D&D 5E If you use thunderstep but teleport less than 10 feet do you take damage?

[Lyxen]

This is the right ruling. Ready is specifically an action taken while in combat.

I completely agree, which is why I specifically wrote that it's a hoiuse rule at our tables, actually probably the only one that we have.

Just like there is no Help action outside combat (rather it is Working Together), there is no Ready action outside of combat. A player can say "If THING happens, I do OTHER THING" all they want outside combat - DM adjudicates accordingly, sometimes that adjudication being: "Ok, roll initiative and that Ready will be your first action"

I know, but I really find this disturbing. Not as disturbing as what happened in particular in 4e where you went from fluid discussion and roleplay into extremely formal combat, and everything was reset, but something of the kind.

We try as much as we can to make the game as fluid as real life (or at least at what we have in LARPs, as most of us are or have been players) where there is no formal "combat starts / combat ends" milestones, sometimes it's a running thing, sometimes an isolated spell or backstab, sometimes a long battle, but where there is no "reset" when moving from exploration to social to combat or the other way around.

 

[Maxperson]

Again dithering and not providing a clear answer. Since you prepared an action from when the caster disappeared, you had something in mind, otherwise, once more, it would have been a very silly action to.

It was very clear. I'm crawling down the wall so as to not get shot by goblins, while the caster is going to end up gods know where. Can't get much clearer than what I said.

The thing is that there is nothing that represents a "typical crawling speed".

They typical crawling speed is half your walking speed, per RAW.

At last, we are progressing. Why did it take 16 pages for you to acknowledge these simple truths ?

I've said that at least 3 times now. I disagree with your interpretation that the trigger is only the disappear portion. Your interpretation that it is only the disappear portion requires that the thunder damage and reappearance not happen until after the PC has crawled out of range of the thunder.

Once more, you are inventing things. An attack or a damage rolls are not effects. Are they effects for you ? Are you going to cling to this new absurdity ?

Damage rolls are separate from attacking, which is swinging a weapon or what have you, and the attack roll that comes AFTER you attack. The damage roll comes after the attack roll. These are all discretely visible events that can all by your definition of Ready, be triggers.

I can trigger on the swing, but before a hit or miss. I can trigger on a hit or miss, but before any damage has happened. And I can trigger on damage happening. Those are all discretely visible.

But more importantly, nowhere does it say that your turn is any specified amount of time, and in particular that it's equal to the duration of the round. If you thing it is, PROVE IT.

I did prove it. My turn is the round. I love how you've avoided proving your claim in any way. Show me one thing written that says a turn is 2 seconds or 3 seconds or anything explicitly less than a round.

I don't need any support. I'm just claiming that nowhere does the game specify the length of a turn, because it would lead to inconsistencies. YOU are the one claiming that a turn is 6 seconds long, so YOU have to prove it.

No. You are absolutely making a claim that turns are less than a round. Back up your claim.

Unfortunately, I have proven to you with a very simple example, that it cannot be the case, so I'm very curious how you're going to prove that.

No. You've shown assumptions and ideas that while creative, aren't supported by the rules.

And the problem, once more, is that you want things to be absolute. They are not. Indeed, it would be silly if all combat was simultaneous, as I 've shown in the example, but it would be equally silly if things were completely in sequence. It's a mix of both, players declare the intents of their characters in terms of actions and the DM describes what happens, trying his best to have thing happen that make sense, and that's all there is to it.

It's not a mix of both. It can't be. You can imagine it as such for your game, but as RAW is written, it's not. Each creature goes on its turn fully and then the next creature gets to move. End of story.

You need to stop putting in your views on how you run your game and just stick to what is written. We are discussing RAW, not how either of us actually run our games.

And as shown in my example, it does not work, because if someone else plays after your turn and before the round is complete, he will not have any time to do it. Hence you are simply, irrevocably wrong.

Nope. It may not make sense, but that is how the game is WRITTEN. All else is your imagination and how you run your personal game, not how the written game is played.

No, it's not a hit and a damage, it's an attack ROLL and a damage ROLL. Are these perceivable by a character ? The only thing that is perceivable is an attack, and whether it hits or misses.

Dude. Those rolls are tied to discrete events. You CANNOT roll to hit without first starting a swing with your sword to attack, which is a discrete and visible event. You cannot hit or miss without that being a discretely visible event. You CANNOT roll damage without first hitting and dealing damage, which is a discrete and visible event. It's three discrete events that can all be triggers.

 

[Lyxen]

It was very clear. I'm crawling down the wall so as to not get shot by goblins, while the caster is going to end up gods know where. Can't get much clearer than what I said.

And once more, you are refusing to answer the simple questions, why are you doing this as a readied action when the caster disappears ? An, even more simply, are you crawling away just as fast as you can ?

Your refusal to answer these simple questions just shows that you are trying (and failing, since again you have zero rule support for your claims) to screw the system, not trying to play the game.

They typical crawling speed is half your walking speed, per RAW.

No, again, read the rules. There is no such thing as a crawling speed. It's your normal speed (which, again, just says how far you move with normal actions, not even the time that you take to do it in combat) but "Each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain) when you’re climbing, swimming, or crawling".

I've said that at least 3 times now. I disagree with your interpretation that the trigger is only the disappear portion. Your interpretation that it is only the disappear portion requires that the thunder damage and reappearance not happen until after the PC has crawled out of range of the thunder.

And you can say things how as many times as you wish, it will not make them true by RAW, which tells everyone who reads it otherwise. You have no RAW support for ANY of your claims.

Damage rolls are separate from attacking, which is swinging a weapon or what have you, and the attack roll that comes AFTER you attack. The damage roll comes after the attack roll. These are all discretely visible events that can all by your definition of Ready, be triggers.

And once more, you are dithering and not answering the point, are the attack and damage ROLLS ? Are these perceivable by the character ? Are you describing huge dices coming out of the sky to say whether a sword which is swung inflicts damage ? No, you are just describing an attack which connects or not, and does damage or not. You are not describing dice rolls.

I can trigger on the swing, but before a hit or miss. I can trigger on a hit or miss, but before any damage has happened. And I can trigger on damage happening. Those are all discretely visible.

Actually no, you can't, sorry. You can trigger on a swing, but it does not mean an attack. Yes, the rules even prevent such dicking around, since they say: "If there’s ever any question whether something you’re doing counts as an attack, the rule is simple: if you’re making an attack roll, you’re making an attack." So basically, you can swing your sword all you can, id you're not making an attack roll, you're not making an attack. And that is all what matters for sentinel.

As for the damage roll, it's even more ridiculous, considering what AC and HP represent. In any case, it's not even important since whatever you want readied will occur after the trigger so it you trigger for damage, the attack is over anyway.

I did prove it. My turn is the round.

Of course, rounds and turns are the same thing, everyone knows this. Honestly...

I love how you've avoided proving your claim in any way.

Simple, the game has a defintion for a round, and a definition for a turn. Are they the same thing ? Please answer yes or no.

And then, there are many turns in a round, as many as there are participants. Are all these turns equal to a round ? Please explain clearly which sentence in the rules supports that claim.

Show me one thing written that says a turn is 2 seconds or 3 seconds or anything explicitly less than a round.

I have given you a clear example, which you constantly suppress from your quotes, I really wonder why... Is it because it obviously points out how wrong you are ?

No. You are absolutely making a claim that turns are less than a round. Back up your claim.

Shown in many examples now. You pretend that a turn lasts 6 seconds, back up your claim.

No. You've shown assumptions and ideas that while creative, aren't supported by the rules.

This is really amusing. You have backed away at every step, admitting that I was right on every case of the RAW so far, because you are unable to find a single sentence in all the rules that contradicts my claim. Only your personal constraints are supporting your claims, and you find no evidence in the rules that they have any backing.

It's not a mix of both. It can't be. You can imagine it as such for your game, but as RAW is written, it's not. Each creature goes on its turn fully and then the next creature gets to move. End of story.

That is really amusing then, because, by the claim above, since "Each creature goes on its turn fully" and you claim that a turn is six seconds, then a round cannot be over in less than 6 seconds times the number of participants, right ? So how can, as the RAW claims, the ROUNDS be six seconds ? Even with two combattants getting turns of 6 seconds, that would be a twelve second rounds, which contradicts the RAW.

So your claims lead us straight into an impossibility. I guess they must be wrong somewhere...

You need to stop putting in your views on how you run your game and just stick to what is written. We are discussing RAW, not how either of us actually run our games.

But the thing is that (except for one house rule which has nothing to do with Thunder Step), my games are completely in line with the RAW. I'm the one sticking with what is written, and I'm actually the only one providing extracts from the rules. You, on the other hand, provide nothing from the rules, only personal statements that make no sense like "My turn is the round", which completely contradict your next sentence of "Each creature goes on its turn fully and then the next creature gets to move". Thankfully, there is nothing like any of these in the rules...

Nope. It may not make sense, but that is how the game is WRITTEN. All else is your imagination and how you run your personal game, not how the written game is played.

I'm playing it exactly as written, I'm not using extra rules like your two gems above, which make no sense at all and actually contradict each other directly in the same post. Which is why my game make sense without problem where as yours seem to lead you to create strange actions with no rhyme or reason.

Dude. Those rolls are tied to discrete events. You CANNOT roll to hit without first starting a swing with your sword to attack, which is a discrete and visible event.

Did I say otherwise ? But is every single swing of a sword an attack ? Think carefully about your answer to this one...

You cannot hit or miss without that being a discretely visible event. You CANNOT roll damage without first hitting and dealing damage, which is a discrete and visible event.

Honestly, you'd better stop this, when you have a sentence that makes as little sense as "You CANNOT roll damage without first hitting and dealing damage", it's time to stop, you are looping...

 

[Maxperson]

And once more, you are dithering and not answering the point, are the attack and damage ROLLS ? Are these perceivable by the character ? Are you describing huge dices coming out of the sky to say whether a sword which is swung inflicts damage ? No, you are just describing an attack which connects or not, and does damage or not. You are not describing dice rolls.

Stop with the semantics. You can perceive that which causes the rolls. The rolls themselves are not relevant to the discretely visible events that I can use as a trigger.

Actually no, you can't, sorry. You can trigger on a swing, but it does not mean an attack.

You're trying to tell me that I can't use "When he begins to attack" as a visible trigger? Really.

Of course, rounds and turns are the same thing, everyone knows this.

If rounds and turns are the same thing and rounds are about 6 seconds long...

I have given you a clear example, which you constantly suppress from your quotes, I really wonder why... Is it because it obviously points out how wrong you are ?

Your example is bupkis. It's you trying to assume that combat has to work the way you envision it. Forget your vision. Look at RAW. Do the turns happen sequentially or not? If yes, does the game then say that they happen simultaneously? If no, then they happen sequentially, but not simultaneously, yet all in 6 seconds. Does it make sense? No, but it's a necessary absurdity so that combat can function in under 10 hours.

Did I say otherwise ? But is every single swing of a sword an attack ? Think carefully about your answer to this one...

If someone says, "I playfully swing my sword though the air." then no. Every swing that is trying to hit something is an attack, whether it's a creature or object.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Probably it is better to accept that the stop motion initiative of 5e does not really make sense from a cinematic point of view. Certain actions/trigger create a suspension of disbelieve.

Here the DM as adjucator of rules comes into play.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

We try as much as we can to make the game as fluid as real life (or at least at what we have in LARPs, as most of us are or have been players) where there is no formal "combat starts / combat ends" milestones, sometimes it's a running thing, sometimes an isolated spell or backstab, sometimes a long battle, but where there is no "reset" when moving from exploration to social to combat or the other way around.

Setting aside that I personally feel trying to simulate “real life” is a futile effort in D&D, I do get what you are saying. I seek to achieve that same natural flow by sticking to the game loop as best possible regardless of what pillar (or combo of pillars) we are in.

Just because initiative is rolled to determine the order in which PCs/NPCs act in combat does not mean it needs to be a “reset” of the action.
If you think about it, the very same thing is going on in exploration and social interaction - with the DM deciding who goes “next” rather than formally rolling initiative/turn order.

As a point of clarification: Do you not use initiative in your games to determine turns in combat? What then determines turn order?

 

[chaochou]

Thunderstep spell:

You teleport yourself to an unoccupied space you can see within range. Immediately after you disappear, a thunderous boom sounds, and each creature within 10 feet of the space you left must make a Constitution saving throw, taking 3d10 thunder damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The thunder can be heard from up to 300 feet away.

What if you only move yourself 10 feet, do you take damage from it?

Yes. You are always in one place or the other. You move, then after that there is a thunderous boom.

Because the movement is instantaneous, it becomes the case that any words describing this movement (disappear, reappear, teleport, move) all describe the exact same moment in time, something which we have no experiential reference for.

But that's what makes it magic.

 

[James Gasik]

I still disagree with the notion that hard mechanics favor players over DM's. What DM on the planet has never made house rulings on how things work for their games? The advantage of hard mechanics is, you can point to an answer. It may not be the answer you like, but it is an answer. If you want to discuss the game with other people on a forum (like here!) it's easier to find the common ground of what the game is written to say, and then make the ruling from there.

The idea that players feel entitled to hard rules to protect them from the "big bad DM" is patently silly- the player feels entitled to a game that is fun. Here's the thing about games. Some people like the challenge of something a little unfair (Dark Souls comes to mind). Some people like playing games that are very fair. Some people like playing games in easy mode. Some people feel like playing early Nintendo games with pixel perfect platforming and enemies that infinitely spawn while a timer ticks down.

If someone doesn't like your game, that's not a personal affront, that's simply them saying "this isn't fun for me, I'm out". Dithering with the rules in order to make your game more fun for everyone involved is fine. Doing so in a way that makes the game less fun is not fine.

A complete game with well defined rules vs. an somewhat messier game where you're told "hey, just do what feels right" isn't favoring one participant over another. In both cases, the DM has to work hard to make sure whatever he fiddles with isn't going to break.

The hard rules just give you the advantage that you have guidance to tell you what the developers think about it before having go on Twitter and having to hope Crawford has the time to give you his opinion.

Which, by the way, even with hard rules, people did this sort of thing ALL THE TIME anyways, lol. So I really don't see how one approach is "superior". It's all in the mind.

 

[Irlo]

Show me one thing written that says a turn is 2 seconds or 3 seconds or anything explicitly less than a round.

No. You are absolutely making a claim that turns are less than a round. Back up your claim.

You won't find those explicit statements in the rules. A turn is not an explicitly defined duration. It is not explicitly 6 seconds, and it is not explicitly less than 6 seconds. And it doesn't matter, really.

There are implicit indications, though. In any given 6-second turn, a character's activity can include two reactions (one before the turn and one after the turn), any actions and movement taken during the turn, and all the smaller movements implied by other mechanics -- applying Dexterity modifiers to AC and making DEX saving throws, for example.

If the turn alone filled the entire round, there wouldn't be time for all the rest.

I think any of us would agree that the sequential action resolution in the initiative-based combat system leads to absurdities. I'm not sure why the absurdity of a quick reaction to a teleport effect is any more jarring than any of the rest of it. Turns are sequential, and turns can be interrupted by reactions, and even a combat with 60 participants takes about 6 seconds of game time. It's all preposterous when you dig into it looking for sense.

 

[Lyxen]

Stop with the semantics. You can perceive that which causes the rolls.

Actually, you can't, not for all the rolls.

The rolls themselves are not relevant to the discretely visible events that I can use as a trigger.

There are only two potentially visible events:

• Raising a weapon, as if to attack (but is that even going to be an attack, how can you tell ?)
• Connecting or missing with an attack.

And that's it.

You're trying to tell me that I can't use "When he begins to attack" as a visible trigger? Really.

This is totally subject to a DM's interpretation. As mentioned above, "raising a weapon, as if to attack" can be a trigger, but:

• Is every weapon raised, every swing, going to be an attack ? Obviously not, a 1st level fighter with one attack per round is not going to swing once and then wait 6 seconds to swing again.
• Is every weapon attack going to come with a warning ? I personally don't think so, the weapon can be concealed, or a good fighter could conceal an attack for example.

So it's not as simple, and you won't find the answer in the rules.

If rounds and turns are the same thing

And I'm sorry, but if you are putting this as an hypothesis, when the rules tell you explicitly that they are different, there is no point discussing anymore...

You want to discuss the RAW, read the RAW: " A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn."

Can't be more simple than that. Are rounds and turns the same thing ? OBVIOUSLY NOT.

Your example is bupkis. It's you trying to assume that combat has to work the way you envision it. Forget your vision. Look at RAW. Do the turns happen sequentially or not? If yes, does the game then say that they happen simultaneously? If no, then they happen sequentially, but not simultaneously, yet all in 6 seconds. Does it make sense? No, but it's a necessary absurdity so that combat can function in under 10 hours.

And then I'm lost about what your position is. I argue that they can be both sequential or simultaneous, depending on the situation and the actions taken (and which is also why it's important that a round is not EXACTLY 6 seconds long, the flexibility in the duration (about 6 seconds) is important for flexibility in narration).

Which one are you arguing for, exactly, seeing that you want to argue that it's either one or the other ?

If someone says, "I playfully swing my sword though the air." then no. Every swing that is trying to hit something is an attack, whether it's a creature or object.

And that does not work, sorry. Does a 1st level fighter only "playfully swing his sword through the air" for all his fights except once every 6 seconds when it's serious ? How do you distinguish between those ? What makes you think that you can distinguish ? Once more, for me, there is no absolute here, the game is open and does not prescribe things like this. I can describe it however I want and be in line with the RAW. I might even describe it the way you do once in a while, what the game does NOT tell me is to do it the way you do every single time, because you are inventing rules that I don't need, they are against the open-ended nature of the game itself.