@JeremyECrawford a player shoots a fireball into a bunch of goblins who happened to have a nilbog with them. Does the fireball trigger nilbogism and save all the goblins ?
— Luc Charette (@DnDPaladin) February 22, 2018
If you try to deal damage to a nilbog by any means (a weapon, spell, or something else), Nilbogism is triggered. If you're unaware of a nilbog's presence and the creature is inadvertently caught in an area of effect you create, you're not subject to Nilbogism. #DnD https://t.co/OTIj4pqM1P
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) February 23, 2018
“If you try to deal damage to a nilbog by any means (a weapon, spell, or something else), Nilbogism is triggered. If you’re unaware of a nilbog’s presence and the creature is inadvertently caught in an area of effect you create, you’re not subject to Nilbogism.”
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What a BIZARRE interpretation!
Why would AWARENESS be the determining factor, and why does the stat block for Nilbogs make no mention of such a detail?
The wording is “Any creature that attempts to damage the Nilbog”. How does intent factor into that? You either are attempting to cause damage (even if unwittingly or for the wrong reasons), or you aren’t.
If you went back in time and tried to assassinate Hitler, but it turned out the person you attacked wasn’t actually Hitler, but was just a body double, that doesn’t somehow mean you didn’t “attempt to damage” the body double.
You didn’t -INTEND- to harm the wrong person, but you still -ATTEMPTED- to.
By the same token, trying to kill a Nilbog with a Fireball without knowing it’s a Nilbog instead of an ordinary Goblin shouldn’t matter – you still attempted to damage the Nilbog, regardless of whether you were aware of that or not.
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Furthermore, if intent or awareness WAS the deciding factor, then it would be impossible to intentionally kill a Nilbog, which is clearly not true!
If I pick up a Nilbog and hurl it over a cliff, I clearly intend to kill it, and yet Nilbogism doesn’t take effect, because the source of the damage is not a “creature that attempts to damage the Nilbog”, it’s falling damage.
If intent to cause harm mattered, as opposed to taking actions which would directly result in harm (causing them to take fall damage is -indirect- harm), then it would be impossible to kill a Nilbog via any intentional means ever.