This morning I read a good post from Mage Advice titled “Why the final word on Warcaster is perfect,” and it made me think about how I’m playing the game. The article mentioned a new rule in 2024 Dungeons & Dragons about opportunity attacks and the Warcaster Feat.
Opportunity Attacks
You can make an opportunity attack when a creature that you can see leaves your reach using its action, its bonus action, its reaction, or one of its speeds. To make the opportunity attack, take a reaction to make one melee attack with a weapon or an unarmed strike against the provoking creature. The attack occurs right before the creature leaves your reach.
Warcaster Feat.
This is the part that interests us.
Reactive Spell. When a creature provokes an opportunity attack from you by leaving your reach, you can take a reaction to cast a spell at the creature rather than making an opportunity attack. The spell must have a casting time of one action and must target only that creature.
You have read that right – any creatures that leave your space can now provoke an opportunity attack, not only enemies but allies too. This means, “Rules as written,” you can now use a spell when an ally leaves your reach. Obviously, this was never “intended” to be the case, so what do I do? I’m going to rule it as written or as intended? Well, like pretty much all things, it depends.
I don’t stick to one or the other for everything in a system, and that’s true when I play with a group or solo.
Rules as Experienced
This is my take, and it works well for me; let me explain.
With rules as experienced, I give myself a chance to test both options – that’s the experience part – then I simply pick what worked best for me or for the group. Which way to interpret the rules is more fun will be the one I ended up with. And you know what? It happens that I even try it a second or third time. I admit it’s more easy to do when playing solo, but I encourage you to test it out. Play one session at a time with rules you want to test; it doesn’t have to stick; revert back to the next session. The only thing that is non-negotiable for me is switching rules mid-session. I want to be able to test the good and the bad.
So that’s it; my little take on ruling. What do you do at your table? Are you more RAW, RAI, Hybrid?”
P.S. Here’s the Mage Advice Article
