D&D 5E Dhampir teleporting onto a wall. Stick or fall?

[rgoodbb]

Dhampir Wildfire Druid level 3 so Spider Climb and Fiery Teleportation are both available. What happens when:

a) Teleporting to a wall

b) Teleporting to a ceiling within reach

Do you stick, fall, or turn upside down if on ceiling. I'm assuming the answer is talk to you DM.

 

[MarkB]

I would do an acrobatics check with a family easy DC. Yes, they appear next to it but they are immediately falling so even if prepared it takes a quick reaction. Writing as a long-time rock climber - once you start falling, it's hard to stop.

Teleport to directly above the origin point, then you can ride the updraft from the fireburst.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fiery Teleportation. The spirit and each willing creature of your choice within 5 feet of it teleport up to 1 5 feet to unoccupied spaces you can see. Then each creature within 5 feet of the space that the spirit left must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC or take ld6 + PB fire damage.

I might see it different, in that the target is an unoccupied space you can see, which is 5x5ft. Allowing you to teleport 1mm from the wall or ceiling might start to open other ideas such as : Sure, there are tables and chairs in that space, but I am aiming for the 1ft space behind the chair and wall where I can fit if I get skinny, so it is like unoccupied.

I cannot seem to find a good outline of what is considered unoccupied. most people seem to think it is no people and objects. Allowing teleportation into a space in the air might also mean that one should be able to teleport into a space with tables and chairs since they could land on the table and not the possibility of being fused with the table taking damage, or just having the spell wasted. Allowing the teleport to target the 5ft space above the table and just saying that you will land on your feet on the table seems odd as well.

Err, I'm not even seeing how you are arguing this. Given that most medium creatures are more than 5 feet tall, it would be very difficult for them not to be touching the ceiling if they teleported to the 5 foot space immediately below the ceiling. A tiny creature might have a problem if they teleported into the middle of the space.

And sure, if there is a table in the way, you teleport onto the table. There is a 5 ft. unoccupied space above the table. I can't see why you are finding that odd?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would do an acrobatics check with a family easy DC. Yes, they appear next to it but they are immediately falling so even if prepared it takes a quick reaction. Writing as a long-time rock climber - once you start falling, it's hard to stop.

Practiced rock climbers do not have the supernatural ability to stroll across the ceiling. If the player was a tabaxi, with an entirely natural climbing ability, this would be a valid comparison, but Spider Climb is an entirely unnatural ability to move like a vampire.

 

[Umbran]

Allowing you to teleport 1mm from the wall or ceiling might start to open other ideas such as...

But, it isn't "1 mm". It is within reach of arms and/or legs - so, more within a couple of feet.

 

[mellored]

Practiced rock climbers do not have the supernatural ability to stroll across the ceiling. If the player was a tabaxi, with an entirely natural climbing ability, this would be a valid comparison, but Spider Climb is an entirely unnatural ability to move like a vampire.

You still need to grab on. Supernaturally or otherwise.

But I also wouldn't make it difficult. Rule of cool applies, and teleporting to walls is cool.

So DC 5 for most surfaces. Easy enough to pass with a little Dex and some training to do consistently. But someone clumsy might slip.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You still need to grab on. Supernaturally or otherwise.

You just need to touch the surface and you can move on it as if it where the ground. It’s magic, you don’t need to grab anything, brushing against it is enough.

 

[Deset Gled]

I would likely allow the wall but might not allow you to suddenly stick to the ceiling. You do not teleport to that space, you teleport to the adjacent space. If you suddenly appear under the ceiling you start to fall before you can grab the ceiling. This is why I can see grabbing the wall and not the ceiling. I could also see something like a DC 15 Acrobatics check to do it.

I think an Acrobatics check is appropriate, but that DC sounds a little high for my taste. Something simple like a flat floor to a flat ceiling would be more like a DC 5 (or even ignored). DC 15 would be to a slippery cave ceiling. DC 10 if there are stalactites to grab.

In any case, the DC should be basically the same as jumping. Easy/negligible under simple conditions, harder in bad terrain.

You just need to touch the surface and you can move on it as if it where the ground. It’s magic, you don’t need to grab anything, brushing against it is enough.

IMNSHO, a lot of ceilings, especially natural or dungeon ones, would be very hard to move on if they were ground. Uneven spaces, weird curves and edges, lots of dirt, dust, bugs, or moisture. It's very justifiable to treat things that were never meant to be walked on as if they were difficult terrain, just as if it were the ground.

 

[aco175]

I think an Acrobatics check is appropriate, but that DC sounds a little high for my taste. Something simple like a flat floor to a flat ceiling would be more like a DC 5 (or even ignored). DC 15 would be to a slippery cave ceiling. DC 10 if there are stalactites to grab.

In any case, the DC should be basically the same as jumping. Easy/negligible under simple conditions, harder in bad terrain.

Maybe just have a time requirement? If it is something you can do mostly all the time, a hero would train to do the cool thing so he could do it in battle. Maybe downtime days or over the course of a couple weeks of game time, a level?

 

[Willie the Duck]

I would likely allow the wall but might not allow you to suddenly stick to the ceiling. You do not teleport to that space, you teleport to the adjacent space. If you suddenly appear under the ceiling you start to fall before you can grab the ceiling. This is why I can see grabbing the wall and not the ceiling. I could also see something like a DC 15 Acrobatics check to do it.

But, it isn't "1 mm". It is within reach of arms and/or legs - so, more within a couple of feet.

That space is full of ceiling, you can't teleport to it. They are (presumably) teleporting to as close to the ceiling as they can and grabbing it just like if they were climbing up to the ceiling on a ladder (or at least at the top of a jump to the ceiling, where they have no net downward velocity). I don't know if D&D has any leaping-spider type creatures, but if you can leap to a ceiling and stick to it, it should work equally for teleporting to the ceiling.

I guess my main point is that it is, barring some reaction-action teleports I am forgetting, their turn, so they just used their action or bonus action to teleport, and then start utilizing their movement action to move along the the ceiling with no specified time gap between. Why this should not work for them, but work for a flier that similarly teleported to that location is not clear -- the climber has to affix themselves to the ceiling by initiating their climbing movement speed, and the flier has to initiate their movement speed in the same way, and if we rule that there is a time gap there for one, it should be there for both of them (in which case they are both doomed, since falling is instantaneous and flying creatures can't seem to 'catch themselves' from a fall).

I would do an acrobatics check with a family easy DC. Yes, they appear next to it but they are immediately falling so even if prepared it takes a quick reaction. Writing as a long-time rock climber - once you start falling, it's hard to stop.

Practiced rock climbers do not have the supernatural ability to stroll across the ceiling. If the player was a tabaxi, with an entirely natural climbing ability, this would be a valid comparison, but Spider Climb is an entirely unnatural ability to move like a vampire.

There's a certain fighter-v-wizard argument that goes something like 'martials can't ever do anything because someone thinks they know what the experience they are attempting would be like, but no one knows what magic would be like.' I think that's a real danger of this in situations like this, and it's likely to negatively effect your characters doing the exact things one personally has a passion for. Nearly everything adventurers do is just plain improbably risky or impractical -- venturing into dangerous holes in the ground in full harness armor, leaping from platforms to platforms over neigh-bottomless pits, going to battle with giants or megafauna, etc. If we suddenly impose realism onto the fields we happen to have personal interest in, those are the ones we're going to render impossible to our characters (meanwhile the rock climber's character can use their longbow in the rain, whereas the player who personally is into archery would have their character keep the bowstring dry but be able to climb in improbable scenarios, etc.). I'm not really taking a position here, so much as warning about a potential issue.

 

[overgeeked]

Dhampir Wildfire Druid level 3 so Spider Climb and Fiery Teleportation are both available. What happens when:

a) Teleporting to a wall

b) Teleporting to a ceiling within reach

Do you stick, fall, or turn upside down if on ceiling. I'm assuming the answer is talk to you DM.

Is spider climb active? Then they stick. If not, they fall. If there’s nothing about changing direction or orientation in the teleport, then they’d be facing/oriented the same way as when they teleported. If that breaks the rules for spider climb, they fall.