work for WotC anymore.
What ls it? While making/reading This thread about a idea l had, the topic (well, mostly the topic maker(me)) got confused because some were saying its possible cause of the sage advice (linked in a edit to my post), while others were saying it wasn't possible because of the rule about only being able to cast more then one spell per TURN if you use a bonus action spell and a action cantrip.
The reason l made this thread is to ask: What exactly is sage advice? Like, how official is it? It's listed on the official site, and it's mentioned HERE that It counts as a official ruling, but does it "one up" official rules written in a official book? I know the dm has final say on rules, but which is more important, sage advice, or "RAW" from the /PHB/DMG?
In other words, is the "rules tier list" Dm-Books-Sage advice, or DM-SA-B?
Edit: keeping this up just because, but l think my answers will be found in the link above (really need to read things fully before posting, lol)
Edit 2: Ok, so it's something there for a Dm to choose to use, and is considered official. (So, basically homebrew with WotC's approval? Is that a good analogy? (A Commonly used part of the game, but entirely dependent on the DM's approval)
First of all all the sage advice referenced in that thread agreed with the written rule, there was no contradiction, and anyone who said otherwise was misreading or misunderstanding JC's poorly written responses.
But as others have said, Sage Advice Compendium is in a rules grey area (Sage Advice not in the compendium is only "advice" and sometimes amount to house rules). It is "official" but makes no attempt to assert its authority as a rules document. So it can help clarify the many confusingly written rules, but does not claim to be the correct interpretation of that rule and sometimes (rarely) even contradicts the rules.
I suggest taking anything it says under advisement at least when making your own rules decisions.
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What ls it? While making/reading This thread about a idea l had, the topic (well, mostly the topic maker(me)) got confused because some were saying its possible cause of the sage advice (linked in a edit to my post), while others were saying it wasn't possible because of the rule about only being able to cast more then one spell per TURN if you use a bonus action spell and a action cantrip.
The reason l made this thread is to ask: What exactly is sage advice? Like, how official is it? It's listed on the official site, and it's mentioned HERE that It counts as a official ruling, but does it "one up" official rules written in a official book? I know the dm has final say on rules, but which is more important, sage advice, or "RAW" from the /PHB/DMG?
In other words, is the "rules tier list" Dm-Books-Sage advice, or DM-SA-B?
Edit: keeping this up just because, but l think my answers will be found in the link above (really need to read things fully before posting, lol)
Edit 2: Ok, so it's something there for a Dm to choose to use, and is considered official. (So, basically homebrew with WotC's approval? Is that a good analogy? (A Commonly used part of the game, but entirely dependent on the DM's approval)
Different people have very strong feelings about what role the SAC has, and whether it should be referenced to answer what is "RAW" (rules as written in the rule books), "RAI" (rules as intended by the authors), or "RAF" (rules as fun, just good ideas for how to best resolve a situation).
TLDR: For some people, if the SAC says something, that's the top of the tier. For others, the SAC is about as unimportant a book as you can imagine, on par with forum posts (or maybe even lower, since they're just presented as short assertions with no support or citation). Up to you and your group how you treat it.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Sage Advice is equal in weight to any rulebook. Rules priority is:
DM > Errata to any official rules document > official rules document > anything that isn't an official rules document
So the SAC contradicting is exactly like when the PHB contradicts itself: all rules sources in question have the same priority, and your DM has to decide which, if any, rules to follow.
Sage Advice isn't rules. It's rulings, i.e. official guidance on how to interpret the rules. Sage Advice rarely contradicts the PHB; when it does, it's because Jeremy Crawford is a human being and can be wrong sometimes. More often, it's a clarification on what he and other designers meant when they wrote a rule with ambiguous language, or an official word on how things are intended to be interpreted. It's also there to address frequently asked questions, even if the rules themselves are quite unambiguous (like the bonus action spell question you yourself had).
Note that "sage advice" has at least 2 meanings:
Important to remember, SAC (#1) is a collection of selections from SA (#2), though the offerings from SA are rephrased/restated when added to the SAC, and occasionally something shows up in SAC that didn't first pass through SA. So saying "SA is unofficial and can be ignored, SAC is official and should be trusted" starts to ring hollow when you realize its the same damn opinion from the same guy (presumably).
It's unclear what vetting process an SA goes through to grow up to be part of SAC, because the SAC introduction is still written from the point of Jeremy Crawford talking in the first person about his SA tweets, though a couple years ago it had that intro paragraph added warning that SA and Jeremy's tweets aren't official like SAC is.
Is there an SAC committee (other rule authors? executives? website admins?) that approves and rewrites SA to create new SAC entries? Is SAC just the SA that Crawford is especially proud of and decides to add to the book while he's on the clock at work instead of tweeting from bed? Is SAC independent conclusions from someone else, which just happen to agree with SA but started elsewhere? Something else?
It's all very muddy.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I am sure it is fairly rare that the SAC exactly contradicts a written rule because relatively few items make it into that compendium which is supposed to be written to provide clarification. If a given rule is unclear in the original rules, then there is no chance that the SAC contradicts it because no one can give a definitive reading of it without some clarification from the authors.
I can think of one right off the top of my head, I don't think it's that rare at all.
That's the kind of BS right there that really grinds my gears. Divine Smite isn't ambiguous or unclear, and SAC is directly contradicting the written PHB language by trying to patch in a new unwritten restriction.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
As mentioned there are two sources of "Sage Advice".
The Sage Advice Compendium is an official WotC publication containing " official clarifications" of the rules.
https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf
From the Sage Advice Compendium.
"Official Rulings
Official rulings on how to interpret rules are made here in the Sage Advice Compendium. A Dungeon Master adjudicates the game and determines whether to use an official ruling in play. The DM always has the final say on rules questions.The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. The tweets of Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), the game’s principal rules designer, are sometimes a pre-view of rulings that appear here."
Two key points.
-The Sage Advice compendium is official rulings but an individual DM decides whether any or all of it applies to their game. They are free to choose otherwise. The Sage Advice Compendium is a document that outlines the Rules as Intended in terms of what the D&D design team had in mind when the rules were written or how they thought they would be best played.
-Any other source of information is not official and only constitutes advice including tweets from Jeremy Crawford or Mike Mearls or others. These can be informative. In many cases, the responses indicate how they might choose to run or resolve a situation in their own games. However, they are unofficial and represent in most cases an informed opinion by very experienced DMs. There are cases where these Sage Advice may disagree with the rules as written and other cases where the poster changed their mind over time and might run something differently now than when they first answered (thus giving apparently inconsistent results). The weight given to these answers depends on the individual reading them ... some folks treat them as "official" and others think of them as the advice described in the Sage Advice Compendium coming from an experienced DM but by no means the final word.
Don't really want to derail the thread but you are wrong on both counts. Unarmed strikes isn't weapons and thus there is no weapon damage to add to, so the PHB text is at the least unclear (and I wager most would see it as ambiguous too) and that also means there is no contradiction or new restriction.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see any good reason for that restriction to exist (and the SAC clearly doesn't mind if a DM ignores it) but the SAC didn't invent the restriction, it merely clarified that it exists.
If the PHB is unclear, then you can't tell me you are right. At least two other features do not at all mention "weapon's damage" when discussing added damage that might apply to any melee weapon attack, including those made without actual physical weapon equipment. You'd have to tell me "weapon's damage" has no meaning or is identical to "attack's damage" or "damage roll" to tell me that this is not ambiguous and a complete contradiction. On the other hand, if you take "weapon's damage" literally then the SAC entry is entirely correct.
Your example, CC, is one where there is at least ambiguity in your interpretation, which means that you can't give a definitive reading. Just because a SAC entry is based on some nuance that you don't think is important doesn't mean that someone else might not. If that means it is ambiguous it cannot be a complete contradiction.
I don't know who run sageadvice.eu (SA #2), exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's not WotC. SA #2 isn't an official publication, and is instead just a collection of tweets (and maybe other public comms) of individuals, some of whom are WotC designers, who are probably not tweeting on company time.
SAC #1 is an official publication, produced by WotC. It's a compilation of official answers. Crawford both tweets and writes for SAC (for example), but he's not just curating his personal tweets into SAC. The same rulings showing up in both is almost certainly coincidence. Besides, SA #2 includes stuff from many people, some of whom don't work for WotC anymore.
First of all all the sage advice referenced in that thread agreed with the written rule, there was no contradiction, and anyone who said otherwise was misreading or misunderstanding JC's poorly written responses.
But as others have said, Sage Advice Compendium is in a rules grey area (Sage Advice not in the compendium is only "advice" and sometimes amount to house rules). It is "official" but makes no attempt to assert its authority as a rules document. So it can help clarify the many confusingly written rules, but does not claim to be the correct interpretation of that rule and sometimes (rarely) even contradicts the rules.
I suggest taking anything it says under advisement at least when making your own rules decisions.