[RPG] Does the Scatter spell actually scatter the targets

dnd-5espells

Based on the spell's name, you would think that all of the targets would end up all over the playing field, but per the Scatter spell description:

The air quivers around up to five creatures of your choice that you can see within range. An unwilling creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw to resist this spell. You teleport each affected target to an unoccupied space that you can see within 120 feet of you. That space must be on the ground or on a floor.

But there are two ways to read this;

  1. This is a many-to-one reading. Each of the up to five creatures are teleported to an unoccupied space. So all five go to one space.
  2. Each is for both target and destination. Each target is teleported to each target's unique designated unoccupied space.

My issue is, that the first interpretation is more "plain English" whereas the second is "loosely based".

So does Scatter really scatter, or does Scatter just teleport up to 5 people as a cluster to a single location?

Best Answer

Each creature probably goes to a different location; you're right, it's ambiguous

I think the underlying questions here are the following:

  1. Do the creatures all make their saves simultaneously?
  2. Do the creatures all teleport simultaneously?
  3. Or even this: Does a creature attempt a save and suffer its effects simultaneously?

Perhaps these should be separate questions of their own though, I'm unsure. One thing we do know is that getting hit and taking damage are simultaneous events, but I'm not sure that that helps here.

The idea that each teleports separately is somewhat supported in the spell's word choice:

[...] You teleport each affected target to an unoccupied space [...]

Note that it does not say "every affected target" teleports, which would imply that they all happen at once, but instead says "each affected creature" which implies that this happens creature-by-creature. One problem with this is that the each/every distinction isn't exactly a strong thing to make any claims out of; it's a prescriptivist rule of English, and one many people don't even learn. However if this is the case, then once a creature is teleported, that space is now occupied and thus the next creature cannot also go to that same space.

There really isn't a lot of evidence to go on here and besides the small argument based on "grammatical correctness" I'm not sure what else one could point to. 

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