Rules Question: Protective Bond and AOEs

[Hael]

So this aims to elucidate the mechanics of a Peace clerics lvl 6th ability with regards to AOEs. The ability reads:

Protective Bond

Beginning at 6th level, the bond you forge between people helps them protect each other. When a creature affected by your Emboldening Bond feature is about to take damage, a second bonded creature within 30 feet of the first can use its reaction to teleport to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the first creature. The second creature then takes all the damage instead.

So the mechanics of how this work is relevant for another thread, so I thought to bring it up here. I've seen it discussed in a few discords and reddit before, but never really found a convincing story.

Lets do this by cases:

Case 1
Let x and y be party members that are bonded by a peace cleric. A cone based AOE is targeted and clips both x and y, where the edges of the cone exactly touch x and y. X can thus take his reaction and tank the damage for y.
Now how do you rule damage? Is it a) y takes no damage and x takes twice the AOE damage or b) y takes no damage and x takes a single application of the AOE?

Case 2
Same as above, except this time y teleports to 5 feet outside of the cone. When ruling damage is it a) or b)

Case 3
Let x, y and z be party members. x, y and z are again taking damage from a cone. This time y takes the damage for x but stays within the cone, and z takes the damage for y and stays within the cone. How much damage does each take? It seems clear that x always takes no damage. But how many doses of the aoe do y and z take respectively?

Case 4.
Same as above, except wherever applicable y and z are teleporting out of the cone area of effect.

A few things stand out here. First is that this really requires a temporal ordering by the DM to make sense. He has to choose what comes first, the initial damage, the reaction, the teleport or the subsequent damage. He also has to choose how to apply the initial damage, and whether or not all party members are hit simultaneously or if its really someone gets hit first, then someone gets hit second, etc.

There is a potential for daisy chaining reactions and essentially escaping most of the damage of an aoe completely if ruled one way. Its also not entirely clear how you treat resistances during this whole process (are they applied each time or do they only matter when applied to the final recipient) Otoh, there is also the potential to line up a huge amount of damage to one target, that might actually be immune to the damage type in the first place.

RAW, I can't make sense of this, other than that there seems to be precedence for reactions to take place before the damage is applied.

[Valmark]

So, the reaction is taken when you're about to take damage and AoE damage is applied to everybody at the same time- as such when X or Y can take the reaction nobody has received damage.

Case 1:
From what I understood the cone doesn't fully engulf Y and their surrounding spaces- as such X can teleport out of AoE range and take Y's damage, leaving it uncathed. Effectively this halves the total damahe received between X and Y.

If it does fully engulf Y and spaces around X would take twice the damage.

Case 2:
In this case Y definitely takes only X's damage and not their own.

Case 3:
Imo Z would take thrice the damage. If Y takes X's damage then when Z takes it for Y they are taking X's too.

Case 4:
Eh, when someone teleports out of the AoE they aren't taking their own third of the damage, simply.

The only thing I see that isn't covered by RAW is wether the Reaction have to be taken sequentially or simultaneously- a DM could rule either way. I'd go with sequentially.

[quindraco]

If multiple things try to happen simultaneously, per Xanathar's, active human at the table determines order. Let's give a PVP example, to keep the DM out of this:

Adam's character Albertus is casting Burning Hands on Bob's character Boblin and Carl's character Carlita. Strictly speaking, Boblin and Carlita can't take damage simultaneously - instead, they take damage in an order determined by Adam. That same order will, of course, determine the order they can react in. Note that Adam is making this decision, not Albertus, so strictly speaking, the RAW encourages what we would otherwise consider metagaming - Albertus should have no idea Boblin and Carlita are bonded, but Adam generally will. You may have better results house ruling that the character makes the decision.

[Valmark]

If multiple things try to happen simultaneously, per Xanathar's, active human at the table determines order. Let's give a PVP example, to keep the DM out of this:

Adam's character Albertus is casting Burning Hands on Bob's character Boblin and Carl's character Carlita. Strictly speaking, Boblin and Carlita can't take damage simultaneously - instead, they take damage in an order determined by Adam. That same order will, of course, determine the order they can react in. Note that Adam is making this decision, not Albertus, so strictly speaking, the RAW encourages what we would otherwise consider metagaming - Albertus should have no idea Boblin and Carlita are bonded, but Adam generally will. You may have better results house ruling that the character makes the decision.

Keep in mind that this is an optional rule- otherwise they would indeed take damage simultaneously.

(I don't think this changes anything in a worthwile manner, just wanted to specify that).

[Man_Over_Game]

It's pretty damn ambiguous, and it's something I've kinda mulled over since I've seen it.

As a DM, I'd probably rule it as being simple math. For every 1 instance of damage, there has to be 1 instance of damage. Sets pretty standard expectations across the board, and people are getting what they're paying for. The movement doesn't change the damage being dealt, that's determined at the time of the effect.

[Segev]

I must emphatically disagree with this assertion:

Strictly speaking, Boblin and Carlita can't take damage simultaneously.

An AoE absolutely does deal damage simultaneously. There is nothing in the rules requiring that it not, and everything about it that suggests that it both should and does. Even if a single player (probably the DM) is responsible for recording all of the damage and has to do so sequentially, the writing down of damage out of game isn't creating an order in which the in-game entities take it.

With this in mind, Boblin and Carlita would, in fact, take damage simultaneously. Which means that, if Carlita is about to take damage, so is Boblin. If Boblin, seeing Carlita about to take damage, uses the Reaction granted by the Protective Bond to teleport to within 5 feet of Carlita, Boblin takes Carlita's damage instead of Carlita taking it.

In the case where Boblin teleports somewhere inside the AoE, he still takes his own damage for being inside of it, as well. In the case where he teleports somewhere outside of it, he takes only Carlita's, because he's not in the AoE when the damage is inflicted. In the last case, where Z uses a reaction to jump in the way of Y who has used his reaction to jump in the way of X and all three are inside the AoE after all the teleporting is done, Z takes 3 "doses" of the AoE damage: his own, Y's, and the dose Y would have taken for X.

This is only true because of game structure, however. I would fully support a DM who ruled that the actual in-game events are one character moving to totally shield another, such that Boblin must teleport somewhere WITHIN the AoE (and possibly even "between the source" and Carlita) to block damage to Carlita, BUT that Boblin only takes one instance of damage in so doing, AND that in the last case of Z blocking for Y blocking for X, Z must move to be in the path of the AoE for Y who must have done the same for X, but Z is the only one to take damage.

Whether it's worth the extra mental effort by the players at the table to work out geometries and reduce damages to achieve verisimilitude, or better just to go with the easier game construct, is up to the table. The RAW way to run it would have the damages stacking if the blocker is in the AoE, and permit the blocker to still take only one dose if he can teleport to outside of it.

A super-cheesy exploit would actually be for X and Y to simultaneously use their reactions to teleport to places adjacent to each other such that both are outside of the AoE. This can either be resolved according to their positions when the reactions are taken, or can be forced sequential by a "location indeterminate" error if they happen with true simultaneity. But given how cheesy this is, I wouldn't fault a DM for simply disallowing it.

[Darth Credence]

Case 1 - y takes x's damage through the bond, and takes their own damage through being in the AOE.

Case 2 - y takes x's damage through the bond, is outside of the AOE when it hits and doesn't take damage from the AOE. (The spell text quoted says when x is about to take damage y can take their reaction to teleport, so it happens before the AOE hits.)

Case 3 - y take's x's AOE damage through the bond, z take's y's AOE damage through the bond, z takes their own AOE damage. Since they each have to take their reaction to takes someone else's damage, they can only take one set of damage. Y's AOE damage and bond damage are two separate instances, so z can only take one of them.

Case 4 - One of two ways, depending how the characters want to use their reactions. As the AOE is about to hit, y can move to take the damage through the bond for x. That would move them out of the AOE, and they wouldn't get that damage themselves. However, the bond damage would occur after the AOE, so z would take the aoe, they could choose to teleprt and take the bond damage that went to y. So either z takes two doses of AOE, their own and the damage that y took through the bond, or they can just take the AOE, retain their reaction, and y takes the bond damage.

Case 4 is the only one that doesn't seem completely clear by RAW to me. I could certainly see a player arguing case 4 and saying that z should be able to teleport out of the AOE when he takes the bond damage from y, but I would stick with the bond damage isn't about to happen until the AOE is already happening. I would rule that resistances only matter to the final recipient of the damage, unless there is something in the spell that changes the damage type.

[Dork_Forge]

This is what you meant by a RAW argument, edge cases where someone can teleport outside of the AOE? I don't see what's so ambiguous about this personally, I think Valmark did a great job of addressing each case.

If you teleport to take someone else's damage and that teleportation leaves you in the aoe still, you take your damage and theirs. There's no reason to assume the damage is not taken simultaneously, so I don't see what the point of ordering anything is, whomever is the last one to use the bond in that manner takes sum total of everyone before in the chain's damage plus their own if they are still in the aoe.

As for why you're asking this question to begin with:

It leads to one character taking a larger amount of damage with the party clumping itself up to be helpless against the next breath at the end of the next turn.

[Valmark]

I must emphatically disagree with this assertion:


An AoE absolutely does deal damage simultaneously. There is nothing in the rules requiring that it not, and everything about it that suggests that it both should and does. Even if a single player (probably the DM) is responsible for recording all of the damage and has to do so sequentially, the writing down of damage out of game isn't creating an order in which the in-game entities take it.

Note: quindraco is referring to an actual (optional) rule from Xanathar's that says that with simultaneous effects the active person chooses the sequence they resolve in.

There is a case to be made on wether an AoE has multiple effects or the same istance of effect applied repeatedly, but regardless, under that rule quindraco's explanation does make sense.

Homewever being an optional rule it really only matters if a DM wants to (which is true for any rule, but optional ones even more so)- I agree that in the general case AoEs deal damage simultaneously.

[Hael]

So, the reaction is taken when you're about to take damage and AoE damage is applied to everybody at the same time- as such when X or Y can take the reaction nobody has received damage.

Interesting. For what its worth I agree, and this is how I would run it as well. For instance suppose we redo case 1 and now Y is outside the cone. Then when he teleports in to take X's damage, he is now in range and takes a dose himself (thus taking two applications). In other words like you say, damage is always applied *after* the reaction.

The issue then is with case 3. Where you have X, Y and Z all inside. So lets do the order of operation here.

1) X is about to take damage (but it hasn't been applied yet).
2) Y teleports next to X (but still within the cone)
3) Y takes the damage from X's attack (but has yet to receive a new dose)
4) Z see's that Y is about to take damage and uses his reaction to teleport)
5) Z takes Y's damage (just one dose so far).
6) Everyone's reaction is over. Time to check positions. All are in range. However Y took X's damage, and Z took the initial hit to Y. However Y still has to take their own damage from the aoe, and Z does as well.

So I can see an argument for either Y taking 1 dose, and Z taking 2 doses. Or Z taking 3 doses. It depends if you can wait after step 3 for when Y receives the second dose, and whether you can *combine* damages.

[Hael]

A super-cheesy exploit would actually be for X and Y to simultaneously use their reactions to teleport to places adjacent to each other such that both are outside of the AoE. This can either be resolved according to their positions when the reactions are taken, or can be forced sequential by a "location indeterminate" error if they happen with true simultaneity. But given how cheesy this is, I wouldn't fault a DM for simply disallowing it.

Indeed, and its not even that difficult, given that they can always teleport 5' in the z axis. Given the nature of this ability, I could definitely see some DMs nerfing it by making all damage apply BEFORE the reaction teleport takes place. In other words if you are in the initial flash, you're taking damage unless someone tanks it for you (this then leads to the conservation of initial aoe damage scenario)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Indeed, and its not even that difficult, given that they can always teleport 5' in the z axis. Given the nature of this ability, I could definitely see some DMs nerfing it by making all damage apply BEFORE the reaction teleport takes place. In other words if you are in the initial flash, you're taking damage unless someone tanks it for you (this then leads to the conservation of initial aoe damage scenario)

My gut ruling is that reactions happen after the trigger unless they necessarily need to happen before the trigger (ie shield or absorb elements). So I'd rule (without looking at the details, and subject to quibbling and pushback) that if you're a target for the damage as well, you can't avoid it by teleporting out of it as a reaction that triggers on taking damage. The damage applies to all targets simultaneously. And since player-targeting AoEs tend to happen on monsters' turns, that leaves it up to me to determine timing if there's conflict. If there's no conflict, then all the damage is assigned in parallel.

But I'll repeat that that's my gut ruling, not something I'm tied to very hard.

[Valmark]

My gut ruling is that reactions happen after the trigger unless they necessarily need to happen before the trigger (ie shield or absorb elements). So I'd rule (without looking at the details, and subject to quibbling and pushback) that if you're a target for the damage as well, you can't avoid it by teleporting out of it as a reaction that triggers on taking damage. The damage applies to all targets simultaneously. And since player-targeting AoEs tend to happen on monsters' turns, that leaves it up to me to determine timing if there's conflict. If there's no conflict, then all the damage is assigned in parallel.

But I'll repeat that that's my gut ruling, not something I'm tied to very hard.

Note that the reaction happens when you're about to take damage, not when you do take it (as in, according to the text). If not for that specification I think too it should go after the damage, but it does specify that the teleport happens before taking damage.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Note that the reaction happens when you're about to take damage, not when you do take it (as in, according to the text). If not for that specification I think too it should go after the damage, but it does specify that the teleport happens before taking damage.

In that case, I'd probably just let it slide. Sure, you can cheat things, but I think it's enough of a corner case that I'm not particularly worried. You need a space within 5' of the second person that's not in the AoE, which reduces the blast radius (pun intended).

Plus, I don't think I've enabled Peace Clerics in my own campaigns, so it's not something that would come up much.