D&D 5E (2014) If you use thunderstep but teleport less than 10 feet do you take damage?

[Irlo]

That does honestly sound like fun. What would the trigger be for said readied blocking action, though?

No idea. Sadly, like a readied action to move away from a caster who teleports, it will never come up in actual play.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

"If the enemy disappears, I want to move to this space." You'd have to guess where they would go.

Assuming the enemy is teleporting, they have already reappeared before you even start to move. You just can't move faster than a teleport. I mean, you can rule that it works like that but... not happening at our table.

Which is improbable, but no worse than what I've seen players do when someone becomes invisible and hidden- they run around the room like turkeys until they have entered every available space in order to try and find the person.

I love this visual... and the audio now too!

 

[Irlo]

Deleted. Better for a different thread.

 

[beancounter]

If it doesn't specifically say so in the spell description, I think it should be up t the DM.

IMO, if it was an unforced error, I would have the caster take damage.

 

[Maxperson]

It's a valid interpretation, but it would have been trivial for WotC to say "oh btw, instantaneous effects cannot be reacted to unless otherwise stated". Instead, they printed things like Shield and Counterspell, which do interact with instantaneous effects, and never bothered to say if they are the exception or the rule.

It actually does say if they are the exception and not the rule. DMG page 252.

"For example, the opportunity attack and the shield spell are clear about the fact that they can interrupt their triggers. If a reaction has no timing specified, or the timing is unclear, the reaction occurs after its trigger finishes, as in the Ready action."

So Shield specifically states that it can interrupt its trigger(instantaneous things like damage and magic missile), but ready does not. Some folks want to treat what is clearly not allowed to interrupt the trigger before it completes and treat the ready action like the Shield spell.

 

[Lyxen]

It actually does say if they are the exception and not the rule. DMG page 252.

"For example, the opportunity attack and the shield spell are clear about the fact that they can interrupt their triggers. If a reaction has no timing specified, or the timing is unclear, the reaction occurs after its trigger finishes, as in the Ready action."

So Shield specifically states that it can interrupt its trigger(instantaneous things like damage and magic missile), but ready does not. Some folks want to treat what is clearly not allowed to interrupt the trigger before it completes and treat the ready action like the Shield spell.

I don't think anyone has ever said that, honestly. it was only you insisting (without any support) that it the trigger could not interrupt an action, that an action started hat to complete, but I am pretty sure that everyone, starting by myself, always argued that the trigger had to complete (but the trigger, not the action). No one argued that the trigger itself had to be interrupted.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm a little annoyed about that rule being in the DMG, but I guess knowing is half the battle, thanks Maxperson. I'm so used to the DMG being terrible, I never check it for rulings on anything, lol.

 

[Lyxen]

You said, "since the spell explicitly inserts a boom in the sequence."

I did not say where it was inserted, it might be in the end or it might be in the middle, that's all.

That's not what the spell says. It says you teleport. Then in the space you left, there is a boom.

And then again, no, it does not say "after the teleport", once more. It does not say "then" either. You are inventing things.

Suggesting that the boom is inserted between the disappearance and reappearance is not explicit. The only mention of reappearance is in the explanation of what the caster can take with them and then only in regard to the fellow traveler not the caster (disappear and reappear separated not by sequence but by topic).

And still, it mentions SPECIFICALLY the reappearance, not a teleportation as a whole.

I'm not sure why you have the idea that I don't know the difference between the words teleport, disappear, and reappear.

Because you seem to insist that they are synonyms. They simply are not.

Nevertheless, they don't have to have the same meaning in order to happen at the same time; disappear and reappear are understood to be parts of teleport.

Good, as they are parts, they can be split apart, that's all that I'm arguing for. They do not have to be, but they can.

That is not a definition on its own. That's like saying the definition of cowardly is acting like a coward.

Are you kidding me ? It's exactly what most dictionaries do, look at "instantaneous" in most dictionaries, and you will find "instant" in there.

In then PHB under spell duration, it says "A spell's duration is the length of time the spell persists. A duration can be expressed in rounds, minutes, hours, or even years." It lists measurable time mechanics of the game. Then it goes on to explain that "Many spells are instantaneous...exists only for an instant." This is an explanation of when something happens that isn't "rounds, minutes, hours, or even years." Those spells happen in an instant, happen instantaneously, instantly, immediately.

Again, do not change the words for the authors. "In an instant" is as clear as "about six seconds", which means not really clear at all. It's an open game.

The rules make a clarification for this 0-time by adding a section about Instantaneous under Duration.

And again, you have not proven at all that is is zero time. Whereas the proof exist that it is NOT zero time, because the boom occurs AFTER the disappearance. So there is a sequence, it's not all simultaneous in zero time.

There is no need to have a section on the others individually, but Instantaneous is different. Instantaneous is the word the rules use when the length of time is zero, when duration is not mechanically measurable.

I would argue that zero is much more measurable that "an instant" or "about six seconds".

If the game meant for rounds to be broken up into smaller units, it would have done so and created terms for this. Instead -- to simplify things, it decided to use Instantaneous as the smallest unit, effectively 0; if an instant could be broken into parts, the game would have given us other terms for those.

That's the advantage of "an instant" for open rules. It can be cut into as many other instants as required for narration.

Zero is indivisible

Mathematically, this is false, by the way. 0 is a multiple of 0 by any number.

, has no parts, cannot be interrupted; geometrically it is a point that cannot be bisected.

Which proves you immediately wrong, as Thunder step is an instantaneous spell that has, RAW, two parts in sequence. Hence your hypothesis is immediately shown to be wrong.

In the real world, people use" immediately" to mean as fast as possible.

And this is not the word used. Nor is it the definition given for instantaneous in the rules.

But this is a game of magic where the meaning of immediately/instantaneously doesn't have to be distorted.

FIne, but once more, you are not using the definition of the rules.

What happens when you divide 1 round or an action or even a bonus action into parts (whenever you divide a number in the game, round down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater)?

https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/SA-Compendium.pdf

Oh, yes, does it make the "teleport" spell a reference ? No, they don't, they refer to "teleportation effects", that's all...

Why would the quote not mentioning the Teleport spell (that does use teleportation effects) make me wrong?

Because it just goes to show exactly what I said, that you can't use a spell as a reference in another spell unless made explicit.

The response I quoted from the compendium was in regard to Misty Step. The compendium's answer then lumped Misty Step and other spells (this quote is from the Spells section) with teleportation effects into a group to explain that spell descriptions are not meant to repeat themselves needlessly.

Which still does not put any one particular spell as a reference.

 

[Lyxen]

ETA: Being able to Counterspell a spell with an instantaneous duration has no bearing on the conversation in this thread. The caster can Counterspell any spell of any duration if they see it being cast within 60' of them. Full stop. There is no "Instantaneous" casting time.

Actually I think there might be, even if I did not make it clear, you can counterspell a shield cast to counter a magic missile. But I agree that even this is debatable, I am not sure that the game is clear as to when you choose targets.

For example, the SAC has this:

So clearly, you choose your target when you release the spell's energy, not when you ready it, which is the full casting.

It also has this:

So it goes to show multiple things:

• Instantaneous is NOT zero time, you are doing things consecutively there and watching for result before choosing the next target
• I think it also means that the spell is completely cast before you choose the targets, since you seem to pick them during the instantaneous duration.

Since shield is cast "when you are targeted by a magic missile" and magic missile has an instantaneous duration, both shield and counterspell can have an instantaneous casting time.

Do you agree?

 

[Lyxen]

One more point about the last extract, it shows that the game has a tendancy to be generous towards the players in its interpretation, because it's not fun to waste a ray or a missile on an enemy which would already be dead without it. I know some people will again say that "5e is easy mode", but it's also "5e recognises that the intention of a game is for players to have fun playing it".