Does Return to Nature stack

[Cheiromancer]

Return to nature is from the Eberron Campaign Setting, pp. 114-115. It has various effects on 'unnatural' creatures; when used against a creature of the Giant type it causes them to reduce in size as an instantaneous effect.

Giants subjected to this spell become smaller, as
though affected by a Reduce Person spell (see page 269 of
the Player’s Handbook).

The text of the reduce person spell states the following:


Multiple magical effects that reduce size do not stack, which means (among other things) that you can't use a second casting of this spell to further reduce the size of a humanoid that's still under the effect of the first casting.

Is there some reason that return to nature would not inherit the 'no stacking' feature of reduce person? I was wondering if maybe the instantaneous nature of the effect made it not count as magical. Instantaneous effects can't be dispelled (as per the text of dispel magic) but I am not sure whether that's the same thing.

Can anyone show by RAW that multiple castings of return to nature stack?

[Alleran]

Well, Reduce Person has a duration. So you can't cast one Reduce Person and then cast another while the same duration is going. So I guess it depends on whether you think Return To Nature's instantaneous duration means that it inherits the Reduce Person duration in perpetuity (although to me, instantaneous means it happens and then it's done, period, so you could cast it multiple times simply because you're not technically stacking the duration, as the duration is one-and-done).

[Chronos]

Instantaneous duration means that once the spell is done casting, you don't have an ordinarily-large giant who's under a Reduce Person effect; you just plain have a medium-sized giant. Since the magic doesn't linger, there's nothing to prevent it from working again. No, that's almost certainly not the intent of the writers, but that just means that their writing was sloppy.

It's not quite precisely stacking, though, since if you cast it again, you don't have a giant under two Reduce Person effects; you have a giant that just happens to be small. And so on.

If you want to houserule the spell to prevent this, probably the simplest way to do it is to say that any giant reduced to Medium size or smaller becomes a humanoid.

[Vaz]

It is stacking. It came from the same spell. Different casting, but same spell. If your DM allows that then henallows nightstick stacking, something he shouldn't want.

[Jeff the Green]

It is stacking. It came from the same spell. Different casting, but same spell. If your DM allows that then henallows nightstick stacking, something he shouldn't want.

Not necessarily. Nightsticks are an ongoing effect. Return to nature, with it's instantaneous duration, isn't. One can dispel (suppress) nightsticks (as they're magic items), but not instantaneous spells.

[Cheiromancer]

I've been thinking about this, and it seems to me that there are two kinds of instantaneous effects: those that last, and those that don't.

If you cast a fireball, the flame doesn't hang around; what remains is the damage it does (plus it can set stuff on fire). If you cast a wall of stone a non-magical mass of stone appears, but it doesn't disappear like a fireball; it stays indefinitely. The feature common to both kinds of instantaneous effects is that nothing magical remains after the casting of the spell. It is normal damage (or burning stuff), and normal stone.

Return to nature is a spell that acts like a reduce person, except that it affects giants and is of instantaneous duration. What kind of instantaneous duration? Instantaneous like fireball, or instantaneous like wall of stone? It would be a dumb spell if the reduction was only for a moment, so it has to be the latter. However, if that is the case, shouldn't the 'cannot be further reduced' clause also hang around? The one that it inherits from the reduce person spell. I think the reason people think this goes away is because instantaneous spells generally leave no magic behind, and an immunity to magical size reduction seems magical.

Still, I don't know of any RAW reasons why the size reduction would last but not the immunity to further size reductions.

[TuggyNE]

I've been thinking about this, and it seems to me that there are two kinds of instantaneous effects: those that last, and those that don't.

If you cast a fireball, the flame doesn't hang around; what remains is the damage it does (plus it can set stuff on fire). If you cast a wall of stone a non-magical mass of stone appears, but it doesn't disappear like a fireball; it stays indefinitely. The feature common to both kinds of instantaneous effects is that nothing magical remains after the casting of the spell. It is normal damage (or burning stuff), and normal stone.

Return to nature is a spell that acts like a reduce person, except that it affects giants and is of instantaneous duration. What kind of instantaneous duration? Instantaneous like fireball, or instantaneous like wall of stone? It would be a dumb spell if the reduction was only for a moment, so it has to be the latter. However, if that is the case, shouldn't the 'cannot be further reduced' clause also hang around? The one that it inherits from the reduce person spell. I think the reason people think this goes away is because instantaneous spells generally leave no magic behind, and an immunity to magical size reduction seems magical.

Still, I don't know of any RAW reasons why the size reduction would last but not the immunity to further size reductions.

It's like putting Invisible Spell on a wall of stone; it creates bizarre inconsistencies. I'm not sure how you should really resolve it logically, but it's something that really shouldn't happen; it should just be Permanent.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'd personally rule like Alleran, that seems the most RAW to my eyes.