5E Spell damage has no R/M type. Attacks do not differentiate spell/weapon

I couldn't do range filtering on spell damage and I had no way to give a spell attack a bonus and not a weapon attack. I went ahead and worked out a solution. To me this seems like a bug as it appears there is old code that sort of half implements this and then there is newer code that doesn't take it to the finish. The code is too deep to release as an extension without some conflict pain. I'm sure you'll come up with a slightly different approach which is fine but here is a roadmap attached (.diff renamed to .txt)

Would be nice to see this put in, I just saw Superteddy talking about this today that he might work on putting this in.

Also requesting to keep unarmed attacks and abilities that are neither weapons nor spells in mind.

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Originally Posted by MeAndUnique

Also requesting to keep unarmed attacks and abilities that are neither weapons nor spells in mind.

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I thought about unarmed and official was melee weapon attack so be ruled as such. House rules though.

MOD: the Lab is for issues with the latest test build. I've moved this to the 5E sub since e it is ruleset specific. It's also really a feature request so should be put on the wish list, it will get lost on the forums. But you can add links to the wish list from here, and then back from that to the discussion here.

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Originally Posted by rhagelstrom

I thought about unarmed and official was melee weapon attack so be ruled as such. House rules though.

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An unarmed attack is a melee weapon attack... but not a melee weapon attack with a weapon.

So, RAW, anything that cares just about it being a melee weapon attack (versus a melee spell attack, or ranged weapon/spell attack, or anything that's not actually an attack at all) should work with an unarmed strike.

Paladin smites, on the other hand, do not work on unarmed attacks because the description specifically refers to "the weapon" damage, and there is no weapon being used. I think it was Crawford that commented that this was mostly flavor-ish and that it wouldn't be broken by any means to house-rule that paladins could in fact smite with unarmed attacks.

I would also like to see more differentiation between attack types, like spell, melee, ranged, weapon. Is it possible for attack types or damage types to trigger effects? For example "when you are hit with melee/spell attack...", "When you take XX type of damage..."

Also, is there an item for this in the wishlist already? I looked and didn't find one.

Thanks for the insight. It's been something that is now in my thoughts and will brainstorm some ideas for it's solution.

Thank you. Keep in mind D&D One breaks unarmed strike into its own attack type.

Additional request if this is a thing, pass down on the roll if the attack is finesse or not