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

[Swarmkeeper]

That's good advice, you got my like, Swarmkeeper. Though I think the rules could stand to make running away easier. I mean, unless you can cast Thunderstep, that is. : )

Perhaps. But in the absence of better “Run Away!” rules, my suggestion is to think about the goals and motivations of the baddies when you are setting up encounters. If combat ensues, will they fight to the death? Will they parley mid fight? Will they pursue those who try to flee? Will they flee? Etc. Not every group of monsters should behave the same and it helps as DM to take a few minutes to decide before the game session. Not that the DM’s plans ever survive first contact with the players(!), but having a general idea in mind has been useful for me.

 

[Lyxen]

By RAW you are.

By RAW you are what ? By RAW you are walking when moving as part of a readied action ? Are you really going to go that way ? It's not even a move action, how can you even say that you are walking.

After that if it's to say that if a player describes his action as walking, then he is walking and that is RAW, then we come back to the basic loop: the players just describe their actions. If the player say "I am prepared to move when the caster disappears, but I will specifically walk", then the DM is absolutely right to rule that he does not escape the blast. Fortunately, I am pretty sure that no player will ever make such a silly declaration of intent, so we should be safe

Show me where it says that I have to rush with my readied action. By RAW I ready the action to move(not run, but move) when the target disappears. When the trigger happens all I have to do is move. Hell, I can get on my knees and crawl 15 feet if I want to, all before(according to you) the target reappears. If you want to say that doesn't happen, you need to show where any of that is forbidden.

OK, honestly, I really hope that this is your last line of defence on this topic, because we are going in a very silly area here. In any case, see above about the basic loop, which is RAW as well.

It's my PC. He did nothing but ready the action to walk, no, now I want to crawl 15 away when the trigger happens. The trigger is when the caster disappears.

Good, then see above my RAW response as a DM.

 

[Lyxen]

AD&D gave a rough idea of many hit points were meat. Presumably the fighters had more luck and skill at combat than the wizards. The rogues more skill and luck than wizards, but less than fighters who were bred for combat.

It did ? I suppose that was from the relative hit points of fighters and rogues, or was there something more precise than this somewhere ?

 

[Lyxen]

In 5e 50% of hit points are explicitly not meat.

I'm really curious where you get this very precise 50% from ?

 

[Lyxen]

It's not only not precise, it's deliberately bonkers. 1 of a monster can be a medium difficulty encounter, but it takes as many as 10 to be deadly?

That's really a side effect of Action Economy combined with Bounded Accuracy. In previous editions, when you used lower CR monsters, they became completely inefficient so even if you multiplied then, the threat never rose. In 5e, they remain efficient, so at some point the increasing threat of multiple less powerful attacks crosses the line and makes them really dangerous again. That part, at least, is relatively straightforward maths.

 

[Maxperson]

By RAW you are what ? By RAW you are walking when moving as part of a readied action ? Are you really going to go that way ? It's not even a move action, how can you even say that you are walking.

Movement speed = walking. In combat it CAN, at the option of the player, be faster movement. By RAW I can sit my rear down on the ground and scoot 15 feet as my readied action.

After that if it's to say that if a player describes his action as walking, then he is walking and that is RAW, then we come back to the basic loop: the players just describe their actions. If the player say "I am prepared to move when the caster disappears, but I will specifically walk", then the DM is absolutely right to rule that he does not escape the blast. Fortunately, I am pretty sure that no player will ever make such a silly declaration of intent, so we should be safe

The DM is wrong to rule that without setting up in advance of the campaign a house rule altering the way readied actions work. The way readied actions work, per your reading of RAW, my character would escape the blast by sitting down on his read and scooting 15 feet on his butt as his readied action.

 

[Lyxen]

Yeah, 5e is simultaneously easy (compared to 3e) and stupidly hard to DM for. Monsters aren't terribly complex, but you can't just grab something at a given CR and say "Go!". Attack bonuses, hit point totals, and AC can vary wildly from monster to monster (I suspect, on the back end, that WotC designs monsters to have roles, just like they did in 4e, but didn't tell anyone). Some special attacks are just impossible for low level characters to deal with (what we used to call the Wight/Cockatrice problem- something a 1st level character can encounter can instantly kill you basically forever and there's nothing you can do about it).

You'd think by now they'd have figured this encounter design out by now...

My, are we branching onto different topics on this thread...

Honestly, 5e is not perfect and I will not defend everything there, but I have asked this question multiple times: Don't you think that if it was doable, there would be a good 3rd party calculator out there, maybe on DMsGuild ? The reason for which there is none is that it's just impossible to do precisely. There are too many uncontrollable factors out there in encounter design that can turn any balanced encounter into a cheese for one side or the other, starting with luck on surprise and initiative to synergies (or anti-synergies) between members of one side and each other or their adversaries, to the effect of terrain, etc.

5e sort of caters for that in a general sense in a section that I'm pretty sure almost no-one ever reads:

Increase the difficulty of the encounter by one step (from easy to medium, for example) if the characters have a drawback that their enemies don’t. Reduce the difficulty by one step if the characters have a benefit that their enemies don’t. Any additional benefit or drawback pushes the encounter one step in the appropriate direction. If the characters have both a benefit and a drawback, the two cancel each other out.

Situational drawbacks include the following:

• The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn’t.
• The enemy has cover, and the party doesn’t.
• The characters are unable to see the enemy.
• The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn’t.
• The characters are hanging from a rope, in the midst of scaling a sheer wall or cliff, stuck to the floor, or otherwise in a situation that greatly hinders their mobility or makes them sitting ducks.

Situational benefits are similar to drawbacks except that they benefit the characters instead of the enemy.

I know, the examples are way too simple and this could be expanded upon a lot, but for me, the basics are there and are good enough.

You will never reach the almost perfection of 4e in encounter balancing, but that's because the game is also way more open. Again, if it could be done, I'm sure it would have been, I'm sure I wouldn't know where to begin apart from the above, and I would get lost quickly.

 

[Maxperson]

It did ? I suppose that was from the relative hit points of fighters and rogues, or was there something more precise than this somewhere ?

"Harkening back to the example of Rasputin, it would be safe to assume that he could withstand physical damage sufficient to have killed any four normal men, i.e. more than 14 hit points. Therefore, let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed."

 

[Maxperson]

I'm really curious where you get this very precise 50% from ?

The PHB.

"Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious."

It says typically show no signs of injury, because if the PC is bitten by a giant spider or stung by a scorpion and is still above half hit points, there would need to be some sign of injury for the venom to be able to force a save.

And I guess it would be less than 50% are meat, really. Below 50% and above 0 would be a combination.

 

[Lyxen]

Movement speed = walking.

Not exactly, though: "Every character has a speed, which is the distance in feet that the character can walk in 1 round." So it's completely the other way around, actually. If you walk, you will move your speed in a round. That's all it says. But if you take a move action and move your speed, it does NOT mean walking, as demonstrated many times over, with standard actions and readied ones.

In combat it CAN, at the option of the player, be faster movement. By RAW I can sit my rear down on the ground and scoot 15 feet as my readied action.

You could but that would not get you out of the blast, which was the whole point to start with.

But note that this has NOTHING to do with Thunder Step. For example, readying an action to move out of a trap door if the orc leader reaches for the lever commanding it would "logically" fail as well, and this is as mundane a readied action as you can find. And a DM's response would be exactly the same: "If you ready a run, you will make it, if you crawl on your ass, you won't".

The DM is wrong to rule that without setting up in advance of the campaign a house rule altering the way readied actions work. The way readied actions work, per your reading of RAW, my character would escape the blast by sitting down on his read and scooting 15 feet on his butt as his readied action.

See above, this is an abuse of the readied action description, not a problem with Thunder Step and teleportation, and it comes from people gaming the system rather than using the (RAW) basic action loop.