To be very pendantic, it’s the other way around: The wording as very precise at describing both spells, but quite vague at describing their interaction. That’s what leads to the problem.

I know that this may be a bit of a gap, but it’s a general problem of our society nowadays: Admitting a mistake is unpopular and can be used by others to say “See: even you acknowledged that you were wrong there.”, so people only rarely do it. (Especially politicians, stars and corporations/corporate representatives.)

He actually has some totally based rulings too. Those just don’t stand out amongst the profoundly dumb ones.

That depends on interpretation of the sentence structure. It could mean “any visible [creatures and objects]” or “any [visible creatures] and objects”.

It’s the Rock-Solo.

Happy to be of service. Arguing over RAU (Rules As Unintended) is very fun at times.

It actually still does, because while disintegrate in 2014 specifically mentions the wall of force, it also specifically mentions how you have to be able to see the target.

The wording simply says “a disintegrate spell”. It does not say what it has to be cast on or wether it continues to travel towards the real target afterwards. But the implication clearly is that you have to hit the wall. Thus, RAW, even with specific overriding general, you cannot target the wall because it is invisible (nothing in its spell description states otherwise) and you can’t target space behind the wall, as it is behind cover.

That one has nothing to do with Crawford far as I’m aware. It’s just plain stupid interaction of several rules. You are definetly intended to be able to just cast disintegrate on the wall.

Some rules are intended in a certain way and just handled poorly. The above case is (I personally think) one of them. Others are actually intended to work a certain way because of designing aspects (like verbal components having to be said at a normal volume) but people simply decide to ditch them anyway, because they like something else better. Both are valid, but they are different.

Oh dear I didn’t even know that. Well that makes it even more absurd.

I’d argue that RAW the wall is still invisible. You now just have the means to pinpoint it’s location.

Funnily enough, Shatter actually has a very easy solution: Objects just take the damage and that’s it.

I actually think it’s a fair restriction for spells that require sight. It imposes a somewhat interesting limit on casters, especially since a lot of spells still do something on a miss.

Yeah I thought of that one as well. It’s one of those weird cases of imprecise wording.

As I have said in another comment, that is RAW not what would happen:

“You can’t even cast it on something behind the wall, because you cannot target something (or someone) with a spell if they are behind total cover. Total cover is created by being behind completely behind an obstacle (like a wall). This counts even if the obstacle is invisible.”

Furthermore, because if you chose an invalid target for a spell, you’d still expend the spellslot but there would be no effect. So you actually spend a sixth level spell a lot to achieve nothing."

It’s very much not RAI I’d say and I would likely handle exactly like you described, but the RAW was so wonky that I wanted to make the meme when I found out about it.

Yes. See invisibility should work as well. Both are quite annoying to activate when in a fight though.

Edit: TIL that detect magic may not work, because the object has to be visible.

It’s technically still invisible. But as there is no clear rule for that I’d say it’s up to interpretation.

No. If we assume that you have to target the wall it would at the very least stop after destroying the wall.

But by RAW, you can’t even cast it on something behind the wall, because you cannot target something (or someone) with a spell if they are behind total cover. Total cover is created by being completely behind an obstacle (like a wall). This counts even if the obstacle is invisible.

Furthermore, if you chose an invalid target for a spell, you still expend the spellslot but there will be no effect. So you’d actually spend a sixth level spell a lot to achieve nothing.

I would not recommend doing it this way, but that’s what the rules say.

Oh definetly. I assume that RAI this is the intention.

The the theoretical problem just solved itself. Neat. Thanks.