D&D 5E Feather Fall hanger on

[5ekyu]

Player: I cast fireball centred right....there!
DM: That's....95 feet away from you.
Player: No problem; the spell's range is 150 feet and I have a clear line of sight.
DM: There's no way you could be so precise in the midst of combat. Roll a DC 10 Wis check to see if you manage to place the spell correctly.
Player: *rolls* Darn, 8.
DM: Okay...that means...you've killed the king and his entire family, who you were there to protect. Having fun yet?

There is no expectation in the rules to have to make rolls to have your spell casting decisions be the subject of skill checks. We don't have to roll to see if we place the blast radius in the right place, or to cast the spell when we want to cast it, or to affect the six correct targets with a friendly spell. These are automatic. If they weren't, D&D would've made this clear in the last 40+ years!

There is a difference between how the players experience this and how the characters experience it. For the players, it's things like, "I centre the blast radius 20 feet from the cave mouth", "I target all the party members except the wizard", "I cast the spell as soon as I get within 30 feet".

But the creatures in the game world are probably not doing that. They are more probably thinking things like, "I cast the spell....there!", "I buff these guys", "I cast the spell.....now!".

Feather fall should not be nerfed by an extra roll (or two rolls for you!) where failure could result in death, when there are no such rolls for the other spells. It's either all decision points of all spells, or we assume that the caster gets to freely choose these things without requiring rolls to see if he gets it right!

Which is it? Well, I think the game would mention it if rolls were required. The game allows creatures to do the things they can do whenever the rules allow them to do it. The use whatever action is required whenever the rules allow them to use that action, without randomly rolling to see if they got the timing right. They allow the spell to be cast at the desired spot within range, without randomising the distance. The caster attacks or affects the creatures he chooses, and concentrates on spells as long as he wants.

In fact, where things are uncertain, the rules are sure to tell us when! Do you hit your intended target? Yes. Yes you do. Unless the rules specify an attack roll or a saving throw. Do you keep concentrating on that spell? Yes, unless a concentration check is forced upon you as described in the rules. Do you aim the blast area where you intend? Yes. Do you cast the spell when you intend? Yes. If these things were subject to random rolls, the game would tell us.

Agree for the most part but let me add... this is not fireball... this is a reaction.

with other reactions i can make my decision to cast a spell or not AFTER i see the roll in some cases, after a beam of light is thrown my way etc.

No roll for timing required for those.

Changing to add chance of failure and risk to a spell that is IMX most often used to try and save PCs and allies is not a direction i would be taking for a spell used so rarely and with really no significant game imbalancing in play history.

But some folks see it differently, of course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Agree for the most part but let me add... this is not fireball... this is a reaction.

with other reactions i can make my decision to cast a spell or not AFTER i see the roll in some cases, after a beam of light is thrown my way etc.

No roll for timing required for those.

Changing to add chance of failure and risk to a spell that is IMX most often used to try and save PCs and allies is not a direction i would be taking for a spell used so rarely and with really no significant game imbalancing in play history.

But some folks see it differently, of course.

[-]There's no additional risk to using the spell to save yourself. This is a complete strawman. The risk is trying to use three spellbr to stop yourself intentionally 10' from the ground in a 500 for fall. Save yourself all day. Save yourself at a reasonable distance is fine. But you aren't trying to save yourself by stopping only 10 feet from the ground. Trying to set up others arguments as such is dishonest and rude.[/-]

ETA: my apologies, I'm on my phone and didn't notice who I was responding to. I did not intend to walk back my last.

 

[Arial Black]

Feather fall is not "nerfed" by asking for a roll to cast it when 10' from the ground. It works just fine and as intended if cast before that.

The issue here isn't "does feather fall work" it's "can I tell, when moving at 174 feet/second, when I'm 10' from the ground? That's uncertain, there's nothing about casting feather fall that's uncertain.

The fireball example doesn't work because there's nothing uncertain about placing fireball with a resolution of 5 feet. That's the spacing enforced by the grid -- a minimum of 5' from your allies. That's 1/4 of the radius of the spell, and, if you refer back to the falling distance, 1/4 of your per round falling is 125 feet. What you're talking about with feather fall is 1/50th of the distance fallen (at 10'). For the fireball, you'd have to be placing it within 4 or so inches from your allies. And, if for some reason you actually wanted to do that in game, I'd definitely call a check for that.

Now, I didn't do that math before just now, but I still made this exact same argument earlier when I pointed out that the analogy would be placing the fireball extent within inches rather than within 5'.

You're nefing it whether you realise it or not.

Let's take the Ready action: you define a trigger and a response to that trigger. If the trigger is 'when I am 60 feet from the ground' and the response is 'I cast feather fall', then the game system itself allows this with no rolls expected.

Every Ready action works this way, whether or not the timing would be uncertain in real life. 'I cast hold person a soon as the baddy gets within range'. Done and done. No rolls to see if you estimate 60 feet correctly. Unrealistic? Exactly as realistic as the rest of the game system.

It is wrong to penalise one spell by making up one or two DC 10 checks, with death as the failure consequence, by enforcing your vision of 'real life' onto one spell and not the others.

Especially when in rel life parachuting using the HALO technique is a real thing, and feather fall has the amazing advantages of being enabled by an instant utterance and takes effect instantly, safely and reliably. Your 'nerf because realism' doesn't hold water.

 

[iserith]

You're nefing it whether you realise it or not.

Let's take the Ready action: you define a trigger and a response to that trigger. If the trigger is 'when I am 60 feet from the ground' and the response is 'I cast feather fall', then the game system itself allows this with no rolls expected.

Every Ready action works this way, whether or not the timing would be uncertain in real life. 'I cast hold person a soon as the baddy gets within range'. Done and done. No rolls to see if you estimate 60 feet correctly. Unrealistic? Exactly as realistic as the rest of the game system.

It is wrong to penalise one spell by making up one or two DC 10 checks, with death as the failure consequence, by enforcing your vision of 'real life' onto one spell and not the others.

Especially when in rel life parachuting using the HALO technique is a real thing, and feather fall has the amazing advantages of being enabled by an instant utterance and takes effect instantly, safely and reliably. Your 'nerf because realism' doesn't hold water.

You can't Ready a spell with a casting time of 1 reaction.

You also can't take a Ready action outside of combat, so that rule may also apply depending on the situation.

 

[neobolts]

Literally first thing that popped into my head was falling at half-speed, like picturing a helium balloon with just too much weight attached. So falling damage divided by 2 is my on-the-fly.

 

[5ekyu]

"Feather fall should not be nerfed by an extra roll (or two rolls for you!) where failure could result in death, when there are no such rolls for the other spells."

Again to repeat... I agree with this for the reasons stated above.

I do not expect everyone to.

If someone chooses to take this kind of statement as setting up others arguments then thats going to be something they have to bear themselves. I cannot help them on that.



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[Ovinomancer]

You're nefing it whether you realise it or not.

Let's take the Ready action: you define a trigger and a response to that trigger. If the trigger is 'when I am 60 feet from the ground' and the response is 'I cast feather fall', then the game system itself allows this with no rolls expected.

Every Ready action works this way, whether or not the timing would be uncertain in real life. 'I cast hold person a soon as the baddy gets within range'. Done and done. No rolls to see if you estimate 60 feet correctly. Unrealistic? Exactly as realistic as the rest of the game system.

It is wrong to penalise one spell by making up one or two DC 10 checks, with death as the failure consequence, by enforcing your vision of 'real life' onto one spell and not the others.

Especially when in rel life parachuting using the HALO technique is a real thing, and feather fall has the amazing advantages of being enabled by an instant utterance and takes effect instantly, safely and reliably. Your 'nerf because realism' doesn't hold water.

You slipped the very important pay where the DM arbitrates if a trigger is valid. Else your reasoning would be valid to say "I wait until the guards aren't looking and cross the hall" and, bam, it happens as soon as the guards aren't looking without a roll.

Just because you can say "my trigger is" doesn't mean the DM has to accept it.

Further, you can't ready a reaction to cast feather fall. As a reaction only spell, it already has a trigger, which is "falling". Not "falling and at an altitude defined by the caster". You can choose to ignore that trigger, ou'd you want, but you can't subdivide that trigger into arbitrarily small increments. You are falling, you may react to falling. Not reacting means you fall 500'. Seems pretty cut and dried.

 

[Satyrn]

This is how I'd rule the OP's situation.

Having noted - as others have pointed out - that the bard has already used his action to cast Thunderwave, he likely doesn't have the ability (in the action economy) to make the grapple attempt, I would decide to rule that the bard leaping off the tower marks the end of combat. Now I don't yave to care one whit about that stuff. And I'd simply have the bard roll a Dex check (DC 15) to reach and grab hold of the falling enemy as the player intends. Failure results in lots of damage.

Then if that works, I'd give the falling enemy one or 2 chances to push the bard off him, making opposed Str checks. The first check would come about halfway down, so 1 success followed by 1 failure results in half damage.

2 successes would be minimal damage, and 3 would be none.

I think it would make for an exciting, scary situation.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My reasoning behind the double ability check was that cooly leaping (or falling, or getting shoved off) a great height and having the presence of mind to time the Feather Fall is less trivial than was implied by the poster. Especially for a non-physical class. To me (and this, of course, is my "ruling") the language suggests that Feather Fall is a reaction to finding oneself suddenly falling, not something you get to time carefully. An "oh !" spell.

But on further thought I would change it to a single Acrobatics roll, of maybe DC 15. And, to get really fancy, if you fail you miss by 10' for each point below the DC. So you might target 60' from the ground, fail, and still get the spell off just in time. So it's not "succeed or die" unless you are foolish enough to aim for exactly 10'.

I don't think this is nerfing the spell at all. If you use the spell as I believe it was intended then you can still use it at the moment of falling with no additional rolls.

YMMV, of course.

Toodles.

 

[5ekyu]

My reasoning behind the double ability check was that cooly leaping (or falling, or getting shoved off) a great height and having the presence of mind to time the Feather Fall is less trivial than was implied by the poster. Especially for a non-physical class. To me (and this, of course, is my "ruling") the language suggests that Feather Fall is a reaction to finding oneself suddenly falling, not something you get to time carefully. An "oh !" spell.

But on further thought I would change it to a single Acrobatics roll, of maybe DC 15. And, to get really fancy, if you fail you miss by 10' for each point below the DC. So you might target 60' from the ground, fail, and still get the spell off just in time. So it's not "succeed or die" unless you are foolish enough to aim for exactly 10'.

I don't think this is nerfing the spell at all. If you use the spell as I believe it was intended then you can still use it at the moment of falling with no additional rolls.

YMMV, of course.

Toodles.

However, the spell is not a reaction to finding oneself falling at all.

You can choose to affect up to 5 creatures who are falling and not yourself at all. there is actually no requirement that you be falling, at all.

The concept of just a reaction that i cannot time may be an issue for a self-only affect spell triggered by the caster falling.

But how does that "reflex" jibe with seeing a dozen other folks falling and casting it with reaction and picking 5 specific ones?

How would that same idea work if it were say 200 people falling out of a tower and you had to pick five and they were also about to splat?

How does that view of reaction timing work with your ability to CHOOSE to cast the spell or not when the falling starts?

How does that jibe with being able to CHOOSE whether or not to throw any number of defensive reaction spells AFTER the attack has been rolled?

As for whether or not it is a "nerf at all" Well, by the rules such as they are you do NOT have to roll with FF to avoid splatting if you CHOOSE not to cast it immediately. it is not a reflex you have limited control over by the RAW.

You might not consider it a "nerf at all" to limit it to just your view of "as it was intended" but others can obviously have different views. that is fine.

As i have stated, i myself for my games have never seen this spell and even the drop the floater end maneuver produce imbalancing or out of whack results to make me want to start inventing new ways for it to fail if folks do not use it the way "I intend. "

I have not seen it to be a problem that would make me want to add to "ways players can die."

But let me ask a question from the positive gain side.

What is it that you see as the positive gains for your games from adding this acrobatics fail chance to feather fall?

What kinds of scenes do you see running now that you would think would be better if there was a chance for feather fall to not save the character when it would right now as written?

Just what positives fun things do you expect this ruling will add that make up for the seeming restriction on player options that "if you wait below abc you may fail on a bad roll"?

What do you see as the upside from this new mechanic being added to feather fall?