Thunderous Smite

[Danimal66]

It wouldn't be a Weds. if I didn't have a post session question(s)

Last night my Paladin decided to cast Thunderous Smite and I'm a little unsure we handled it right and what exactly it is doing. The description of the spell is as follows:

The first time you hit with a melee weapon attack during this spell’s duration, your weapon rings with thunder that is audible within 300 feet of you, and the attack deals an extra 2d6 thunder damage to the target. Additionally, if the target is a creature, it must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be pushed 10 feet away from you and knocked prone.

I'm not in front of my FG right now and probably should be but if I recall he had a cast button attack button and save button. Anyway he tried to cast the spell which cause an attack to occur but it didn't have any of his bonuses. The creature also failed a save. In the combat tracker I saw 2 effects. The prone effect from failing the save and a 2D6 Thunder damage effect.

My assumption is his next melee hit during the spells duration would cause an automatic 2d6 thunder damage roll. The character hit with his next attack while the effect was still present but this didn't occur. This bring up several questions for me and I'll admit effects are still hit or miss for me.

1. Should the thunder damage of been automatically rolled?
2. Why is the cast button making an attack for this spell?
3. I did the damage manually by simply having him roll 2d6 and manually applying the lose to the monsters health. However if I wanted him to say roll 2d6 thunder damage to this creature is that even possible?

Thanks, one day I will master all of this.

[jshauber]

OK here comes an answer...

1. Under the spell you can create effects/attacks/heals/etc. You can link the CAST button to roll a save as well as make a melee attack. You just have to open the magnifying glass next to the spell and enter the proper bonuses for the attack. Alternately, you can set up a separate melee attack with an extra 2d6 thunder damage in the weapon section, and just use the cast button to roll the save and apply the effect. If you saw a 2d6 thunder damage effect than that is because it is set up that way and not associated with the weapon damage.

IF the 2d6 damage is going to apply for multiple rounds then I would set up a separate combat entry for it and just use an effect to track the duration of the thunder damage entry being used. You can then use the cast button for hitting other targets and have them make a save or apply the prone effect.

Still willing to do a one-one session if you want.

[Danimal66]

Jim I emailed you just a bit ago.

I guess i should of been a little clearer. I have the complete 5E Player pack. So I just dragged this spell to the character sheet. It created all those effects when put on there. I guess based on your answer i need to adjust those to how I want them. I'm just a little surprised that the spell is not set up accurately.

[TASagent]

I don't think there is a cast button that is distinct from an attack button. Likely the spell was parsed and the parser said "Ooo! This says melee weapon attack, so I'll add an attack." and it did. But if you think about it, there's no way the spell can know what melee weapon attack you intend to use. You should remove the attack action that was automatically added by default.

The effect that it parsed out by default is wrong. It actually added an effect to the monster that would add 2d6 thunder damage to all of his attacks until the end of the round. Instead you want the effect to target yourself (you don't cast this on an enemy, you cast it on yourself), and you want it to expire on the next roll, and you only want it to trigger on melee attacks. Something like "DMG: 2d6 thunder melee", set to expire on next roll and apply to self.

[Danimal66]

I don't think there is a cast button that is distinct from an attack button. Likely the spell was parsed and the parser said "Ooo! This says melee weapon attack, so I'll add an attack." and it did. But if you think about it, there's no way the spell can know what melee weapon attack you intend to use. You should remove the attack action that was automatically added by default.

The effect that it parsed out by default is wrong. It actually added an effect to the monster that would add 2d6 thunder damage to all of his attacks until the end of the round. Instead you want the effect to target yourself (you don't cast this on an enemy, you cast it on yourself), and you want it to expire on the next roll, and you only want it to trigger on melee attacks. Something like "DMG: 2d6 thunder melee", set to expire on next roll and apply to self.

This makes sense, since it was a spell from the official content do I report somewhere that it is not set up right? I can't be the only one who is going to run into this problem.

[TASagent]

You can report it to the 5e Bugs thread. But I'm not sure if it will get fixed.

Automation of this variety can be done be accomplished with a broad, narrow, or mixed approach. The broad approach is to implement a parser that produces good results in the majority of cases - this works fairly well with how Wizards words things fairly consistently. The narrow approach is to predefine the effects associated with each specific spell that could be added to the spellbook - this gives you the ability to have 100% correct effects, but makes it more difficult to impossible to get similar results for homebrew. The mixed approach is to do both, with the narrow implementation overriding the broad one when provided - this is the best approach overall but more work than both of the others combined.

Smiteworks opted for the broad approach, which I agree with as a balance between the amount of effort and the utility for everyone. They do not have the ability (currently, anyway) to override the effects and such generated by the spell parser with more tuned effects and abilities. To improve the abilities generated by the parser, an expanded set of rules that work correctly for all spells needs to be developed. Inelegantly crowbaring in a fix for one spell can (and often will) break a dozen of others that were working fine. Improving on the parser is challenging because you want to make sure that you fix more than you break.

One of the several benefits is that player-entered and player-created content can have complete functionality. Want to make a fireball that deals acid damage and applies a damage over time? You can, and if it's worded like Wizards' spells, it will parse properly.

The main drawback is that there are going to exist spells that don't parse correctly and give you bad results.

Reporting it is helpful because it helps create a list of spells that aren't parsing properly, and the programmer tasked with improving the parser can see if there's any similarities among the ones that are failing, and if there's any way to adjust the algorithm so that they turn out correct without breaking anything else.

But, again, this isn't unfortunately just an issue of adjusting some effects defined in their database.

Generally speaking, fixing the effects for spells that don't parse properly needs only be done once on a given character sheet.

[jshauber]

Agree with TAS here. The outliers are easily fixed on a per case basis, while the vast majority work as intended from the go.

Starting the thread and replies on how it can be corrected should allow others to make changes as they experience/use the spells that do have a flaw or two.

[kylania]

You can report it to the 5e Bugs thread. But I'm not sure if it will get fixed.

But, again, this isn't unfortunately just an issue of adjusting some effects defined in their database.


So are you saying that when I drag a spell from the spell list to the character sheet it parses it on the fly to create the effects? That's why it won't get fixed since fixing it would require changing the run time parser?

Or are these effects created once via the parser when the module is created then added to the character sheet from the pre-parsed spell block? If that's the case fixing this should be as simple as adjusting the XML and pushing out an update, right? Same as if it was a typo in the spell or something, right?

[TASagent]

You did kind of answer your own question, by outlining the possibilities and noting that only one was congruent with what I'd said.

Yes, the spells are parsed on the fly. That's actually why you have the ability to right-click on a spell and choose "reparse spell actions", or whatever that particular choice is called. You can edit the spell's description to better suit the parser and choose reparse if you want. That's a helpful option if you're tweaking homebrew spells to have the right wording.

[Moon Wizard]

I'll take a look at the parsing to see if I can help clean up some of these items with the next patch.

If a spell or ability does require a weapon attack to use (not triggered like this one), there is not currently a way of selecting which weapon gets used. In those cases, I would turn off or adjust the attack based on the weapon bonuses. Unless they are using a magic weapon, it should be the same roll anyways.

Cheers,
JPG

[kylania]

Ooh interesting!

[damned]

You can report it to the 5e Bugs thread. But I'm not sure if it will get fixed.

Automation of this variety can be done be accomplished with a broad, narrow, or mixed approach. The broad approach is to implement a parser that produces good results in the majority of cases - this works fairly well with how Wizards words things fairly consistently. The narrow approach is to predefine the effects associated with each specific spell that could be added to the spellbook - this gives you the ability to have 100% correct effects, but makes it more difficult to impossible to get similar results for homebrew. The mixed approach is to do both, with the narrow implementation overriding the broad one when provided - this is the best approach overall but more work than both of the others combined.

Smiteworks opted for the broad approach, which I agree with as a balance between the amount of effort and the utility for everyone. They do not have the ability (currently, anyway) to override the effects and such generated by the spell parser with more tuned effects and abilities. To improve the abilities generated by the parser, an expanded set of rules that work correctly for all spells needs to be developed. Inelegantly crowbaring in a fix for one spell can (and often will) break a dozen of others that were working fine. Improving on the parser is challenging because you want to make sure that you fix more than you break.

One of the several benefits is that player-entered and player-created content can have complete functionality. Want to make a fireball that deals acid damage and applies a damage over time? You can, and if it's worded like Wizards' spells, it will parse properly.

The main drawback is that there are going to exist spells that don't parse correctly and give you bad results.

Reporting it is helpful because it helps create a list of spells that aren't parsing properly, and the programmer tasked with improving the parser can see if there's any similarities among the ones that are failing, and if there's any way to adjust the algorithm so that they turn out correct without breaking anything else.

But, again, this isn't unfortunately just an issue of adjusting some effects defined in their database.

Generally speaking, fixing the effects for spells that don't parse properly needs only be done once on a given character sheet.

I do love your explanations!

[TASagent]

Thank you!

I never want to just answer a question. I usually try to also impart some understanding as to why the answer is what it is. More interesting that way.

[limpinjezus]

Just a note, I've noticed a few Paladin spells that parse with the incorrect damage effect as described here and off the top of my head, it likely was all the smite line spells.

[Zacchaeus]

Just a note, I've noticed a few Paladin spells that parse with the incorrect damage effect as described here and off the top of my head, it likely was all the smite line spells.

All of the 'Smite' spells in fact parse damage correctly, but as I think has been pointed out above one or two parse some extra stuff.

In the case of Thunderous Smite it parses an attack described as melee. To fix this you would click the magnifying glass on the 'cast' line and in the dialog which pops up click on 'type' until you get '-'. This leaves the saving throw and takes out the unneeded melee bit.

When he 'casts' the spell the player doesn't actually do anything in terms of attack or damage; he just sort of 'prepares' the spell ready for when he next hits something within the time limit. So all that needs happen is the player tells you that he is using his bonus action to cast the spell (all of them are bonus action spells). Now, this could of course lead to the player or you forgetting that they have done so, or the player might get hit and lose concentration and therefore the spell. So you could create a new effect for the spell with just it's name and a time of 1 minute and drag this effect onto the player when he says he is casting it. What I do is have spellcasters have a general effect simply called concentrating and drag that; it's up to them to remember which spell they are concentrating on :)

To actually use the spell the player, once he hits, drags the damage effect onto himself before he rolls for damage. When he does that roll the additional damage (along with the correct type) is applied to whatever other damage is done. If, then, there is an additional effect (such as is the case with Thunderous smite) then the player will click the cast button to force the save and then click the 'Prone' effect if the creature fails.

The procedure detailed above can be used to 'correct' all of these spells.

[TASagent]

I think he was just point out Smite as another place to look when Moon Wizard is looking at the parser. Ideally, these would parse without the defined attack and with an effect that is set to Self-target.

While it's possible to work around the default parsed features, it isn't, strictly speaking, necessary.

[Zacchaeus]

I think he was just point out Smite as another place to look when Moon Wizard is looking at the parser. Ideally, these would parse without the defined attack and with an effect that is set to Self-target.

While it's possible to work around the default parsed features, it isn't, strictly speaking, necessary.

Indeed, but when players see a button they are going to push it aren't they :)

[Nylanfs]

https://www.volacci.com/files/imce-uploads/dont-push-button_0.jpg

[Danimal66]

FWIW thanks to jshauber spending sometime in game with me last night I was able to get this and a few other custom powers working correctly. I'm not in front of my PC to recall exactly what I did but it was pretty simple with Jim's help.

[jshauber]

Just doing my part to pay back the community for the help I got (and still do) from guys like Trenloe, Blackfoot and others.