I'll open with a general question about time, followed by a specific scenario that took place during our group's sessions last night. Disclaimer: Our DM is fantastic, and in no way is our group looking for judgement against him; we (including the DM) are trying to resolve something for present and future situations.
If a character casts a spell that has a duration of 1 minute, does the round it is cast count towards the time limit? Or will the spell end after 10 additional rounds have ended?
Onto the specific case: Roane the Miniscule, a bard of questionable moral fiber, is hit with a fireball, draining most of his hit points. He is then attacked by 2 enemies, both of whom have multi-attack. Bad Guy 1 hits him, knocking him unconscious, and then hits him again, which is an auto-crit and counts as 2 failed Death Saving Throws. Bad Guy 2 hits him again, and Roane is now officially dead. But this is mid-round, and the action continues until the last person in the initiative goes, thus ending the round. Now, Revivify states that you can revive a dead creature who has died within the last minute. We the PCs contend that the 60-second countdown begins at the start of the Round after death, and ends at the finish of the 10th round following death. Yours truly was the only party member still conscious at this point, and with the final action at the end of Round 9, I jammed a Greater Potion of Healing down the throat of our cleric. Round 10 begins, and consists of 6 seconds, in which all characters who still have active initiatives take their Actions. The cleric casts Revivify on Roane, and our contention is that this Action take place somewhere between seconds 54-60, thus narrowly avoiding permanent death. Our DM feels that the countdown begins at the moment of death, and therefore the round that Roane "died" is Round 1 of 10.
The rules don't explicitly say how you're supposed to measure rounds, but the most logical and likely intended way is to use the initiative count: if Roane died on initiative count 16, his 1 minute Revivify timer expires 10 rounds later at the start of initiative count 16.
Counting time this way means exactly 10 turns will elapse for everyone involved. So if you cast Blur on your first turn of combat, you'll benefit from it for 10 turns, including the one you cast it on; everyone lower than you on initiative order will also take 10 turns before Blur expires, assuming they're still around.
As proof that it's possible to measure a round from an arbitrary turn, consider these two quotes from the rules:
The rules for reactions say: "When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn."
The rules for the Ready action say: "Remember that you can take only one reaction per round."
Revivify doesn't specify the number of rounds, it says "within the last minute." You're not counting rounds, you're counting 60 seconds. Rounds just happen to be a convenient method of counting seconds, but its not exact, but an approximation. The timer should definitely start the moment the first PC "died."
I don't think that there's anything that actually counts rounds. You have things that last one round, and after that we start counting in terms of minutes, hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, days/weeks/etc. And you have to keep in mind that these aren't exact - 8 hours is the typical adventuring day "shift," and everything that says 8 hours is designed to fit for the duration of that shift. Meanwhile, things that last 1 hour are meant to fit within the timeframe of a short rest, even if the exact amount of time you rest is a bit flexible. Anyways, not really anything applicable here, but I do think the intent for the Revivify is that, if you use it right after combat (the arbitrary length of one combat), it should work.
But, the DM is always "right," and if they want to say someone dies, then they do. Mediating the rules is kind of their job. Ideally, the GM should listen to the players, and having a dead body at the table means someone isn't playing and having fun, so that's an issue. But the DM always gets final say.
So as long as I'm understanding how you're describing the order of events properly, it's BOTH true that the timer starts immediately after they die, AND true that their initiative place in the 10th round following their death marks the 60 second mark. So as long as the Revivify came in before their point in the initiative order in that round, I personally as a DM would say that was before a minute was up.
(What I'm trying to say there is if Round 1 is the round in which they die, then it's Round 11 when it's been a minute. A minute is 10 rounds, and from 1 to 10 is only 9 rounds.)
I can see both sides of the argument, and both of them are quite valid.
The moment the player took that second hit while unconscious they are "dead" and the timer starts at that moment. This is the only part of the situation that cannot be argued.
When does the first "tick" on that clock happen? That's the question we are looking at here.
Answer 1: The first tick happens at death, so that is round 1. This means 6 seconds will have passed (of the 1 minute needed for Revivify). The death and the rest of the initiative order are inside that 6 second window of the round.
Answer 2: The first tick happens on the next initiative of the dead character. This means that there are some unaccounted for seconds (the time between the death blow and the dead character's next initiative). You end up with a buffer of seconds in regards to the 1 minute needed for Revivify.
As was pointed out earlier, many of the spells and effects use "end/beginning of turn" or "per round" which helps imply a flow of time. I belong to the camp that says the timer starts at the beginning of the next round. This lets all actions and reactions resolve from the current turn, and that resolution is where we then take stock of what has happened to the battle field in that 6 second window. Now I am looking at this from a fairly static interpretation of "If A then B" but it helps keep track of things in my mind.
I can see both sides of the argument, and both of them are quite valid.
The moment the player took that second hit while unconscious they are "dead" and the timer starts at that moment. This is the only part of the situation that cannot be argued.
When does the first "tick" on that clock happen? That's the question we are looking at here.
Answer 1: The first tick happens at death, so that is round 1. This means 6 seconds will have passed (of the 1 minute needed for Revivify). The death and the rest of the initiative order are inside that 6 second window of the round.
This makes no sense to me. How can 6 seconds pass at the very moment something happens? How does that work?
Is this like that one fence math problem? You know, the one where it talks about making a ten foot fence, and a pole every two feet, and ask how many poles you need? You count out five ten feet sections, but then you have to remember the very first pole, for a total of six.
As I understand it, the turn-based combat system in D&D is only representative of what real combat may be like (if real combat had fireballs and vampires). A round is roughly six seconds, and your turn is what you're doing within those six seconds. Realistically, a creature could die during any one of those six theoretical seconds - however, taking turns is not actually realistic.
I would say the creature is dead from the round it actually died in. The reasoning behind that is, if you die on the very beginning of the round, at the top of the initiative order, you'd give your cleric 11 turns to potentially resurrect you. That means 66 seconds of their own time.
It's not perfect from a player's perspective, especially the dead one, but consider other actions that also take a minute - such as spellcasting. If death timers do not count as happening until the start of the new round, surely spells that have a casting time of 1 minute would not begin to be cast until the end of that round either (taking 11 turns to cast, effectively). I doubt many players will argue that 1 minute spells should take 11 turns to cast.
With all that said, given the rarity of that single round really mattering, I'd probably just allow my players to have the extra round to get the life-restoring spell out (unless I was DMing a game/campaign that was supposed to be brutally punishing).
Anyways, not really anything applicable here, but I do think the intent for the Revivify is that, if you use it right after combat (the arbitrary length of one combat), it should work.
But, the DM is always "right," and if they want to say someone dies, then they do. Mediating the rules is kind of their job. Ideally, the GM should listen to the players, and having a dead body at the table means someone isn't playing and having fun, so that's an issue. But the DM always gets final say.
In this instance the Revivify spell was needed to be cast while still in combat. The character died in the 1st round of a combat consisting of a high-level mage riding a wyvern, 4 multi-attack foes and a smaller, land-based dragon. Due to circumstances that I don't think are germane, the rest of us didn't join in until the start of round 2. The combat didn't end until round 11 or 12.
And of course the DM is always right ;) Our game is all family and friends. We try to keep the rules lawyering to a minimum, or jot down things to look up after the game is over, but this was somewhat of a pivotal moment and we engaged in a spirited debate (by which I mean shouting at each other lol).
...we engaged in a spirited debate (by which I mean shouting at each other lol).
I had one of those with my fiancee over a particular trap that I felt should have been avoided in CoS (which she is DMing)...I almost slept on the couch.
LMAO! Now I'm nervous, cuz I'm trying to get my wife to join our group at some point in the future. She's never played D&D, though she knows all the people in our group. Ugh! I hate my couch!
I think the argument hinges on how you interpret the combat round.
Initiative is used to select the order to resolve essentially simultaneous player actions within the exact SAME 6 second combat round. Everyone is doing something in that 6 second time window and intiative is a game mechanism that allows the DM to resolve a series of essentially simultaneous actions. Initiative doesn't really represent the order in which the actions take place (this would make no sense since there can be dozens of characters and monsters all taking actions that may be resolved one after the other ... but if they were actually HAPPENING one after the other then the 6 second combat round gets broken down into fractions of a second in which all of the character actions/movement take place ... which really doesn't make much sense). Characters are not motionless while waiting for other characters or monsters to perform an action. All the actions occur within the same 6 second time frame of the combat round.
Using this interpretation then, a character is alive at the beginning of the combat round and is dead at the end ... since the exact time that they died within the round is not defined (initiative doesn't give that information since it is just the order used to resolve simultaneous actions by all the characters each of whom may be spending up to 6 seconds). I would start the one minute revivify timer at the end of the combat round in which the character died. Revivify could be cast for 10 more rounds ... on the 11th round the character could not be restored by revivify.
That would be my take anyway ... other DMs will have other opinions :)
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I'll open with a general question about time, followed by a specific scenario that took place during our group's sessions last night. Disclaimer: Our DM is fantastic, and in no way is our group looking for judgement against him; we (including the DM) are trying to resolve something for present and future situations.
If a character casts a spell that has a duration of 1 minute, does the round it is cast count towards the time limit? Or will the spell end after 10 additional rounds have ended?
Onto the specific case: Roane the Miniscule, a bard of questionable moral fiber, is hit with a fireball, draining most of his hit points. He is then attacked by 2 enemies, both of whom have multi-attack. Bad Guy 1 hits him, knocking him unconscious, and then hits him again, which is an auto-crit and counts as 2 failed Death Saving Throws. Bad Guy 2 hits him again, and Roane is now officially dead. But this is mid-round, and the action continues until the last person in the initiative goes, thus ending the round. Now, Revivify states that you can revive a dead creature who has died within the last minute. We the PCs contend that the 60-second countdown begins at the start of the Round after death, and ends at the finish of the 10th round following death. Yours truly was the only party member still conscious at this point, and with the final action at the end of Round 9, I jammed a Greater Potion of Healing down the throat of our cleric. Round 10 begins, and consists of 6 seconds, in which all characters who still have active initiatives take their Actions. The cleric casts Revivify on Roane, and our contention is that this Action take place somewhere between seconds 54-60, thus narrowly avoiding permanent death. Our DM feels that the countdown begins at the moment of death, and therefore the round that Roane "died" is Round 1 of 10.
What say you all?
The rules don't explicitly say how you're supposed to measure rounds, but the most logical and likely intended way is to use the initiative count: if Roane died on initiative count 16, his 1 minute Revivify timer expires 10 rounds later at the start of initiative count 16.
Counting time this way means exactly 10 turns will elapse for everyone involved. So if you cast Blur on your first turn of combat, you'll benefit from it for 10 turns, including the one you cast it on; everyone lower than you on initiative order will also take 10 turns before Blur expires, assuming they're still around.
As proof that it's possible to measure a round from an arbitrary turn, consider these two quotes from the rules:
In other words, to the reaction rule, a round is measured from the start of your turn.
This is really two separate issues here, I think.
Revivify doesn't specify the number of rounds, it says "within the last minute." You're not counting rounds, you're counting 60 seconds. Rounds just happen to be a convenient method of counting seconds, but its not exact, but an approximation. The timer should definitely start the moment the first PC "died."
I don't think that there's anything that actually counts rounds. You have things that last one round, and after that we start counting in terms of minutes, hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, days/weeks/etc. And you have to keep in mind that these aren't exact - 8 hours is the typical adventuring day "shift," and everything that says 8 hours is designed to fit for the duration of that shift. Meanwhile, things that last 1 hour are meant to fit within the timeframe of a short rest, even if the exact amount of time you rest is a bit flexible. Anyways, not really anything applicable here, but I do think the intent for the Revivify is that, if you use it right after combat (the arbitrary length of one combat), it should work.
But, the DM is always "right," and if they want to say someone dies, then they do. Mediating the rules is kind of their job. Ideally, the GM should listen to the players, and having a dead body at the table means someone isn't playing and having fun, so that's an issue. But the DM always gets final say.
First, the DM is always right, as a general principle, they decide how the rules work after all :-)
Second, it is indeed written as "if they died within the past minute". Each round is 6 seconds, so here's how it goes:
Round 0- Initiative X- Player dies
Round 1- Initiative X- It's been 6 seconds since they died.
Round 2- Initiative X- 12 seconds
Round 3-18; Round 4- 24; Round 5- 30; Round 6- 36; Round 7-42; Round 8- 48; Round 9- 54; Round 10- 60.
So as long as I'm understanding how you're describing the order of events properly, it's BOTH true that the timer starts immediately after they die, AND true that their initiative place in the 10th round following their death marks the 60 second mark. So as long as the Revivify came in before their point in the initiative order in that round, I personally as a DM would say that was before a minute was up.
(What I'm trying to say there is if Round 1 is the round in which they die, then it's Round 11 when it's been a minute. A minute is 10 rounds, and from 1 to 10 is only 9 rounds.)
I can see both sides of the argument, and both of them are quite valid.
The moment the player took that second hit while unconscious they are "dead" and the timer starts at that moment. This is the only part of the situation that cannot be argued.
When does the first "tick" on that clock happen? That's the question we are looking at here.
As was pointed out earlier, many of the spells and effects use "end/beginning of turn" or "per round" which helps imply a flow of time. I belong to the camp that says the timer starts at the beginning of the next round. This lets all actions and reactions resolve from the current turn, and that resolution is where we then take stock of what has happened to the battle field in that 6 second window. Now I am looking at this from a fairly static interpretation of "If A then B" but it helps keep track of things in my mind.
As I understand it, the turn-based combat system in D&D is only representative of what real combat may be like (if real combat had fireballs and vampires). A round is roughly six seconds, and your turn is what you're doing within those six seconds. Realistically, a creature could die during any one of those six theoretical seconds - however, taking turns is not actually realistic.
I would say the creature is dead from the round it actually died in. The reasoning behind that is, if you die on the very beginning of the round, at the top of the initiative order, you'd give your cleric 11 turns to potentially resurrect you. That means 66 seconds of their own time.
It's not perfect from a player's perspective, especially the dead one, but consider other actions that also take a minute - such as spellcasting. If death timers do not count as happening until the start of the new round, surely spells that have a casting time of 1 minute would not begin to be cast until the end of that round either (taking 11 turns to cast, effectively). I doubt many players will argue that 1 minute spells should take 11 turns to cast.
With all that said, given the rarity of that single round really mattering, I'd probably just allow my players to have the extra round to get the life-restoring spell out (unless I was DMing a game/campaign that was supposed to be brutally punishing).
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In the end, mostly due to the well-phrased explanations on this thread, I conceded the point to our DM.
LMAO! Now I'm nervous, cuz I'm trying to get my wife to join our group at some point in the future. She's never played D&D, though she knows all the people in our group. Ugh! I hate my couch!
I think the argument hinges on how you interpret the combat round.
Initiative is used to select the order to resolve essentially simultaneous player actions within the exact SAME 6 second combat round. Everyone is doing something in that 6 second time window and intiative is a game mechanism that allows the DM to resolve a series of essentially simultaneous actions. Initiative doesn't really represent the order in which the actions take place (this would make no sense since there can be dozens of characters and monsters all taking actions that may be resolved one after the other ... but if they were actually HAPPENING one after the other then the 6 second combat round gets broken down into fractions of a second in which all of the character actions/movement take place ... which really doesn't make much sense). Characters are not motionless while waiting for other characters or monsters to perform an action. All the actions occur within the same 6 second time frame of the combat round.
Using this interpretation then, a character is alive at the beginning of the combat round and is dead at the end ... since the exact time that they died within the round is not defined (initiative doesn't give that information since it is just the order used to resolve simultaneous actions by all the characters each of whom may be spending up to 6 seconds). I would start the one minute revivify timer at the end of the combat round in which the character died. Revivify could be cast for 10 more rounds ... on the 11th round the character could not be restored by revivify.
That would be my take anyway ... other DMs will have other opinions :)