D&D 5E Flying carpet. How durable do you rule it is, how easy do you rule it is to be knocked off it?

[epithet]

The sadistic joy of watching my opponent fall to their doom.

You wouldn't rather kill him and take the carpet as a trophy?

 

[Lanefan]

Magic items are all really durable in 5e.

Which is a bug rather than a feature, in my view; but I digress.

Why would anyone want to destroy a magic carpet, though?

Nobody *wants* to destroy a flying carpet, but fireballs and other accidents happen.

As for being knocked off, it depends on whether the passenger is standing, kneeling, or prone. It would require a grapple to remove a prone person from the carpet against his will, the other two I would adjudicate as a shove attack. The kneeling one would get advantage on his ability check to resist the shove. If a person is shoved off of the carpet, I would possibly let them make a dex save to grab the edge of it before falling, depending on the circumstances.

Further variables are how fast the carpet might be moving at the time, whether the carpet is flat and-or level at the time, how easily the carpet tends to tip or flip over (if the only remaining occupant is hanging from an edge will the carpet even still function?), whether the "pilot" is still able to concentrate on flying, and so on.

You'll rarely if ever see two people trying to knock each other off a carpet (for which grapple rules do the job); more common is having to determine what happens when the carpet and-or its occupant(s) are hit by something like a Giant's thrown boulder or the flailing tentacle of a Kraken or a sudden gust of wind.

Lan-"call it too much Harry Potter, but for flight I see brooms as far less risky than carpets"-efan

 

[CaptainGemini]

You wouldn't rather kill him and take the carpet as a trophy?

No. Flying carpets are way too obvious a target.

 

[Scorpio616]

Lan-"call it too much Harry Potter, but for flight I see brooms as far less risky than carpets"-efan

well, those presumably would use mounted combat rules.