Well now I'm glad her character was annihilated in Tomb of Annihilation!
We never finished that campaign and when I go back to revisit early next year (to finish the dungeon) WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SOME WORDS before she's welcomed back
I'm hoping there's an innocent explanation, I hope I just got drunk and forgot giving her permission to use an ammended version in bad judgement or something
So I've gone to my old Ancestral Guardian character, and on the character sheet itself (digital and exported PDF) the wording has been abridged to
* Ancestral Protectors • XGtE 10
While raging, the first creature you hit with an attack on your turn has disadvantage on any attack that isn't against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you, that creature has resistance to the damage dealt by the attack.
It still clearly says resistance and stresses attacks but it is a little less clear. I don't know what her sheet reads, but it could have been an honest mistake on her part.
So I've gone to my old Ancestral Guardian character, and on the character sheet itself (digital and exported PDF) the wording has been abridged to
* Ancestral Protectors • XGtE 10
While raging, the first creature you hit with an attack on your turn has disadvantage on any attack that isn't against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you, that creature has resistance to the damage dealt by the attack.
It still clearly says resistance and stresses attacks but it is a little less clear. I don't know what her sheet reads, but it could have been an honest mistake on her part.
Moral of the story: Always refer to the books.
I don't let someone pick a class without reading about it myself first (eg: id probably say no to a sun soul monk in Barovia), I used to not do that and pretty much let people pick things and educated myself ad hoc about how it worked
It takes effect on the first enemy you hit on a turn per turn whilst raging.
So whilst yes, it runs out after a turn, you just slap them again to renew it. And with Polearm Master and Sentinel feats you're potentially rolling a lot of attacks.
Wait, shit. So it's basically a Battle Master Fighter's Goading Strike (also gotten at level 3)... except it doesn't spend a limited resource, it doesn't require a save AND it halves their damage on top of the disadvantage?
It gives resistance to damage on targets that aren't you as long as it uses an attack roll (which is also done at disadvantage) so spells that require a save instead of a spell attack roll should be unaffected (like fireball).
And you are raging so you have resistance to slashing/piercing/bludgeoning for if the creature decides to attack you.
This is one of the reasons why I don't like saving throws and preferred the way that 4th Edition made everything an attack against various types of defence
The same issue is in Pathfinder 2nd Edition - took me ten minutes of jumping across index references to confirm to my satisfaction that the penalty for attacking twice on an action doesn't affect spells which require saving throws
Wait, shit. So it's basically a Battle Master Fighter's Goading Strike (also gotten at level 3)... except it doesn't spend a limited resource, it doesn't require a save AND it halves their damage on top of the disadvantage?
Fuck me.
Technically, it does require a resource as they have to be raging to use it.
And as was mentioned, it's basically their one trick. It's a good one. A really good one. But when you run into an encounter where it's not effective, you basically don't have a back up tactic.
Well now I'm glad her character was annihilated in Tomb of Annihilation!
We never finished that campaign and when I go back to revisit early next year (to finish the dungeon) WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SOME WORDS before she's welcomed back
I'm hoping there's an innocent explanation, I hope I just got drunk and forgot giving her permission to use an ammended version in bad judgement or something
While it is entirely possible that your player tried to pull one over on you, I'm generally the type to give the benefit of the doubt, so I'm guessing it was them short handing it on the sheet so it'd be easier to read / take less space, probably mixed with a misunderstanding on how the ability works. I can see how a player would think that any ability / spell that does damage is an attack.
It's an easy thing to misunderstand that "attack" is a keyword that means something specific in D&D. It's like the difference between spells (Counterspellable) and a dragon's breath (not Counterspellable). I would give them the benefit of the doubt there.
well she told me over discord that "she put it in how it was written in the UA document she was using", but it's not worded that way at all in UA
I don't have proof but I have a hard time assuming good faith given how often this particular player has "accidentally" misinterpreted the rules for her own benefit
she is absolutely aware of the difference of "attack" and other wording, as she's the biggest rules lawyer at any given table
Wait, shit. So it's basically a Battle Master Fighter's Goading Strike (also gotten at level 3)... except it doesn't spend a limited resource, it doesn't require a save AND it halves their damage on top of the disadvantage?
Fuck me.
Yeah it's still a phenomenally, ridiculously powerful ability that makes little sense in the game world (okay so how do your "spirits" bother Acererak, at all? The actual gods of this place don't bother him). The ability also works if the creature using it is using a ranged weapon
as is sentinel for the same reason, neither ability has any limitations in terms of scope, a level 1 human variant fighter can cripple a Tarasque with Sentinel
You guys really are some wizards here with the rules.
It's a great reminder that if something in an official published source is breaking your game, you should look into it.
If something is really freaking powerful in a very specific circumstance, that's probably cool and intended. But if you have something that you feel is literally breaking every encounter you come across, I'd dig a bit.
I'm going to guess that this barbarian player (as player tend to do) interpreted the power in the absolute broadest, most powerful manner possible, and just rolled with it. And it seemed to snowball with a few other minor misunderstanding of the rules, with just happened to coincidentally amplify the misunderstanding.
I really hate nerfing published abilities but I think I'd probably stick with the changes. Deleting a legendary resistance for no resource cost and a dragon avoiding sentinel's movement reduction only to take double damage are still powerful, fight-altering things, but they avoid the kind of situations legendary resistance was meant to avoid (a boss getting pinned in a corner by a save or suck spell and insta-dying)
not that it matters since her reroll character after getting killed by acererak's trash compactor is a sorcerer
like wise in my discussion with my DM about my creation bard's ability: if he wants to nullify it entirely with a legendary resistance I would be perfectly happy with that (we both are pretty happy with it just needing a grapple to do anything to a creature's movement)
well she told me over discord that "she put it in how it was written in the UA document she was using", but it's not worded that way at all in UA
I don't have proof but I have a hard time assuming good faith given how often this particular player has "accidentally" misinterpreted the rules for her own benefit
she is absolutely aware of the difference of "attack" and other wording, as she's the biggest rules lawyer at any given table
Wait, shit. So it's basically a Battle Master Fighter's Goading Strike (also gotten at level 3)... except it doesn't spend a limited resource, it doesn't require a save AND it halves their damage on top of the disadvantage?
Fuck me.
Yeah it's still a phenomenally, ridiculously powerful ability that makes little sense in the game world (okay so how do your "spirits" bother Acererak, at all? The actual gods of this place don't bother him). The ability also works if the creature using it is using a ranged weapon
as is sentinel for the same reason, neither ability has any limitations in terms of scope, a level 1 human variant fighter can cripple a Tarasque with Sentinel
The spirits are VERY annoying, they're constantly doing the "I'm not touching you, is this bothering you" thing.
It's an easy thing to misunderstand that "attack" is a keyword that means something specific in D&D. It's like the difference between spells (Counterspellable) and a dragon's breath (not Counterspellable). I would give them the benefit of the doubt there.
Yeah, I've caught myself on multiple occasions remembering an ability in a broader sense than the worded definition, just because it'd been a while since I used it.
That and Starfinder can be bloody particular about its wording sometimes.
well she told me over discord that "she put it in how it was written in the UA document she was using", but it's not worded that way at all in UA
I don't have proof but I have a hard time assuming good faith given how often this particular player has "accidentally" misinterpreted the rules for her own benefit
she is absolutely aware of the difference of "attack" and other wording, as she's the biggest rules lawyer at any given table
Wait, shit. So it's basically a Battle Master Fighter's Goading Strike (also gotten at level 3)... except it doesn't spend a limited resource, it doesn't require a save AND it halves their damage on top of the disadvantage?
Fuck me.
Yeah it's still a phenomenally, ridiculously powerful ability that makes little sense in the game world (okay so how do your "spirits" bother Acererak, at all? The actual gods of this place don't bother him). The ability also works if the creature using it is using a ranged weapon
as is sentinel for the same reason, neither ability has any limitations in terms of scope, a level 1 human variant fighter can cripple a Tarasque with Sentinel
Yikes, that player sounds like a cheater and maybe you shouldn't play with them anymore, I guess you already came to that conclusion.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Acererak and Ras Nsi can control undead, except your barbarian spirits, becase
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
4E justified it by stating that the spirits of the dead invoked by "Primal" magic had become part of the spirits of nature. Incorporeal undead are spirits who persist in spite of nature.
5E got rid of most of the flavor text regarding "Primal" magic while still retaining some of the ideas. You can tell there's a bit of disconnect between the developers of 5E concerning what various spirits are. Sometimes they're fey, sometimes they're elementals like the chwinga from Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frost Maiden (apparently there was a bit of a disagreement during ToA's development whether chwingas should be fey or elementals), Tasha's includes beast spirits summoned by various means that retain the beast type despite being spirits, the eidolons of even deities that grant powers against undead are powered by an undead spirit (personally I would have made them celestial or fiendish in nature) etc.
To complicate matters, 4E also presented a possible origin for Primal spirits being Elemental spirits that chose to forsake the Elemental Plane and become part of the world.
TL;DR, Acererak can't control barbarian spirits because they're not undead spirits.
Acererak and Ras Nsi can control undead, except your barbarian spirits, becase
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
Where does it classify the barbarian Ancestral Spirits as undead?
It doesn’t. But 5e is the land of natural language and not keywords (even though it has a lot of key words) so things that are not explicitly said to be one thing can still be that thing. Are there fey spirits? Or elemental spirits? The power doesn’t say it’s those either. It doesn’t say what kind of spirits they are besides saying they’re the spirits of your dead forebearers.
Now I understand not having them be typed because it would be annoying for a monster to turn your class abilities back on you. But this is the kind of thing that 5e was supposed to enable as part of its move away from keyword language
Acererak and Ras Nsi can control undead, except your barbarian spirits, becase
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
Where does it classify the barbarian Ancestral Spirits as undead?
inconsistent because there is no save or counterplay (IE: a Dispel Magic wouldn't help), not because they actually are undead, they aren't any type, they're just a visual effect, that was just me musing on how ridiculous these mechanics are if you try to logic them out to the world
they are "dead ancestors", so by the logic of the universe our characters are in, they should be undead with all the pros and cons that come with that, that's just how I contextualize what's happening in the world, which is why sentinel similarly bothers me (how are you actually stopping the 30 foot tall iron juggernaut's movement?). You can bet your bacon that if you as the DM tell a player who is a cleric "you are accosted by ghosts and have disadvantage on attack rolls" and they said "turn undead' and you said "yeah but no" they would rightly get annoyed at you
I like to be able to visualize how abilities actually work, which is why I don't let a line of 2000 peasants teleport items from one point to another, for example
which is why we go to rule 1 present right in the beginning of the phb, dmg, and tashas: the DM gets to say "since they're explicitly spirits of the dead, they are undead, and in certain circumstances, things that would stop undead will stop them", as long as applying universe logic doesn't just benefit NPCs, the players sure as shit get to make use of it as well
edit: one of the barbarian's fellow players actually raised that point to me, at least with the group of players I play with, we prefer to preserve verisimilitude over RAW mechanics. The rogue in my current SKT game for example, requested that evasion move the character to a safe place if they take zero damage, and if they couldnt possibly get to a safe place with their movement, they still take half damage - she asked for a self nerf just because she thought would be more fun if she ended up in a chimney or hanging off a ledge after a fireball
creatures sometimes have evasion so they get the same deal, ofc
Acererak and Ras Nsi can control undead, except your barbarian spirits, becase
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
Where does it classify the barbarian Ancestral Spirits as undead?
It doesn’t. But 5e is the land of natural language and not keywords (even though it has a lot of key words) so things that are not explicitly said to be one thing can still be that thing. Are there fey spirits? Or elemental spirits? The power doesn’t say it’s those either. It doesn’t say what kind of spirits they are besides saying they’re the spirits of your dead forebearers.
Now I understand not having them be typed because it would be annoying for a monster to turn your class abilities back on you. But this is the kind of thing that 5e was supposed to enable as part of its move away from keyword language
Yup. This ability is a really good example of the 5E natural language smokescreen. Ancestral Protectors is a Power with a Trigger, an Action, an Effect, and Flavor Text. Written in the 4E style:
Ancestral Protectors - Barbarian Utility 3 Your rage calls forth spectral warriors to harass the target of your attacks. At-Will - Primal No Action Range: Special Trigger: The first time you hit a target with an attack while raging on your turn. Target: The target of the triggering attack. Effect: Until the start of your next turn, the target has Disadvantage on any attack roll that isn’t against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you with an attack, that creature has Resistance to the damage dealt by the attack. The effect on the target ends early if your rage ends.
Of course if this was actually a 4E power it would probably be a Rage power and a Daily Attack instead of this weird utility thing that 5E turns it into, but the point still stands that almost everything in 5E is actually a power and can be written as such. The game just intentionally makes everything more confusing so that it feels more flavorful without actually being more flavorful.
I like to have these discussions with my players, like in my ancestral guardians example, if she hadn't budged at all, I would have just dealt with it, I was glad she was willing to compromise with me
any kind of house rule is usually debated at the table, with the exception of pre-game stuff (before session zero I reserve the right to dictate terms, and people can join or not join based on them)
Acererak and Ras Nsi can control undead, except your barbarian spirits, becase
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
Where does it classify the barbarian Ancestral Spirits as undead?
inconsistent because there is no save or counterplay (IE: a Dispel Magic wouldn't help), not because they actually are undead, they aren't any type, they're just a visual effect, that was just me musing on how ridiculous these mechanics are if you try to logic them out to the world
they are "dead ancestors", so by the logic of the universe our characters are in, they should be undead with all the pros and cons that come with that, that's just how I contextualize what's happening in the world, which is why sentinel similarly bothers me (how are you actually stopping the 30 foot tall iron juggernaut's movement?). You can bet your bacon that if you as the DM tell a player who is a cleric "you are accosted by ghosts and have disadvantage on attack rolls" and they said "turn undead' and you said "yeah but no" they would rightly get annoyed at you
Perhaps they are the spirits of their live ancestors, and elderly barbarians of this clan are known to occasionally fall into a Weatherwaxian fugue state as their spirits go off to harangue the 'friends' of their grandchild that they don't approve of and consider 'the wrong sort', or at the very least a bad influence?
The Exhaustion mechanic then modelling the massive sulk Wulfgar ends up in, after having to end his rage with a "Unngh, Gran! We were fighting the lizardfolk just fiiine", combined with the mocking from his peers.
I alluded to this earlier, but I prefer to say that the spirits of the dead aren't all necessarily undead. Undead spirits persist in defiance of the natural order, while spirits such as the ones that Barbarian ability invokes are ones that the spirits of nature have inducted into their number. Such spirits would have more limitations on what they can do because they exist to fill a role, as opposed to undead spirits that exist for their own sake.
Anyway, I've got a question regarding magical dusts. By RAW, the only way to use Dust of Sneezing and Choking is to pull it from the pouch by hand and throw it in the air. However, what's stopping someone from rigging a trap where the dust pouch falls and bursts, or is blown in a certain direction by Gust of Wind, or some other method?
I'm mainly interested in this because I'm developing a deep gnome enclave that is allied with a myconid colony and has harvested various unique dusts from them that hypothetically could be used for defense if the user wasn't themselves vulnerable to the effect.
Dust of Euphoria. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Poisoned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns. When the effect ends, the creature gains one level of exhaustion.
Dust of Pacification. 10 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Stunned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns.
Dust of Petrification. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 12 Constitution save. Restrained until the end of its next turn, when it must repeat the saving throw. On a success the effect ends; on a failure the creature is petrified for 24 hours.
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PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Anyway, I've got a question regarding magical dusts. By RAW, the only way to use Dust of Sneezing and Choking is to pull it from the pouch by hand and throw it in the air. However, what's stopping someone from rigging a trap where the dust pouch falls and bursts, or is blown in a certain direction by Gust of Wind, or some other method?
I'm mainly interested in this because I'm developing a deep gnome enclave that is allied with a myconid colony and has harvested various unique dusts from them that hypothetically could be used for defense if the user wasn't themselves vulnerable to the effect.
Dust of Euphoria. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Poisoned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns. When the effect ends, the creature gains one level of exhaustion.
Dust of Pacification. 10 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Stunned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns.
Dust of Petrification. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 12 Constitution save. Restrained until the end of its next turn, when it must repeat the saving throw. On a success the effect ends; on a failure the creature is petrified for 24 hours.
"using" the dust just takes an action, so it would be the same as any other trap that did a thing
I alluded to this earlier, but I prefer to say that the spirits of the dead aren't all necessarily undead. Undead spirits persist in defiance of the natural order, while spirits such as the ones that Barbarian ability invokes are ones that the spirits of nature have inducted into their number. Such spirits would have more limitations on what they can do because they exist to fill a role, as opposed to undead spirits that exist for their own sake.
I mean, Watchnorns are elf cultural guardians that willingly decide to be naked sexy elf spirits seperated from their body for eternity, existing in natural groves, and they're still very much undead
yeah yeah I can hammer it into making sense, I just don't like the ability. The player ended up perfectly happy with the "nerf" that legendary resistance could cancel the ancestral guardians if a boss wanted, anyway.
...unlike my avernus DM who as a player will drag the game to a HALT if he doesn't like a ruling, like he took like 15 minutes to argue why he could cast spells outside of his tiny hut instead of just accepting that I said "no"
I see that Watchnorns came about in Third Edition, which was the same edition that introduced a Deathless creature type for Eberron.
Deathless is a new creature type, describing creatures that have died but returned to a kind of spiritual life. They are similar in many ways to both living creatures and undead. However, while undead represent a mockery of life and a violation of the natural order of life and death, the deathless merely stave off the inevitability of death to accomplish a righteous purpose. While undead draw their power from the plane of Mabar, the Endless Night, the deathless are strongly tied to the plane of Irian, the Eternal Day, the birthplace of all souls. In fact, the deathless are little more than disincarnate souls, sometimes wrapped in material flesh, often incorporeal and hardly more substantial than a soul in its purest state.
It boils down to different writers having different ideas for what spirits of the dead other than ghosts and specters and wraiths should be like in the game. Fourth Edition, IMO, had the clearest answer in establishing a pantheon of nature spirits that would sometimes induct ancestral spirits into their number, with incorporeal undead being spirits that persist due to the influence of a corrupting negative energy. Fourth Edition also established the concept of mortals having both a soul that can depart after death and an animus that remains behind (for example, the spirit that is invoked by Speak With Dead would be an animus). Most undead were said to be powered by corrupted animuses that were more along the lines of an unshackled id than complete minds. An aspect of this I find particularly interesting is that ghouls were described as soulless undead, meaning that even if a ghoul acted in some ways like the person did in life, the actual soul of that person could be awaiting judgment and completely unaware that their body has become a ghoul.
However, Fifth Edition doesn't detail this lore, so I can't say that the prior edition's explanation holds weight in the current one. The best I can argue going by what Fifth Edition gives is that the Summon Beast spell in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is described as invoking a spirit that can take corporeal form. The statblock for this spirit when in corporeal form denotes it as being a Beast type creature despite its spiritual nature. Perhaps ancestral spirits similarly have the Humanoid type.
5e relies a lot on just, natural language and DM interpretation, so just saying the spirits are undead with no stat block wouldn't make a DM out of line I feel like
I wouldn't actually go far enough to be like "Yeah they're undead" but as I said, against incredibly specific enemies, like Acererak, I would have some mechanical funkiness come into play. I think it makes more sense to go for the "summon undead" spell than "summon beast", since the ancestral guardians spell makes incorporeal humanoids, which the "summon undead" spell also does
I think the best explanation is that they are the spirits of long dead ancestors, as when someone says "ancestral spirits", I think horses, not zebras
I mean, dead ancient relatives, not their great uncle steve
If a player picks ancestral guardian and wants them to be humanoid I'm totally down though, they hit an enemy and a large screaming naked man appears and wraps his arms around the enemy blathering incoherently
I think if i was gonna have the enemy fuck with their mechanics i'd tell the player ahead of time and cook up a replacement feature. Like yeah im gonna turn off your ancestral guardians in this fight as acerak just dismisses them from being, your anger in response cannot be contained you can frenzy a la the berserker subclass with no exhaustion afterward, or like give them the bear totem raging features during the fight. Something that really crunches on their absolute unfathomable rage at their ancestors guidance being stripped from them for this encounter.
I think if i was gonna have the enemy fuck with their mechanics i'd tell the player ahead of time and cook up a replacement feature. Like yeah im gonna turn off your ancestral guardians in this fight as acerak just dismisses them from being, your anger in response cannot be contained you can frenzy a la the berserker subclass with no exhaustion afterward, or like give them the bear totem raging features during the fight. Something that really crunches on their absolute unfathomable rage at their ancestors guidance being stripped from them for this encounter.
Eh... I don't really agree, I think it's a reasonable interpretation that the staff of the forgotten ones would make him immune to "ancestral spirits", just like it makes him immune to a necromancer's army of undead, my players get hard combats out of me and part of that is that I don't tell them what enemies are going to be capable of or how the abilities of something their character has never seen will interact with their class abilities (which has led to them researching foes when possible and getting arcana checks to make those kinds of determinations). before she lost her character, she got a preview of this when her spirits turned against her when facing Ras Nsi, the scorned barae who can control the dead. She didn't get upset.
they were sure surprised when that beholder they faced was a death tyrant with a bunch of thorn covered skeleton minions and not a beholder, for example
not going to matter anyway, they're probably all going to die when they face Acererak because... I mean the only way he can't win that fight is if the DM decides he can't use a different spell loadout, despite being the smartest creature in the multiverse
edit: the barbarian isn't even going to be there so the entire thing is moot
Our DMs pretty regularly make encounters that are designed to counter one of the party member's usual tricks, to force the group to figure out how to work around it. I think as long as it's not a consistent thing (like repeatedly throwing undead/constructs at a Bard kitted out in charm effects) it's fine?
Unless it comes across as mean spirited, or you're at such a low level that you have literally no other tools in your kit, it's no different from what fights are supposed to do, challenge you tactically. I'm pretty sure that Barbarian can still hit things and soak up damage just fine, they don't normally just throw a rock to proc the ability and then sit down and let everyone else do the work.
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We never finished that campaign and when I go back to revisit early next year (to finish the dungeon) WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SOME WORDS before she's welcomed back
I'm hoping there's an innocent explanation, I hope I just got drunk and forgot giving her permission to use an ammended version in bad judgement or something
It still clearly says resistance and stresses attacks but it is a little less clear. I don't know what her sheet reads, but it could have been an honest mistake on her part.
Moral of the story: Always refer to the books.
I don't let someone pick a class without reading about it myself first (eg: id probably say no to a sun soul monk in Barovia), I used to not do that and pretty much let people pick things and educated myself ad hoc about how it worked
but 2018 was a simpler time
So whilst yes, it runs out after a turn, you just slap them again to renew it. And with Polearm Master and Sentinel feats you're potentially rolling a lot of attacks.
Fuck me.
And you are raging so you have resistance to slashing/piercing/bludgeoning for if the creature decides to attack you.
Battlemasters get other manoeuvres and all the other fighter goodies too - bonus ASIs etc.
Compared to some of the paladin auras (Oath of Ancients specifically) it's not all that.
The same issue is in Pathfinder 2nd Edition - took me ten minutes of jumping across index references to confirm to my satisfaction that the penalty for attacking twice on an action doesn't affect spells which require saving throws
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Technically, it does require a resource as they have to be raging to use it.
And as was mentioned, it's basically their one trick. It's a good one. A really good one. But when you run into an encounter where it's not effective, you basically don't have a back up tactic.
While it is entirely possible that your player tried to pull one over on you, I'm generally the type to give the benefit of the doubt, so I'm guessing it was them short handing it on the sheet so it'd be easier to read / take less space, probably mixed with a misunderstanding on how the ability works. I can see how a player would think that any ability / spell that does damage is an attack.
I don't have proof but I have a hard time assuming good faith given how often this particular player has "accidentally" misinterpreted the rules for her own benefit
she is absolutely aware of the difference of "attack" and other wording, as she's the biggest rules lawyer at any given table
Yeah it's still a phenomenally, ridiculously powerful ability that makes little sense in the game world (okay so how do your "spirits" bother Acererak, at all? The actual gods of this place don't bother him). The ability also works if the creature using it is using a ranged weapon
as is sentinel for the same reason, neither ability has any limitations in terms of scope, a level 1 human variant fighter can cripple a Tarasque with Sentinel
It's a great reminder that if something in an official published source is breaking your game, you should look into it.
If something is really freaking powerful in a very specific circumstance, that's probably cool and intended. But if you have something that you feel is literally breaking every encounter you come across, I'd dig a bit.
I'm going to guess that this barbarian player (as player tend to do) interpreted the power in the absolute broadest, most powerful manner possible, and just rolled with it. And it seemed to snowball with a few other minor misunderstanding of the rules, with just happened to coincidentally amplify the misunderstanding.
not that it matters since her reroll character after getting killed by acererak's trash compactor is a sorcerer
like wise in my discussion with my DM about my creation bard's ability: if he wants to nullify it entirely with a legendary resistance I would be perfectly happy with that (we both are pretty happy with it just needing a grapple to do anything to a creature's movement)
The spirits are VERY annoying, they're constantly doing the "I'm not touching you, is this bothering you" thing.
That and Starfinder can be bloody particular about its wording sometimes.
I think it's really inconsistent design when compared with all similar abilities
Yikes, that player sounds like a cheater and maybe you shouldn't play with them anymore, I guess you already came to that conclusion.
Your spirits count as equipped items obviously!
actually the barbarian spirits just grappling the enemy and dragging them away instead of what hey currently do would be hilarious
4E justified it by stating that the spirits of the dead invoked by "Primal" magic had become part of the spirits of nature. Incorporeal undead are spirits who persist in spite of nature.
5E got rid of most of the flavor text regarding "Primal" magic while still retaining some of the ideas. You can tell there's a bit of disconnect between the developers of 5E concerning what various spirits are. Sometimes they're fey, sometimes they're elementals like the chwinga from Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frost Maiden (apparently there was a bit of a disagreement during ToA's development whether chwingas should be fey or elementals), Tasha's includes beast spirits summoned by various means that retain the beast type despite being spirits, the eidolons of even deities that grant powers against undead are powered by an undead spirit (personally I would have made them celestial or fiendish in nature) etc.
To complicate matters, 4E also presented a possible origin for Primal spirits being Elemental spirits that chose to forsake the Elemental Plane and become part of the world.
TL;DR, Acererak can't control barbarian spirits because they're not undead spirits.
Where does it classify the barbarian Ancestral Spirits as undead?
It doesn’t. But 5e is the land of natural language and not keywords (even though it has a lot of key words) so things that are not explicitly said to be one thing can still be that thing. Are there fey spirits? Or elemental spirits? The power doesn’t say it’s those either. It doesn’t say what kind of spirits they are besides saying they’re the spirits of your dead forebearers.
Now I understand not having them be typed because it would be annoying for a monster to turn your class abilities back on you. But this is the kind of thing that 5e was supposed to enable as part of its move away from keyword language
inconsistent because there is no save or counterplay (IE: a Dispel Magic wouldn't help), not because they actually are undead, they aren't any type, they're just a visual effect, that was just me musing on how ridiculous these mechanics are if you try to logic them out to the world
they are "dead ancestors", so by the logic of the universe our characters are in, they should be undead with all the pros and cons that come with that, that's just how I contextualize what's happening in the world, which is why sentinel similarly bothers me (how are you actually stopping the 30 foot tall iron juggernaut's movement?). You can bet your bacon that if you as the DM tell a player who is a cleric "you are accosted by ghosts and have disadvantage on attack rolls" and they said "turn undead' and you said "yeah but no" they would rightly get annoyed at you
I like to be able to visualize how abilities actually work, which is why I don't let a line of 2000 peasants teleport items from one point to another, for example
which is why we go to rule 1 present right in the beginning of the phb, dmg, and tashas: the DM gets to say "since they're explicitly spirits of the dead, they are undead, and in certain circumstances, things that would stop undead will stop them", as long as applying universe logic doesn't just benefit NPCs, the players sure as shit get to make use of it as well
edit: one of the barbarian's fellow players actually raised that point to me, at least with the group of players I play with, we prefer to preserve verisimilitude over RAW mechanics. The rogue in my current SKT game for example, requested that evasion move the character to a safe place if they take zero damage, and if they couldnt possibly get to a safe place with their movement, they still take half damage - she asked for a self nerf just because she thought would be more fun if she ended up in a chimney or hanging off a ledge after a fireball
creatures sometimes have evasion so they get the same deal, ofc
Yup. This ability is a really good example of the 5E natural language smokescreen. Ancestral Protectors is a Power with a Trigger, an Action, an Effect, and Flavor Text. Written in the 4E style:
Ancestral Protectors - Barbarian Utility 3
Your rage calls forth spectral warriors to harass the target of your attacks.
At-Will - Primal
No Action
Range: Special
Trigger: The first time you hit a target with an attack while raging on your turn.
Target: The target of the triggering attack.
Effect: Until the start of your next turn, the target has Disadvantage on any attack roll that isn’t against you, and when the target hits a creature other than you with an attack, that creature has Resistance to the damage dealt by the attack. The effect on the target ends early if your rage ends.
Of course if this was actually a 4E power it would probably be a Rage power and a Daily Attack instead of this weird utility thing that 5E turns it into, but the point still stands that almost everything in 5E is actually a power and can be written as such. The game just intentionally makes everything more confusing so that it feels more flavorful without actually being more flavorful.
any kind of house rule is usually debated at the table, with the exception of pre-game stuff (before session zero I reserve the right to dictate terms, and people can join or not join based on them)
Perhaps they are the spirits of their live ancestors, and elderly barbarians of this clan are known to occasionally fall into a Weatherwaxian fugue state as their spirits go off to harangue the 'friends' of their grandchild that they don't approve of and consider 'the wrong sort', or at the very least a bad influence?
The Exhaustion mechanic then modelling the massive sulk Wulfgar ends up in, after having to end his rage with a "Unngh, Gran! We were fighting the lizardfolk just fiiine", combined with the mocking from his peers.
I'm mainly interested in this because I'm developing a deep gnome enclave that is allied with a myconid colony and has harvested various unique dusts from them that hypothetically could be used for defense if the user wasn't themselves vulnerable to the effect.
Dust of Euphoria. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Poisoned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns. When the effect ends, the creature gains one level of exhaustion.
Dust of Pacification. 10 foot radius sphere. DC 11 Constitution save. Stunned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns.
Dust of Petrification. 20 foot radius sphere. DC 12 Constitution save. Restrained until the end of its next turn, when it must repeat the saving throw. On a success the effect ends; on a failure the creature is petrified for 24 hours.
"using" the dust just takes an action, so it would be the same as any other trap that did a thing
I mean, Watchnorns are elf cultural guardians that willingly decide to be naked sexy elf spirits seperated from their body for eternity, existing in natural groves, and they're still very much undead
yeah yeah I can hammer it into making sense, I just don't like the ability. The player ended up perfectly happy with the "nerf" that legendary resistance could cancel the ancestral guardians if a boss wanted, anyway.
...unlike my avernus DM who as a player will drag the game to a HALT if he doesn't like a ruling, like he took like 15 minutes to argue why he could cast spells outside of his tiny hut instead of just accepting that I said "no"
It boils down to different writers having different ideas for what spirits of the dead other than ghosts and specters and wraiths should be like in the game. Fourth Edition, IMO, had the clearest answer in establishing a pantheon of nature spirits that would sometimes induct ancestral spirits into their number, with incorporeal undead being spirits that persist due to the influence of a corrupting negative energy. Fourth Edition also established the concept of mortals having both a soul that can depart after death and an animus that remains behind (for example, the spirit that is invoked by Speak With Dead would be an animus). Most undead were said to be powered by corrupted animuses that were more along the lines of an unshackled id than complete minds. An aspect of this I find particularly interesting is that ghouls were described as soulless undead, meaning that even if a ghoul acted in some ways like the person did in life, the actual soul of that person could be awaiting judgment and completely unaware that their body has become a ghoul.
However, Fifth Edition doesn't detail this lore, so I can't say that the prior edition's explanation holds weight in the current one. The best I can argue going by what Fifth Edition gives is that the Summon Beast spell in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is described as invoking a spirit that can take corporeal form. The statblock for this spirit when in corporeal form denotes it as being a Beast type creature despite its spiritual nature. Perhaps ancestral spirits similarly have the Humanoid type.
I wouldn't actually go far enough to be like "Yeah they're undead" but as I said, against incredibly specific enemies, like Acererak, I would have some mechanical funkiness come into play. I think it makes more sense to go for the "summon undead" spell than "summon beast", since the ancestral guardians spell makes incorporeal humanoids, which the "summon undead" spell also does
I think the best explanation is that they are the spirits of long dead ancestors, as when someone says "ancestral spirits", I think horses, not zebras
I mean, dead ancient relatives, not their great uncle steve
If a player picks ancestral guardian and wants them to be humanoid I'm totally down though, they hit an enemy and a large screaming naked man appears and wraps his arms around the enemy blathering incoherently
Eh... I don't really agree, I think it's a reasonable interpretation that the staff of the forgotten ones would make him immune to "ancestral spirits", just like it makes him immune to a necromancer's army of undead, my players get hard combats out of me and part of that is that I don't tell them what enemies are going to be capable of or how the abilities of something their character has never seen will interact with their class abilities (which has led to them researching foes when possible and getting arcana checks to make those kinds of determinations). before she lost her character, she got a preview of this when her spirits turned against her when facing Ras Nsi, the scorned barae who can control the dead. She didn't get upset.
they were sure surprised when that beholder they faced was a death tyrant with a bunch of thorn covered skeleton minions and not a beholder, for example
not going to matter anyway, they're probably all going to die when they face Acererak because... I mean the only way he can't win that fight is if the DM decides he can't use a different spell loadout, despite being the smartest creature in the multiverse
edit: the barbarian isn't even going to be there so the entire thing is moot
Unless it comes across as mean spirited, or you're at such a low level that you have literally no other tools in your kit, it's no different from what fights are supposed to do, challenge you tactically. I'm pretty sure that Barbarian can still hit things and soak up damage just fine, they don't normally just throw a rock to proc the ability and then sit down and let everyone else do the work.