D&D 5E Boots of Striding and Springing.......kinda lame

Gadget said:

I think the main problem with the boots (aside from attunement) is one it share with the Jump spell: it does not give you additional "Jump" movement to help you take advantage of the increased jump range without using your action and such. It would not be out of line at all to have the boots and the spell grant you an additional 30' Jump movement in any direction as part of your move action. Easy peasy, no looking up jump rules and calculating how much movement you have based on your strength and all that jazz.

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Exactly.

The fact the occasional player has managed to gain something fun or cool out of the spell/item does not change the basic fact that even for a level 1 spell Jump is woefully mundane.

The "triple your jump distance" bit connects to the beige rules in the PHB. This is complex and yet underwhelming.

That you must use your action (Dash) to get anywhere is a HUGE cost.

That you still can't exceed your normal movement range (say 60 feet) is inexplicable.

But really, the question that needs to be asked is: would it break the game if the Jump spell (and hence the item) simply gave you a "Jump speed"?

And, of course, the answer would be no, no it would not break anything.

In fact, not only would it be much more fun, cool and useful, it would also be much more in line with 5th edition because it would be SIMPLE.

The reality is that the Jump spell is a throwback to the d20-era silliness of merely having the spell give you a skill bonus. That's the origin of the "triple your jump distance" bit.

My take is that a true 5th edition Jump spell would have cut away all that excess baggage and simply have given you a "Jump speed 30 ft" - enabling you to clear horizontal and vertical gaps of 30 ft with your regular movement, and up to 60 ft gaps if you sacrifice your action to Dash.

No need to calculate jump distances. No need to take your own height and ability to reach things over your head. None of that slow complex nonsense.

Either the gap is 30 ft (60 ft) or less, and you simply jump across (up, down); or you don't.

Quick and simple... not to mention useful and fun

flametitan said:

Just a bit of trivia I noticed, as I got confused as to why people were talking about attunement: The version LMoP doesn't require attunement, so either LMoP got something misprinted, or the internal playtesters at wotc found a reason for it to require attunement between the adventure and the DMG (not that it really matters for my own group; so far they haven't found enough items to hit the limits of attunement anyway).

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I would definitely treat the one they found as "special edition", something to treasure

(It certainly won't break anything to keep it as not requiring attunement. In fact, it's such a low-power item, I'd be surprised if they will even keep it around long enough for attunement to start becoming an issue...)

Caliban said:

Are you suggesting that the characters are actually forced to stop moving between turns?

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I think he's suggesting that a character that ends her turn in mid-air....

...simply falls.

A very reasonable and very common way to run things, I am sure you realize.

Especially since we're discussing a magic item with explicit language to enforce the turns...!

Saelorn said:

It's not like your character literally stops at the end of their turn and waits for everything else to happen before they resume movement. If you need to make a long jump, and you used your full movement in the previous round, then you were moving immediately prior to making the jump.

The rules of the game - the round structure, and the jumping rules - describe what's going on within the narrative. They don't define it. And in this case, it should be fairly clear as to what's happening within the narrative, and why the rules allow this type of movement. (Less clear is how these boots mysteriously know about the concept of rounds. It seems likely that this unnecessary line was just included in hopes of expediting gameplay.)

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As long as we're clear that you have made a ruling and that you're okay with others not making the same ruling (since none of this is in the PHB), we can agree that in your game the Jump spell is considerably less sucky than in other games.

But, Saelorn, what is "less clear" about the boots?

To me it is exceptionally clear the boots enforce the less generous way to run movement between turns.

Caliban said:

Not at all. It has to be the thing you did immediately before you jump. And unless you are suggesting that the PC's are actually moving in a stop-motion fashion, that 10 feet of movement can occur on the previous round - as long as it was the last thing you did on your turn that round. You next turn follows immediately after your previous turn, no time passes between them. As a player you pause to allow all the other creatures involved to resolve their actions that (in theory) occurred during the same six seconds as your turn, but for the character it's a seamless flow of actions (in theory).

So for your character, the last you do on your previous turn occurs immediately before the first thing you do on your current turn. (And of course, the actions of other individuals in the combat may make it impossible to attempt the jump, regardless of how you moved.)

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As a ruling, that's fair enough.

But how do you make the boots restriction work in your game, Caliban?

Can you still "claim" movement from a previous turn to jump using the boots?

Kobold Stew said:

Again, No, because you also have an action on your turn. Only if you move 60' in a round you are literally moving for the full 6 seconds (though you still have a reaction and a bonus action, so it's not literally "literally").

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Actually a case can be made for you still moving continously throughout your turn at speed 30... only that when you dash you still move continously throughout your turn only twice as fast.

Saelorn said:

I believe that long jumps are expected to take place outside of combat. I seem to recall that, if you do make a long jump in combat, then excess distance of the jump beyond your normal move speed carries over onto your next turn; but I can't find anything about that in the Basic Rules, and it's entirely possible that I'm remembering that from a different game.

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This is the core of your contention.

When somebody says the Jump rules, the Jump spell and the boots suck, its based on the expectation that no such rulings are in place.

Plenty of gamers run the game turn by turn; there are plenty of examples throughout the editions where end-of-turn is actually important to justify this reading as well.

My veteran players, for instance, they never even considered that you wouldn't simply fall if you end your turn without something to stand on or hold onto.

There really is no need for an argument. At least to me it's evident that the reason you and Caliban don't see the weakness of this item is because you aren't operating by the same core expectations than Kobold.

CapnZapp said:

The item were awesome (in a low-level kind of way) in previous editions.

What happened that made that unacceptable in 5th edition?

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The difference between magic items in 5E and magic items in previous editions is that magic items in 5E cannot be priced or purchased. They no longer need to inflate the capabilities of the item in order to justify the price they ask for it, because it's not available at any price, nor is it in competition with other items for your boot slot (since it's highly unlikely that you're going to find more than one pair of magic boots anytime soon).

Besides, they aren't objectively terrible. They actually do something useful - they help the slow character keep speed with the rest of the party; and they let you jump across a thirty-foot gap, which would otherwise be an insurmountable obstacle at low levels. They're pretty great for halfling rogues, who can make greater use of both powers. If you want to call them a terrible item, then you should be equally ready to condemn the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, which offer plenty of utility for a wide range of characters even though they aren't useful to Strength-based characters like they were in third edition.

The baggage that you are bringing into this game from others games and editions is preventing you from appreciating this item in its appropriate context. If I had the choice between taking these boots and taking nothing, I would take these boots every time, and you can bet that I would find plenty of use for them.

jaelis said:

Sure but I'm interested in understanding your reasoning for letting the boots stack with SotW stack, but not with the jump spell. I'm not trying to judge either way, play it how you like. But understanding how other people think about things is nice.

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FWIW, to me Caliban's ruling is the evident one.

You can only apply a magical effect once. But you can always use your class features, except (obviously) when they recreate a magical effect.

Step of the Wind isn't described as having anything to do with the Jump spell, but the boots are. Case closed

jaelis said:

Yep, was thinking that elf got +10 ft, but of course that's wrong.


Well, that depends how you stack the item effects. I'd probably play as you suggest: SotW + boots = 5x; SotW + boots + spell = 8x. Actually I'd probably be even less generous, and say SoTW gives you and increase of +1x, the boots and spell both give increases of +2x, for a net increase of +5x. So at a base of 12, you'd jump 6*12 = 72 ft all combined.

But by the book I guess you would just continue to multiply, so SotW + boots + spell would be 2*3*3 = 18x. So for a base of 12 ft. you'd be at 216 ft.

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O boy I wished the designers had caught the old-itis in time, and purged the spell from any of these calculations.

Having to make them in game, in combat, is a huge downer. It would have been SO MUCH more like 5th edition to simply say "you jump x feet, done".