The Endless Problems With Nystul's Magic Aura... (VIDEO SCRIPT)

It’s been almost 3 weeks since my last Mechanics Mondays Wednesday edition video. I’m sorry for disappearing, I’m guilty on all charges, so to at least partially redeem myself, I will buy a D&D-related gift for one qualified viewer of this video. Keep watching, I am going to tell you how to qualify once you understand the context.

Without further ado, let’s kick things off again with this series. On that last video, there were a few comments pointing out several potential issues with part of the combo used to decapitate your enemies, so I figured it was time to cover it as part of a more general analysis of a spell called Nystul’s Magic Aura.

Core Mechanics

At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with this spell. A second level illusion that can manipulate how magic and non-magic items appear to magical sensors, or circumvent spells detecting or triggering off of specific creature types. There’s no saving throw against it, so it can be a very useful tool for DMs to build storylines and narratives around in all sorts of ways, just like you piling onto those engagement buttons down below is a plotline useful for the YouTube algorithm’s evaluation of this video and this channel.

Player characters can sometimes find creative and fun uses for this spell as well. A non-metagaming DM is required to pull it off in most imaginable cases, which is a common issue shared by most illusion spells in the game.

However, things get confusing and ambiguous really quickly once you start peeling off the surface layers.

Wording vs. Design Intent

There’s a common theme, a pattern that can be observed in the description of most 5th edition D&D spells. It usually starts with a sentence or two describing the general, summarized purpose and effect of the spell. A little bit of fluff and theme to better understand what the spell is supposed to do, before delving into its specific mechanics.

Nystul’s Magic Aura is no exception in this regard, with its first sentence being, quote: “You place an illusion on a creature or an object you touch so that divination spells reveal false information about it.”

In and of itself, there are no issues here. However, two words in there stick out like a sore thumb.

Divination spells. This spell is apparently only supposed to work against those.

Of course, that’s not really the case, otherwise I wouldn’t be making this video, right? If you take a closer look down at the two examples given for the Mask effect specifically, both clearly fall outside of these bounds. Divine Sense is not even a spell, it’s a Paladin core class feature. Symbol, on the other hand, IS a spell, but it doesn’t belong to a divination school, it’s a protective, abjuration spell. So, right there, it’s immediately obvious parts of Nystul’s Magic Aura spell description don’t really match and align with each other. In fact, they’re quite contradictory.

Nystul’s Magic Aura core design intent was and is to be used as a catch-all solution against all kinds of magical sensors and magic that detects creature types. This is rather clear.

Problematic Interactions

However, what exactly constitutes “detecting creature types”? What does it mean exactly? If we reexamine the Symbol spell, nowhere in the description of that one can you find words “detect” and “type”. It does state it can be triggered, it can be activated based on creature’s physical kind, so that’s just a different way to say type, I guess, but then what’s the difference between that and the infamous, controversial interaction with the Magic Jar spell? If we read the description of every Lich-wannabe’s favorite 5thedition spell, it requires a humanoid body. While it’s definitely not the same kind of interaction, detecting a creature type is still a passive requirement for the spell to work. So, why wouldn’t Nystul’s Magic Aura allow you to bypass that limitation? You clearly can’t cast it on a non-humanoid, so it is perfectly plausible to make an argument that some kind, some sort of detection occurs when you cast this spell.

Magic Jar isn’t even the only culprit here. What about Animate Dead, another spell so dear to all the Lich lovers out there? While the interaction is probably highly unlikely, it isn’t impossible. In fact, I’d dare and say it’s likely to occur if the DM uses Nystul’s Magic Aura to mess with creature types and one of the players is using this Animate Dead to make an army of undead minions.

Heck, speaking about undead, you know how you pretty much can’t use any of the healing spells like Cure Wounds, Healing Wordand others to heal undead and constructs? Well, if we make the same argument that healing spells clearly detect creature types because they don’t affect undead and constructs, then masking a friendly undead or construct with Nystul’s Magic Aura totally makes sense, even though it totally doesn’t.

Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants also come to mind here. You can mask any non-beast or non-plant into a beast or a plant with Nystul’s Magic Aura and then have a catch all solution to communicate with every possible type of creature out there. You can accomplish the same with Comprehend Languages and Tongues, but that’s for normies. You can totally capitalize on Nystul’s Magic Aura’s crappy and unclear spell description and drive your DM mad to the point of murdering your mega-munchkined character out of raw frustration.

And this isn’t even the end of the depths of depravity theoretically possible with this spell. Notice how the Mask option repeatedly mentions “target” when referring to, well, the target of the spell? We know from the first sentence of the spell description that you can target both creatures and objects with it, so the real kicker is using Mask on an object and making it APPEAR as a creature type. I repeat, the effect is an illusion of a creature type, but unlike False Aura, which clearly only affects objects, the target of Mask can, at least by rules as written, be an object. And if you really stretch this approach out, you can even allow every spell in the game that affects only creatures and not objects, to actually also be able to affect objects as well. Of course, when you cast Nystul’s Magic Aura on a wall and mask it to appear as a shapechanger or whatever other creature type… well, it counts as a creature, so it should be targetable by spells that can only target creatures, right?

Solution?

Of course, we’re now deeply in the pits of rules-lawyering Hell and there’s no easy way to unravel the Gordian knot of ridiculous possibilities this spell can create.

So, what do we even do about it? Well, the easy way out would be to simply ban the spell and get rid of the potential headache, but that’s rarely, if ever a fair approach in my humble opinion.

You can totally limit it to its intended use and simply keep it useful only for magic that directly detects creature types, instead of that detection being an indirect requirement or limitation for that magic to work, as is the case for most of the spells discussed above.

The lines are still blurry here. If a player decides to go down the Magic Circle + Planar Binding route and stack Nystul’s Magic Aura on top of that classic combo, if you’re a DM you are forced to make a ruling. Magic Circle should clearly work, because its detection mechanic is very similar to that of a Symbol. But then, Planar Binding’s detection is more akin to that of Magic Jar or any of the other spells discussed earlier in this video and that, of course, does fall outside of the perceived design intent and limitations of this problematic illusion spell.

Letting the player go ham and  munchkin the hell out of this spell is a slippery slope as well. If the player is reasonable, then there’s no problem, but a person determined to go way out of the bounds of the game will find a way to do it with this spell. And then it becomes an arms race between the DM and the player, both looking to one-up each other. Anybody who’s been through those kinds of situations would know that they usually end poorly and suck the fun out of the game completely.

The best advice I can give you is to have rulings on a case-by-case basis compatible with your own table and with your own players. If you’re looking to use this spell in any way as or similar to what I talked about in this video, you should discuss it with the rest of the table in order to understand how far can you can push the envelope. Maybe you can go ham and spam the hell out of this spell on everything and everyone. But it’s also possible you will constantly butt heads with the DM and make everyone else at the table way too uncomfortable and ruin the overall mood.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Of course, a handful of these weird Nystul’s Magic Aura spell interactions I talked about in this video are just a tip of the iceberg, so here’s a challenge for you. One comment describing the most ridiculous, funny, insane or just interesting combo with Nystul’s Magic Aura will get pinned to the top and I will buy one book for that person on D&DBeyond as a gift. You have until December 5th to come up with the most outrageous idea you can think of, so comment section is yours to spill your brains out. Don’t forget to mask the Like, Subscribe and bell icon buttons below with Nystul’s Magic Aura so that YouTube algorithm thinks I have over 9000 interactions on this video.

As always, the script for this video is available on my Patreon page under the Fireball tier. It’s not mandatory, it’s 100% optional, but you do get access to my Patreon-exclusive Discord server and other perks like suggesting and voting on new topics, so if it’s worth the trouble, worth your time and worth your money, chuck a few bucks my way and support this channel over there.

Special shoutout to all of my current patrons, thank you for your continued support. I will get busier before year’s end because there’s a bunch of stuff still waiting to be done, so keep an eye out for new videos.

With everything said and done, MMM out, talk to you soon!