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

[UngeheuerLich]

It's not constant teleportation by the runners. It's constant sequential actions per initiative. Nobody is moving at instantaneous(teleportation) speeds.

Same for your example. Exactly my point.

 

[Horwath]

I really feel they missed more tactical application with this spell.

The spell should deal 3d10 damage to all targets around the place of departure and all targets at the place of arrival.
except the teleporting creatures/objects. They teleport a split second before damage and reappear split second after second damage.

This would ofc have tactical option to teleport to exact same place where you have been to have all targets suffer 6d10 damage.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I really feel they missed more tactical application with this spell.

The spell should deal 3d10 damage to all targets around the place of departure and all targets at the place of arrival.
except the teleporting creatures/objects. They teleport a split second before damage and reappear split second after second damage.

This would ofc have tactical option to teleport to exact same place where you have been to have all targets suffer 6d10 damage.

Oh no, please not. A bit much for a 3rd level spell and that would invite additional problems.

 

[Horwath]

Oh no, please not. A bit much for a 3rd level spell and that would invite additional problems.

1/4th the area of fireball, you need to stay in melee range for 20% more damage than fireball vs. 150ft range. Targets Con save, that is on average better than Dex save.

if you use it for teleport only you deal only 3d10 damage, if you mean to deal only 3d10 damage on arrival, you are entering melee range for dealing 15 damage? not great for 3rd level spell.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, 16.5 but yeah. I've already compared it to an upcast Shatter mixed with Misty Step.

Honestly, I think a upcast Earth Tremor is the better deal if Thunder Step is intended to harm the caster- just over half the damage, but it's safe to the caster, and can prone.

The more I think about Thunder Step, the more I'm curious why this spell exists. I mean, think about it. To get full value, you need to be surrounded by multiple enemies within 10' of you. Have no allies in that area (it's a Conjuration so no Sculpt Spells), and have a safe spot within 15-30' feet you can move to (potentially).

How often do these circumstances come up?

 

[Lyxen]

Other fiction or other game systems may have other rules for things; I don’t think they apply in 5e RAW in this case. For instance, Star Trek teleportation has been mentioned a few times as taking time. To be fair n Star Trek they are Transporters that “teleport” by transforming matter into energy and then moving the particles rapidly. In 5e, teleport causes something to disappear and reappear at a certain location; the intricacies of modern science are mostly ignored.

And this is discussing 5e RAW how ? There are many fantasy instances where teleportation is not instant either, the magical energies need to gather, disappearance and reappearance do not take 0 time, neither is the transfer being described as taking zero time.

The ONLY thing that we know in 5e RAW is that the spell takes an instant to act, with "an instant" not being defined more than that.

Teleport happens instantly.

No, it does not. It simply does not, that word is not used. It's an instantaneous spell, which means that it happens "in an instant".

The game uses plain language — the common definition of “instantly” is immediately or without a gap in time.

And this is not the word used by the RAW. It would also be very easy for me to invent what spells do by rewriting them in my own words, but they would no longer be the RAW.

The boom happens after the disappearance. The first sentence of the spell’s description says the caster teleports to a different location. Then it says immediately after the disappearance the boom happens. The order of the sentences and the use of the word after help clarify what happens.

Yes, you will teleport so by your description above ("teleport causes something to disappear and reappear"), you will disappear and reappear an instant later (because the spell is instantaneous), and immediately after you disappear, there will be a boom. The spell makes no provision for the reappearance sequence.

Fabricating a gap in time that has no defined duration and therefore either a vague “t-space” location or the addition of unexplained chronological magic seems to add powers and complexity and confusion that the spell doesn’t even seem to hint at.

And yet it does, to people reading it in its entirety and with an open mind. Yes, it hints at it, and once more, you have zero support for a 0-time teleportation with disappearance and reappearance intrinsically linked since the spell explicitly inserts a boom in the sequence.

There are demi-planes and time spells, but neither is mentioned in the spell description.

On that we agree, however they have been used in the past for teleportation spells, and if you read the spell as having minor delays somewhere in the process, they can be used to describe how the RAW applies in your world.

If a DM wants to interpret the spell differently, the rules allow for that. But that doesn’t make that ruling RAW; it amends those rules.

The thing that you don't seem to understand is that, by pretending that teleportation is unitary and happens in zero time, YOU are already amending the rules, since they mention nothing of the kind.

Ruling that the caster takes damage is not punishing a player; it’s the most basic (non-complicated) understanding of the spell’s description. If the player doesn’t realize they will be a part of “each creature” in range taking damage

Only, once more, you are modifying the way the rules are written. They don't say "each creature in range" (and honestly, the fact that you modify the very simple words is a proof that even you are not comfortable with the original wording), they say: "Immediately after you disappear, a thunderous boom sounds, and each creature within 10 feet of the space you left". So clearly, it also hints at a disappearance with a space that you left, and possibly have not come back to YET.

the DM probably should warn them because their PC has likely had more experience with the spell. I don’t see the cost/benefit aspects of the spell informing this interpretation. It’s dangerous just like a fireball.

And that is your personal interpretation, you are absolute allowed to explain this in your campaign and modify the RAW so that teleport happens always in zero time, and even that fireball backwashes like in 1e, but it does not make your claims according to the RAW as you are adding constraints of your own.

 

[James Gasik]

Not really zero time more like 397 x 10 to the negative 21st power seconds.

EDIT: 397 zeptoseconds.

 

[Lyxen]

Instantaneous is too quick to dispel, even with dispel magic readied and used instantly. If it's over so fast that an instant dispel can't affect it, it's faster than someone walking, or even hurrying or running.

And again, you have no proof of that. You have failed to give any indication as to the actual velocity of movement in 5e, simply because the system does not work the way you think it works, and it allows for movement described in a heroic fantasy fashion, just as it allows spells that look cinematic and don't happen in 0-time, exactly like all spells in the genre (and with lasers in SciFi), because 0-time cannot be perceived and is boring. Stop making people think that these constraints exist in the game as written, they don't.

 

[Lyxen]

Not to mention the silliness involved with, "You interrupt the instant teleport to walk 30 feet or crawl 15 feet, and then the instant teleport concludes when you finish moving." or "Since you readied the action to walk away, you are now walking faster than an instant teleport and get out of the way of the instant thunder damage."

See how you are inventing words that don't even exist in the rules, like "instant teleport" ? Again, proof that you don't know the RAW and are just inventing things to support your views of the game, which are way narrower than the possibilities of the RAW.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, Teleport itself says "this spell instantly transports you..." and Dimension Door, Misty Step, and Thunder Step all use "teleport" as a shorthand to describe their movement.

So it's not outright stated, but it can be inferred.