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Hi folks,
Two questions came up today:
1) Confusion says “use all your actions to strike or cast offensive cantrips…”. Since “stride” isn’t an option, does this imply that someone who’s confused is unable to move and can just be kept away from?
2) We disturbed a Drider armed with a glaive with 10ft reach. The Drider opened the door that was between us. However, the GM then had trouble as the Drider entry does not list the reach of the Drider’s hands and it was a bit difficult to believe that the Drider hooked the door handle with their glaive and then pulled it open. Is there any standard assumption about the interaction reach of creatures with weapons that would clearly increase reach beyond their hands, but that don’t have listed unarmed attack reach?
1) if you finish reading the sentence it answers your question for you.
"You use all your actions to Strike or cast offensive cantrips, though the GM can have you use other actions to facilitate attack, such as draw a weapon, move so that a target is in reach, and so forth."2) while not explicitly stated, it is implied in the Drider's statblock that it does not have natural reach. The glaive is a reach weapon even in the hands of a PC, so that is why it is listed as having reach. Compare that to Fangs which don't have reach.
There is not hard and fast rule for this question. it's really just a case by case decision by the GM.
Yeah, if a creature doesn't list a reach for the creature overall as an override, then I would use the default reach entries for the creature size.
If an entry for an attack lists a different reach, then that is an override for that specific attack. Not for the other attacks, and not for interact actions such as opening a door, and not for combat maneuvers such as grapple and trip.
What's funny is that despite having entries for reach based on creature size including a tall and long variant for each, I don't see it called out (in the drider entry) whether it's tall or long. But traditionally IIRC drider's have always had 5ft reach as a normal medium humanoid would, and it's only size large because of the bottom spider half of the creature.
It's not as clear as it could be, but the fact that the glaive calls out 10ft reach and the other don't call out anything strongly implies only 5ft reach. Otherwise the default would be 10ft for a large creature, but then you wouldn't need to call out the glaive as having 10ft, rather it would have 15ft reach.
There isn't a callout in the statblock because the table of what kind of reach things usually have is a guideline of what to expect, not a rule defining defaults. So the actual reached for a creature are expected to be in its statblock directly, not pulled from that table. The table is there to give you something to work from when you need to improvise and when making your own critters. The long and tall variants aren't actually a mechanical designation anything officially has.
So the actual reached for a creature are expected to be in its statblock directly, not pulled from that table.
So if the table isn't the defaults, what is?
An Aluum Enforcer is size Large. It doesn't give any listing of its reach for any of its attacks (which is pretty typical). It is important to know since the creature does have Attack of Opportunity. So is that AoO field 5 feet, 10 feet, or zero because it doesn't have anything listed?
IIRC in first edition most animals that crawl or walk on all fours (such as mounts and animal companions) were long and large humanoids were tall.
The Aluum enforcer doesn't have the humanoid trait but its art is humanoid. It's probably large(tall).
The drider is half humanoid but it's not large because of the torso part and the glaive giving them the same reach as if they were large(tall) probably confirms that they're large(long).
Of course don't quote me on that, I don't have a source for that in second edition.
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Glancing around a bit at a few monsters, I feel like the answer is...
That there just isn't, or wasn't at some point, a standard when it comes to writing monster stat blocks.
On the one hand, many creatures list independent reaches for different attacks, which don't make a lot of sense if we stick with the default assumptions. It doesn't make sense an Ogre has a 10 foot reach on one attack and no reach on another attack if it just has a 10 foot reach on every attack by default.
On the other hand, it seems inconsistent that the Aluum Enforcer, or something like the Huge Giant Animated Statue have a reach of just 5 feet.
Plus almost no tiny creature I could find specifically mentions a 0 foot reach, which means if we're supposed to ignore the table most of those creatures have a 5 foot reach instead. That doesn't sound right.
Always relying on the table gets you redundant values that don't make sense when a monster is clearly designed to have variable reach, and always ignoring the table means many creatures have very strange reaches without much justification for it. The whole thing feels haphazard.
So the actual reached for a creature are expected to be in its statblock directly, not pulled from that table.So if the table isn't the defaults, what is?
An Aluum Enforcer is size Large. It doesn't give any listing of its reach for any of its attacks (which is pretty typical). It is important to know since the creature does have Attack of Opportunity. So is that AoO field 5 feet, 10 feet, or zero because it doesn't have anything listed?
5ft. Attacks list their reach when it is other than 5ft, even if they are not small or medium.
This is also why, for example, an Enlarge spell lists increasing your reach, because it is not baked into the size change.
