D&D General How would you make this ruling? Vortex Warp

Sorry to say that I disagree. Swallowed is not the same as grappled, it’s similar, but it’s not the same. I would say it travels with it, along with the rest of the contents of the stomach.

If you take the approach that a creature targeted doesn’t include creatures within it then teleport effects would be a cure for parasites.

A second level spell that can move a creature of any size? Yuk.

Paul Farquhar said:

If teleportation did not work on creatures inside the body of the target, a wizard would leave their gut bacteria behind every time they misty stepped, which would be both disgusting and unhealthy.

In fact most creatures will have a whole bunch of organisms living in and on them - worms, fleas, ticks, fungi etc, then there are collective organisms like Portuguese man-o-war. I would rule that these things are all part of one creature for purpose of teleport. The druid is teleported with the fish, they are not left behind.

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You're stretching WAY too hard to find physics-based reasons to ignore the game mechanics laid out in the rules. Show me a statblock for Gut Bacteria and then I'd agree that it's a creature that would be left behind when teleporting

I allow teleports out of grapple, and being swallow whole is just extreme form of being grappled so I would allow it.
It cost a 2nd level spell, an Action and can fail due to Con save and big monsters tend to have high Con.

DrJawaPhD said:

You're stretching WAY too hard to find physics-based reasons to ignore the game mechanics laid out in the rules. Show me a statblock for Gut Bacteria and then I'd agree that it's a creature that would be left behind when teleporting

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Yea, but that's kind of the core issue.

The mechanics of the spell create the idea of an effect that's functioning with intention. The spell can distingush between a swallowed sword (an object) and a swallowed person (a creature). Heck, it can distinguish between a dead person (an object) and a live person (a creature). That implies that the spell is targeting a specific identity (THAT fish monster), and doesn't impact any other identity (the swallowed druid).

But, the narrative of the spell, especially the name, indicate the idea of the spell is creating a minor warp in space, something like a wormhole, to move one creature from one point to another. The Con save indicates that the spell is somehow forceful and impacts the body, reinforcing the "spatial tear" idea.

So I think the spell has some tension between the narrative it's presenting and how it implements it.

Granted, that might be inescapable; making the spell target a specific square or squares also presents its own edge cases.

If a creature is attacked by a red slaad it is possible that they are now carrying a slaad egg that will hatch and kill the host. I would rule that a creature cannot have the egg removed by teleporting the host.

The PC cannot be targeted separate from the fish, therefore spells that target the fish target the fish's stomach contents as well. It's no different than attempting to target the host and the red slaad egg separately.

Echohawk said:

Whenever this sort of unusual situation arises in my games (which happens surprisingly frequently!), we typically revert to an Arcana check for the caster, to see if they can tweak the spell to work exactly the way that they are hoping it will on the fly. If the caster makes a, say DC15, Arcana check then they manage to vortex warp the fish and not the druid, otherwise the druid warps too.

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This was going to be my suggestion.

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If the ruling is emphatically that there is no way it works, I am now wondering about a Jonah and the (friendly) Whale technique to teleport a large number of people at one time (and their boat too if it is a big enough whale).

Paul Farquhar said:

If teleportation did not work on creatures inside the body of the target, a wizard would leave their gut bacteria behind every time they misty stepped, which would be both disgusting and unhealthy.

In fact most creatures will have a whole bunch of organisms living in and on them - worms, fleas, ticks, fungi etc, then there are collective organisms like Portuguese man-o-war. I would rule that these things are all part of one creature for purpose of teleport. The druid is teleported with the fish, they are not left behind.

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If you want to bring biology into the ruling, then I could say that according to biologists whatever is in a creature's digestive tract is not technically "inside" the creature's organisms but still "outside" of it.

But then, I do not think it's really sensible to bring biology in for this purpose.

Hey, as the player of the Artificer in this particular scenario, I'd just like to say a couple of things:

1. Thanks for chiming in with thoughts! I appreciate seeing a bunch of different takes on the question!
2. I'm cool with either ruling from the DM. I can see it from both points of view, which is why I gave the DM a head's up - there's no time constraint forcing on the spot ruling, so why not give them time to make a decision?

I have to admit, I do hope that the DM lets my character at least make an arcana check to know whether or not she thinks it will work...

Thanks!

Echohawk said:

Whenever this sort of unusual situation arises in my games (which happens surprisingly frequently!), we typically revert to an Arcana check for the caster, to see if they can tweak the spell to work exactly the way that they are hoping it will on the fly. If the caster makes a, say DC15, Arcana check then they manage to vortex warp the fish and not the druid, otherwise the druid warps too.

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I agree wholeheartedly.

I think a lot of us players tend to forget about the possibility of using the Skill system as a de facto "change the world up" system. The fact is there's always a whole bunch of stuff that happens within "the world" that the PCs are living in that do not get translated directly into set rules and game mechanics that you can find and read in the respective rulebooks. So oftentimes to cover for these things we DMs will add additional game mechanic requests to our players when they attempt to do things that are not specified by the game rules.

A player wants their PC to jump from the roof of a building to tackle a guy riding by the building on a horse in order to dismount the rider from it? There are no rules in the game that specify that specific series of events, so the DM would need to "create" one with choices of various skill checks and attack rolls-- Athletics check perhaps to jump from the roof at the right angle to arrive at the moving horse, Unarmed Strike attack roll to grapple the rider, maybe an Acrobatics check as the PC dismounts the rider using the momentum from the jump so that both the PC and the rider get taken to the ground but the Acrobatics check lets the PC roll with it and not take damage from the fall.

These are the kinds of things that DMs can do all the time to "create rules" at the time they are needed to check whether things that are questionable for success can be accomplished or not when there's no definitive rule in the book to use. And Spells are just one more part of the game that can get adjusted outside their written rule scope by the application of other game mechanics when necessary. So a player wants to teleport a monster but not the creature it has grappled or swallowed? If the game rules do not specify what might be the rule for the situation... throw in another game mechanic or two (in this case an Arcana skill check) to allow this manipulation or slight change of a Spell to occur. Why not? Let the players have fun and be creative but with a potential payment of a d20 Test.

To me, technical ruling on the spell..... if I cast disintegrate on the monster....would you also disintegrate the person inside it? Or fireball or hold person or healing word or any other spell effect.

I think the answer most people would give is no, you can't target the character inside the stomach with any spells (good or bad). And therefore, you shouldn't suddenly include them in a teleport spell as well.

For those going "you don't leave your lunch every time you teleport"....my lunch isn't a creature, its an object. And if the PC was dead, they would be an object and subject to teleport. But creatures get a lot of protective benefits to magic, not all of which make sense...and this is simply one of those. Now if the creature has other creatures in its swallow whole, than yeah they would stay behind as well. but if they are already killed by it, they go along for the ride.