Can Gravity Well activate multiple times per cast of a spell?

Question

Recently I've been looking at ways to make a forced movement character. This initially leads me to look at the warlock, specifically repelling blast. Repelling blast obviously works on each cast of the eldritch blast, as there are other invocations for eldritch blast that only works once per turn.

However, I also noted the Gravity Well feature for the Graviturgy Wizard, which says:

When you reach 6th level, whenever you cast a spell on a creature, you can move the target 5 feet to an unoccupied space of your choice if the target is willing to move, the spell hits it with an attack, or it fails a saving throw against the spell.

This made me think of trying to find synergy with repelling blast and if I could have a 15ft movement eldritch blast, potentially up to 60ft per cast if at a high enough level.

I've looked online but only found people talking about it on Reddit and DnDBeyond and I've found that people who give answers aren't always credible on those sites and people on this site tend to be.

So can the Gravity Well feature trigger multiple times per hit of Eldritch Blast?

Answer 1

Once per Spell

The class feature reads:

You’ve learned how to manipulate gravity around a living being: whenever you cast a spell on a creature, you can move the target 5 feet to an unoccupied space of your choice if the target is willing to move, the spell hits it with an attack, or it fails a saving throw against the spell.

So the trigger is "whenever you cast a spell on a creature" (once) The condition to allow movement is

• The target is willing to move
• The spell hits it with an attack
• Or it fails the saving throw.

So if you cast EB with three attacks and one of them hits, then you move them 5 feet. Or if you cast EB with three attacks and three of them hit, then you move the target 5 feet -- because it is triggered once.

Why is this different from Repelling Blast? Because the trigger is different. Repelling Blast reads:

When you hit a creature with eldritch blast, you can push the creature up to 10 feet away from you in a straight line. Which means each beam would push.

Now, if you wanted to be cheesy and multi classed Wizard/Warlock, you could push them 10ft per blast from Warlock and another 5ft for the spell using Gravity Well for a 35ft (assuming all beams hit).

Answer 2

The language is ambiguous, though I lean toward "once per casting".

As I've sat thinking about how this feature is written, and I've found myself changing my mind several times. The language of this feature could be interpreted either way:

• That you may move the target creature each time the spell hits

• Or that you may only move the creature once per casting of the spell.

Gravity Well states:

you can move the target 5 feet to an unoccupied space of your choice if [...] the spell hits it with an attack

One could interpret this to mean that each time the spell hits with an attack, or that "the spell hits with an attack" is a conditioned fulfilled no matter how many times you actually hit, as long is it is at least once. It should be observed that the language is different from Repelling Blast, which reads:

When you hit a creature with eldritch blast, you can push the creature up to 10 feet away from you in a straight line.

Repelling Blast says when you hit, so that it unambiguously triggers each hit. But Gravity Well says if you hit, which is true when you hit one, two, three, or four times. What has me leaning toward "once per casting" is the bit of the feature description which says:

whenever you cast a spell on a creature

This unambiguously only happens once per casting, which may indicate that the feature only triggers once per casting.

I will echo the sentiment I have often presented in response to questions about the Echo Knight, the fighter subclass published in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: the Wildemount content is unrefined and requires you to work with the DM to agree on a ruling. When I played an Echo Knight and DM'd for an Echo Knight we just kept a list of rulings for how the features functioned, because the features just didn't play well with the core mechanics. You may have to do that here.