EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Irrelevant. Using Levitate while falling simply causes you to be 4 squares (20 feet) above the ground without taking damage. It cannot send you higher than that.Levitate.
You're going to have to be more specific. There is no power nor ritual called "Teleport" in 4e. Certainly none of them have a range of 100 squares or more, I guarantee you that.Teleport.
Irrelevant. Insufficient range (50 feet, aka 10 squares.)Dimension Door.
Unlikely to be relevant. That's a level 16 Wizard utility to begin with, so if the party isn't that level or doesn't have a Wizard this is irrelevant. More importantly, even with a flight speed of 8, it's going to take 100/8 = 13 rounds to rise at least 500 feet, meaning even with Fly in play, if the character falls to the bottom they're not rejoining this fight, period.Fly.
And if the fight ends before they fly back up...then they just sustain Fly until they reach the top. When there is no pressure to get up as quick as possible and one can fly at 40 feet every 6 seconds for as long as one continues to sustain the power, then it doesn't matter whether the tower is 500 feet or 5000 feet, within ten to fifteen minutes, the party will be reassembled, and spending valuable game time on determining that "it takes you just under 5 minutes, 41 seconds to ascend back up to where you fell" (for my 2271 feet suggestion) is a pointless waste.
If you fall and nothing stops you, you die. If you fall and something saves you, you are out of the fight until well after it will be resolved, one way or another. If the fight resolves, you can just walk back up (the slow but reliable way) or fly back up if you have the tools or abilities to enable you to do so (the fast but resource-spending way). Either way, there is no cost nor interesting consequence for failure at that point, so the exact distance has no relevant gameplay value.
There are no ranged attacks with a range of more than 500 feet. I don't even need to look that one up. But just in case, if someone does find an attack with that kind of range, though, I will concede the point...but I am confident there are no such attacks.What about ranged attacks from down there?
It turns out I accidentally miscalculated, conflating the 50d10 with 50 squares fallen, when it is actually 100 squares. So it would actually be 34 Athletics checks that must be passed to climb at least 500 feet.And that's just about getting back into the fight physically.
You still have to contend with recovering the character after the fight. So that's the difference between 10 or 17 or whatever Athletics checks. Having enough rope. Etc.
It's important information.
A single rope is never longer than 100 feet in 4e, you'd have to tie together at least 5 ropes to make that work...or just have the PC walk back up like a normal person. You know, the way they got up there in the first place!
Again: if the fall is at least as far as the capped distance (which, in 4e, is 500 feet), then it is essentially guaranteed to be lethal to anyone who falls that far. 50d10 averages 275 damage. A level 30 Warden, with 30 Constitution (AFAICT the maximum possible) and the Toughness feat, has 17+30+15+29*7 = 265 HP. This is quite literally the toughest possible character in the game, and a fall of this magnitude is still almost guaranteed to drop them to negative HP. Anyone short of this, which the vast, vast majority of characters will be, is essentially dead on impact unless they (or an ally) have a trick up their sleeve to fix it. Even if they do, it's going to take dramatically longer than the fight in question to get the character back into the fray, and clearly there are easier ways to get back up because the party already used one!Not to mention it's just DM fiat unless you have the distance (and damage) of a fall, which definitely flies in the face of D&D's design since the 2000s.
Look, I get that this annoyed you. Your reaction is not illegitimate or anything like that. But honestly, describing the fall as essentially guaranteed deadly is perfectly cromulent for its relevance to the actual combat, and the exact value is pretty much irrelevant in most contexts. There is no need to use ropes or other such tools to get back up because the character can literally just walk there LIKE THEY ALREADY DID.