Rules Lawyers, Mettle, Orb of Fire

[ciopo]

Except Mettle already takes care of that:



Orb of fire is the attack. It is also one single magical effect as seen in the effect line. If fire resistance reduces the damage to 0, as long as the spell hits it still rolls against the daze as energy resistance doesn't disrupt a spell. Being struck does not equate to doing damage. It just means the attack roll beats the AC.

Take a look at Ray of Exhaustion. Would you really say that Mettle wouldn't negate the entire effect. Fortitude partials are all like that and the description of Mettle specifically calls them out as completely negating the magical effect of the spell.

I re-point out that Orb of X description have two separate paragraphs, that to me denotes some measure of separation between the effects of a spell. that section is called "Descriptive text", not "effect", but much as I like arguing semantic, I understand where you're coming from here, I colloquially call that the spell effect, too.

I can do bolded quote too, specifically that the actual text of orb of X are "... fortitude save negates ...", and ray of exhaustion is the perfect use case of it indeed being completely negated by mettle as opposed to partially negated (no argument here, we agree), I don't know how to do that without sounding confrontational, so if I'm sounding confrontational, I am giving out reassurance that I am not being confrontational.

The lesser effect of orb of fire is doing just damage. Mettle negates that effect. The lesser effect of ray of exhaustion is causing fatigue. Mettle negates that.

for a moment I misread that as "lesser orb of fire" and I was confused, but this brought this thought to me : I find there to be some argumentative wiggle room that "Orb of X, lesser" have no saving throw, therefore the damage portion of "Orb of X, lesser" is behaviorally the same, and the fortitude save clearly ( to me ) refers only to the sickened/dazed/etc, and negates that.

agree to disagree, I suppose?

Are you talking about Hexblade Mettle or Pious Templar Mettle? I'm more likely to accept Pious templar Mettle to completely negate a spell, because that's what it says it does. Hexblade Mettle does not say "completely negate the spell", it says "completely negates the effect"(implied, to me : "..the effect that would otherwise (do something) on a successfull save.") ( and the implication of the implied is that the damage of Orbs have no relation to the secondary effect of causing some debuff with fort negate )