Much like shield can be used to block magic missile, so too can JCraw be invoked to defend the concentration check stuff: twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/716012166101401600?s=20
Mr Rexx and AJ Pickett do D&D lore and history, and I think you would appreciate the resources they can give you. Note you do technical stuff with lore, and they do lore, with occasional obscure features. I hope this helps your pool of knowledge and interests you.
I've always taken spells with multiple hits that hit at the same time (i.e. Magic Missle) that since they all hit at the same time, they only disturb the caster once. If it didn't say "simultaneously", then yes, a concentration save for each hit. Eldritch Blast and Scorching Ray don't have the "simultaneously" part, so they are the latter.
and then literally everyone replies to it to say JC is full of shit... I mean, I actually agree with that particular ruling, but WotC can fuck off at this point. They've done nothing but steadily ruin 5e with every release since the original three books.
“If you agree with the guy whose job is to create, balance, and clear up rules confusion... who I don’t agree with because sometimes it’s not my first interpretation that I refuse to budge from... JC ruins DND!!!”
I love the implication that Magic Missile was specifically designed by wizards to serve as a magical handful of Pocket Sand to break their opponents concentration.
@@sarahmellinger8125 Ah yes, division. One of the eight schools of magic: Algebration, Calculation, Derivation, Division, Enumeration, Integration, Necromathsy, and Transcommutation. I hate that in order to specialize in any school other than Division you have to give up two other schools; how am I supposed to integrate without algebration and derivation?
@@SnancyNegative You think that's bad, try being DM when somebody starts selling you on their Proofs specialty wizard they pulled out of an ancient Dragon Magazine article and want to update to the current edition.
Ah, good old Baldur's Gate 2 (so, 2nd Edition D&D)! Every time there was a fight with a wizard, you could take forever dispelling and/or cutting through his buffs, or you could use Magic Missile (a wand worked just fine) in the first second of combat to interrupt each buff as he cast it.
Way too relevant. I can't tell you how often people turn in TCG collections and a few particular regulars scouting them before we buy them lol. It May be petty but I often scoop those singles in spite. (wish we had a privacy room)
@@flamingRose100 "I'm here for the global Pandemic tournament." "No, Phil. There's a virus raging across the planet." "Yeah, and with the help of 3 teammates, we. will. stop. it." "Where's your mask?" "Were we supposed to cosplay?"
@@xyryyn "hey can me and my 7 man party hold a d&d campaign at your store" "why cant you do it at your home or skype" "well Skype sucks and I dont want to bring viruses into my house"
You know, this is prolly one of the D&D channels that is free of people refrancing Ben from Puffin Forest in comments... mostly due to JoCat's (and his advice on Fireball) constant presence in the comments section
@@henriktucker63 I must disagree with you. You can't cast a leveled spell for both your bonus action and action/reaction. There is no rule stating you can't use your reaction on your turn, and there is no rule that says you can't cast a spell as a reaction if you had already cast a leveled spell. This next bit is right out of the PHB page 202 Most spells require a single action to cast, but some spells require a bonus action, a reaction, or much more time to cast. Bonus Action A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn. You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action. Reactions Some spells can be cast as reactions. These spells take a fraction of a second to bring about and are cast in response to some event. If a spell can be cast as a reaction, the spell description tells you exactly when you can do so. This next bit comes from sage advice in 2015 Casting Time Is there a limit on the number of spells you can cast on your turn? There’s no rule that says you can cast only X number of spells on your turn, but there are some practical limits. The main limiting factor is your action. Most spells require an action to cast, and unless you use a feature like the fighter’s Action Surge, you have only one action on your turn. If you cast a spell, such as healing word, with a bonus action, you can cast another spell with your action, but that other spell must be a cantrip. Keep in mind that this particular limit is specific to spells that use a bonus action. For instance, if you cast a second spell using Action Surge, you aren’t limited to casting a cantrip with it. Can you also cast a reaction spell on your turn? You sure can! Here’s a common way for it to happen: Cornelius the wizard is casting fireball on his turn, and his foe casts counterspell on him. Cornelius has counterspell prepared, so he uses his reaction to cast it and break his foe’s counter-spell before it can stop fireball.
I don't come here for precise, perfect, unerring rules knowledge. I come here because listening to you talk about D&D is like chatting across the table with friends of mine. Given the virus and all, this is something I REALLY crave right now. Your voice is easy to understand (no thick accents) and your anecdotes have a good blend of humor and rules knowledge.
Can't day i feel the same or understand it. Don't get how people can't deal for some good months being away from people. I'm just here for animations lmao
Magic resistance doesn't mean SQUAT if you can just auto-hit. This means any creature can be killed if you throw enough first level Wizards/Sorcerer's at it, unless there is a Force-Immune creature I don't know about. Also I guess Acerack has infinite Shields so...
@@Falx415 Harpy: "I'm fly." Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Oh thanks for provoking my Opportunity Attack twice before and after the start of my turn... Now... I up cast four lv7 Magic Missiles! Dealing 72 to 180 Force damage from 36d4 + 36 individual Magic Missiles!... FOR FREEDOM!!!" Harpy: "I'm die, thank you forever." (This is possible... At the cost of four lv7 Spell Slots when performing the combo.)
Also because Crawford's ruling implies they are separate sources of damage, each attack on an unconscious target would result in a failed death save. A level 1 magic missile can straight up kill an unconscious person bypassing their saves. I highly recommend **against** using this on players. No one appreciates it.
Yeah, this is a Crawford ruling you can safely ignore. Why else would it say "simultaneously"? At least with spells like Scorching Ray you consume a resource and have a failure chance like most multiattacks.
@@collinguo2175 all turns happen simultaneously in the same 6 seconds. Separate sources of damage can hit at the same time. its 3 diff bolts so 3 checks. pretty easy to understand.
More importantly, Vincent Price uses a shield spell to block Boris Karloff's Magic Missile spell in the movie that gave Gary the idea for them both: The Raven.
So he invented a spell that can get through any defense, probably sold spell scrolls on it, then followed that up by inventing the one spell that can block it. Wizard stonks.
@@matthewtaylor744 it may have something to do with the base roots of the word (which is more interesting than you might think). I'll see what I find Edit: missile was french from the 1650s, meaning "thing thrown or discharged from a weapon to hit something" (guns to literally a rock is covered by this definition), which came from the latin missus, "throw, hurl." Roughly 1750 was when it was used to described self propelled rockets or bombs, which may or may not have been related to mortars (which existed as far back as the 1400s. Crazy.)
@@stevenn1940 thing that goes through the air is about all you can call a missile, and essentially it just got left without any word more specific, like rocket, shell, bullet, warhead, grenade
@@thewingedporpoise My guess would be that because of the dominance of firearms a catchall term for projectiles became pointless because you can just call them all bullets.
@@tylerstewart5829 that sort of makes sense, but yeah, no arrows raining down, just gunfire and artillery, and bombs, and rockets, and they're called missiles because they are guided missiles, things going through the air that are guided, but saying guided every time is annoying, missiles
2:36 I wish they still kept the "unerringly strike their target" part of the description; I've seen people get surprised when they learn magic missile never misses (which is implied by the fact the spell has no attack rolls or saving throws, but new players might not realize that immediately).
Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Unlimited Missiles Works!" Which is four up casted lv7 Magic Missiles for a 36d4 + 36 Force damage. (72 to 180 Force damage.) So many missiles in about 1 turn/off turn. And since it's all INSTANT duration. You can stack EVEN MORE!!! Without the need of Concentration. "THIS IS POWER!!!"
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 what feats and rules are you using here? Action surge is the only thing I can think of that would let you cast multiple magic missiles in a single turn. Extra attack doesn’t work with spells, as “Cast a Spell” and “Attack” are listed as two separate actions in the PHB. You also can’t cast Magic Missile using a bonus action and then also cast it as an action on the same turn, so no features that allow that (such as metamagic) would work either. Eldritch Knights also cap at a single 4th level spell slot at 19th level, never achieving a 7th level slot. So that’s two casts in a turn, a third as a reaction with war caster and sentinel and only one is above 3rd level
@@Khunkurisu Warcaster + Feats which affects Opportunity Attacks. As for the EK... I only have the Essentials Kit so lv7 to lv20 for Spell Slots is unknown to me... Since it caps at lv4 Spells. It's 1d4 + 1 times 4 for the up cast instead of 7.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 I see. Warcaster + sentinel would let you use a reaction to cast magic missile if an enemy is vaguely nearby basically, and action surge lets you do it twice in one turn. You’d be nearly out of juice till a long rest and for level 19 you’d only be dishing out 32-80 damage in one round, at the cost of 3 spell slots. It’s guaranteed damage and would absolutely ruin anyone trying to concentrate on a spell (that’s 16 darts), but for that level the damage is horrid. By comparison that eldritch knight could simply use the same setup with Booming Blade (assuming longsword) for a potential damage of up to 96 without the enemy moving at no cost of spell slots (additional 96 damage if they willingly move). The only difference being that they might miss, and the opponent might only have to make 3 concentration checks.
@@Khunkurisu Conversations long over I know but there are rules for casting multiple spells on a turn - you can never cast more than one, unless the second spell is a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action (which implies that a fighter-sorc multiclass could haste themselves, use action surge, and then quicken a spell to cast with their bonus action and follow up with 3 cantrips (normal action, haste action, surge action) but for any spell that has a level, you can only ever cast one during your turn, and you can't pop another cantrip in unless it's cast as an action (meaning the leveled spell is on eitehr your bonus action or a special additional action). Unfortunately the rules for readying spells don't help either, as the casting technically occurs as part of the action used to ready it, i.e. on your turn
@@wander1ngw1zard83 Truth. So much going on-line these days. I hope that the local game shops don't die out completely. I was practically raised in ours.
I started playing D&D in 1978 when I was 10 years old. This brought back memories of me casting magic missiles back then & getting made fun of by major enemies "That tickled."
If your using a first level spell.. it's pretty much the best there is. It scales nicely with your levels, can't miss, isn't any "type of dmg" to be resisted like fire or ice. Oh and the range was like 180 yards or something, a much safer place to be as a Mage than touch range for things like Shocking grasp.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming Shocking Grasp might not be great for a spellcaster that's squishy like most mages, but for an Eldritch Knight it's very good. I watched Shocking Grasp do a lot of battlefield control against a NPC Paladin that was possessed by a sentient sword, who was trying to kill the cleric NPC the party had been sent out on a quest to protect during their Ordination ceremony. The PC Eldritch Knight used shocking grasp every turn to steal the NPC Paladin's reaction, preventing them from using many of their legendary actions. And then because it was a Paladin in a town where they worship the same gods as the paladin gets their power from, the party simply KO'd the Paladin instead of outright killing them (killing that paladin would probably have been hard to explain). Turns out most of the legendary actions were coming from the sword not the paladin, and near the end of the final encounter the sword actually floated itself over a runic circle that had been part of the room the encounter happened in from the beginning and teleported somewhere else (the party couldn't find out where it went, and thankfully everyone in the party had enough D&D experience to know not to touch a sentient weapon).
@@JustaGuy_Gaming my personal favorite in older editions was sleep. That spell was sooo overpowered against first level monsters. Kobolds, orcs, or cultists? Super unconcious. Lol.
So what you’re saying is that by subtracting where it is from where it isn’t, or where it isn’t from where it is- whichever is greater - that it obtains a difference, or deviation?
I like how realistic the depiction of the dynamic between the characters is. I used to work at a gas station and we had a guy who only worked there for like, 3 6-hour shifts a week. But he was always hanging out there. Hanging out with him was part of the job. And we would wind up interacting with him a lot like how Zee interacts with his friend.
I just realized....this also helps explain why lighting bolt and fire ball are such insanely powerful spells for the level they're cast at, it's a reference to the history of the game, because those are the two spells the wizard unit could use as their magic missiles
There are additional reasons. Firstly, that both of those spells would destroy treasure (which you needed to level up), and that both of them were likely to also harm the players - lightning bolt by bouncing off the walls, and fireball just because it expanded strictly volumetrically. So annoying were both of these drawbacks that a PC wizard researched and created a new, viable AoE spell that did not have them - Cone of Cold.
@@JonMW I know I'm super, super late to this party, but the problem of fireball being volumetric was also solved by a different, underrated spell: Melf's Minute Meteors.
1:33 Zee's rendition of Don Lowry's rendition of Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax's renditions of Jack Coggins' rendition of a knight in battle. At this point in the game of telephone, it's a miracle he's not riding a giant duck and wielding a garden rake.
@@MrTailson1 Honestly, flip flopped. People outside D&D know fireball, it's the spell the nerds try to cast in real life. Same as Lightning Bolt, actually, Fireball always comes first, but both occupy the same space. Nobody outside D&D knows what a magic missile is. I'd say even Sleep is a more well known spell.
in the greyhawk supplement magic missile did 1d6+1 because all damage dice were d6 in original d&d. magic missile scaled at a rate of 1 missile at 1, 2 missiles at 3, 3 at 5, up to 5 shots at 9 from it's original print all the way to pathfinder(which you can basically think of as d&d 3.75). Magic missile is famously one of the most abusable spells to build around because anything that adds a flat adder to spell damage gets multiplied over several hits.
In old school DnD weapon type was actually mostly irrelevant. As ymmij mentioned everything was d6 so what mattered was HOW FAST you attacked and stuff like polearms or two-handers attacked once every other round while daggers or knives attacked twice a round. So because grognards are grognards this entailed a lot of 'fighting men' being made which dual wielded daggers dealing 4d6 a rounds since it was optimal. Also magic missile on one of the only spells to have a magic item in every addition since 2nd to have a specific magic item made to screw it over (The Brooch of Shielding) which stops a certain number of Magic Missiles stone cold.
@@Lordike3 "Also magic missile is one of the only spells to have a magic item in every edition since 2nd to have a specific magic item made to screw it over (The Brooch of Shielding) which stops a certain number of Magic Missiles stone cold." And then dissolves like a scrub! ah but yea broaches of shielding are the kinda magic item that is either awful or amazing depending on dm. In either case by mid levels you'll almost always have something better in your neck slot.
I just love how you poked the comments section for history. I'm there with you! Now let's start the beginning of the Viking Age... There were only three classes, Viking, Friendly-Scandanavian, and the people who regretted meeting the first ones...usually slaves or dead men being plundered, or the Conquered Peoples as they call them. The same was true of Original Dungeons and Dragons...the Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric. It is actually weird how some of the classes today have Rank names based on Level of the character, such that you actually became a Wizard at higher levels as a Magic-User, and lower down you were a Necromancer, I think a Sorcerer, and I do know that Warlocks were either a lower level Magic-User in OD&D or at least definitely in the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement that fed in D&D's history and the development of the First Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I hate to be that guy who gets in trouble and yelled at for recommending other channels...Or at least that is how it is on Twitch often enough. But go check out DM It All...They did some great D&D History videos, and I particularly enjoyed their breakdown of Original D&D, The Tomb of Horrors, the Original, and The Village of Hommlet. There is a lot of history and cool design in the Original stuff that makes you think about how and why things are built into RPG systems. Inspires us, as well as Zee's fun videos, to this day. You got 1 darn spell as a Level 1 Magic User. So...I think technically then that Magic Missile was your only friend and magic...for the day, even... If you chose Magic Missile instead of Detect Magic that is...
@@ymmijx6061 Yeah, I.. Never really got that to be honest. If the bad guy had it they were basically immune to this one first valence spell. The brooch shields for waaaay more damage than most player wizards prepared Magic Missiles so it's not like you were gonna be able to punch though the Brooch in a single fight. If the players had it it defended them fr a single ultra specific attack that statistically speaking never was going to happen unless they were fighting a Wizard or Sorcerer who didn't really have anything better to do with their round (aka never). So it was gonna last forever just occupying your neck slot which as you mentioned has a lot of better options. It kind of rinds me about how drow magic weapons and armor used to melt into uselessness in sunlight, a sort of antagonist GM 'Haha'.
first experience with the so called "utility beard", huh? granted, ive not seen it used for food before, but ive definitely seen pens, pencils, and even dice materialize from a beard before.
It’s also good for waking up people under the effect of say a hypnotic pattern or similar effect. If they need to take only a bit of damage for the effect to end, then magic missile can be really helpful.
Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Or to completely obliterate an enemy with 72 to 180 Force damage of 4x up casted lv7 Magic Missiles. 36d4 + 36 at 36x individual Magic Missiles. No Concentration needed and this is stackable at the cost of Spell Slots."
If you're an artificer you can actually straight up just make spellbinder style bracers that you can flick your missiles off, or an actual magical ray gun! ...That fires missiles instead of rays. Or actual mechanical rays that you throw at your opponent.
Except they hit at the same time, so it's just a single concentration check. Upside, you can attempt to break [Spell slot level+2] enemies' Concentration at once. Combine that with Mage Slayer (yaknow, if you're a madman), and watch all of them roll their save at Disadvantage unless they've got War Caster.
@@babulbi it's more for the fact that you have to designate targets BEFORE casting (unlike scorching ray, where you can see the result before firing another shot). Sage Advice confirms that each dart from magic missile forces a new concentration check from target
My favorite use of Magic Missle is as a DM. You see, there's no reason any of all of your human npcs in an area can't be variant humans. So there's no reason basic common people without class levels can't have access to a spell via Magic Initiate. So if you're building an arcanocratic settlement or country, there's no reason the guard, garrison or army can't have access to a cast of Magic Missile once per day. So if you were to, let's say, have an ancient red dragon attack a medium to large settlement, there's no reason you couldn't put the fear of god in your players by have the guard deal 240d4 plus 240 damage. Have fun
Wait, deadass smart AF. I was going to make the argument that Players are unequal to NPCs because of classes and levels but I realize that you made no mention to those at all and are just talking about a standard race. Granted, these variant humans would have lower health but I think the fear of 240d4 + 240 is good enough to cover that.
@@icegod4849 I don't even really think it's important enough to stat put such NPCs, because largely the way I use it is as a shock moment for really experienced players for a one shot, more often than not for conventions or the rare time I get to enjoy a night at my LGS. It's legal by RAW, so you can explain it if asked, but it's always fun to show more experienced players the extent of what can be done with the rules they've used so much it seems boring. Alternatively, you can build an entire high magic setting akin to, say, Avatar with just the variant human/Magic Initiate combo. It's a wonderful way to introduce high magic without constant character levels. EDIT: LGS not being my capitalized was bothering me lol
@@skynyrdjesus Hmm, I'd sort of been noodling with an idea regarding how different societies in a setting view and use magic (one aspect being that specializing in specific schools of magic as a Wizard meant you needed to be from a society that taught that specialization or otherwise have access to someone who would teach you, such as Elves train Enchanters and Bladesingers, Hobgoblins teach War Mages, Dragons teach Evokers, etc). One of the societies was going to be highly magic centric, to the level of magic being rigidly codified in how it's legal to use, so that magic is common, but there were many laws meant to keep people from abusing their gifts. This was particularly important because I had the view of the society being very open about using Necromantic magic, but being very strict in punishing misuses of it (things like raising the dead without an express written statement or will from the deceased before their death stating what they do and do not agree may be done with their remains). So honestly the idea that magic might be so prevalent that it might even seep into the populace actually sounds really neat.
There is a book series about a magical World War, instead of rifles, the soldiers were all armed with what amounts to Rods of Magic Missile. Though recharging them could get…messy. Since recharging magic items in that world went by almost Elder Scrolls rules and required sacrifice of living creatures for non-magic users to recharge magic items.
@@nvfury13 That sounds a lot like the Pantheon series' Egyptian stories, with the magic rods powered by the Egyptian gods! Definitely interesting enough to warrant asking for the title if it's not the same story!
Fun fact: The biggest change to Magic Missile was during 4th edition, where it became an At-Will attack (Basically a cantrip, you can use it as often as you want) but lost it's unerring status, instead requiring an attack roll- however! It acquired the status of a "Ranged Basic Attack", a rule concept unique to fourth edition. Basic attacks could be used in the place of an opportunity attack, the attack at the end of a charge, or in place of a free attack granted by a Warlord (Or other Leader), and there were a surprising amount of feats, class abilities, and magic items that otherwise upgraded basic attacks, making it surprisingly effective tool. However, there were enough people complaining "They changed it, now it sucks!" that it was given errata to now automatically deal damage (and had its base damage lowered), and "Could be used in the place of a basic attack", however, that meant it no longer *was* a basic attack, meaning all those feats, class features, and items no longer interacted with it, promptly making it *completely worthless*, and depriving the wizard class of a usable basic attack.
Yes and no. In 2nd edition (the one I’m by far the most familiar with) it is definitely physical damage, but it only affects living targets, so no causing a rockslide. I seem to remember it also applying to animated. That is really easy to interpret as spiritual damage, but that didn’t seem to be quite it.
Well, since you LITERALLY "ask for it", here you go. "Well ACTUALLY" the damage DID vary once. In D&D (as in BASIC D&D vs. AD&D) magic missiles did damage equivalent to a +1 arrow. (aka 1d6+1, instead of 1d4+1) But the increase of the # of missiles was slower than in AD&D. Just FYI. There you go. That's my free "nit-pick". Don't say I never do anything for ya. Good video by the way!
@@y2a1979 I can't help myself :-) - I still have my D&D Basic Set, rules are as follows: "Magic Missile, Range: 150', Duration: 1 round, Effect: Creates 1 or more arrows. A Magic Missile is a glowing arrow created and shot by magic, which inflicts 2-7 (1d6+1) points of damage to any creature it strikes. After the spell is cast, the arrow appears next to the magic-user and hovers there until the magic-user causes it to shoot. When shot, it will automatically hit any visible target. It will move with the magic-user until shot or the duration ends. The Magic Missile actually has no solid form, and cannot be touched. A Magic Missile never misses its target and the target is not allowed a Saving Throw. For every 5 levels of experience of the caster, two more missiles are created by the same spell. Thus a 6th Level Magic-user may create three missiles. The missiles may be shot at different targets." Oh the nostalgia!
Incredible timing. I just heard that the friend with whom I used to have this exact kind of conversations (and who both looked and sounded a little like you) passed away last night. I came on RUclips to distract myself and this was the first video on my feed. So thank you for that.
@@videogollumer yeah, forgot u gotta up cast it once, i did it to a boss with my arcana cleric, and even though i did 2 damage the party was pretty impressed.
What version are you referencing? In 5e Mirror Image only effects Attacks. Attacks normally require Attack Rolls, and there's nothing in the description of Magic Missile describing it as an Attack, so presumably, 5e RAW, the spell would just ignore the mirror images without destroying them.
@@andrewosborn7753 i'd assume anything that inflicts damage is an attack, i guess we were playing it as 1 damage pops the mirror image which made sense to us.
"I'm with a customer." I like to think that was an outtake, and you wrote that guy in the background into the episode for a quick gag. Also, thanks for mentioning Chainmail. I haven't seen that one in years.
In 3.5 we used to carry wands of magic missile everywhere because it's cheap and holds 50 charges. It was cheaper than using a spell slot and would deal guaranteed damage.
My RUclips app has recently had issues where the audio slowly drops out of sync with the video. Sometimes, it’s hard to spot. But your animation is so well done, and so well synced, that I realized almost immediately that it had slipped! Amazing work as always!
The effort on this episode really shows. The history of dungeons and dragons is always really fascinating and the animation was top notch. Can't wait to give a wizard a really bad time with this. Keep up the good work!
The animation in this series is so interesting-I can’t help but be fascinated by the movement of the characters. Thank you for making these interesting videos!
On a tangent, one other note on magic missile that I've seen people confused about: force damage isn't physical damage. It's more like, raw magical energy damage. I've seen people insisting that it's a type of physical damage or that it should be able to push or move something via magic missile or spiritual weapon. The name's a bit misleading.
This confusion is probably because the damage type section of the phb is kinda useless. It weirdly gives examples of things that deal the damage, but doesn't really describe what being damaged by that type does, except for a few entries which are vague at best. This is fine, if a little redundant when it comes to things like fire or cold, but a little odd when talking about Force or Psychic. Like thanks book for telling me that "A lightning bolt spell and a blue dragon's breath deal lightning damage." or "Mental abilities such as a mind flayer's psionic blast deal psychic damage." but I think I could parse that myself. How about telling me wtf psychic damage is, how I am supposed to describe it, and what the hell does it look like when it kills someone? Like you can say force damage "isn't physical damage." but firstly, what does that even mean? Is it spiritual damage? Metaphysical damage? All the text says is: "Force is pure magical energy focused into a damaging form." so really there's nothing to say it can't push people or move something (especially as we have walls and cages of it at higher levels that prevent physical passage) or that it doesn't interact with things in a physical way. They gave us a tiny bit of detail with Necrotic and Radiant (neither of which seem capable of pushing or moving anyone) but nothing like that with Force. So at this point ruling either way is a DM fiat kind of thing.
I, personally, divide the damage types into 3 categories when thinking about that stuff; -Weapon Damage: Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing. Called that because those types are most often caused by weapons or spells emulating weapons in someway. -Elemental Damage: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightening, Poison, and Thunder. Because that's the kind of stuff most commonly utilized by nature, animals, or the environment in some way, shape, or form. -Arcane Damage: Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant. These things either come from a deity, drawn from some mystical source of power, or are just raw magic pulled from the cosmo's.
@@Lurklen Physical as in comparable to bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing, or resisted by a vanilla barbarian's rage. Which it's not, as it's explicitly effective against incoporeal creatures. I've had players try to argue that force damage's primary purpose was to move targets. It wouldn't impact you any more than a firebolt would. Damage types don't inherently have any rules of their own outside of damage calculation oriented things, but the name 'force' makes people think that for some reason it has additional effects. On top of that, in 3.5/PF damage was broken up into two types: energy and physical. Force fit into neither of these types, and was capable of being added on to some attacks via enchantments, and AFAIK it could bypass all resistances as a result. Both of these types otherwise used different damage reduction calculations (since DR/Resistance were flat reductions to damage, rather than halving damage.)
Me: whaaaat? You don’t roll concentration checks for each dart; that’s why it says they all hit simultaneously. *looks up concentration rules* “If you take damage from multiple sources, such as an arrow and a dragon’s breath, you make a separate saving throw for each source of damage.” Also me: ...oh... hmm
That's... actually even more confusing since you could reasonably argue the magic missile spell itself is a single source of damage, even if the darts are separate manifestations of it. God damn it, four (and a half) editions later and they still can't make this shit clear.
It does make sense if you consider that each dart from the spell is its own Unit/Packet of damage, and for conc checks, every single Unit/Packet of damage taken forces a check to counter whatever effect it may have on ones spell casting, as being hit in the head provokes a different reaction that being hit in the stomach, and the concentration is to ensure you don't f$%k up the spell you're casting by instinctively ducking away from the pain (in the case of the head) or curling in on yourself (Ala stomach). Overall, the main problem here is that it can be ruled either way, and is up to the DM to decide if they want to count it all as separate checks or lump it together, but if you do decide one way or the other, for gods sake don't decide this when its used against the bad guy you're playing. Decide ahead of time and tell the players so they can plan around it.
The way I rule it is sources of damage are seperate damage dice rolls. Take hex, and the extra necrotic damage. A hit with hex is 2 sources of damage: the origional, and the extra necrotic. Same if a weapon does slashing and fire damage. Two different dice rolls, two sorices of damage. Two attacks? 4 sources of damage, 2 from two swings, and 2 from each time you're hit by the fire. 3 missiles, 3 seperate sorices of damage.
The wizard steps forward- he bravely speaks ancient arcane words- fiery darts fly from us finger tips - striking the goblin in the chest - the wizard clears his the throat “ I’m done “ and sits down
@@danielryan4220 Yeah, I'm pretty sure on one of his videos Zee commented something like "If we weren't such good friends we wouldn't collab on each other's videos like this".
"There is prolly more experts in the comments"... You mean... all the people talking about how awesome JoCat and Fireball is? I cast Magic Missile at the darkness
One of my favourite spells. Interestingly, the art for it in the Red Box of basic D&D shows it creating full size physical arrows, which is an interesting take on the concept.
@@konoyaronekobaka Yep, even when I played D&D and 1st edition AD&D, I allowed magic-user characters to customize their magic missiles. My younger brother used colored orbs just like Ariel from "Thundarr the Barbarian".
@@SymbioteMullet well its simple an old farmer that finds his long lost daughter's spellbook, which causes him to break the modify memory spell. now, trying to understand his daughters spells searches for her most spells are flavored as gardening tools, animals and such (now i realized its not simple)
The best thing about this video isn't the knowledge, it's the pure shot to the heart of him calling across the room "I'm with a customer." We've all been both sides of that.
That would be the current lore, but that didn't exist when they were written. Lots of stuff retconned in over the years. For instance it isn't damaged capped in 1e AD&D so a level 30 caster fired 14 of them for 14d4+14 damage for a level 1 spell. No saves, no misses, range of 360 yards outdoors at that level.
The magic missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't, by subtracting where it is, from where it isn't, or where it isn't, from where it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance sub-system uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the magic missile from a position where it is, to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position where it was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event of the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has required a variation. The variation being the difference between where the magic missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too, may be corrected by the GEA. However, the magic missile must also know where it was. The magic missile guidance computance scenario works as follows: Because a variation has modified some of the information the magic missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is, however it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subracts where it should be, from where it wasn't, or vice versa. By differentiating this from the algebraic sum og where it shouldn't be, and where it was. It is able to obtain a deviation, and a variation, which is called "air"
Watched a Tim Kask (one of the designers of AD&D) video once, and he said he really had to put some effort to persuade Gygax to make Magic Missile an auto-hit. Gygax originally wanted the Magic-User to role to hit. Gygax, according to Kask, didn't like spellcasters. The AD&D Magic User is a poor class. With a d4 hit dice, and one spell per day at level 1, it's really a challenge to survive to the point where a character can be powerful. So Kask convinced Gygax that if the Magic User has only one spell per day and he chooses Magic Missile then at least make that lousy 1d4+1 guaranteed damage.
If anyone ever played Baldur's Gate 1, they know the importance of Magic Missile. ANY damage stops a mage from casting and MM has an almost non existent cast time. Never misses.... Best interrupt in the game!
I've also recently used magic missile as a way to break a Cambion's Fiendish Charm affect on a party member in much the same way one uses it to break concentration, just with a bit of friendly fire
My current go-to to clean a place is Melf's mini meteores + fireball + magic missile (lvl 7 sorcerer as I type this comment). Being paired with the mage of the campaign is always funny because he uses magic missile alongside lightning spells so we're basically the rocket launcher and rail gun in elven forms (both of the characters also happen to be the only 2 local elves lol). When peeps go "hehe squishy" on us, we "hehe squishy" them back.
@@webbowser8834A wizard will get access to it at 5th level, which is the lowest level of "tier 2". So while it isn't a "starter" spell like Magic Missile is, I think it can definitely be argued to be a low level spell and part of an early wizard setup.
I've been playing since 1979. It been great fun watching the game evolve through the editions, except for 4th, that was so far from the spirit of the game I thought it would kill the brand entirely. I remember the satanic panic of the 80s when anyone who played was absolutely going to kill themselves, their parents, or random strangers to summon demons. As a result they took demons and devils out of the game by way of name changes and the game progressed and eventually demons and devils were demons and devils again. New players now, especially on social media, try to control the game just like the same people that accused of being satanist wanted to control it, only for different reasons. Way back in 1e days my groups were actually more diverse than they are today. We had all kinds of people play at my table or my friend's tables, blacks, Asians, mixed, boys, girls, jocks, geeks, bi and gay, etc. The only people that were excluded were people that caused trouble or just jerks in general. Anyone that wanted to have fun was welcome and there wasn't any kind of politics or agenda like you see so much of now. It was just people who liked to have fun getting together and doing just that. I miss those days.
@@darrenp9454 ah, the Panic. Brought on almost entirely by a flavor passage in the 1e DMG describing a flashy ritual to summon a demon. From there the christian world collectively forgot how reality worked
Chainmail is not really 'lost history', now Blackmore? THATS some lost history stuff as most of it was Arneson's personal campaign setting and only saw marginal print
@@darrenp9454 I have to disagree on a couple of points. *4e wasn't "against the spirit of D&D." It also brought in tens of thousands of new players. To date, nobody has ever been able to explain how it "wasn't D&D," merely throwing around debunked assertions like "you can't RP in 4e" and "it focuses too much on map-based combat," as if OD&D wasn't a miniature-based wargame & 3.x didn't specifically reference 5' squares in every book. *There's no more politics at D&D tables now than there were in the 70s & 80s; the internet has just made it more visible. As someone who started playing in the deep South, there was a lot of gatekeeping against non-whites & women (especially women/girls) by D&D players. The change in diversity in your personal experience is due to a change in the people surrounding you, not some shift in the demographics of players.
A thing not mentioned but useful to know is force damage is very special. In 3.5 at least, it is the one type of damage almost nothing resists and being a force effect it hits on multiple planes. This means it can always hit ghosts and other incorporeal beings.
Evocation wizard casts magic missile at 9th level. The entire party: OH GODS THE BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE! The DM: He did like 55 damage it's not that big of a deal.
Magic missile is wonderous. The Magic missile mage was one of my favorite prestige classes Dragon magazine printed. A magical assasin with a wand of magic missile could easily kill the backline with little trouble.
Chainmail's wording of missile makes sense, as apart from referring to the self propelled weapons we know as missiles these days, the word also has a still valid and much older definition, that being "an object which is forcibly propelled at a target, either by hand or from a mechanical weapon." So technically, a firearm fires missiles.
There's a couple magic items in 5e that completely negate magic missile. Some use your reaction, but I think there's a ring that just makes you immune to it. No action required.
Brooch of shielding: gives resistance to force damage & immunity to magic missile but requires a limited (Attune-ment slot) It's a hefty price to gain two effects that don't come up much?
Update, I though shield of missile attraction and gloves of missile snaring were able to protect against magic missile as well as other ranged attacks, but I checked and they don't have any effect on magic missile.
Magic missle is one of my groups favorite spells to flavor the look of. One dwarven wizard has theirs shaped like hammers. My magical girl styled one has her's shaped like pink roses
This makes a lot of sense. The term "missile" is very generic and can be applied to any number of things. It's also versatile yet low enough level that you can reasonably expect to see it in every campaign, regardless of what level the players are.
@@webbowser8834 honestly flavoring spells is always fun imo. As a player I always do it and as a GM I encourage it. That magical girl one has a lot of her stuff shaded pink or purple and as a joke I noted when she casts stinking cloud it smells like shitty overpowering mall perfume
The notion of them triggering multiple concentration checks is controversial. Since they strike simultaneously, many treat that as a single instance of damage and only one concentration check. I believe that’s also Jeremy Crawford’s take on it for whatever that’s worth to people. Eldritch Blast is sequential, also according to Jeremy Crawford’s take (FWIW) and thus WOULD trigger multiple checks.
@@AnarchyInYourHead I think it's fair the simultaneous attacks count as multiple concentration rolls. If you got punched in the face and in the back as the same time that would be two things you had to defend against right?
@@aatired7307 Maybe. But it's not really about defending against them, it's about not being distracted by the pain. If you're being punched twice, simultaneously, you would say "Ow" not "Ooh, owch". This would all come down to DM discretion though. So, if you're the DM do what makes sense to you and if someone complains tell them to either prove it or shut it.
@@BBBness This is kinda abstract to explain, but if you're hurt in two places at the same time you kinda do go Ooh, ouch. I've never been punched simultaneously, but I've had muscle and joint aches in different areas of the body at the same time. Dealing with multiple different small sources of pain at once does literally take more concentration to deal with than one huge pain. With one pain you just hold still in that area, but with more than one you have to maneuver around the problem areas so that neither hurt. I imagine it's even harder to do if those pains are sudden like with an attack.
I love going back to the AD&D books on my shelf to compare 3.5 and 5th ed spells. I played AD&D as a child, so I have nothing memorized, but vague notions of what a magic-user or druid had cast.
@@curumu_yt I mean, force damage is just non-elemental damage, so throwing anything hard enough can be force damage... So let's do some Chicken Damage!
No, Force Damage is defined as "Pure magical force", and has the unique property of being able to damage incorporeal and ethereal foes. You're thinking of Kinetic Damage, which is what most physical weapons (and a few rare spells) deal, and is usually sub-definite into Bludgeoning, Piercing or Slashing damage.
Holy shit, can I just mention how MUCH you improved on your animation? Those smooth head position transitions are amazing and really make the animation feel alive
No, just a quirk of the move to natural language. Mechanically “they strike simultaneously” means more or less nothing except maybe with regards to retargeting. (That is if you down a target with your first scorching Ray can you shoot the other two at other targets?). Both will require your DM to make a ruling because again, natural language
I loved the flavour of this one, different enough to stand out whilst similar enough to be on theme and you can tell how much effort was poured into it, great job!
I mean, if you want to be real technical, any set of attacks (Eldritch Blast, Extra Attack, Scorching Ray, Magic Missile), especially in combats with large groups of things in initiative, happy so quickly next to each other that they may as well be simultaneous Being hit by 3 darts of magical energy in your face, shoulder, and knee all at once is just as distracting as being punched in the gut 3 times in the span of 6 seconds
@@Pancakeli I would say you have a point but my counter point is that all of those require separate attack rolls and can miss. None of them strike simultaneously either, eldritch blast can have many CC effects that can stack for instance.
@@Epsilon954 Your counter point is not good. Many of those attacks have the benefit of being far far more powerful and devastating than 1d4+1 and are completely free to use. Magic Missile costs a level 1 spell slot, has super low damage, is easily stopped by several things, and does so little compared to what casters could do with their action and spell slots. It is in no way overpowered to say "hey make a couple more dc 10 saves." If somebody's strategy revolves entirely around maintaining concentration on an effect, they can easily prepare for things that might stop them from doing that. Rule it how you like, I'm not here to tell you how to play and enjoy dnd, but making Magic Missile do more multiple concentration checks is in no way overpowered. It would do that if you hit several concentrating targets, which is arguably more powerful anyways, so there's no reason good enough to say it shouldn't do the same to one target.
@@Epsilon954 You are right, you have to actually roll to hit which is a lot more "work" than "these all hit no matter what." Individual rolls means you probably will have to worry about concentration more and I'd say would cause more rolls. However (other than the funky controversial and often ignored flip flop of a sage advice) the magic missile spells specifically says all the missiles strike at the same time so if they are targeting one creature then it really only counts as one attach because all damage hits at one time so not 3x 1d4+1, but 3d4+3
Jeremy Crawford has on record said they cause multiple concentration checks. If you don't like that rule, that's fine, and I do know Mike Mearls has said the opposite, but Jeremy is the head rules designer, that's his job. His word would generally take precedence if you are looking for the actual ruling.
Still remember playing one of my first games if D&D where a "expert" player kept insisting my Mage/Cleric (dual-class, knowledge cleric: because taking Life Cleric felt too min/maxy) cast Magic Missile as an offensive spell- even though I could prove to him by math that Guiding Bolt was a better spell for my character and did more damage on average (even after incorporating the chances if a miss) with the advantage to attack it provided the other players in the group. Yeah, that guy was a jerk- and tried to play everyone's character for them- especially mine, as I was new...
I'm currently playing a Life Cleric, and defeated a miniboss using guiding bolt (and inflict wounds, but eh), so I know it's powerful. I didn't realize Life domain was min/maxy tho.
The biggest thing i take from your video is always the beauty of the art, and then your writing and lastly the information. Because your animation and writing is just soooo good
Much like shield can be used to block magic missile, so too can JCraw be invoked to defend the concentration check stuff:
twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/716012166101401600?s=20
Mr Rexx and AJ Pickett do D&D lore and history, and I think you would appreciate the resources they can give you. Note you do technical stuff with lore, and they do lore, with occasional obscure features. I hope this helps your pool of knowledge and interests you.
I've always taken spells with multiple hits that hit at the same time (i.e. Magic Missle) that since they all hit at the same time, they only disturb the caster once. If it didn't say "simultaneously", then yes, a concentration save for each hit. Eldritch Blast and Scorching Ray don't have the "simultaneously" part, so they are the latter.
and then literally everyone replies to it to say JC is full of shit...
I mean, I actually agree with that particular ruling, but WotC can fuck off at this point. They've done nothing but steadily ruin 5e with every release since the original three books.
@@CrashSable Could it be that you're just growing older?
“If you agree with the guy whose job is to create, balance, and clear up rules confusion... who I don’t agree with because sometimes it’s not my first interpretation that I refuse to budge from... JC ruins DND!!!”
I love the implication that Magic Missile was specifically designed by wizards to serve as a magical handful of Pocket Sand to break their opponents concentration.
HA, sand in the eye! You'll never get my plans!
I say at the concentrating division wizard
@@sarahmellinger8125 Ah yes, division. One of the eight schools of magic: Algebration, Calculation, Derivation, Division, Enumeration, Integration, Necromathsy, and Transcommutation.
I hate that in order to specialize in any school other than Division you have to give up two other schools; how am I supposed to integrate without algebration and derivation?
@@SnancyNegative You think that's bad, try being DM when somebody starts selling you on their Proofs specialty wizard they pulled out of an ancient Dragon Magazine article and want to update to the current edition.
Ah, good old Baldur's Gate 2 (so, 2nd Edition D&D)! Every time there was a fight with a wizard, you could take forever dispelling and/or cutting through his buffs, or you could use Magic Missile (a wand worked just fine) in the first second of combat to interrupt each buff as he cast it.
"Actually ___, but I can see how you would make that mistake." He HAS worked in a shop.
"...Watch as larry openly weeps as a 5th level spell slot evaporates". Nice eyeballs.
4:30 ish
POCKET SAND!
imagine homebrewing a magic missile variant with heavily reduced damage, but moar missiles.
@@thereprehensible435 so, buckshot magic missile?
"I'M WITH A CUSTOMER!"
That made me laugh way more than it should have, lol!
I've wanted him to do magic missile since I found this channel so long ago, but that whole bit is my favorite part of this video.
I actually feel like I'm in a shop
That was a golden moment.
Way too relevant. I can't tell you how often people turn in TCG collections and a few particular regulars scouting them before we buy them lol. It May be petty but I often scoop those singles in spite. (wish we had a privacy room)
ya, hilarious the war gamers in the back of the shop keeping to themselves. just like every shop near me lol
As a former game store employee, I can confirm this is 100% accurate.
was gonna like, but didn't want to ruin that number
@@BeeCrab I did :)
As a current game store employee o can confirm the pandemic has done little to slow down this
@@flamingRose100 "I'm here for the global Pandemic tournament." "No, Phil. There's a virus raging across the planet." "Yeah, and with the help of 3 teammates, we. will. stop. it." "Where's your mask?" "Were we supposed to cosplay?"
@@xyryyn "hey can me and my 7 man party hold a d&d campaign at your store" "why cant you do it at your home or skype" "well Skype sucks and I dont want to bring viruses into my house"
I was told by a very handsome lizardman in assless chaps named Jocat that this spell is weak and that I should use fireball and only fireball.
You know, this is prolly one of the D&D channels that is free of people refrancing Ben from Puffin Forest in comments... mostly due to JoCat's (and his advice on Fireball) constant presence in the comments section
Fizboom is my fireball mentor, "what was that spell again?"
You only cast this when you cant use fireball
IE: out of spell slots above level 3 or to low level
I'll say that until the hit by magic missile and they lose their fireball and then your allays destroy that wizzard
@@An_Ian Once you're out of third level spells, you start igniting molotovs made from fireball and throw them at your enemies like a real wizard
Magic Missile is a classic spell. It's so interesting to see how it evolved, and changed, but stayed the same.
Okay, so how much are my miniatures?
@somadman latest rule *books* you're gonna need the main book too, new edition baby!
Don't forget that the new 40K 85th Edition is coming out in 5 months do you want to pre-order your book now?
@@kevinkorenke3569 And of course the new edition's also gonna introduce a new version of the miniature.
So it's basically a Shark
@somadman I'd like to use my points card, I spent 80 dollars here yesterday so I should get 8 euros off.
Anyone else notice the fact that JoCat was being attacked by a magic dolphin at 3:12 ?
Nice! Always good to see JoCrap getting his comeuppance.
I looked through the comments just to check who else caught that
Are we NOT going to talk about the poster in the background for DO DO Man??
It's part of a running gag from the "Fireball" video.
I did not. Thank you for mentioning this. ^^
Imagine casting magic missile to mess up a wizard's concentration but the wizard casts shield so you use your reaction to counterspell shield.
Cant cast two spells in one turn.
@@henriktucker63 correctamango. unless you have an item that counterspells in which case your gm needs a talking to.
@@henriktucker63 I must disagree with you. You can't cast a leveled spell for both your bonus action and action/reaction. There is no rule stating you can't use your reaction on your turn, and there is no rule that says you can't cast a spell as a reaction if you had already cast a leveled spell.
This next bit is right out of the PHB page 202
Most spells require a single action to cast, but some spells require a bonus action, a reaction, or much more time to cast.
Bonus Action
A spell cast with a bonus action is especially swift. You must use a bonus action on your turn to cast the spell, provided that you haven’t already taken a bonus action this turn. You can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action.
Reactions
Some spells can be cast as reactions. These spells take a fraction of a second to bring about and are cast in response to some event. If a spell can be cast as a reaction, the spell description tells you exactly when you can do so.
This next bit comes from sage advice in 2015
Casting Time
Is there a limit on the number of spells you can cast
on your turn? There’s no rule that says you can cast only X number of spells on your turn, but there are some practical limits. The main limiting factor is your action. Most spells require an action to cast, and unless you use a feature like the fighter’s Action Surge, you have only one action on your turn.
If you cast a spell, such as healing word, with a bonus action, you can cast another spell with your action, but that other spell must be a cantrip. Keep in mind that this particular limit is specific to spells that use a bonus action. For instance, if you cast a second spell using Action Surge, you aren’t limited to casting a cantrip with it.
Can you also cast a reaction spell on your turn? You sure can! Here’s a common way for it to happen: Cornelius the wizard is casting fireball on his turn, and his foe casts counterspell on him. Cornelius has counterspell prepared, so he uses his reaction to cast it and break his foe’s counter-spell before it can stop fireball.
Magic duel
Casting two spells in one turn is totally fine. Double fireball EKs are awesome.
I don't come here for precise, perfect, unerring rules knowledge. I come here because listening to you talk about D&D is like chatting across the table with friends of mine. Given the virus and all, this is something I REALLY crave right now. Your voice is easy to understand (no thick accents) and your anecdotes have a good blend of humor and rules knowledge.
Couldn't have put it better. Plus the animations are always super cool :P
I always find he talks waaay too fast to understand. I have to pause and rewind multiple times to get the gist of it.
Absolutely this!
Can't day i feel the same or understand it. Don't get how people can't deal for some good months being away from people. I'm just here for animations lmao
This. Just. This.
"This is one of the longest episodes that I've ever animated" - It looks brilliant Zee, time well spent! Thank you, entertaining as always.
five skeletons against the players
Magic Missile, a spell for when you just don't trust your luck at all and need some reliable damage
or most of all, you need that baddie to stop concentrating on that spell
Magic resistance doesn't mean SQUAT if you can just auto-hit. This means any creature can be killed if you throw enough first level Wizards/Sorcerer's at it, unless there is a Force-Immune creature I don't know about.
Also I guess Acerack has infinite Shields so...
Or if you're an EK Fighter and the bastard you're fighting started flying.
Or when some asshat monster is flying and my eldritch knight can't hit it with his pike
@@Falx415
Harpy: "I'm fly."
Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Oh thanks for provoking my Opportunity Attack twice before and after the start of my turn... Now... I up cast four lv7 Magic Missiles! Dealing 72 to 180 Force damage from 36d4 + 36 individual Magic Missiles!... FOR FREEDOM!!!"
Harpy: "I'm die, thank you forever."
(This is possible... At the cost of four lv7 Spell Slots when performing the combo.)
is this going to be on the test?
yes yes it is
Surprising to see you here
I see you're a fan of this as well. Nice to see you here!
Nice to see good creators supporting each other
I need to study for Wizard SATs so this video is very helpful :D
These videos are the only things that hit more often than magic missile
Also because Crawford's ruling implies they are separate sources of damage, each attack on an unconscious target would result in a failed death save. A level 1 magic missile can straight up kill an unconscious person bypassing their saves.
I highly recommend **against** using this on players. No one appreciates it.
*Furiosly takes notes on how to fuck up my dms npcs*
Ah yes; the fabled Triple Tap
Yeah, this is a Crawford ruling you can safely ignore. Why else would it say "simultaneously"? At least with spells like Scorching Ray you consume a resource and have a failure chance like most multiattacks.
@@collinguo2175 all turns happen simultaneously in the same 6 seconds. Separate sources of damage can hit at the same time. its 3 diff bolts so 3 checks. pretty easy to understand.
You highly recommend on using it **against** PCs? Thanks for the advice! I'll be sure to keep it in mind for a ehem... "*a rainy day*"
If I remember correctly the reason that the Shield spell blocks Magic Missile was because they were made in tandem by the sasme wizard.
More importantly, Vincent Price uses a shield spell to block Boris Karloff's Magic Missile spell in the movie that gave Gary the idea for them both: The Raven.
I believe that he it's talking about the name given to the spell not to actually the spell magic missile
So he invented a spell that can get through any defense, probably sold spell scrolls on it, then followed that up by inventing the one spell that can block it. Wizard stonks.
@@catoticneutral
That is kind of the scientific way XD
“The SASME Wizard” is my new character.
funnily enough, by chainmail's definitions; firing a missile (in the modern military sense) wouldn't be a missile attack.
Nope. Because missile originally referred to small flying objects. I have no idea how it got applied to big self-propelled explosives.
@@matthewtaylor744 it may have something to do with the base roots of the word (which is more interesting than you might think).
I'll see what I find
Edit: missile was french from the 1650s, meaning "thing thrown or discharged from a weapon to hit something" (guns to literally a rock is covered by this definition), which came from the latin missus, "throw, hurl."
Roughly 1750 was when it was used to described self propelled rockets or bombs, which may or may not have been related to mortars (which existed as far back as the 1400s. Crazy.)
@@stevenn1940 thing that goes through the air is about all you can call a missile, and essentially it just got left without any word more specific, like rocket, shell, bullet, warhead, grenade
@@thewingedporpoise My guess would be that because of the dominance of firearms a catchall term for projectiles became pointless because you can just call them all bullets.
@@tylerstewart5829 that sort of makes sense, but yeah, no arrows raining down, just gunfire and artillery, and bombs, and rockets, and they're called missiles because they are guided missiles, things going through the air that are guided, but saying guided every time is annoying, missiles
2:36 I wish they still kept the "unerringly strike their target" part of the description; I've seen people get surprised when they learn magic missile never misses (which is implied by the fact the spell has no attack rolls or saving throws, but new players might not realize that immediately).
Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Unlimited Missiles Works!"
Which is four up casted lv7 Magic Missiles for a 36d4 + 36 Force damage. (72 to 180 Force damage.)
So many missiles in about 1 turn/off turn. And since it's all INSTANT duration. You can stack EVEN MORE!!! Without the need of Concentration.
"THIS IS POWER!!!"
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 what feats and rules are you using here? Action surge is the only thing I can think of that would let you cast multiple magic missiles in a single turn. Extra attack doesn’t work with spells, as “Cast a Spell” and “Attack” are listed as two separate actions in the PHB. You also can’t cast Magic Missile using a bonus action and then also cast it as an action on the same turn, so no features that allow that (such as metamagic) would work either.
Eldritch Knights also cap at a single 4th level spell slot at 19th level, never achieving a 7th level slot. So that’s two casts in a turn, a third as a reaction with war caster and sentinel and only one is above 3rd level
@@Khunkurisu
Warcaster + Feats which affects Opportunity Attacks.
As for the EK... I only have the Essentials Kit so lv7 to lv20 for Spell Slots is unknown to me... Since it caps at lv4 Spells. It's 1d4 + 1 times 4 for the up cast instead of 7.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 I see. Warcaster + sentinel would let you use a reaction to cast magic missile if an enemy is vaguely nearby basically, and action surge lets you do it twice in one turn. You’d be nearly out of juice till a long rest and for level 19 you’d only be dishing out 32-80 damage in one round, at the cost of 3 spell slots. It’s guaranteed damage and would absolutely ruin anyone trying to concentrate on a spell (that’s 16 darts), but for that level the damage is horrid.
By comparison that eldritch knight could simply use the same setup with Booming Blade (assuming longsword) for a potential damage of up to 96 without the enemy moving at no cost of spell slots (additional 96 damage if they willingly move). The only difference being that they might miss, and the opponent might only have to make 3 concentration checks.
@@Khunkurisu Conversations long over I know but there are rules for casting multiple spells on a turn - you can never cast more than one, unless the second spell is a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action (which implies that a fighter-sorc multiclass could haste themselves, use action surge, and then quicken a spell to cast with their bonus action and follow up with 3 cantrips (normal action, haste action, surge action) but for any spell that has a level, you can only ever cast one during your turn, and you can't pop another cantrip in unless it's cast as an action (meaning the leveled spell is on eitehr your bonus action or a special additional action). Unfortunately the rules for readying spells don't help either, as the casting technically occurs as part of the action used to ready it, i.e. on your turn
I cast it at the darkness!
That comic was funny
You see an elf before you with a gray tunic, and blue eyes.
I read it as "I cast it at Darkness!"
Pretty sure she should like it however.
I was waiting for someone to reference that, well played sir.
Anybody want a Mt Dew?
I WISH I could go to a game shop where you're the guy behind the counter!!
IKR?
I’m happy to personally know someone like that in my hometown. My experience playing tabletop games are unforgettable when he’s around.
I wish I hade a game shop in my town
@@wander1ngw1zard83 Truth. So much going on-line these days. I hope that the local game shops don't die out completely. I was practically raised in ours.
@@FeinryelRavenclaw Agreed. Some of my fondest memories are game-store memories.
Hearing Zee Bashew humble himself by describing himself as ‘the cashier at a card shop’ made my day a lot better. You’re a saint, man.
I started playing D&D in 1978 when I was 10 years old. This brought back memories of me casting magic missiles back then & getting made fun of by major enemies "That tickled."
This was the spell my first character nine-year old me used. What could be cooler than a missile? A MAGIC heat seeking missile!
If your using a first level spell.. it's pretty much the best there is. It scales nicely with your levels, can't miss, isn't any "type of dmg" to be resisted like fire or ice. Oh and the range was like 180 yards or something, a much safer place to be as a Mage than touch range for things like Shocking grasp.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming Shocking Grasp might not be great for a spellcaster that's squishy like most mages, but for an Eldritch Knight it's very good.
I watched Shocking Grasp do a lot of battlefield control against a NPC Paladin that was possessed by a sentient sword, who was trying to kill the cleric NPC the party had been sent out on a quest to protect during their Ordination ceremony.
The PC Eldritch Knight used shocking grasp every turn to steal the NPC Paladin's reaction, preventing them from using many of their legendary actions. And then because it was a Paladin in a town where they worship the same gods as the paladin gets their power from, the party simply KO'd the Paladin instead of outright killing them (killing that paladin would probably have been hard to explain). Turns out most of the legendary actions were coming from the sword not the paladin, and near the end of the final encounter the sword actually floated itself over a runic circle that had been part of the room the encounter happened in from the beginning and teleported somewhere else (the party couldn't find out where it went, and thankfully everyone in the party had enough D&D experience to know not to touch a sentient weapon).
@@44R0Ndin "Help, I am being wielded!" Blade Bunnies reaction to having it happen to her.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming my personal favorite in older editions was sleep. That spell was sooo overpowered against first level monsters. Kobolds, orcs, or cultists? Super unconcious. Lol.
Magic Missile never misses because it knows where it wasn't.
Underrated comment.
Cap: I understood that reference.
But the position where it wasn't it now is, and the position where it was it now isn't.
Yes
So what you’re saying is that by subtracting where it is from where it isn’t, or where it isn’t from where it is- whichever is greater - that it obtains a difference, or deviation?
I like how realistic the depiction of the dynamic between the characters is. I used to work at a gas station and we had a guy who only worked there for like, 3 6-hour shifts a week. But he was always hanging out there. Hanging out with him was part of the job. And we would wind up interacting with him a lot like how Zee interacts with his friend.
I just realized....this also helps explain why lighting bolt and fire ball are such insanely powerful spells for the level they're cast at, it's a reference to the history of the game, because those are the two spells the wizard unit could use as their magic missiles
Especially since in the old Chainmail Strategy games, those two spells could conceivably take out an entire enemy unit.
Still a weird balancing decision to make a spell vastly outperform other options just because it used to do that in older decisions...
There are additional reasons. Firstly, that both of those spells would destroy treasure (which you needed to level up), and that both of them were likely to also harm the players - lightning bolt by bouncing off the walls, and fireball just because it expanded strictly volumetrically.
So annoying were both of these drawbacks that a PC wizard researched and created a new, viable AoE spell that did not have them - Cone of Cold.
@@JonMW I know I'm super, super late to this party, but the problem of fireball being volumetric was also solved by a different, underrated spell: Melf's Minute Meteors.
The designers (I forget which ed) have also said it's purposefully op so casters can have the thrill of big, flashy, damaging spells
1:33 Zee's rendition of Don Lowry's rendition of Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax's renditions of Jack Coggins' rendition of a knight in battle.
At this point in the game of telephone, it's a miracle he's not riding a giant duck and wielding a garden rake.
Ah, Magic Missile, arguably the signature spell of D&D.
Maybe Magic Missile is the signature spell to people outside of D&D, and Fireball is the signature spell of those who play D&D.
@@MrTailson1
Honestly, flip flopped.
People outside D&D know fireball, it's the spell the nerds try to cast in real life. Same as Lightning Bolt, actually, Fireball always comes first, but both occupy the same space.
Nobody outside D&D knows what a magic missile is. I'd say even Sleep is a more well known spell.
Me: _pokes comment section_ "come on, tell history"
in the greyhawk supplement magic missile did 1d6+1 because all damage dice were d6 in original d&d.
magic missile scaled at a rate of 1 missile at 1, 2 missiles at 3, 3 at 5, up to 5 shots at 9 from it's original print all the way to pathfinder(which you can basically think of as d&d 3.75). Magic missile is famously one of the most abusable spells to build around because anything that adds a flat adder to spell damage gets multiplied over several hits.
In old school DnD weapon type was actually mostly irrelevant. As ymmij mentioned everything was d6 so what mattered was HOW FAST you attacked and stuff like polearms or two-handers attacked once every other round while daggers or knives attacked twice a round. So because grognards are grognards this entailed a lot of 'fighting men' being made which dual wielded daggers dealing 4d6 a rounds since it was optimal.
Also magic missile on one of the only spells to have a magic item in every addition since 2nd to have a specific magic item made to screw it over (The Brooch of Shielding) which stops a certain number of Magic Missiles stone cold.
@@Lordike3 "Also magic missile is one of the only spells to have a magic item in every edition since 2nd to have a specific magic item made to screw it over (The Brooch of Shielding) which stops a certain number of Magic Missiles stone cold."
And then dissolves like a scrub!
ah but yea broaches of shielding are the kinda magic item that is either awful or amazing depending on dm. In either case by mid levels you'll almost always have something better in your neck slot.
I just love how you poked the comments section for history. I'm there with you!
Now let's start the beginning of the Viking Age...
There were only three classes, Viking, Friendly-Scandanavian, and the people who regretted meeting the first ones...usually slaves or dead men being plundered, or the Conquered Peoples as they call them.
The same was true of Original Dungeons and Dragons...the Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric. It is actually weird how some of the classes today have Rank names based on Level of the character, such that you actually became a Wizard at higher levels as a Magic-User, and lower down you were a Necromancer, I think a Sorcerer, and I do know that Warlocks were either a lower level Magic-User in OD&D or at least definitely in the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement that fed in D&D's history and the development of the First Fantasy Roleplaying Game.
I hate to be that guy who gets in trouble and yelled at for recommending other channels...Or at least that is how it is on Twitch often enough. But go check out DM It All...They did some great D&D History videos, and I particularly enjoyed their breakdown of Original D&D, The Tomb of Horrors, the Original, and The Village of Hommlet. There is a lot of history and cool design in the Original stuff that makes you think about how and why things are built into RPG systems. Inspires us, as well as Zee's fun videos, to this day.
You got 1 darn spell as a Level 1 Magic User. So...I think technically then that Magic Missile was your only friend and magic...for the day, even...
If you chose Magic Missile instead of Detect Magic that is...
@@ymmijx6061
Yeah, I..
Never really got that to be honest. If the bad guy had it they were basically immune to this one first valence spell. The brooch shields for waaaay more damage than most player wizards prepared Magic Missiles so it's not like you were gonna be able to punch though the Brooch in a single fight.
If the players had it it defended them fr a single ultra specific attack that statistically speaking never was going to happen unless they were fighting a Wizard or Sorcerer who didn't really have anything better to do with their round (aka never). So it was gonna last forever just occupying your neck slot which as you mentioned has a lot of better options.
It kind of rinds me about how drow magic weapons and armor used to melt into uselessness in sunlight, a sort of antagonist GM 'Haha'.
So, nobody's gonna point out how he's chewing on an opened candybar that came straight out of his beard?
first experience with the so called "utility beard", huh? granted, ive not seen it used for food before, but ive definitely seen pens, pencils, and even dice materialize from a beard before.
@@Skywatcher16 I'm well aware of their utility. Their hygiene, though?
YARGH! His name be Stickybeard matey!
It was the pocket, actually. Then, right after he took it out, he put it back in his beard
"Beard of Holding / Many Pockets"
It’s also good for waking up people under the effect of say a hypnotic pattern or similar effect. If they need to take only a bit of damage for the effect to end, then magic missile can be really helpful.
Eldritch Knight + Feats: "Or to completely obliterate an enemy with 72 to 180 Force damage of 4x up casted lv7 Magic Missiles. 36d4 + 36 at 36x individual Magic Missiles. No Concentration needed and this is stackable at the cost of Spell Slots."
Drop one missile on your Buddy to wake them up and the other two on the caster who enthralled them.
I like to imagine Magic Missile as being like the Mandalorian's Whistling Birds.
Good flavour, specially if you're an armorer artificer
@@Khaons ...Oh my god, I hadn't even considered that yet.
@@Khaons I am doing this exact thing in a campaign!
Thats very cool!
If you're an artificer you can actually straight up just make spellbinder style bracers that you can flick your missiles off, or an actual magical ray gun! ...That fires missiles instead of rays.
Or actual mechanical rays that you throw at your opponent.
Holy shit, Zee! You're a madman. I never thought of MM as a way to break concentration. Brilliant! Great video.
I dread the day my DM sees this video and figure that out.
Except they hit at the same time, so it's just a single concentration check.
Upside, you can attempt to break [Spell slot level+2] enemies' Concentration at once.
Combine that with Mage Slayer (yaknow, if you're a madman), and watch all of them roll their save at Disadvantage unless they've got War Caster.
It actually doesn't, as all attacks strike at the same time so they only force a single Con check unless you're targeting multiple casters.
@@babulbi it's more for the fact that you have to designate targets BEFORE casting (unlike scorching ray, where you can see the result before firing another shot). Sage Advice confirms that each dart from magic missile forces a new concentration check from target
@@DragonKnightJin I think the "simultaneous" is just fluff and you aren't supposed to take it literally. It is 3 separate attacks.
My favorite use of Magic Missle is as a DM. You see, there's no reason any of all of your human npcs in an area can't be variant humans. So there's no reason basic common people without class levels can't have access to a spell via Magic Initiate. So if you're building an arcanocratic settlement or country, there's no reason the guard, garrison or army can't have access to a cast of Magic Missile once per day. So if you were to, let's say, have an ancient red dragon attack a medium to large settlement, there's no reason you couldn't put the fear of god in your players by have the guard deal 240d4 plus 240 damage. Have fun
Wait, deadass smart AF. I was going to make the argument that Players are unequal to NPCs because of classes and levels but I realize that you made no mention to those at all and are just talking about a standard race. Granted, these variant humans would have lower health but I think the fear of 240d4 + 240 is good enough to cover that.
@@icegod4849 I don't even really think it's important enough to stat put such NPCs, because largely the way I use it is as a shock moment for really experienced players for a one shot, more often than not for conventions or the rare time I get to enjoy a night at my LGS. It's legal by RAW, so you can explain it if asked, but it's always fun to show more experienced players the extent of what can be done with the rules they've used so much it seems boring. Alternatively, you can build an entire high magic setting akin to, say, Avatar with just the variant human/Magic Initiate combo. It's a wonderful way to introduce high magic without constant character levels.
EDIT: LGS not being my capitalized was bothering me lol
@@skynyrdjesus Hmm, I'd sort of been noodling with an idea regarding how different societies in a setting view and use magic (one aspect being that specializing in specific schools of magic as a Wizard meant you needed to be from a society that taught that specialization or otherwise have access to someone who would teach you, such as Elves train Enchanters and Bladesingers, Hobgoblins teach War Mages, Dragons teach Evokers, etc).
One of the societies was going to be highly magic centric, to the level of magic being rigidly codified in how it's legal to use, so that magic is common, but there were many laws meant to keep people from abusing their gifts. This was particularly important because I had the view of the society being very open about using Necromantic magic, but being very strict in punishing misuses of it (things like raising the dead without an express written statement or will from the deceased before their death stating what they do and do not agree may be done with their remains).
So honestly the idea that magic might be so prevalent that it might even seep into the populace actually sounds really neat.
There is a book series about a magical World War, instead of rifles, the soldiers were all armed with what amounts to Rods of Magic Missile. Though recharging them could get…messy. Since recharging magic items in that world went by almost Elder Scrolls rules and required sacrifice of living creatures for non-magic users to recharge magic items.
@@nvfury13 That sounds a lot like the Pantheon series' Egyptian stories, with the magic rods powered by the Egyptian gods! Definitely interesting enough to warrant asking for the title if it's not the same story!
Fun fact: The biggest change to Magic Missile was during 4th edition, where it became an At-Will attack (Basically a cantrip, you can use it as often as you want) but lost it's unerring status, instead requiring an attack roll- however! It acquired the status of a "Ranged Basic Attack", a rule concept unique to fourth edition. Basic attacks could be used in the place of an opportunity attack, the attack at the end of a charge, or in place of a free attack granted by a Warlord (Or other Leader), and there were a surprising amount of feats, class abilities, and magic items that otherwise upgraded basic attacks, making it surprisingly effective tool. However, there were enough people complaining "They changed it, now it sucks!" that it was given errata to now automatically deal damage (and had its base damage lowered), and "Could be used in the place of a basic attack", however, that meant it no longer *was* a basic attack, meaning all those feats, class features, and items no longer interacted with it, promptly making it *completely worthless*, and depriving the wizard class of a usable basic attack.
"I'm right on some stuff, I'm wrong about other stuff" Zee Bashew.
That the spirit of D&D I think ;-)
"But what about the Fourth Edition version that could miss?"
"We don't talk about Fourth Edition magic missile."
Only early 4e MM could miss. With the July 2010 update, Magic Missile was changed so that it would never miss, making it a reliable minion-murderer.
"We don't talk about Fourth Edition."
I talk about 4th edition. :(
@@Syenthros sin. Go attack a 15'th level 4e rogue for your sins.
Yes and no. In 2nd edition (the one I’m by far the most familiar with) it is definitely physical damage, but it only affects living targets, so no causing a rockslide. I seem to remember it also applying to animated.
That is really easy to interpret as spiritual damage, but that didn’t seem to be quite it.
"Yeah man this is cool and all but can i have my 2$ dice now."
...sure, you only want the single set?
@@williamaldred335 I need the Normal ones for snakes and ladders
@@zealotoftheorchard9853 ...o...kay... not going to question why you lost the original set but enjoy and hope to see you again.
Well, since you LITERALLY "ask for it", here you go.
"Well ACTUALLY" the damage DID vary once. In D&D (as in BASIC D&D vs. AD&D) magic missiles did damage equivalent to a +1 arrow. (aka 1d6+1, instead of 1d4+1) But the increase of the # of missiles was slower than in AD&D. Just FYI.
There you go. That's my free "nit-pick". Don't say I never do anything for ya.
Good video by the way!
I believe it was one at first level, and then one more every two levels(two at third, three at fifth level, and so on).
@@y2a1979 I can't help myself :-) - I still have my D&D Basic Set, rules are as follows: "Magic Missile, Range: 150', Duration: 1 round, Effect: Creates 1 or more arrows. A Magic Missile is a glowing arrow created and shot by magic, which inflicts 2-7 (1d6+1) points of damage to any creature it strikes. After the spell is cast, the arrow appears next to the magic-user and hovers there until the magic-user causes it to shoot. When shot, it will automatically hit any visible target. It will move with the magic-user until shot or the duration ends. The Magic Missile actually has no solid form, and cannot be touched. A Magic Missile never misses its target and the target is not allowed a Saving Throw. For every 5 levels of experience of the caster, two more missiles are created by the same spell. Thus a 6th Level Magic-user may create three missiles. The missiles may be shot at different targets." Oh the nostalgia!
That's the Red Box. In the 1978 Basic rules you had to roll to hit, and then it did 2-7 damage.
Incredible timing. I just heard that the friend with whom I used to have this exact kind of conversations (and who both looked and sounded a little like you) passed away last night. I came on RUclips to distract myself and this was the first video on my feed. So thank you for that.
That 1-second wipe of Shield was really unexpected and a really cool touch! It really makes me think what Shield would look like physically.
When was that?
So, in the pathfinder kingmaker video game, shield is a slight blue energy in the direction of the attack, or just infront of your character when idle
@@BNRmatt 3:34
Yay! More Animated Spellbook, haven't had one of these in a while, these ones are my favourite!
Fun fact: Use magic missile to cancel out mirror image.
only one dart will hit but you destroy all the illusions.
Mirror Image creates three duplicates.
@@videogollumer yeah, forgot u gotta up cast it once, i did it to a boss with my arcana cleric, and even though i did 2 damage the party was pretty impressed.
What version are you referencing? In 5e Mirror Image only effects Attacks. Attacks normally require Attack Rolls, and there's nothing in the description of Magic Missile describing it as an Attack, so presumably, 5e RAW, the spell would just ignore the mirror images without destroying them.
@@andrewosborn7753 i'd assume anything that inflicts damage is an attack, i guess we were playing it as 1 damage pops the mirror image which made sense to us.
@@andrewosborn7753 Wouldn't that also mean that Mirror Image wouldn't protect you from the Marut's Unerring Slam?
"I'm with a customer."
I like to think that was an outtake, and you wrote that guy in the background into the episode for a quick gag.
Also, thanks for mentioning Chainmail. I haven't seen that one in years.
I like to imagine that my campaigns is animated in your style
Edit: thanks to everyone for 1,000 likes this is my most liked comment
Same
Do u mean the dolphins?
*are
Me to
@@runktheruler *no one asked
In 3.5 we used to carry wands of magic missile everywhere because it's cheap and holds 50 charges. It was cheaper than using a spell slot and would deal guaranteed damage.
My RUclips app has recently had issues where the audio slowly drops out of sync with the video. Sometimes, it’s hard to spot.
But your animation is so well done, and so well synced, that I realized almost immediately that it had slipped! Amazing work as always!
Still using the official youtube app? Switch to youtube Vanced ma man. Bring your pain to an end.
I love how accurate Larry is, right down to the grateful dead patch on his vest
The effort on this episode really shows. The history of dungeons and dragons is always really fascinating and the animation was top notch. Can't wait to give a wizard a really bad time with this. Keep up the good work!
The animation in this series is so interesting-I can’t help but be fascinated by the movement of the characters. Thank you for making these interesting videos!
On a tangent, one other note on magic missile that I've seen people confused about: force damage isn't physical damage. It's more like, raw magical energy damage.
I've seen people insisting that it's a type of physical damage or that it should be able to push or move something via magic missile or spiritual weapon. The name's a bit misleading.
Yeah, it's a little bit weirdly named but it's effectively "raw magic"
I usually describe it as "arcane" damage
This confusion is probably because the damage type section of the phb is kinda useless. It weirdly gives examples of things that deal the damage, but doesn't really describe what being damaged by that type does, except for a few entries which are vague at best. This is fine, if a little redundant when it comes to things like fire or cold, but a little odd when talking about Force or Psychic. Like thanks book for telling me that "A lightning bolt spell and a blue dragon's
breath deal lightning damage." or "Mental abilities such as a mind flayer's
psionic blast deal psychic damage." but I think I could parse that myself. How about telling me wtf psychic damage is, how I am supposed to describe it, and what the hell does it look like when it kills someone?
Like you can say force damage "isn't physical damage." but firstly, what does that even mean? Is it spiritual damage? Metaphysical damage? All the text says is: "Force is pure magical energy focused into a
damaging form." so really there's nothing to say it can't push people or move something (especially as we have walls and cages of it at higher levels that prevent physical passage) or that it doesn't interact with things in a physical way. They gave us a tiny bit of detail with Necrotic and Radiant (neither of which seem capable of pushing or moving anyone) but nothing like that with Force. So at this point ruling either way is a DM fiat kind of thing.
I, personally, divide the damage types into 3 categories when thinking about that stuff;
-Weapon Damage: Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing. Called that because those types are most often caused by weapons or spells emulating weapons in someway.
-Elemental Damage: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightening, Poison, and Thunder. Because that's the kind of stuff most commonly utilized by nature, animals, or the environment in some way, shape, or form.
-Arcane Damage: Force, Necrotic, Psychic, and Radiant. These things either come from a deity, drawn from some mystical source of power, or are just raw magic pulled from the cosmo's.
@@Lurklen Physical as in comparable to bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing, or resisted by a vanilla barbarian's rage. Which it's not, as it's explicitly effective against incoporeal creatures. I've had players try to argue that force damage's primary purpose was to move targets. It wouldn't impact you any more than a firebolt would.
Damage types don't inherently have any rules of their own outside of damage calculation oriented things, but the name 'force' makes people think that for some reason it has additional effects.
On top of that, in 3.5/PF damage was broken up into two types: energy and physical. Force fit into neither of these types, and was capable of being added on to some attacks via enchantments, and AFAIK it could bypass all resistances as a result. Both of these types otherwise used different damage reduction calculations (since DR/Resistance were flat reductions to damage, rather than halving damage.)
3:13 Jocat getting properly punished for burning down the library
Glad I am not the only saw that
Me: whaaaat? You don’t roll concentration checks for each dart; that’s why it says they all hit simultaneously.
*looks up concentration rules*
“If you take damage from multiple sources, such as an arrow and a dragon’s breath, you make a separate saving throw for each source of damage.”
Also me: ...oh... hmm
That's... actually even more confusing since you could reasonably argue the magic missile spell itself is a single source of damage, even if the darts are separate manifestations of it. God damn it, four (and a half) editions later and they still can't make this shit clear.
@@nyankers You can also argue that the spell creates multiple sources of damage because it can hit multiple targets, but it's not AOE.
I dunno what the rules mean but exactly because they hit simultaneously it does not make any sense that they'd cause multiple conc. rolls.
It does make sense if you consider that each dart from the spell is its own Unit/Packet of damage, and for conc checks, every single Unit/Packet of damage taken forces a check to counter whatever effect it may have on ones spell casting, as being hit in the head provokes a different reaction that being hit in the stomach, and the concentration is to ensure you don't f$%k up the spell you're casting by instinctively ducking away from the pain (in the case of the head) or curling in on yourself (Ala stomach). Overall, the main problem here is that it can be ruled either way, and is up to the DM to decide if they want to count it all as separate checks or lump it together, but if you do decide one way or the other, for gods sake don't decide this when its used against the bad guy you're playing. Decide ahead of time and tell the players so they can plan around it.
The way I rule it is sources of damage are seperate damage dice rolls. Take hex, and the extra necrotic damage. A hit with hex is 2 sources of damage: the origional, and the extra necrotic. Same if a weapon does slashing and fire damage. Two different dice rolls, two sorices of damage. Two attacks? 4 sources of damage, 2 from two swings, and 2 from each time you're hit by the fire. 3 missiles, 3 seperate sorices of damage.
That bit about Magic Missile obliterating Concentration is amazing!! Thanks for the tip!!!
The wizard steps forward- he bravely speaks ancient arcane words- fiery darts fly from us finger tips - striking the goblin in the chest - the wizard clears his the throat “ I’m done “ and sits down
Your grudge against JoCrap seems to be as vibrant as ever.^^
Whats the grudge
@@RusticVisuals in character JoCrap burned down his Wizard School.
Out of character they're probably good friends.
@@danielryan4220 Yeah, I'm pretty sure on one of his videos Zee commented something like "If we weren't such good friends we wouldn't collab on each other's videos like this".
@@danielryan4220 yes. and yet, WE STILL DON'T HAVE CLOSURE!
@@RusticVisuals it was in a crap guide to wizards...
_You're welcome._
"There is prolly more experts in the comments"... You mean... all the people talking about how awesome JoCat and Fireball is?
I cast Magic Missile at the darkness
One of my favourite spells.
Interestingly, the art for it in the Red Box of basic D&D shows it creating full size physical arrows, which is an interesting take on the concept.
Magic missile is like the best spell to customise according to TCoE's spell customizing
@@konoyaronekobaka Yep, even when I played D&D and 1st edition AD&D, I allowed magic-user characters to customize their magic missiles. My younger brother used colored orbs just like Ariel from "Thundarr the Barbarian".
you can even use chickens exploding on impact
(dont ask what character concept i have)
@@nathanex5122 I'm afraid i can't not ask. Please tell!
@@SymbioteMullet well its simple
an old farmer that finds his long lost daughter's spellbook, which causes him to break the modify memory spell. now, trying to understand his daughters spells searches for her
most spells are flavored as gardening tools, animals and such
(now i realized its not simple)
"I'm with a customer!" Had me dying
The best thing about this video isn't the knowledge, it's the pure shot to the heart of him calling across the room "I'm with a customer." We've all been both sides of that.
magic missile and shield are made by the same guy in the age of netheril
Of course Netherese Magic, those guys spent most of their days trying to mess each other up.
That would be the current lore, but that didn't exist when they were written. Lots of stuff retconned in over the years. For instance it isn't damaged capped in 1e AD&D so a level 30 caster fired 14 of them for 14d4+14 damage for a level 1 spell. No saves, no misses, range of 360 yards outdoors at that level.
@@stfrodric Yep. No eight dice on fireball or lightning bolt, either, just 1d6 per level, full stop. :D
@@y2a1979 back when epic level gameplay required all of your dice.
Kinda tragic how almost all Netherese spells had their inventors forgotten.
I don't even play DND but I LOVE your animated series the animation is so good and fun to watch
The magic missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't, by subtracting where it is, from where it isn't, or where it isn't, from where it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance sub-system uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the magic missile from a position where it is, to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position where it was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event of the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has required a variation. The variation being the difference between where the magic missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too, may be corrected by the GEA. However, the magic missile must also know where it was. The magic missile guidance computance scenario works as follows: Because a variation has modified some of the information the magic missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is, however it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subracts where it should be, from where it wasn't, or vice versa. By differentiating this from the algebraic sum og where it shouldn't be, and where it was. It is able to obtain a deviation, and a variation, which is called "air"
Loving the new animation style, its so cool seeing how much your animating talents have improved over this series. Also a really informative episode.
Watched a Tim Kask (one of the designers of AD&D) video once, and he said he really had to put some effort to persuade Gygax to make Magic Missile an auto-hit. Gygax originally wanted the Magic-User to role to hit. Gygax, according to Kask, didn't like spellcasters. The AD&D Magic User is a poor class. With a d4 hit dice, and one spell per day at level 1, it's really a challenge to survive to the point where a character can be powerful.
So Kask convinced Gygax that if the Magic User has only one spell per day and he chooses Magic Missile then at least make that lousy 1d4+1 guaranteed damage.
still one of my favorite episodes to date. You do lovely work and I’m glad you exist
3:13 Jocat cameo. The war is still on XD
If anyone ever played Baldur's Gate 1, they know the importance of Magic Missile. ANY damage stops a mage from casting and MM has an almost non existent cast time. Never misses.... Best interrupt in the game!
I've also recently used magic missile as a way to break a Cambion's Fiendish Charm affect on a party member in much the same way one uses it to break concentration, just with a bit of friendly fire
Magic missile + fireball the perfect deadly combo
but what about 12 magic missiles and a fireball?
fireball isn't exactly a "low level" spell...
My current go-to to clean a place is Melf's mini meteores + fireball + magic missile (lvl 7 sorcerer as I type this comment). Being paired with the mage of the campaign is always funny because he uses magic missile alongside lightning spells so we're basically the rocket launcher and rail gun in elven forms (both of the characters also happen to be the only 2 local elves lol). When peeps go "hehe squishy" on us, we "hehe squishy" them back.
fireball first, then magic missile the survivors.
@@webbowser8834A wizard will get access to it at 5th level, which is the lowest level of "tier 2". So while it isn't a "starter" spell like Magic Missile is, I think it can definitely be argued to be a low level spell and part of an early wizard setup.
It's kind of scary that dnd started so long ago that there's "lost history"
I've been playing since 1979. It been great fun watching the game evolve through the editions, except for 4th, that was so far from the spirit of the game I thought it would kill the brand entirely. I remember the satanic panic of the 80s when anyone who played was absolutely going to kill themselves, their parents, or random strangers to summon demons. As a result they took demons and devils out of the game by way of name changes and the game progressed and eventually demons and devils were demons and devils again. New players now, especially on social media, try to control the game just like the same people that accused of being satanist wanted to control it, only for different reasons. Way back in 1e days my groups were actually more diverse than they are today. We had all kinds of people play at my table or my friend's tables, blacks, Asians, mixed, boys, girls, jocks, geeks, bi and gay, etc. The only people that were excluded were people that caused trouble or just jerks in general. Anyone that wanted to have fun was welcome and there wasn't any kind of politics or agenda like you see so much of now. It was just people who liked to have fun getting together and doing just that. I miss those days.
@@darrenp9454
ah, the Panic. Brought on almost entirely by a flavor passage in the 1e DMG describing a flashy ritual to summon a demon. From there the christian world collectively forgot how reality worked
Chainmail is not really 'lost history', now Blackmore? THATS some lost history stuff as most of it was Arneson's personal campaign setting and only saw marginal print
@@darrenp9454 I have to disagree on a couple of points.
*4e wasn't "against the spirit of D&D." It also brought in tens of thousands of new players. To date, nobody has ever been able to explain how it "wasn't D&D," merely throwing around debunked assertions like "you can't RP in 4e" and "it focuses too much on map-based combat," as if OD&D wasn't a miniature-based wargame & 3.x didn't specifically reference 5' squares in every book.
*There's no more politics at D&D tables now than there were in the 70s & 80s; the internet has just made it more visible. As someone who started playing in the deep South, there was a lot of gatekeeping against non-whites & women (especially women/girls) by D&D players. The change in diversity in your personal experience is due to a change in the people surrounding you, not some shift in the demographics of players.
A thing not mentioned but useful to know is force damage is very special. In 3.5 at least, it is the one type of damage almost nothing resists and being a force effect it hits on multiple planes. This means it can always hit ghosts and other incorporeal beings.
Evocation wizard casts magic missile at 9th level.
The entire party: OH GODS THE BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE!
The DM: He did like 55 damage it's not that big of a deal.
And that's max damage ... you would most likely deal around 39 ... ToT
@@ShineyCrow Damage that doesn't miss. Magic Missile cast at 9th level can decimate an entire army.
@@CarrowMind imagine if the DM had given them a magic item granting+2 damage to all spells the attuned used.
@@CarrowMind (or you take 1/2 the HP of the LVL 6 barbarian)
Evocation Wizard uses Wish to upcast magic missile to 9,000,009th level
The DM: o_o
Magic missile is wonderous. The Magic missile mage was one of my favorite prestige classes Dragon magazine printed. A magical assasin with a wand of magic missile could easily kill the backline with little trouble.
Magic Missile Mage was not a powerful Prestige class on it’s own, but it was hella fun. Especially if you got War Mage from Dragonlance book with it.
The animation of Larry slinking back to his hole is great. It makes me chuckle every time.
3:13 boy do wizards not give up grudges easily
To be fair, Jo *did* burn up his main and all his back up spellbooks.
Easily. Or ever.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J.R.R. Tolkien
@@kingalfred2014 A true man of culture thee are I see
2:45 "D&D "Extends"
Ah, yes, the most popular D&D site.
Chainmail's wording of missile makes sense, as apart from referring to the self propelled weapons we know as missiles these days, the word also has a still valid and much older definition, that being "an object which is forcibly propelled at a target, either by hand or from a mechanical weapon."
So technically, a firearm fires missiles.
I actually have a copy of the chainmail rule set. So that's a thing. I liked the drawings of the books in this video. Very cool Zee 😊
There's a couple magic items in 5e that completely negate magic missile. Some use your reaction, but I think there's a ring that just makes you immune to it. No action required.
But aren't those pretty rare? Please correct me if I am wrong.
@@TheTiredBard By the loot drop table, yeah Im pretty sure but like all things its up to the whims of your DM
Yeah, they're very situational usually. You'd probably only look for them if you were planning on taking down a really powerful magic missile user.
Brooch of shielding: gives resistance to force damage & immunity to magic missile but requires a limited (Attune-ment slot)
It's a hefty price to gain two effects that don't come up much?
Update, I though shield of missile attraction and gloves of missile snaring were able to protect against magic missile as well as other ranged attacks, but I checked and they don't have any effect on magic missile.
This is bringing up a few memories of visiting the older game shops. Thanks for the stroll.
Magic missle is one of my groups favorite spells to flavor the look of. One dwarven wizard has theirs shaped like hammers. My magical girl styled one has her's shaped like pink roses
This makes a lot of sense. The term "missile" is very generic and can be applied to any number of things. It's also versatile yet low enough level that you can reasonably expect to see it in every campaign, regardless of what level the players are.
Phallic magic missiles
@@0DemonKiller0 I mean you can though that's kinda boring im
@@webbowser8834 honestly flavoring spells is always fun imo. As a player I always do it and as a GM I encourage it. That magical girl one has a lot of her stuff shaded pink or purple and as a joke I noted when she casts stinking cloud it smells like shitty overpowering mall perfume
My Graviturgy Wizard casts "Homing Soul Mass", basically.
My Eladrin Sorlock conjures up as many homing icicles to eff up the enemy targeted.
I never considered the concentration part, so that can also be applied to Eldritch Blast and to however many beams the player fires at once.
The notion of them triggering multiple concentration checks is controversial. Since they strike simultaneously, many treat that as a single instance of damage and only one concentration check. I believe that’s also Jeremy Crawford’s take on it for whatever that’s worth to people. Eldritch Blast is sequential, also according to Jeremy Crawford’s take (FWIW) and thus WOULD trigger multiple checks.
@@AnarchyInYourHead Especially since each beam requires an attack roll.
@@AnarchyInYourHead I think it's fair the simultaneous attacks count as multiple concentration rolls. If you got punched in the face and in the back as the same time that would be two things you had to defend against right?
@@aatired7307 Maybe. But it's not really about defending against them, it's about not being distracted by the pain. If you're being punched twice, simultaneously, you would say "Ow" not "Ooh, owch". This would all come down to DM discretion though. So, if you're the DM do what makes sense to you and if someone complains tell them to either prove it or shut it.
@@BBBness This is kinda abstract to explain, but if you're hurt in two places at the same time you kinda do go Ooh, ouch. I've never been punched simultaneously, but I've had muscle and joint aches in different areas of the body at the same time. Dealing with multiple different small sources of pain at once does literally take more concentration to deal with than one huge pain. With one pain you just hold still in that area, but with more than one you have to maneuver around the problem areas so that neither hurt. I imagine it's even harder to do if those pains are sudden like with an attack.
I love going back to the AD&D books on my shelf to compare 3.5 and 5th ed spells. I played AD&D as a child, so I have nothing memorized, but vague notions of what a magic-user or druid had cast.
“Force damage” = a chicken thrown at your face. Magic Missile is now just a mage throwing three chickens. - Randen Gardner, RUclips comment.
Chicken attack!?
@@curumu_yt I mean, force damage is just non-elemental damage, so throwing anything hard enough can be force damage... So let's do some Chicken Damage!
No, Force Damage is defined as "Pure magical force", and has the unique property of being able to damage incorporeal and ethereal foes. You're thinking of Kinetic Damage, which is what most physical weapons (and a few rare spells) deal, and is usually sub-definite into Bludgeoning, Piercing or Slashing damage.
@@Rikmach Joke's going over your head, I see... Maybe these chickens are MISS-iles after all! :D
isn't there art of magic missiles shaped as chickens in tasha's cauldron of everything?
“More knowledge and know how in the comments” me thinking about RUclips comment sections..... yeah maybe not
There's more knowledge and more bs!
When it comes to DnD, maybe. The problem is, its still the RUclips comment section soooo......
Well the Perception Skill video got some heat
its more knowledge and bullshit, it goes both directions.
BS is valuable unknowledge in itself. And I am a rich man.
I can never get past the E.T hands you give everyone. It's so jarring yet alluring. Like grubby hands that have a history or some shit.
Holy shit, can I just mention how MUCH you improved on your animation? Those smooth head position transitions are amazing and really make the animation feel alive
I'm with a customer!
I watch your videos over and over again. I luv your content - keep up the great work and many thanks for the efforts.
"I'm with a customer!" That was too real. 🤣
I thought "they strike simultaneously" was exactly addressing the concentration check thing.
No, just a quirk of the move to natural language. Mechanically “they strike simultaneously” means more or less nothing except maybe with regards to retargeting. (That is if you down a target with your first scorching Ray can you shoot the other two at other targets?). Both will require your DM to make a ruling because again, natural language
I loved the flavour of this one, different enough to stand out whilst similar enough to be on theme and you can tell how much effort was poured into it, great job!
4:15 This sounds suspiciously similar to the action economy.
If the misses strike simultaneously wouldn't that be one lump of damage and thus one concentration check?
I mean, if you want to be real technical, any set of attacks (Eldritch Blast, Extra Attack, Scorching Ray, Magic Missile), especially in combats with large groups of things in initiative, happy so quickly next to each other that they may as well be simultaneous
Being hit by 3 darts of magical energy in your face, shoulder, and knee all at once is just as distracting as being punched in the gut 3 times in the span of 6 seconds
@@Pancakeli I would say you have a point but my counter point is that all of those require separate attack rolls and can miss. None of them strike simultaneously either, eldritch blast can have many CC effects that can stack for instance.
@@Epsilon954 Your counter point is not good. Many of those attacks have the benefit of being far far more powerful and devastating than 1d4+1 and are completely free to use.
Magic Missile costs a level 1 spell slot, has super low damage, is easily stopped by several things, and does so little compared to what casters could do with their action and spell slots. It is in no way overpowered to say "hey make a couple more dc 10 saves."
If somebody's strategy revolves entirely around maintaining concentration on an effect, they can easily prepare for things that might stop them from doing that.
Rule it how you like, I'm not here to tell you how to play and enjoy dnd, but making Magic Missile do more multiple concentration checks is in no way overpowered. It would do that if you hit several concentrating targets, which is arguably more powerful anyways, so there's no reason good enough to say it shouldn't do the same to one target.
@@Epsilon954 You are right, you have to actually roll to hit which is a lot more "work" than "these all hit no matter what." Individual rolls means you probably will have to worry about concentration more and I'd say would cause more rolls. However (other than the funky controversial and often ignored flip flop of a sage advice) the magic missile spells specifically says all the missiles strike at the same time so if they are targeting one creature then it really only counts as one attach because all damage hits at one time so not 3x 1d4+1, but 3d4+3
Jeremy Crawford has on record said they cause multiple concentration checks. If you don't like that rule, that's fine, and I do know Mike Mearls has said the opposite, but Jeremy is the head rules designer, that's his job. His word would generally take precedence if you are looking for the actual ruling.
That ending cracked me up. Thank you for the amazing work.
Still remember playing one of my first games if D&D where a "expert" player kept insisting my Mage/Cleric (dual-class, knowledge cleric: because taking Life Cleric felt too min/maxy) cast Magic Missile as an offensive spell- even though I could prove to him by math that Guiding Bolt was a better spell for my character and did more damage on average (even after incorporating the chances if a miss) with the advantage to attack it provided the other players in the group.
Yeah, that guy was a jerk- and tried to play everyone's character for them- especially mine, as I was new...
I'm currently playing a Life Cleric, and defeated a miniboss using guiding bolt (and inflict wounds, but eh), so I know it's powerful. I didn't realize Life domain was min/maxy tho.
Meanwhile, our table treats Guiding Bolt as an in-joke, because the Cleric hasn't hit a single time with it
That guy was right.
Making a roll at all is putting the results up to god.
Every cast of Magic Missile is one more god rejected.
I always allowed clerics to take this spell in my games. Just called it "holy missile" and nobody complained
Canonically in previous editions Clerics of Ellistraee had it, because of that one time she accidentally shot her dad.
The power of Christ compels you! Also this magic gun that is my hand.
Arcana Domain Clerics (from Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide) get Magic Missile as one of their domain spells.
The biggest thing i take from your video is always the beauty of the art, and then your writing and lastly the information. Because your animation and writing is just soooo good
No, you are a real-life wizard trying his best to educate us plebians on the complexities of magic. YOU ARE NOT A CASHIER
...You can be both :)
Those spell components ain't cheap ya know? And it takes a while to grow a sprig of wormwood to the proper hue and size to work.
"now take my money"
He’s a wizard playing his own form of D&D... Desk jobs and Doormen.