Second-Guessing Myself: Allow Teleporting While Falling?

[KarinsDad]

Eh, it seems entirely reasonable to me that a character could jump partway across a gap, and then use a power to teleport the rest of the way.

It is totally reasonable.

What is not reasonable is a player thinking that this is an automatic action with no chance of failure, especially when the player does not mention his intent to jump and teleport, rather, he suddenly reacts to the results of the failed Jump check by saying that he wants to throw in a new Standard action and he expects the DM to go against RAW and rule in his favor.

He jumped, the winds threw him back and slammed him onto the ledge, and he wasn't fast enough to teleport over before that happened (by failing the save). That too is totally reasonable.

 

[Mengu]

Eh, it seems entirely reasonable to me that a character could jump partway across a gap, and then use a power to teleport the rest of the way.

Reasonable? Maybe. But I don't know how you can come to a conclusion that this is the intended rule.

It seems entirely reasonable to me the intention of the rule is when you fail a jump check, you fall. There are specific skills, powers, and items to help out the situation when you do fall. The particular power in question is not one of them, and was not intended to be one of them.

The ruling I'm comfortable with in this scenario is to say no. The ruling of the OP to allow a save is fine, but if I was at that table I'd be slightly put off. A ruling of yes would not draw complaints from me, but it would displease me. My characters abide by the rules and don't ask for favors. If I'm taking a risk and jumping, and I fail, I fully expect to suffer the consequences. I'd even go so far as to say I enjoy the consequences as they provide a new challenge.

 

[Riastlin]

My thoughts: 1. Per RAW, I don't think it works. The player should have fallen then been allowed to finish his turn. 2. This does fall into the category of "awesome" (realizing of course that one's definition of awesome will vary) and so finding a potential solution is acceptable, even if not RAW. 3. I'm guessing (though can't say for sure) that the player in question only thought of the teleport attack after his athletics check came up short, which makes me less likely to allow it (or at least less likely to allow it automatically).

So, what would I have done? Well, if the player declared his intention to use the teleport attack should he come up short, I would almost certainly have allowed it. Essentially, the assassin is preparing himself to leap across the chasm but realizes its a long jump and that he might not make it, so he readies plan B. Sure, you can't take a readied action on your turn per RAW, but I think this is an acceptable case for making an exception to the rule.

Had the player waited until after the check failed, its 50-50. This might be the time that I allow the save to be able to use the power. In other words, the assassin jumps over the chasm, gets part way across and realizes "Oh crud, I'm not gonna make it. What can I do?" The save represents his ability to collect his thoughts, formulate a plan, and execute the teleport portion of the power before "hitting" the chasm. The fact that the player failed the save just means that in his panic, the assassin wasn't able to properly execute the move.

Finally, there's absolutely nothing wrong with going with the RAW. Personally, as a DM, I really dislike it when the players get into extended arguments over the rules. Its fine to question it, but it bugs me when they continue to argue the rule during the session. The better time and place to bring it up is after the session. For situations where the rules do not clearly spell out what to do, then the players just need to go with the DM's ruling then bring it up later and make your points so as to not derail the game any further and potentially bring even more resentment into the game. I've had players whine about immediate actions not being usable on their turns, argue with me over it, then when I show them the rule in the book, continue arguing because the rule doesn't make sense (which is an arguable point, but doesn't matter).

Anyhoo, sorry for the slight derail. As stated I would probably allow it under certain conditions, but the RAW really don't allow it. My main reason for allowing it quite frankly is that I don't imagine that the same situation would come up all that often, so allowing it doesn't really break the game all that much. There was a similar situation wherein the swordmage in my game wanted to charge during the surprise round (the only way she could get into range for an attack) but in order to reach the closest target, she would have to use her fly ability granted by her racial feature (it gives her a higher speed). Technically, I think the RAW would not allow it since its one action to activate the fly and another to charge. I told her that per RAW I didn't think it worked, BUT it sounded cool so I allowed it. The key here was that she knows if she goes to a gameday or a Con or something similar, it might not be allowed but she did get to do it. Over 11 levels so far, I think she's done it twice, maybe three times. So yeah, it really hasn't affected the campaign much at all but it rewards the player for thinking a bit creatively, keeps her happy, and provides a "cool" element to a couple of encounters. In the end, everyone goes home happy.

 

[delericho]

It is totally reasonable.

What is not reasonable is a player thinking that this is an automatic action with no chance of failure, especially when the player does not mention his intent to jump and teleport...

If you read my previous posts in the thread, you'll see I've said that twice already.

Reasonable? Maybe. But I don't know how you can come to a conclusion that this is the intended rule.

I don't know what the designers were thinking. That's just how I would rule on it.

Edit: Actually, thinking on it, this is an area where I'm reasonably sure I do know what they were thinking:

In 3.5e, a character could make a jump such that his Jump check allowed for more squares than he had movement (that is, he had 4 squares of movement, but got 25 or more on the check). In this case, in 3.5e, the character would end his turn in mid-air and finish it at the start of his next turn. (This actually makes perfect sense - it's an artifact of the turn structure that characters move in discrete 30 ft blocks, when in reality that jump would be one continuous movement.)

The problem with this, of course, was that the character would seem to 'hang' in space, motionless, from one turn to another. This caused a number of people problems making sense of the action. So, with 4e, the rule was changed so that you couldn't 'split' a jump in this manner - if you ran out of movement, you fell, regardless of the Athletics check. (From a strict simulation POV, this is wrong, of course, but this is one area where simulation actually hampers the ability of players to make sense of what is going on - odd, no?)

Because I'm reasonably sure that the rule was written this way to fix that hole in versimilitude, I'm also reasonably sure that the spirit of the rule would tend towards allowing "jump-then-teleport".

(Incidentally, I think there's a better fix, that neither breaks the (loose) simulationism of 3e, nor requires allowing characters to 'hang' in mid-air: do away with strictly fixed movement rates. Allow a character, when running, to make an Athletics check to add a few squares on to his movement rate depending on the check. As an added bonus, this also gives you a built-in chase mechanic, something the system doesn't really have when everyone moves at exactly 6 squares all the time.)

 

[Mengu]

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]: I think we have different definition of what RAI means.

The rules are rather specific about double move. The double move action gets around most situations where you would otherwise need to end a move action in mid-air. Note that with double move rules, if you have teleport 5 as an at-will movement mode, you can use a double move to teleport 10 squares. If you're trying to double move and squeeze in an attack at the end of it, you better have a minor action attack or an action point, otherwise, rules don't allow it.

Say I want to disregard the rules and want to combine my move action and standard action into a long charge that lets me move twice my speed, so I can clear a chasm reach the other end, and have enough movement to make an attack. Do the rules intend to allow this? If they do, they are pretty specific about disallowing it, which would be a complete failure of RAW.

99% of the time RAI *is* RAW. There are few instances where they "forget" about a rule aspect, and RAW does not agree with RAI. For instance the Scouts had a problem being able to use their Power Strike and Dual Weapon Attack in the same turn because of a restriction in number of free attacks per turn. This was unintended, and it got fixed.

In the matter at hand, if RAW and RAI are at odds, then it's a serious mess up because no reading of the rules lets me combine move actions and standard actions. You cannot combine a move and a charge into a double move attackish thing that's not even defined by the rules. This is no different than what the player was trying to do combining regular movement and teleportation written as part of an attack power into a double move after which he gets an attack. And what's worse, he was trying to turn a failed skill check into an inconsequential matter. None of this can be RAI.

In the name of fun, or even verisimilitude, sure you can ignore rules, make any judgement call. I'm not debating that. But in this case, rules work as intended.

 

[eamon]

I think framing this as RAW vs. RAI is misleading. Clearly, and as been stated tons of times by lots of people, the DM is there to make judgement calls on situations the rules weren't designed to cover. I don't think people jumping and then teleporting (or for that matter doing anything) mid-jump was ever considered.

A D&D character can't jump and throw a ball mid-jump - by RAW anyhow, assuming throwing is a standard action.

There's a good reason the rules don't cover it - doing something mid-jump is complex and rare, and it's not worth the bother nor the risk of imbalanced abuses. I don't see this as RAI vs. RAW - this scenario is just not one 4e is designed to handle. Kindof like 3d movement early on in the 4e development. That doesn't mean it can't happen or that it's "cheating" to try it - it just means you shouldn't look at the rules and expect anything sane to result.

So, either accept that a jumping PC is fully occupied and play by RAW - or wing it, and accept that the rules just don't cover it, and try to be consistent.

There is no RAI - jumping and then doing something mid-jump doesn't look like a scenario ever intended to work one way or the other.

 

[Deltran]

Wow - I miss the forum for one day and A LOT of awesome conversation went on!

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] Nice idea about the athletics check


Very interesting insights, everyone. So it's the difference between upholding the integrity of the rules and the wisdom of when to break them? If you have players that expect everything by the book, or if all of the tools that can make that happen (swordmage in party, someone passing up feyleaf shoes) where passed up, then the players knowingly left those options on the table and they should have to live with the consequences. On the other hand, if none of those are available (no swordmage, little or no shopping opportunities) or if players are more narrative then allowing rules to be bent for creative ideas is more acceptable.

Seem right to anyone?


While the conversation moved passed this point, I'll say that at the time I had no idea he was doing this but in hindsight he moved his mini into the space he 'fell' in and declared he was using the power. I don't remember him asking me before hand if it would work, but I don't recall him being wishy-washy about doing it either (meaning I don't think he tried to do it to save his bacon).

 

[delericho]

The rules are rather specific about double move.

I was of the impression that 4e didn't actually have any concept of a "double move" - it was just "one move after another".

If you're trying to double move and squeeze in an attack at the end of it, you better have a minor action attack or an action point, otherwise, rules don't allow it.

Say I want to disregard the rules and want to combine my move action and standard action into a long charge that lets me move twice my speed, so I can clear a chasm reach the other end, and have enough movement to make an attack. Do the rules intend to allow this? If they do, they are pretty specific about disallowing it, which would be a complete failure of RAW.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they allow this by RAW. I'm pretty sure (but not 100%, and don't have my PHB to hand), that there is no Jump action, but rather that jumping is something you do as part of other movement.

This means that you can include a jump as part of a Charge action. And that in turn means that you can Move (including jump) followed by Charge (including jump), to perform that "long charge" you just described, including the attack at the end.

In fact, it would even be possible, by RAW, to Charge (including jump) followed by Move (including jump), in order to use a melee attack against an opponent flying in the middle of that chasm.

In the matter at hand, if RAW and RAI are at odds, then it's a serious mess up because no reading of the rules lets me combine move actions and standard actions. You cannot combine a move and a charge into a double move attackish thing that's not even defined by the rules.

It's not covered because there's no need. You just Move and then Charge (or Charge and then Move).

The only question is whether Jump is a separate action, or if jumping is merely something you do as part of other movement.

This is no different than what the player was trying to do combining regular movement and teleportation written as part of an attack power into a double move after which he gets an attack. And what's worse, he was trying to turn a failed skill check into an inconsequential matter. None of this can be RAI.

That last point is fairly important. In my first posts on this topic, I did note that the player should have had to declare them both at the outset. (Something like, "I'll jump across, and as soon as I'm in range use Inescapable Shadow".) In such a case, the jump is actually only part-way across the chasm, and so have a lower DC (which, it appears from the OP, the player made).

But, yes, if the player didn't declare his intention up-front, or he failed the jump check (at the reduced DC), I agree that the character should fall (no save).

 

[Nullzone]

Say I want to disregard the rules and want to combine my move action and standard action into a long charge that lets me move twice my speed, so I can clear a chasm reach the other end, and have enough movement to make an attack. Do the rules intend to allow this? If they do, they are pretty specific about disallowing it, which would be a complete failure of RAW.

[...]

You cannot combine a move and a charge into a double move attackish thing that's not even defined by the rules. This is no different than what the player was trying to do combining regular movement and teleportation written as part of an attack power into a double move after which he gets an attack. And what's worse, he was trying to turn a failed skill check into an inconsequential matter. None of this can be RAI.

What is this I don't even

A charge is a standard action, if your speed is 5 and you move before charging you can absolutely end up 10 squares from where you started which you describe as a "double move attackish thing".

As for using this method to jump a canyon, your speed is totally irrelevant since your Athletics check determines how many squares you clear. And yes, I would totally allow someone to make an Athletics check to clear a gap in the middle of a charge if it made sense.

The individual actions you take on your turn do not exist in a vacuum separate from eachother, they happen in an abstract sort of flow; I'm not sure what to say if you think otherwise. To simply say "Ok, you jump and miss. You fall." as though the PC is paralyzed as he falls and is unable to do anything else until he hits the ground, especially when he has the magical physics-defying ability to instantly move from point A to point B without crossing the space in between is so terribly bizarre. You did note it was an encounter power, right? It's not like he could do this back and forth across the canyon at his leisure. If you really wanted to catch him on the canyon issue, then play copycat; one of the monsters jumps to the other ledge, maybe even teleporting the rest of the way when he comes up short. Or add a dude who was lurking in the shadows that's out of reach, requiring another jump to take down.

There are ways to get players involved in your mechanical bits without cutting their legs out from under them and taking imagination and creative thinking out of it. It's this kind of approach that has really garnered 4e the reputation it has for being "lifeless".

Just because it isn't explicitly written in the rules doesn't mean it can't be done.

 

[delericho]

As for using this method to jump a canyon, your speed is totally irrelevant since your Athletics check determines how many squares you clear.

Nitpick:

Under the rules for jumping, it does specify that if you don't have enough movement left to cover the distance, then you fall. Basically, you can't end your turn in mid-air.

Otherwise, I agree.