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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7315014">Ok, I find this fascinating.  I just checked in onthe "My Character Always..." thread and found this post:I started writing the following, and decided to just move the whole thing here....Funny, I just popped into this thread (partly because I was curious why it's still hovering near the top of the threads page) and read this.I totally agree.  We evidently share some viewpoints about playstyle, including tradeoffs.So I'm kind of flummoxed why you are so adamantly opposed to my P.O.V. on Feather Fall.  (Because, really, our Feather Fall disagreement is a sub-category of this thread.)  What you are describing here is exactly what I was describing as a reason for applying the skill check: because trade-offs are more interesting.  If there's no "cost" to doing HALO jumps with Feather Fall...which I hope you will at least admit is more challenging than simply using it as soon as the fall starts....won't players use it every single time?Now, maybe the particular trade-off I came up with on the spur of the moment ("roll reasonably well or die") is so harsh that it effectively eliminates the option, but wouldn't a more nuanced, less binary cost be appropriate?What if the cost of failing the skill check were just that you land Prone?  Would that satisfy you?  Or are you simply adamant that HALO jumps are the intended use of Feather Fall?  That the WotC team must surely be aware of this use and therefore they would have written the description to exclude it if that was their intent?  If so, I would offer the rules on Stealth as an example of how they very intentionally left things up to DM interpretation, which they very clearly did.Speaking of which, and in the spirit of discussion not argument, I'll freely admit that I would probably be arguing the other side in a debate about stealth: in the example of "I will Hold Action until the guards look the other way" I actually think that this is exactly how stealth works.  I wouldn't let somebody do it without a stealth roll, just because they Hold Action, but I would assume it's simply part of a successful stealth roll, in the way you assume HALO jumps are simply part of a Feather Fall spell.  Some people think that if guards are watching you absolutely cannot Hide (because, according to the rules, you cannot Hide if "you", which could be interpreted to mean the area you want to stealth through, are under direct observation).  My interpretation is that a successful Stealth roll means you waited until the guards glance away and therefore the area you want to cross is not under direct observation.  Because that's what good stealthing ability is, in the same way that magicians (in the Penn & Teller sense) do their tricks when they know you are looking somewhere else.Isn't that the exact opposite of what I'm saying about Feather Fall?  Yeah, maybe.  On the one hand I'm saying the fancy timing is not part of the ability/spell, and in the other case I'm saying it is.  I suppose my rationale is that rogues are supposed to be good at stealth, but Wizards are not masters of acrobatics.  Unless they are, of course, in which case they can do HALO jumps.Alternatively, you could see it that both situations are parallel: the rogue and the wizard both get to do something they want to do (Move, or Cast) without rolling any checks.  If they want to do so without consequences they have to make a skill check.  If the guards weren't there the Rogue wouldn't have to make a stealth check, and if the Wizard doesn't want to use any fancy timing he wouldn't have to make an acrobatics check.</blockquote>

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