D&D 5E Feather Fall hanger on

[SkidAce]

What do either of you expect to gain from this? You do realize neither of you are going to change your mind....

 

[5ekyu]

What do either of you expect to gain from this? You do realize neither of you are going to change your mind....

If posts on this forum or the internet were limited to cases where one thought there was a reasonable chance of changing the direct person being exchanged with's mind, the internet would be a whole lot quieter.

Did you think your post would change either or our minds?

if not, why did you post it?

 

[Guest 6801328]

See, i am pretty sure if i assume anything about your ruling it will invite a response about putting words into your mouth or assuming what you are thinking... Based on history.

Huh? I'm not asking you to guess what I'm thinking, I'm asking you to just explain your cutesy attempt at a trap so we can work through it. That's what somebody who actually wanted to discuss something would do.

So i ask again, is it one of those three or another?

Ok, I'll answer: none of the above, because it's a reaction, so it's not that character's turn.

 

[Guest 6801328]

What do either of you expect to gain from this? You do realize neither of you are going to change your mind....

Oh, I've gotten something out of it already. And I don't just mean entertainment value: having to argue the point has required me to think through something that was previously more intuitive/instinctive. For example, why is targeting a fireball within a 5' square different than targeting Feather Fall within a specific 5' cube? Prior to this thread I hadn't actually thought through the bit about temporal accuracy.

Speaking of which, another thought occurs to me: as I explained earlier, if you try to time Feather Fall to go off in the last 5' of an 80' fall, you have to have 1/14th of second accuracy. That's because you'd be falling about 70' per second. That's the same as a 420' movement rate. So, to answer the previous question about why getting an Attack of Opportunity shouldn't also, according to my logic, require some kind of "precision" roll, one answer is that if an enemy with a 420' movement rate passed through the 5' square adjacent to yours, should your Attack of Opportunity have any penalty? A "temporal precision" penalty?

Not according to RAW, of course. But I can see two different ways of ruling this:
1) Not according to RAW, so no: the AoO wouldn't have any penalty.
2) The rules can't and shouldn't cover every single edge case; that's where "rulings not rules" comes into play. Not only does it make sense that hitting a target moving that fast should be hard, but other places in the rules equate speed/mobility with being hard to hit with AoO's so there's logical precedent. Disadvantage at the very least.

(This is another example of something I've never specifically thought about before, but thanks to the intransigence of my debating partners I now have, and it's interesting to do so.)

 

[5ekyu]

Huh? I'm not asking you to guess what I'm thinking, I'm asking you to just explain your cutesy attempt at a trap so we can work through it. That's what somebody who actually wanted to discuss something would do.

Ok, I'll answer: none of the above, because it's a reaction, so it's not that character's turn.

Are you under the mistaken understanding that reactions cannot occur on your turn or that a caster cannot cast feather fall as a reaction on their turn?

or did you just elect to choose a different subset to avoid answering the question?

cuz last time i checked... in a character's turn they can step off a ledge and fall... and they can also use a reaction to cast feather fall during their turn... just like say i can on my turn use counterspell to counter a spell someone else is react-casting to and any number of other reactions which can happen on your turn.

Your choice to dodge the question is i must admit hilarious.

But OK, fine if you simply don't want to directly answer that simple an element of how you choose to run feather fall in your games, no big deal. I am sure you have your reasons.

Question rescinded.

have a nice day.

 

[machineelf]

the player didn't like it and stormed out in a huff because "I'm not in the mood tonight..." - despite the session already being shorthanded due to a late dropout. ... He was the only player in my group not to buy a PHB, nor did he ever look any rulings up online. He just liked to live on his wits and make an argument of every point of contention for the sake of it!

These kinds of players wreck a game and frustrate other players, so it's best that it worked out the way it did and he didn't come back.

And I would totally let him try on his next turn to jump off and grab a hold of the feather-falling enemy. But it would have to be the next turn since he already used his turn that round to cast thunderwave. He would be jumping quite a ways down by then and it would take an athletics check to grab him. Risky move, but it satisfies the rule of cool. You handled it fine as far as I can tell.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Are you under the mistaken understanding that reactions cannot occur on your turn or that a caster cannot cast feather fall as a reaction on their turn?

or did you just elect to choose a different subset to avoid answering the question?

cuz last time i checked... in a character's turn they can step off a ledge and fall... and they can also use a reaction to cast feather fall during their turn... just like say i can on my turn use counterspell to counter a spell someone else is react-casting to and any number of other reactions which can happen on your turn.

Your choice to dodge the question is i must admit hilarious.

But OK, fine if you simply don't want to directly answer that simple an element of how you choose to run feather fall in your games, no big deal. I am sure you have your reasons.

Question rescinded.

have a nice day.

What's hilarious is that you are so excited to spring this trap that you are unwilling to simply state the paradox that you think I'm going to stumble into so that we can discuss it. You'd rather say "GOTCHA!!!!" than actually move the conversation forward. At least, that's the only reason I can think for your refusal to answer my question. I already told you my reason for refusing to answer your question: I rolled 7 on Perception (DC: 5, at most) and there's a trap in front of me. I'm just not going to engage that way.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Ok, I find this fascinating. I just checked in onthe "My Character Always..." thread and found this post:

first, thanks for your input. it is appreciated.

Second, i see the elements you describe quite differently and think maybe i did not communicate it well enough.

First yes they described how to gain advantage but... if those actions do not cost anything, have no consequences of their own, how then does not always having advantage on the road for ambushes become standard practice? if you look at many of the other cases of method produce advantage in the game they often come with a corresponding "consequence" - use action to gain disadvantage on attacks against you - use second character help to gain advantage on attack or skills checks - etc. There are not many cases described within the rules where all you need is to basically ask for advantage (by means of description) and gain it without any other corresponding consequence. The cases where it seems you do, say melee attacks against a prone target - the circumstance gives you advantage without necessarily any specific description on your part.

But to a more specific case - actions and choices have consequences and those consequences matter. if moving slowly and cautiously enough to more easily spot advantages matters, then the impacts and consequences of moving in that way have to apply good and bad. Chasing after a moving force can leave you open for ambush if they left one behind and moving cautiously and slowly to watch for those means you don not keep up as well with the main group. it seems obvious this is a logical consequence and trade-off of speed vs safety with good and bad on both sides.

As for bandits vs bugbears - sorry -i made no such reference. maybe it works differently in your games but in mine travelling slowly and cautiously does not leave you vulnerable based on what magic word you chose to use to describe your enemies. You say bandits, great, you still get the same cautious and wary approach when i saw "bugbears". no need for me to assume and insert some "gotcha" thing based on the names you chose to use. Slowly and cautiously looking for enemies is good enough... you are sacrificing speed and rate of travel.

As for your pegasus and your dragonnette - those sound pretty ridiculous to me but have nothing to do with consequences of actions. It seems like both are cases where your character already did what was needed to gain the pegasus or the egg and after the fact the Gm started hitting you with direct combat penalties. That is different by far from a case where while taking voluntarily specific actions you must suffer both the positive and negative results of those actions.

I wont guess what was in your GMs minds when they did those things, but that is different from saying "you chose to move slowly so you get these consequences (some good, some bad) while doing so."

or at least, that is how i see it.

Thanks again.

I started writing the following, and decided to just move the whole thing here....

Funny, I just popped into this thread (partly because I was curious why it's still hovering near the top of the threads page) and read this.

I totally agree. We evidently share some viewpoints about playstyle, including tradeoffs.

So I'm kind of flummoxed why you are so adamantly opposed to my P.O.V. on Feather Fall. (Because, really, our Feather Fall disagreement is a sub-category of this thread.) What you are describing here is exactly what I was describing as a reason for applying the skill check: because trade-offs are more interesting. If there's no "cost" to doing HALO jumps with Feather Fall...which I hope you will at least admit is more challenging than simply using it as soon as the fall starts....won't players use it every single time?

Now, maybe the particular trade-off I came up with on the spur of the moment ("roll reasonably well or die") is so harsh that it effectively eliminates the option, but wouldn't a more nuanced, less binary cost be appropriate?

What if the cost of failing the skill check were just that you land Prone? Would that satisfy you? Or are you simply adamant that HALO jumps are the intended use of Feather Fall? That the WotC team must surely be aware of this use and therefore they would have written the description to exclude it if that was their intent? If so, I would offer the rules on Stealth as an example of how they very intentionally left things up to DM interpretation, which they very clearly did.

Speaking of which, and in the spirit of discussion not argument, I'll freely admit that I would probably be arguing the other side in a debate about stealth: in the example of "I will Hold Action until the guards look the other way" I actually think that this is exactly how stealth works. I wouldn't let somebody do it without a stealth roll, just because they Hold Action, but I would assume it's simply part of a successful stealth roll, in the way you assume HALO jumps are simply part of a Feather Fall spell. Some people think that if guards are watching you absolutely cannot Hide (because, according to the rules, you cannot Hide if "you", which could be interpreted to mean the area you want to stealth through, are under direct observation).

My interpretation is that a successful Stealth roll means you waited until the guards glance away and therefore the area you want to cross is not under direct observation. Because that's what good stealthing ability is, in the same way that magicians (in the Penn & Teller sense) do their tricks when they know you are looking somewhere else.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what I'm saying about Feather Fall? Yeah, maybe. On the one hand I'm saying the fancy timing is not part of the ability/spell, and in the other case I'm saying it is. I suppose my rationale is that rogues are supposed to be good at stealth, but Wizards are not masters of acrobatics. Unless they are, of course, in which case they can do HALO jumps.

Alternatively, you could see it that both situations are parallel: the rogue and the wizard both get to do something they want to do (Move, or Cast) without rolling any checks. If they want to do so without consequences they have to make a skill check. If the guards weren't there the Rogue wouldn't have to make a stealth check, and if the Wizard doesn't want to use any fancy timing he wouldn't have to make an acrobatics check.

 

[5ekyu]

Ok, I find this fascinating. I just checked in onthe "My Character Always..." thread and found this post:



I started writing the following, and decided to just move the whole thing here....

Funny, I just popped into this thread (partly because I was curious why it's still hovering near the top of the threads page) and read this.

I totally agree. We evidently share some viewpoints about playstyle, including tradeoffs.

So I'm kind of flummoxed why you are so adamantly opposed to my P.O.V. on Feather Fall. (Because, really, our Feather Fall disagreement is a sub-category of this thread.) What you are describing here is exactly what I was describing as a reason for applying the skill check: because trade-offs are more interesting. If there's no "cost" to doing HALO jumps with Feather Fall...which I hope you will at least admit is more challenging than simply using it as soon as the fall starts....won't players use it every single time?

Now, maybe the particular trade-off I came up with on the spur of the moment ("roll reasonably well or die") is so harsh that it effectively eliminates the option, but wouldn't a more nuanced, less binary cost be appropriate?

What if the cost of failing the skill check were just that you land Prone? Would that satisfy you? Or are you simply adamant that HALO jumps are the intended use of Feather Fall? That the WotC team must surely be aware of this use and therefore they would have written the description to exclude it if that was their intent? If so, I would offer the rules on Stealth as an example of how they very intentionally left things up to DM interpretation, which they very clearly did.

Speaking of which, and in the spirit of discussion not argument, I'll freely admit that I would probably be arguing the other side in a debate about stealth: in the example of "I will Hold Action until the guards look the other way" I actually think that this is exactly how stealth works. I wouldn't let somebody do it without a stealth roll, just because they Hold Action, but I would assume it's simply part of a successful stealth roll, in the way you assume HALO jumps are simply part of a Feather Fall spell. Some people think that if guards are watching you absolutely cannot Hide (because, according to the rules, you cannot Hide if "you", which could be interpreted to mean the area you want to stealth through, are under direct observation).

My interpretation is that a successful Stealth roll means you waited until the guards glance away and therefore the area you want to cross is not under direct observation. Because that's what good stealthing ability is, in the same way that magicians (in the Penn & Teller sense) do their tricks when they know you are looking somewhere else.

Isn't that the exact opposite of what I'm saying about Feather Fall? Yeah, maybe. On the one hand I'm saying the fancy timing is not part of the ability/spell, and in the other case I'm saying it is. I suppose my rationale is that rogues are supposed to be good at stealth, but Wizards are not masters of acrobatics. Unless they are, of course, in which case they can do HALO jumps.

Alternatively, you could see it that both situations are parallel: the rogue and the wizard both get to do something they want to do (Move, or Cast) without rolling any checks. If they want to do so without consequences they have to make a skill check. If the guards weren't there the Rogue wouldn't have to make a stealth check, and if the Wizard doesn't want to use any fancy timing he wouldn't have to make an acrobatics check.

Context matters.

The thread in question was spawned by a module reference which stated in one of its scenes that if the players said they were looking for ambushes they would get Advantage on the roll.

So that discussion is not about adding a roll for an already defined game aspect, but about allowing Advantage on a roll just by making a statement in player mode.

Equivalent would be say "if player states they are looking for fireball, the get advantage on saves vs fireball."

In this case, its different because it boils down to whether the GM has decided that a caster can use reactions when they want as long as the conditions are met or if there is some additional requirement and roll needed.

Now, honestly, i did not go back to read this stealth held action thing, but. If it were someone wanting to say bypass stealth roll (or gain advantage) by means of hold action "when they *look* away" that would not fly with me and i would explain that 5e base assumption is folks turning and looking around normally in the course of the round, so the stealth check itself and lighting concealment etc is already a test to see if that succeeds.

However, if they were waiting "for a distraction" and say an ally started a fire or sounded an alarm to distract the guards to be looking elsewhere and that was when the sneaker acted, that would be dome with Advantage or maybe no roll if they eaited for the chance the guards stepped away entirely, leaving the area unobserved.

Those are both to me applications of the same principle - to gain Advantage on a defined mechanic you need a circumstance or effort or sacrifice to gain it. Like fighting defensive, help actions, melee vs prone etc. A general principle, shown often in the rules, applied consistently.

Compared to what i see here which is a GM deciding to add new limits and chances of catastrophic failure to a very specialized spell based on ruling its casting reaction works under some new principle that will mostly only come up for it (mostly.)

Even then, as i have said here, a GM can make any ruling they want that their players will abide by it. If you look a lot of the questiond have been centered around is this going to be how other reactions are handled or something unique for this spell. (Basically sounds like it will apply to any case which manages to duplicate the circumstance but that is really going to mostly translate to "just this spell" based on what i have seen in play unless monsters/adversaries/players get to speeds in the 400s or whatever you sussed out as your latest justification.)

See it boils down to this... With the FF all the player is asking is for the spell to work as written and for reaction to work as written for no exception to be made for a typical case... Falls usually have a bottom.

They are not asking for Advantage on a roll or to bypass an established skill check altogether.

As i have said here repeatedly, that is not a reduction in player choice or a decision to add a new definition category of "are you trained in this way of using that spell" that i wpuld choose to add. I tend to consider spellcasters trained in how to use their spells in tactical sotuations and i would not consider "casting FF within say abc feet of the bottom" as some novel enough case that they would not have trained for it.

I am a lot more lenient and likely to give "works as normal" rulings when no unusual circumstances are in play than i am to give Advantage on established checks or allow bypassing established checks where no trade-off or special circumstance applies.

If thst seems inconsistent to some... Hey thats life.










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[5ekyu]

What's hilarious is that you are so excited to spring this trap that you are unwilling to simply state the paradox that you think I'm going to stumble into so that we can discuss it. You'd rather say "GOTCHA!!!!" than actually move the conversation forward. At least, that's the only reason I can think for your refusal to answer my question. I already told you my reason for refusing to answer your question: I rolled 7 on Perception (DC: 5, at most) and there's a trap in front of me. I'm just not going to engage that way.

I am so happy you are so happy with having avoided the trap you imagined even if it means you cannot answer a basic question about the spell being discussed and how it apllies in your game with your ruling.

Have a great Sunday.

Edit to add... Or maybe the trap was making you think there was a teap by asking a simple question and seeing you go all conspiracy theory duckey dodgey trying to not get caught in the "trap" that you choose to not even answer a simp... Ahh nevermind.

Have a really really great Sunday... If it really is actually Sunday... Have you checked? Maybe i reset your computer date setting and its really Monday.

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