Wisp Magic Immunity

[jcheung]

I was wondering if someone would be able to help me figure out why of all the force damage spells, only magic missile can damage a wisp-class creature? (excluding corpselight)

For one example, Force Bolt (wizard focus) is basically a single magic missile but can't damage wisp-class creatures.

Then there's the 12 other spells/focus spells that deal force damage-what can magic missile do that those types of force damage can't do?

The rest of the immunities make sense to me, but magic missile bypassing the immunity list confuses the stuffing out of me.

[Squiggit]

It's just some weird legacy quirk from older editions of D&D.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Will-o'-the-Wisp immunity to magic with the exception of magic missile (and maze and protection from evil) dates all the way back to as old as the magic missile spell. It even appears in the 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual (though technically the history of D&D can go back further, I can't find anything about it).

Plausibly in the olden days of AD&D, magic missile was thought or intended to be some kind of archetypal magic-user spell. It certainly manages to get called out in random places an exception to this or that, such as the shield spell's ability to block it, etc.

[jcheung]

Was Magic Missile the only force damage spell back then? I'm not familiar with the older rulesets.

[graystone]

Back in the old days it was "protection from evil, magic missile, and maze" that worked by default. There isn't a specific vulnerability to force, just spells listed.

There were a few other force spells like Mordenkainen's Sword but that spell says "it can hit any sort of opponent even those normally struck only by +3 weapons or astral, ethereal or out of phase". By the time you're high enough to cast that spell, you're unlikely to meet a will o wisp.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

graystone wrote:

Back in the old days it was "protection from evil, magic missile, and maze" that worked by default. There isn't a specific vulnerability to force, just spells listed.

There were a few other force spells like Mordenkainen's Sword but that spell says "it can hit any sort of opponent even those normally struck only by +3 weapons or astral, ethereal or out of phase". By the time you're high enough to cast that spell, you're unlikely to meet a will o wisp.

Heh... I wonder if old gaming groups ever got into pedantic hypothetical arguments about wisps being immune to Mord-Sword or not just because it's not listed as an exception but the latter affects anything? Sounds like fertile ground for the game's other favorite tradition.

[graystone]

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

graystone wrote:

Back in the old days it was "protection from evil, magic missile, and maze" that worked by default. There isn't a specific vulnerability to force, just spells listed.

There were a few other force spells like Mordenkainen's Sword but that spell says "it can hit any sort of opponent even those normally struck only by +3 weapons or astral, ethereal or out of phase". By the time you're high enough to cast that spell, you're unlikely to meet a will o wisp.

Heh... I wonder if old gaming groups ever got into pedantic hypothetical arguments about wisps being immune to Mord-Sword or not just because it's not listed as an exception but the latter affects anything? Sounds like fertile ground for the game's other favorite tradition.

Not really. Any caster that could use Mordenkainen's Sword most likely had magic missile too [x7 1d4+1 damage with no save is a good problem solver for a 1st level spell].

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

Just because it is extremely unlikely ever to come up in-play is hardly any defence against pedantic hypothetical arguments cropping up around it, but you do have a point.