Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, One of the most celebrated poets in America, Robert Frost was an author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes and a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony. Leave this field blank. Fire and Ice Robert Frost , - Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. First printed in Harper's Magazine , December When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain.
They click upon themselves As. A Patch of Old Snow. Love and a Question. A stranger came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. Its both depressing and irritating but unfortunately as a whole people are too accepting to stand up and demand stuff be properly polished before they pay for it. We used to demand quality but now we just want quantity.
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Compared to previous editions, 5e has gone through more rigorous playtesting, slower release cycles, and designers that are extremely reticent to post any kind of errata that overrides the printed books the most they'll usually do is try to clarify. This is due to lessons from previous editions, which had tons of errata and were much more applicable to your complaint. The real reason 5e is "messy" is that they decided from the start to use "natural language" - to avoid the mathematical, gamist way of looking at it and allow enough descriptive language to dictate the mechanics where it was evocative and colorful, with enough wiggle-room for DMs to make rulings and decisions when they need to.
The reason they did it this way and I am by no means saying it doesn't have its own problems , is they tried it the other ways and it sucked. You knew exactly what you were getting but the flipside of that is, you also knew exactly what you weren't getting. The gaps that still remained and there always are were that much more pronounced, the rulesets were complicated and unwieldy, and people constantly got into arguments about them, broke them too easily, or found them lacking or limiting like a straitjacket, impeding play.
I think plenty of people on this sub still like to argue about 5e guilty! P , but the others are much improved. This past summer i ran a small campaign for my 9 and 11 year cousins both very smart individuals even for their age and they constantly picked apart things that i couldn't really explain why it was done that way. This is where the Broad theme of "Patch it Later" comes in, its easier and cheaper to pay Crawford to check twitter every 4 days and answer how the rules "were meant to be" instead of paying a group to sit down in a conference room and play blindly for hours. And unfortunately patching it Via Sage Advice and Errata leads to people getting upset because a fresh read of a LOT of abilities ends up with a good amount of people interpreting them as completely different then the Developers planned but neglected to word properly.
Now that i think about it WotC could solve so many problems by hiring a crew to listen to what the ability does and then word it in a clear concise way, like get a dictionary editor. If you say so - on the surface it might resemble the patch-it-later mentality, but all I can do is point to those of us who lived through those more explicit editions and say, "we tried it, it doesn't work too well". Don't get me wrong, I think anything can be perfected, and 5e certainly has its flaws I am not a fan of many of Crawford's interpretations, and that PHB index, yeech!
A dictionary editor would slay it with holy water! I just think with the lessons learned over the past few editions, I do trust the designers to know when such perfection is out of their reach either financially, conceptually, or both , and if they can't fully satisfy their player base, at least they can leave enough of it "loosey-goosey" to empower them to make their own decisions.
I don't agree with them on many things, but I've seen enough "edition wars" to know that reams of errata only lead to more errata. Oh trust me i played 3. However when a 9-year old girl looks at the book then looks at me and just asks "Wouldn't it be easier to just call these two things something different" and i cant answer I think i just solved WotCs Language Problem Hire a team of English Major Interns that have no experience with the game.
Give them the sole purpose of making sure the wording is simple and succinct. After that get a bunch of year olds to read the abilities and ask if they understand it. Yea one of my friends was an English major They actually did consider naming certain things different. Dungeon floors, spell ranks, and character levels for example but people didn't like that. They preferred it the other way. I would love to find the playtesting group they questioned and just call them all idiots.
I dunno, I dont hold too much against them for missing a few things, or some wording that may be a little off That could be the case, and absolutely is for video games, but I can't fathom they planned on fixing things later on printed products. Their ideas are there and haven't changed or been patched out, outside of typos.
I think they just focused so much on streamlining that they have reached major ambiguities. But I've always wondered, is that planned? Maybe that's how they patch it later? They leave things ambiguous so the DM can decide it. I mean even the basic out of house playtesting would have revealed a lot of these issues but when its playtested by the people who built the game they already have these preconceived notions of how the ability will be used.
Wasn't 5E publicly playtested for an extended period? I didn't even touch it until well after release but it was everywhere and hard to miss. Except few people that i knew played it. And I still need to look at the beta but ive heard that not everything that was beta tested was actually put into the game, and not everything that was put in the game was ever beta tested.
Few people that you knew participated in the public beta, so it wasn't far-reaching and widely publicized? I couldn't throw a stone without hitting someone playing the 5e beta. I played online and most people on the sites i looked for players on played it once and said "meh". You have to learn to read the text thats there, and not look for loopholes, because the confusion usually stems from someone squinting really hard at it for a different result. I dont have any issues reading it. Except the way i read Dragons Breath is that the Target is who you give the ability to not who they then may or may not use their own action to blast.
Yes the Spell description says what the breath weapon does but if it had just been worded that "the target gets the dragon born breath weapon that they can use every turn" then there wouldn't be any confusion at all.
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Also as to the Squinting really hard, you got it backwards i had 3 of my 5 players look at the spell and ask them what the target was all 3 of them said the creature getting the breath weapon. After i explained how it was according to Crawford 2 of them said that he was clearly wrong and the third sat there trying to figure out how that could possibly be the case I think that the issue with your reading of it is that the breath portion of the spell is intended to be part of the spell- its a concentration effect that grants a special action like the bonus action effect on witch bolt or something.
Haste and polymorph meanwhile just alter the creature, and then the creature leverages their action normally- attacking isn't in the haste or polymorph spell, its a normal part of your skills- but the special action of dragon breath is explicitly the effect of the spell. The player you give it to is simply determining where to direct it's effect- whereas the text of the haste spell is done with you right when it changes your action economy.
Also your players are probably at least partially confused by the same thing that keeps getting brought up, target is just a word in english, not a game term- anything directly affected by the spell is a target, but the way you phrase that makes it sound like you're meant to identify a singular target, so of course their reading restricts it's scope.
Except the PHB clearly defines what target means in the Spellcasting section. By RAW the PHB technically lists the center of fireball's radius is the target, now twinning fireball is probably ridiculous but at the same time that is just after a basic reading of what the book has listed, i didn't have to go looking for loopholes. I honestly feel that if they didn't want spells like DB to be twinned they should more clearly explain what Twinned spell can do, because as written It clearly uses TARGET as a keyword.
Whether they meant to or not isn't the question, although maybe if they used the whole keyword system it would simplify all these questions. No it doesn't, it just happened to use the word target in an example- game terms are written in bold- the center of a fireball is described in the "areas of effect section" as follows:.
Every area of effect has a point of origin, a location from which the spell's energy erupts. The rules for each shape specify how you position its point of origin. Typically, a point of origin is a point in space, but some spells have an area whose origin is a creature or an object. A spell's effect expands in straight lines from the point of origin.
If no unblocked straight line extends from the point of origin to a location within the area of effect, that location isn't included in the spell's area. To block one of these imaginary lines, an obstruction must provide total cover, as explained in chapter 9. In the instance you're attempting to cite, the word is used in it's english sense to show that you can drop fireball on a point of space as opposed to a creature , that point in space isn't the only target of the spell- because when we look at the spell.
A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. Here we see target referring to the creatures making the saving throw, the use of target in the game rules is like most of the other words in the rules- contextual english words, target isn't a keyword, they literally mean you can't twin a spell that affects multiple creatures in the context of the spell's effects. Sometimes the issues are born when Crawford squints really hard at something and gets results contrary to how everyone else reads it. Cases in point, twinned dragon's breath and Empowered Evocation magic missile.
In most cases yes, granted every now and then theres a new mechanic that's screwy until they reword it. Yep, it pretty much pigeonholes sorcerers to single target damage spells for twinning, or healing spells for paladin - mount combo however there are some pretty cool things a paladin can still do, a vengeance paladin misty stepping with his horse is still my favorite.
A lot of people give leeway to sorcerers for twinning though, which I can easily see why, as others have said, sorcerers have gotten the short end on a lot of things. I mean, the Divine Soul has a lot of other interesting things to twin, Healing Word, Shield of Faith, Revivify Gods forbid you have two party members die in the same fight.
So before this discussion of 'target' had developed much, there were some painfully cheesy things. Basically, the logic was because that you are only targeting yourself with cone of cold Self - 60 feet is the target , it also applies to your mount. So a Paladin - Wizard multiclass could cast cone of cold twice on his turn. Here's the original post, I think. I never meant that you could use Dragon's Breath in lieu of Cone of Cold in that regard, merely that this ruling focuses on the same subject that prevents double cone of cold from being possible as well as preventing many spells from being twinned.
If I understand you correctly, this brings up another ambiguity. Find steed says "you can make any spell you cast that targets only you also target your steed. Does that refer to spells where the only possible target is yourself Misty Step , or in that specific casting, only targets you Cure Wounds. By the logic in your post, you would say that Cure Wounds cannot by used with Find Steed? I would rule you can, otherwise there's not many spells that can benefit from that feature.
Can the designers of a game be wrong about the rules they made?
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Because I kind of think they are here. Jeremy Crawford seems to really dislike a few classes, sorcerers being one of them. His ruling on arcane focuses not working for somatic with spells that don't have material components is asinine and breaks half the caster classes.
If a spell has material and somatic components the hand manipulating the material component can also be used for the somatic component. If a spell has somatic but no material components the hand doing the somatic component must be empty. Also by crawford and from this year, as that may matter https: He's stated multiple times that the intent of an Arcane focus is to be perfectly usable in a situation where you have a torch in one hand, your focus in the other, and a spell with a somatic component.
He's made this point abundantly clear, specifically in regards to a clerics holy symbol in the rulings I've linked, and some of the most common ones on the subject. It's possible I have missed another such ruling, but no amount of searching has brought me to Jeremy Crawford ruling that you have to do so. Does it have to be included in the somatic component? If a spell has a material component, you need to handle that component when you cast the spell PH, If a spell has a somatic component, you can use the hand that performs the somatic component to also handle the material component.
She likes to wade into melee combat with a mace in one hand and a shield in the other. She uses the holy symbol as her spellcasting focus, so she needs to have the shield in hand when she casts a cleric spell that has a material component. If the spell, such as aid, also has a somatic component, she can perform that component with the shield hand and keep holding the mace in the other.
They could give a baseline for everyone to work form, so we know what needs clarified in Session 0. I say could because I don't think most people follow him in the day to day, so I don't think its as useful as could be in advance sometimes since its in tweets. I'm completely sorry, I misunderstood your question. I'm not actually familiar with his ruling being one of the people that doesn't often follow his tweets. Seems to imply that it works fine, it just doesn't add or subtract anything, since you're brandishing your focus to take care of the somatic components, and the focus is also the nothing the spell requires.
Knowing Crawford he could have modified that statement later though. Also his 'how your caster looks' thing seems like a weird thing to really bring up and kindof irrelevant, since its more about the situation you find yourself in. I replied to you by mistake cuz I clicked the wrong button, then you replied to me seemingly thinking reasonably, that I was the person you were engaged in conversation with.
Which means that unless a spell has a material component I must have a free hand to cast spells. So if I can't use my wand for generic somatic components, why not carry around a component pouch that sits on my belt instead of staying in my hand? The problem is that override has completely misrepresented it. According to another ruling https: The only exception would be if the material component was not a free one, however you need a hand for that regardless of your choice to have a focus or component pouch.
This issue just outright doesn't exist through any rulings I've found. Uh, that SA is saying that if your somatic spell does not have a material component then you need to drop your focus to have a free hand. Which is exactly the stupid ruling we are complaining about. I've been saying he's a hack for over a year now. Instead of using clear concise terminology they constantly over complicate all the wordings so that they can just "clarify" it later and save time on proper playtesting. I thought arcane focuses only removed the need for material components anyway They are also supposed to not obstruct your somatic components.
Except Crawford thinks that they should obstruct your somatic components if your spell doesn't have material components.
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Which overcomplicates what should be a fairly simple issue. That is not true though. Somatic says you need a free hand to cast spells. That is the general rule. Under material components it says that if a spell has both somatic and material components, you can use the same hand as the one holding the focus. It totally makes sense and it doesnt break half caster classes at all. Plebbit as always exagerating by minor inconviniences. How does it make sense from a design perspective for wizards to throw their staves to the ground before they can cast a spell unless it has material components - it's an unnecessary complication, unnecessary complications are why 4th edition sucked.
How does his ruling break half the caster classes? The ruling that's been linked further in the chain just states that you don't need an Arcane focus to cast a spell without material components, which is how Arcane focus's work. Meanwhile, another ruling and errata , https: Directly states that you can hold your wand, rod, or whatever form your focus takes, and cast spells with somatic components with that same hand. This "asinine" ruling that "breaks half the caster classes" literally doesn't do anything that the books don't do. And the books don't do that either! They are, as Jeremy states, a distinction made purely for flavor.
You can only use a wand for somatic components if it also has material components, otherwise you must drop your focus. It's a silly ruling that makes the game unnecessarily complicated.
I feel like people use passive perception wrong a lot. It should be something enemies roll against with stealth. If there is something just sitting around that players should notice without having to actively look for it, just have them find it.