Feather Fall When Flat-footed?

Ohhh... right

Feather Fall
The addition of immediate actions to the game means that casting feather fall is now an immediate action instead of a free action, since you can cast the spell at any time, even if it’s not your turn.


So Hypertext has been updating stuff from the RC??? nice... didn't know that.


As for your question... I don't find it problematic. You remain flat footed until the moment you slip...

from the slip onward you can activate it... makes sense doesn't it? Or perhaps you are asking something else?

This is how I handle it.

There was lengthy discussion on this very topic as it pertained to falling traps.

My opinion (and is pretty much how I see the rules as written) is that all of a character's movement is resolved on his turn in the initiative order. That means the character is no longer flat-footed when you start to resolve the fall - hence you can now take immediate actions and feather fall works as intended to. There is a specific exception to the resolve movement on your turn rule and that would be bull-rush but that is specifically stated when to resolve the movement hence it is a situational/specific exception to the general rule.

So while it looks Whiley Cayote like a character (per the rules) is momentarily suspended in air for the period of time between the action that caused him to fall and when he actually starts to fall. This is a peculiarity in the rules, but since the combat rules are be design very loose in the real world logic/physics comparison it still fits within the rules as written.
 

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This is how I handle it.

There was lengthy discussion on this very topic as it pertained to falling traps.

The lengthy discussion: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-le...diate-actions-cant-used-when-flat-footed.html

I handle this by simply ignoring the errata that borked up the whole thing. Casting Feather Fall is a free action that can explicitly be used outside of your turn. Simple, effective, elegant. They got it right the first time, and only succeeded in making things worse by changing it.

Of course, the concept of immediate actions annoys me to begin with, so any excuse to ignore them is a good one.
 

The lengthy discussion: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-le...diate-actions-cant-used-when-flat-footed.html

I handle this by simply ignoring the errata that borked up the whole thing. Casting Feather Fall is a free action that can explicitly be used outside of your turn. Simple, effective, elegant. They got it right the first time, and only succeeded in making things worse by changing it.

Of course, the concept of immediate actions annoys me to begin with, so any excuse to ignore them is a good one.

I hate immediate actions too, first and foremost because they were introduced in the EPH (*disgusted*), but I believe that all this confusion around it is without reason.

Being Flat Footed is ALWAYS a "condition" in respect to something.

You are Flat Flat footed either because you are not aware of a threat, or because you are not fast enough to react to that threat (initiative).

Of course, this was never explicitly written down in any book, but this the only logical explanation I can come up with. Otherwise nothing makes sense. If you treat a character as flat-footed in every situation except for his first round of combat (and beyond... until the combat ends), the what you have is this:

A wizard standing alone on the edge of a cliff decides to jump. He runs, jumps and starts falling. Now the only way he can save himself from true death is the small chance of a dragon showing up in time so that he can roll initiative? That's insane... but that doesn't mean you have to rule out the text change and go back to free action.
Just treat Flat-Footed as mentioned above and you won't have any problems.

A nice example is this:
RC p107

Sneak up from Hiding: You can sneak up on someone after emerging from a hiding place. For every 5 feet of open space between you and the target, you take a –5 penalty on your Hide check. If your Hide check succeeds, your target doesn’t notice you until you attack or perform some other attention-grabbing action. Such a target is treated as being flat-footed with respect to you.

You see, here the character being attacked might as well be already in combat, far from being flat-footed in respect to the enemies he's been fighting for several rounds now.
But in respect to the invisible attacker he IS flat-footed.
 
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