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

Maxperson said:

Dude. You keep avoiding. I laid out the summary of RAW facts. So I'll try again as questions for you to answer.

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Speaking of avoidance, why don't you answer mine first, I believe it was asked before yours...

Maxperson said:

1. Can I by RAW, without having done anything else at all during a round, ready an action to crawl 15 away from the caster when he disappears?

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You can ready a ''move up to your speed", this is RAW. Does this pose a problem to you ?

Now, about the crawl, no, you can't ready specifically a crawl. It might be that you are prone, although, honestly, if you are doing nothing apart from readying your action, the minimal action that your character should take is to stand up to be ready to dash away. Not doing is is purposefully disconnecting the description of your actions and the intended resolution. But even if you are prone and unable to get up, it still works, see below.

Maxperson said:

2. Will this readied action by RAW go off when the trigger completes(disappearance) before the thunder or reappearance of the caster?

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Yes, by RAW. Does this cause a problem to you ? It does not for me, at all. Why ? Because, once more, although you (wrongly by RAW, as proven many times now) imagine that movement is uniform across the distance, this is not what the game says. the rules put limit on how much you can accomplish in terms of distance covered in a unit of time that is not fixed, since nothing describes the actual percentage of the 6 seconds round in which you are actually moving. Even if you cover only 30 feet, you might cover them at a leisurely walk while discussing, or you could scramble like a madman in an instant and spend the rest of the 6 seconds recovering from that mad scramble.

So even if you are prone when you ready your move, the DM would be perfectly justified in saying: "from the corner of your eye, you see the caster disappear, knowing that the boom is coming you lunge across the floor, scrambling, rolling desperately,... and you feel the thunder of the blast just brush you by why you lay panting, recovering, 20 feet away from where the caster was."

And now your turn:

• First, prove to me that the interpretation above in any way contradicts the RAW. It might violate YOUR sense of verisimilitude, but I'm sorry, it's not universal.
• Second, the problem with your vision is that the problem does not come at all from Thunder Step. It only crystallises here because you have decided (your rules, not the RAW) that appearance is simultaneous with disappearance and therefore occurs before the thunder, and that all that happens so fast that nothing can happen in between. Neither of these are said by the rules. The problem is you imagining the round as perfectly uniform with seconds ticking by and events that happen "in an instant" actually happening within 0 time, perfectly simultaneous. You would have exactly the same problem with someone pulling a lever to open a trap, if someone was prone, you would not allow him to crawl away fast enough even if he was ready for it. That's fine, it's part of your role as a DM to say what is possible or not in your game world. But what is not fine is you trying to impose that vision on others just because you feel like it and feel that the rules should support you in this. They don't, the game is way more open than that and in particular about creating a sense of narration that is truly heroic and in line with the genre, where such escape are routine.

Maxperson said:

That's it. Nothing else matters. Not whether the DM would make some sort of ruling(those aren't RAW and don't apply to RAW discussions). And not whether you could move in a different manner.

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Actually they do, because I find it strange that you would punish a player for not teleporting more than 15 feet with his Thunder Step and not punish him even more for trying to screw up the system by making a description of what he is doing that makes no sense in terms of action loop. Basically, the player would both say that he is preparing to run away and at the same time not doing anything to be as ready as he can. I've never seen a player act like this, so it's purely theoretical on your part and therefore devoid of any practical value in this discussion.

Maxperson said:

I disagree. The language implies that after 23 hit points people just stop accumulating any physical hit points and it's all the other type.

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No, it does not. The whole paragraph is stating "Harkening back to the example of Rasputin" so it's just an example. It continues by saying "Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels, starting from a base score of from an average of 3 to 4, going up to 6 to 8 at 2nd level, 9 to 11 at 3rd, 12 to 14 at 4th, 15 to 17 at 5th, 18 to 20 at 6th, and 21 to 23 at 7th level." It does not say anything beyond level 7 when fighters actually continue to accrue hit dice beyond that. It then goes on to examine a 10th level fighter with 95 hit points, and certainly does not refer the 23 again. It just says "However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises." So the meat is reached well before the fighter is down to 23 hit points.

Again, these are just examples to explain, as he puts it "the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points."

The interesting point here, however, is that it's about 50%, just like in 5e.

Maxperson said:

If it meant 7th level, Gygax would have said so instead of saying a character will eventually have 15-23 hit physical hit points.

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It says SPECIFICALLY: "and 21 to 23 at 7th level"...

Maxperson said:

Again, they were forced to include "typically", since atypical damage occurs from some monster attacks. Like spider bites that have to do physical damage to be able to poison a PC. That doesn't make it not the general rule. It just means that specific beats general for some monster attacks.

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You have missed the first part of the sentence, which makes it clearly not a rule, it does not mandate what a DM should say, the book just says, in a side bar that clearly indicates that this is not a rule: "Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways..."

And coming back to the "spider bites that have to do physical damage to be able to poison a PC", I'm sorry but it's a counter-example. The rules do NOT mention "physical damage", they mention "damage", which is just "Hit Point Damage" (A creature that takes piercing or slashing damage from an object coated with the poison is exposed to its effects.). If my 120 fighters is a full strength and is bitten by a spider for 1 point of damage, I'm pretty sure that he would not even get a scratch, from the "typical" description of damage, and yet, although it's not really physical damage to his meat, he still gets to make a saving throw and possible suffer poison damage.

Lyxen said:

Speaking of avoidance, why don't you answer mine first, I believe it was asked before yours...

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Because you're the one who has been evading for several posts now. Tossing out Red Herring after Red Herring after Red Herring.

Lyxen said:

You can ready a ''move up to your speed", this is RAW. Does this pose a problem to you ?

Now, about the crawl, no, you can't ready specifically a crawl.

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Where in RAW does it say that I can't ready crawling?

"Each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain) when you're climbing, swimming, or crawling."

RAW says I can crawl when I move.

Lyxen said:

It might be that you are prone, although, honestly, if you are doing nothing apart from readying your action, the minimal action that your character should take is to stand up to be ready to dash away.

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This is claptrap. You don't get to say would or should for any PC but yours. If I want to crawl for my readied action, RAW says I can do that.

Lyxen said:

Not doing is is purposefully disconnecting the description of your actions and the intended resolution.

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The description of my action is crawl away and the intended resolution is that I am now 15 feet away via crawling. No disconnect happened.

Lyxen said:

Yes, by RAW.

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Excellent. So by RAW, I can in fact(according to your interpretation of Ready) ready a crawl away from the teleport and make it away before the thunder or reappearance, even though I am interrupting two instant effects and taking the entire round to do it.

Lyxen said:

Because, once more, although you (wrongly by RAW, as proven many times now) imagine that movement is uniform across the distance

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You 100% cannot have been moving even an inch prior to the disappearance. The game requires the trigger to happen and complete BEFORE the Readied action can occur.

Lyxen said:

So even if you are prone when you ready your move, the DM would be perfectly justified in saying: "from the corner of your eye, you see the caster disappear, knowing that the boom is coming you lunge across the floor, scrambling, rolling desperately

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No. 1) the DM is not justified in playing my PC without some sort of magical mind control..............ever. 2) this is just more Red Herring claptrap. We're discussing RAW, not what a DM is justified to do or might do.

Lyxen said:

• First, prove to me that the interpretation above in any way contradicts the RAW.

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RAW doesn't allow the DM to play my PC for one. So your Red Herring contradicts RAW, which is that the player states what his PC is doing.

Lyxen said:

• Second, the problem with your vision is that the problem does not come at all from Thunder Step. It only crystallises here because you have decided (your rules, not the RAW) that appearance is simultaneous with disappearance and therefore occurs before the thunder, and that all that happens so fast that nothing can happen in between. Neither of these are said by the rules. The problem is you imagining the round as perfectly uniform with seconds ticking by and events that happen "in an instant" actually happening within 0 time, perfectly simultaneous. You would have exactly the same problem with someone pulling a lever to open a trap, if someone was prone, you would not allow him to crawl away fast enough even if he was ready for it. That's fine, it's part of your role as a DM to say what is possible or not in your game world. But what is not fine is you trying to impose that vision on others just because you feel like it and feel that the rules should support you in this. They don't, the game is way more open than that and in particular about creating a sense of narration that is truly heroic and in line with the genre, where such escape are routine.

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There are two problems here. First, that you think you can interrupt a singular instant effect to take non-instant actions. That's an issue with Ready and the assumption that the trigger only includes part of an effect. Second, that Thunderstep somehow has three instant effects when it in fact only has two. 1. teleportation 2. thunder.

Lyxen said:

Actually they do, because I find it strange that you would punish a player for not teleporting more than 15 feet with his Thunder Step and not punish him even more for trying to screw up the system by making a description of what he is doing that makes no sense in terms of action loop.

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So first, I never punish players for anything. Ever. In game consequences for in game actions is not punishment. Nor is interpreting RAW correctly and not allowing an instant effect to be split up. Second, this isn't about DM personal feelings about what makes sense or not, but what RAW allows.

Lyxen said:

No, it does not. The whole paragraph is stating "Harkening back to the example of Rasputin" so it's just an example. It continues by saying "Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels, starting from a base score of from an average of 3 to 4, going up to 6 to 8 at 2nd level, 9 to 11 at 3rd, 12 to 14 at 4th, 15 to 17 at 5th, 18 to 20 at 6th, and 21 to 23 at 7th level." It does not say anything beyond level 7 when fighters actually continue to accrue hit dice beyond that. It then goes on to examine a 10th level fighter with 95 hit points, and certainly does not refer the 23 again. It just says "However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises." So the meat is reached well before the fighter is down to 23 hit points.

Again, these are just examples to explain, as he puts it "the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points."

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You're mixing things up. First, it says "a character...", not "Rasputin" or "7th level." It's a statement about all characters. Second, the example of nicks and scratches isn't about "reaching" meat. It's about hit points being abstract and damage containing all types. So the first hit on that 95 hit point fighter for 8 damage would involve a meat nick or scratch, as well as skill/luck/divine/whatever hit point damage.

Lyxen said:

The interesting point here, however, is that it's about 50%, just like in 5e.

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Waiting until the end is a new thing. Prior to WotC damage was a mix of types from the get go.

"Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5 1/2 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only of small amount of actual physical harm."

23 meat hit points is the max a character of any level can expect to get, but even if the PC had 200, the first hit for 5 damage would do a small amount of physical harm. It doesn't take going through the other 177 before the meat is reached.

Lyxen said:

It says SPECIFICALLY: "and 21 to 23 at 7th level"...

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Because that's where the meat stops. These aren't isolated statements.

"...and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character." and "...and 21 to 23 at 7th level." have to be taken together and mean that they cap out at 7th and a character could possibly have as many as 23.

Swarmkeeper said:

The general sentiment I can agree with… but… I think there are a lot more creative things to do than choosing to thunderstep 0’ to 10’ instead of 15’ to 90’, but perhaps that’s a subjective assessment on my part.

More troubling here is the implication that it is okay to punish players in-game for constantly bending the game rules. An out-of-game adult conversation should be happening in that situation, not any kind of in-game retribution.

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Yes, you are right of course. I did not mean as punishing, but rather have a very careful approach about what to allow or not. As long as players act in good faith, my default answer is "yes".
If I notice bad faith, my default answer is "no", but a out of game talk is also necessary.

Maxperson said:

Where in RAW does it say that I can't ready crawling?
"Each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain) when you're climbing, swimming, or crawling."

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It says, specifically, that you can ready a move. It does not say which type of move so no, you cannot specifically ready crawling. Once more, just read the rules, don't invent what you think should be in there: "you choose to move up to your speed in response to it" and the example "If the goblin steps next to me, I move away". It does not say whether you intend to crawl, climb or even fly.

Maxperson said:

RAW says I can crawl when I move.

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You need to be prone to do this. Otherwise no. Of course, you can drop prone as part of your move if you want. It's stupid, but you can.

Maxperson said:

This is claptrap. You don't get to say would or should for any PC but yours. If I want to crawl for my readied action, RAW says I can do that.

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No, it does not, just read the rules. After that, when you do your move, if you want to drop prone and crawl, no worry.

Maxperson said:

The description of my action is crawl away and the intended resolution is that I am now 15 feet away via crawling. No disconnect happened.

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The description of your action makes zero sense from your character's perspective, this is where a DM should tell you that you are being stupid and therefore don't get far enough, but I agree that this is local rulings and not the rules.

Maxperson said:

Excellent. So by RAW, I can in fact(according to your interpretation of Ready) ready a crawl away from the teleport and make it away before the thunder or reappearance, even though I am interrupting two instant effects and taking the entire round to do it.

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And this is where, after all the claptrap above, you get to the wrong conclusion. You have, once more, failed to prove that it takes the entire round. So this is your challenge, prove that it takes the entire round (and by the way, which round are you even talking about ?).

Maxperson said:

You 100% cannot have been moving even an inch prior to the disappearance. The game requires the trigger to happen and complete BEFORE the Readied action can occur.

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So, did I say otherwise ?

Maxperson said:

No. 1) the DM is not justified in playing my PC without some sort of magical mind control..............ever.

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He is not playing your PC. You made a declaration of intent, the DM describes what happens. 100% standard loop.

Maxperson said:

2) this is just more Red Herring claptrap. We're discussing RAW, not what a DM is justified to do or might do.

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Listen here, either you, as a player, make a declaration that makes sense, or you don't:

• If you make a declaration that makes sense, like really trying to get away from the blast, the DM will describe something sensible.
• If you make a declaration that is absurd, like making as if you wanted to get away from the blast, but actually preparing to stay in it, then DM will also describe something sensible.

Despite what you are thinking, as a character, you have ZERO control over the caster and the amount of time its action takes, or yours, actually, in the round. The DM describes what happens, not you, based on your declaration. If you make a stupid one by trying to screw over the rules, the DM's description will screw your character over.

Maxperson said:

RAW doesn't allow the DM to play my PC for one. So your Red Herring contradicts RAW, which is that the player states what his PC is doing.

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And once more, you are totally wrong here. You describe what your character intends to do, the DM describes the result, Standard loop.

Maxperson said:

There are two problems here. First, that you think you can interrupt a singular instant effect to take non-instant actions. That's an issue with Ready and the assumption that the trigger only includes part of an effect.

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And once more, you have failed to prove that you cannot interrupt instantaneous effects. I have proven to you that there is no such limit, and I've even given you other examples, like counterspell of counterspell. So once more, you are left with nothing to stand on but your personal wishes that it was otherwise.

Maxperson said:

Second, that Thunderstep somehow has three instant effects when it in fact only has two. 1. teleportation 2. thunder.

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And once more, you have failed to prove it, in face of the evidence provided by the spell's description, that the disappearance is a singular event. And by the way, it's not an effect, a spell only has one effect, unless specified otherwise:

• The rest of a spell entry describes the spell’s effect.
  
  
• Exceptions, like Guards and Wards, say it specifically: "When you cast this spell, you can specify individuals that are unaffected by any or all of the effects that you choose. "

The problem is that you are trying to discuss the RAW without reading them, it causes all your arguments to be totally baseless.

Maxperson said:

So first, I never punish players for anything. Ever. In game consequences for in game actions is not punishment. Nor is interpreting RAW correctly and not allowing an instant effect to be split up. Second, this isn't about DM personal feelings about what makes sense or not, but what RAW allows.

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And since you have not understood the RAW, you continue, time and time again, to fail to prove anything. And, in this particular case, failed to prove that instantaneous effects cannot be interrupted by reactions (several examples given) and failed to prove that readied actions are based on complete actions, since it explicitly says otherwise.

Once, feel free to apply your personal limitations to your game, but since they don't appear even slightly in the RAW, it would be nice for you to finally admit this.

Maxperson said:

You're mixing things up. First, it says "a character...", not "Rasputin" or "7th level."

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It's funny, because one knows, when you present snippets like this instead of whole quotes, that you are going to pretend anything but the truth. So here is the complete paragraph with the relevant passages quoted. Deny that the 23 hit points are about Rasputin at 7th level, jsut for fun:



sigh

Maxperson said:

It's a statement about all characters. Second, the example of nicks and scratches isn't about "reaching" meat. It's about hit points being abstract and damage containing all types. So the first hit on that 95 hit point fighter for 8 damage would involve a meat nick or scratch, as well as skill/luck/divine/whatever hit point damage.

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While I agree about this statement, it's a different paragraph, the one about Rasputin the 7th level fighter with 18 Con as an example was to show what it meant. This comes from the next paragraph, where the example is this time a 10th level fighter with 95 hit points:

Maxperson said:

Waiting until the end is a new thing. Prior to WotC damage was a mix of types from the get go.

"Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5 1/2 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only of small amount of actual physical harm."

23 meat hit points is the max a character of any level can expect to get, but even if the PC had 200, the first hit for 5 damage would do a small amount of physical harm. It doesn't take going through the other 177 before the meat is reached.

Because that's where the meat stops. These aren't isolated statements.

"...and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character." and "...and 21 to 23 at 7th level." have to be taken together and mean that they cap out at 7th and a character could possibly have as many as 23.

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But they don't, it was only an example.

As for "Waiting until the end is a new thing", I really wonder where this comes from. I have shown you that it's not the case in 5e for example, and as far as I know it's not been present in any edition.

Lyxen said:

There certainly is, but discouraging even small "innovations" is certainly not a way to encourage larger and more creative ones.



Indeed. In a sense, it goes back to some recent posts by @EzekielRaiden about the state of mind of the DM, when balancing what he sees as the verisimilitude of his world vs. the fun of the players. Discussing all that, possibly at session 0 or at later equivalents is indeed the right way to do it, not in game "subtle hints"...

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To specify my thoughts, hopefully concisely:

DMs produce the world (maybe cooperatively), setting what can be seen, acquired, opposed, etc. These form incentives, which feed player decisions. The DM evaluates those decisions, and sets results and consequences, either directly or by invoking mechanics. Those results and consequences, whether direct from DM or mediated by mechanics, set the next round of incentives. The wheel turns.

I see many DM questions that reflect some amount of ignorance about the connection between their inputs (information/incentives) or outputs (results/consequences) and player decisions. Sometimes, it takes the form you cite, using (allegedly) subtle hints or the like, trying to create incentives without having them be seen as incentives. Other times, it shows as a frustration with ongoing (or intensifying) player behavior, with the DM not seeing how their incentives and consequences directly lead to those behaviors.

In the "subtle hints" case, DMs seem to think just talking to players will ruin the moment or destroy the "magic" etc. That's a valid point, but often taken too far, dragging out fixable problems without need. It is ineffective, and possibly destructive, to so heavily prioritize "preserving the magic" when dealing with certain kinds of ongoing issues.

In the latter case, which I think is more relevant here, the DM has some clear goal they want to push their players toward, but it isn't happening, or they have something they want to push the players away from, but it keeps happening. Having players that want to do creative things means either giving worthy rewards (in their eyes, not strictly in the DM's eyes) for the risks, or lowering the risk to match them (or both). This is another part of why I work so hard to encourage genuine (non-abusive, non-exploitative) player enthusiasm in...pretty much every bit of the game. The more my players know I'm with them, that I'm implicitly "on board" for their shenanigans, the more shenanigans they'll willingly pull, and the more fun we'll all have.

Players still have responsibility to do their part in making a great game. But DMs need to think, sometimes very hard, about how their choices, beliefs, biases, etc. shape what players will choose to do. Realism is cool, and usually worth seeking. But it can encourage stuff you don't want to happen, or discourage what you do want to happen, if you don't examine it critically. Players are the best people for the job of helping a DM critique her methods and (pre)conceptions.

Ok, this debate about readied actions is a real corner case. At first I was thinking, ok, yeah if a PC is prone, and they want to ready an action and then roll out of the way of an attack (as opposed to crawling), I'd be like sure....

But then it hit me. How on earth would a character know to ready this sort of action? That would be like "I ready on the off chance the enemy caster uses fireball". You don't know his spell list. So the only way this would be remotely feasible is if the guy already hit you with a fireball, I guess? It seems like a ludicrous example. But hey, fine, let's say your actual trigger is "if the enemy disappears" which satisfies the "perceivable circumstance" trigger.

Walk is not the only way to "move your speed" in the game. Not only could you use a different type of speed, such as flight, there are other effects that move you- for example, Maneuvering Attack, which allows an ally to spend their reaction to move half their speed.

Just because we use "walking speed" to describe speed, does not necessarily mean that you are in fact, walking when you move your speed. For another example:

The Volo's Guide Orcs can move up to their speed as a bonus action to move towards an enemy. If we take any instance of "move your speed" as "the opponent walks", and you watch an Orc move 30' and then move ANOTHER 30' as a bonus action- are we going to describe that as a 'casual stroll'?

James Gasik said:

Ok, this debate about readied actions is a real corner case. At first I was thinking, ok, yeah if a PC is prone, and they want to ready an action and then roll out of the way of an attack (as opposed to crawling), I'd be like sure....

But then it hit me. How on earth would a character know to ready this sort of action? That would be like "I ready on the off chance the enemy caster uses fireball". You don't know his spell list. So the only way this would be remotely feasible is if the guy already hit you with a fireball, I guess? It seems like a ludicrous example. But hey, fine, let's say your actual trigger is "if the enemy disappears" which satisfies the "perceivable circumstance" trigger.

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I agree, the number of cases in which it applies is really small, although players can sometimes get a hint of what a caster is likely to do, because it's a bit like their signature spell. It can happen with PCs and with NPCs. The PCs can learn about this by making some research about a NPC, but the other way around, for example, the sorceress in our Avernus Campaign is very frequently using lightning bolt (many reasons, and in particular the lesser lightning resistance of fiends, but also she is a storm sorceress and has a feat that ignores resistance). After a while, the legend grows, and adversaries, intelligent ones, will have heard about her and will take steps. Now, they must be able to take steps, and in any case lightning bolt is not one of those spells that you can really react to, but the principle is there for those who want to think about it in advance.

James Gasik said:

Walk is not the only way to "move your speed" in the game. Not only could you use a different type of speed, such as flight, there are other effects that move you- for example, Maneuvering Attack, which allows an ally to spend their reaction to move half their speed.

Just because we use "walking speed" as shorthand for speed, does not necessarily mean that you are in fact, walking when you move your speed. For another example:

The Volo's Guide Orcs can move up to their speed as a bonus action to move towards an enemy. If we take any instance of "move your speed" as "the opponent walks", and you watch an Orc move 30' and then move ANOTHER 30' as a bonus action- are we going to describe that as a 'casual stroll'?

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Indeed, and this in addition to the fact that a move action, at best, uses half of your round instead of your full round to move your walking speed. Combat is not a stroll, and it shows not only in the descriptions and the feeling of the fights, but simply in the rules.