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

[cbwjm]

That’s the crux. Does the “immediately” of the damage happen before the “instantly” of the teleport? Unfortunately those words are synonyms and are often used in the definitions of each other.

The Marvel Super Heroes rpg (1984) ranked adjectives so that Unearthly, Amazing, and Typical had mechanical meaning. 5e doesn’t provide a hierarchy for words such as “instantly” and “immediately” to determine their speed relative to each other. Each DM could place their own value on the words, but since they virtually mean the same thing there can’t be a mechanical difference.
So a character teleports. The damage occurs instantly after they disappear, yet they reappear immediately — there are no gaps in time. If they are in range, they are affected by the damage that comes after the teleportation.

View attachment 281093

That's fine if you want to get all into the meaning of words, for me, I'm gonna go with my ruling and separate the disappearance and reappearance so that the damage occurs in that instant between when you leave and return.

 

[Rabulias]

If a character uses the Ready action for Misty Step — triggered by a dragon’s breath, can it teleport into another dimension to avoid damage completely before the teleport ends?

The description of Ready for an action suggests that you could not. Readied actions are taken after the triggering event is finished.

<rules-pedantry>It would also fail as you technically can't Ready a spell with a casting time of 1 Bonus Action.</rules-pedantry>

 

[Bacon Bits]

The game doesn’t expect rules from previous editions, because the game is not made for just people who have the old editions. If a DM wants to include old rules, the they absolutely can but that doesn’t change the rules for everyone else. There are the 5e RaW, and then there are the rules any DM picks and chooses which can be old rules.

A new edition often makes updates/additions for clarification or balance; these are retroactive. I’ve never seen a new edition say, in order to understand these new rules, you’ll need to go buy all of the old editions.

Supplements contain new rules. Sage advice clarifies rules. But those are clarifications moving forward and are official or quasi-official in a way much more unifying than picking and choosing from past editions. A new errata could clarify that a caster is immune to Thunderstep damage in a way that expecting everyone to decide on which rules from all of the previous might apply does not.

Plain language is not the same thing as lore either. When JC says that a spell only does what it says it does, he’s not saying go research all of the lore from all of the editions to find something that was there that we decided not to include in the spell description. If 5e teleportation is inhibited by lead, the spell would say so (like Detect Magic does).

I don't think you will find any rules in any edition that will really agree with this. I think you'll find a lot of people who do, but that's different.

Using only the rules in the books as a guide, how do you tell the difference between an alteration of a rule, a replacement of a rule, and a supplement? When new rules are released, they often directly replace or contradict equivalent old rules. In that case, they often tell you that some rules are not meant to be compatible, and then it's entirely natural to replace those rules. Not doing so would result in a contradiction. Teleport can't be a 5th-level spell and a 7th-level spell in 5e. Teleport mishaps can't cause both 1d10 and 3d10 damage.

However, they do not always cause contradictions, and there is nothing inherently atomic about rules. Even spell descriptions. I don't think you can make a decision without making choices as a DM makes choices. I don't think the rules tell you how to make that decision because the authors expected that to be a DM's decision. I don't think any edition of the rules even considers it a point worth touching on. After all, they pretty regularly tell you to alter any of the rules to fit your purposes.

3e tried very hard to comprehensively restate every rule, but that proved to be an unsustainable design limitation. It takes a huge amount of design effort, and the results are... not always great. 4e and 5e did not try to emulate that. Neither will One D&D. That means those editions are often mute on things that 3e or prior editions were not. There's no inherent reason to discard those older rules if they still work. After all, 5e D&D is not a new game. It is a new edition of an existing game. I mean, it's right there in the name, isn't it?

In any event, there has never been a rule that says, "Here is how you identify fluff, which is mutable and can be ignored. Here is how you identify hard mechanics, which are hard rules that should not be altered without careful consideration." That's an assumption that people took from 3e's design. Which is to say, beginning with 3e the game was no longer so arcane and obtuse that it was impossible to identify the design, so they actually felt confident enough to make alterations themselves. However, the fact that you can separate the two does not mean that the fluff is any less of a rule than hard mechanics are. After all, D&D is not a dice-rolling game or even a war game. It's a role-playing game. The story matters just as much if not more than everything else, so shouldn't lore be a first-order rule alongside any mechanics?

In fact, I think the argument you're making is one that is only credible to make when an edition of the game has been in print for many years. The game obviously didn't have enough content to feel complete in 2014, and you wouldn't assume that a rule being missing was itself an indication of a rules change. It's only quite late in the life cycle of the game that it makes sense to start saying, "Well, they haven't released this rule again so they must want it eliminated." Early on you'd say, "Hey, does anyone know if they intend this to work the same way? It doesn't say anymore."

Player: “I cast Teleport to get out of the dungeon.”

DM: “Unfortunately, the room has lead walls so Teleport doesn’t work.”

P: “Do I lose my spell slot?”

DM: “I’ll have to figure out which edition that lead prohibition was in. It’ll take a few minutes.”

The DM might just as easily say, "I don't remember how spellcasting works. I'll have to look that up and it'll take a few minutes." The fact that you don't know a rule doesn't mean it's not a rule. Like the problem you're describing isn't that the rule is non-functional. It's that you don't know the rule. That happens all the time already in games that have only one edition!

 

[plisnithus8]

I don't think you will find any rules in any edition that will really agree with this. I think you'll find a lot of people who do, but that's different.

Using only the rules in the books as a guide, how do you tell the difference between an alteration of a rule, a replacement of a rule, and a supplement? When new rules are released, they often directly replace or contradict equivalent old rules. In that case, they often tell you that some rules are not meant to be compatible, and then it's entirely natural to replace those rules. Not doing so would result in a contradiction. Teleport can't be a 5th-level spell and a 7th-level spell in 5e. Teleport mishaps can't cause both 1d10 and 3d10 damage.

However, they do not always cause contradictions, and there is nothing inherently atomic about rules. Even spell descriptions. I don't think you can make a decision without making choices as a DM makes choices. I don't think the rules tell you how to make that decision because the authors expected that to be a DM's decision. I don't think any edition of the rules even considers it a point worth touching on. After all, they pretty regularly tell you to alter any of the rules to fit your purposes.

3e tried very hard to comprehensively restate every rule, but that proved to be an unsustainable design limitation. It takes a huge amount of design effort, and the results are... not always great. 4e and 5e did not try to emulate that. Neither will One D&D. That means those editions are often mute on things that 3e or prior editions were not. There's no inherent reason to discard those older rules if they still work. After all, 5e D&D is not a new game. It is a new edition of an existing game. I mean, it's right there in the name, isn't it?

In any event, there has never been a rule that says, "Here is how you identify fluff, which is mutable and can be ignored. Here is how you identify hard mechanics, which are hard rules that should not be altered without careful consideration." That's an assumption that people took from 3e's design. Which is to say, beginning with 3e the game was no longer so arcane and obtuse that it was impossible to identify the design, so they actually felt confident enough to make alterations themselves. However, the fact that you can separate the two does not mean that the fluff is any less of a rule than hard mechanics are. After all, D&D is not a dice-rolling game or even a war game. It's a role-playing game. The story matters just as much if not more than everything else, so shouldn't lore be a first-order rule alongside any mechanics?

In fact, I think the argument you're making is one that is only credible to make when an edition of the game has been in print for many years. The game obviously didn't have enough content to feel complete in 2014, and you wouldn't assume that a rule being missing was itself an indication of a rules change. It's only quite late in the life cycle of the game that it makes sense to start saying, "Well, they haven't released this rule again so they must want it eliminated." Early on you'd say, "Hey, does anyone know if they intend this to work the same way? It doesn't say anymore."



The DM might just as easily say, "I don't remember how spellcasting works. I'll have to look that up and it'll take a few minutes." The fact that you don't know a rule doesn't mean it's not a rule. Like the problem you're describing isn't that the rule is non-functional. It's that you don't know the rule. That happens all the time already in games that have only one edition!

I hear you saying a DM can alter rules as they wish, and I agree, but those aren’t official alterations.
Official alterations within an edition are different than a DM’s specific alteration as well as any rules from previous editions.

I still don’t see any evidence that the current rules as written have any expectations to be clarified by old editions. Or that something not mentioned in the current rule set stays as it was ruled in a previous edition unless it is specifically contradicted. 5e is designed to stand alone; it is made so that new players can pick it up without the burden of learning old systems.

I have found no evidence of a 5e book referring back to old edition rules. I could be mistaken, and would be interested to see evidence to the contrary. Some DMs/players that used previous editions might, but that doesn’t make it official. A DM has no expectation to have read, remember, or refer to old edition rules.

If I am understanding you correctly, fluff should be considered more important than mechanics when looking at the rules for a spell. And that fluff could come from decades of lore covering all of the editions. I don’t see how to justify that with the general understanding of a spell as written, which only does what it says it does with a common understanding of what words mean.

Besides this idea of lead prohibiting teleportation and teleportation taking someone to another dimension, are there other examples (preferably 5e only) of lore being more important than the mechanical description of a spell in determining how the spell works?

 

[S'mon]

Sorry, what is “eg lead?” Do you mean the metal lead should block teleportation, if so why would it?
How a spell works (the mechanics) is how the spell is written. The DM can add flavor/fluff, but fluff isn’t mechanics. When fluff negates damage, it isn’t just fluff any more.

Lead blocks teleportation in some previous editions. Whether it does so in 5e is up to the GM.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I still don’t see any evidence that the current rules as written have any expectations to be clarified by old editions. Or that something not mentioned in the current rule set stays as it was ruled in a previous edition unless it is specifically contradicted. 5e is designed to stand alone; it is made so that new players can pick it up without the burden of learning old systems.

I don't know what you want here, man.

If you're looking for a RAW explanation for why one guy on a D&D board is doing a thing, that's just not going to happen.

RAW has nothing to do with it. RAW has abandoned us. RAW is dead.

 

[ooshrooms]

The game doesn’t expect rules from previous editions

I think this is the key. If you know the basic mechanics inside and out, every ability, spell, item, etc should be understood just from reading it. That's not always true, because it's been written by imperfect humans, and language is plastic. You're not expected to know anything from past editions or have to look up other abilities to flesh out your understanding. I think the plain language is intended to prevent someone's decades of knowledge and attention to detail to dominate games at the expense of new players' fun.

Arguments about how things work are usually fringe cases including this one. It shouldn't matter if a fringe case is executed improperly at the table. It's rare. Be consistent. Rule 0 lets the DM change any rules, so even when they're wrong, they're right. 5e is supposed to create more freedom in a collaborative game. Fighting online about it? Fine. Not amicably resolving it in your gaming group for the sake of fun? Maybe play with different people.

Unrelated to that, I found an example that contradicts what I said before (more accurately is an example of something I said I hadn't been able to come up with). Private sanctum allows restriction against teleportation and/or planar travel along with other things at the discretion of the caster. They aren't unified.
If teleportation sent the caster fully into another plane then return, it seems unlikely that this spell could distinguish between that and normal planar travel. This is good evidence that teleportation does not involve entering another plane. We're still left with the possibility, "That makes it sound like teleportation is extra dimensional travel but not travel to a different plane." If teleportation messes with the boundaries of the plane the caster is in, getting outside the plane but not into another one, it makes it related to planar travel but distinctly different.

 

[plisnithus8]

When I saw the word “extra-dimensional,” I assumed it meant beyond the current plane. After looking up the definition, it actually means “existing outside any plane or dimension” and is interchangeable with “non-dimensional” which means “not expressed in measurements of length or time.” So not beyond the current plane but outside of any meaning of plane.

It seems then used in context with teleportation, extra dimensional just describes the act of teleporting: not moving continuously from A to B and not taking any time to do so.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I hear you saying a DM can alter rules as they wish, and I agree, but those aren’t official alterations.
Official alterations within an edition are different than a DM’s specific alteration as well as any rules from previous editions.

I still don’t see any evidence that the current rules as written have any expectations to be clarified by old editions. Or that something not mentioned in the current rule set stays as it was ruled in a previous edition unless it is specifically contradicted. 5e is designed to stand alone; it is made so that new players can pick it up without the burden of learning old systems.

I have found no evidence of a 5e book referring back to old edition rules. I could be mistaken, and would be interested to see evidence to the contrary. Some DMs/players that used previous editions might, but that doesn’t make it official. A DM has no expectation to have read, remember, or refer to old edition rules.

From my reading of the thread, you're the one making claims that you're not supposed to use prior edition rules, or that new editions always totally invalidate existing rules. You're the one claiming that, as a rule, teleport no longer involves planar travel because the spell description doesn't say that.

I think you're the one that needs to provide evidence, because there's not really any justification in the rules that actually leads to the conclusion you're making. I'm saying that the game works actually just fine if you incorporate every rule from prior editions... provided that it doesn't directly contradict or is directly incompatible with new rules. It's a fine decision to make as a DM if it's right for your table, but it's a DM decision to do it. It's neither supported nor prohibited by the rules. I don't see anything in any edition of the game that demands the rules be taken independently. That seems to be what you're claiming. To be fair, many old rules do directly contradict or are directly incompatible. But many of them don't.

I'm saying, "Where does it say we must or even should discard rules that are neither directly contradictory nor directly incompatible?" Because teleport being astral travel is entirely compatible. Even other effects that block astral travel similarly block teleportation. Dimensional shackles, magic circle, private sanctum, forbiddance, and forcecage all work the same.

I'm asking you to show me where the rules support that claim. So far, all you've really said is, "Well, it's obvious and self-evident," or, "Well, not everybody would have them," or, "Well, that can be complicated." To the former, I say, no, that's an assumption. To the rest, I say that doesn't mean fewer rules are inherently virtuous.

Is 5e a different game? Maybe in some senses, but at pretty fundamental levels the answer is no. Even the game's publishers tell you to reuse as much of the prior editions as you want or can. In fact, I think one of the things that keeps the game attractive and coherent across editions is precisely that the rules continue to fit.

And rules don't need to refer to each other to be valid. The skill rules hardly reference combat rules at all. Does that mean you shouldn't use one of them? The rules for daggers don't say anything at all about gnomes. Which one is actually a rule?

The game doesn't necessarily accommodate every conceivable rule, but it does tell you to add or modify the game however you wish and in whatever manner you choose. The game is designed to be mutable at the most basic design level. That's been foundational to not just this game but the entire hobby for 50 years. The most minimal form of the game is still mutable by design. The fact that you might end up with a broken or unworkable game isn't really a consideration. Indeed, sometimes you get that out-of-the-box! The ability to change a rule doesn't mean it's not an overpowered or broken rule, but that doesn't mean there's virtue in blindly following rules that are broken or overpowered... or incomplete.

If I am understanding you correctly, fluff should be considered more important than mechanics when looking at the rules for a spell. And that fluff could come from decades of lore covering all of the editions. I don’t see how to justify that with the general understanding of a spell as written, which only does what it says it does with a common understanding of what words mean.

Besides this idea of lead prohibiting teleportation and teleportation taking someone to another dimension, are there other examples (preferably 5e only) of lore being more important than the mechanical description of a spell in determining how the spell works?

No, at this level I'm saying the distinction between "fluff" and "mechanic" is wholly contrived. It's rules lawyering in the pejorative sense. I'm saying that the game itself places no weight or importance on one over the other. We know that because it never actually guides us on interpreting rules. It always leaves that decision up to us. The game doesn't ever tell us that fighter is more important than wizard, or that darkvision is more important than 50-foot rope. There is no rule that dungeon is more critical than dragon. I see no reason to think that they are anything but equal in the eyes of the game. Each rule is presented to stand on it's own merits.

What I'm really saying that if your argument concludes, "We can ignore this part because it's just fluff," then you're not really interested in the rules as rules for a roleplaying game. Take the description for fireball:

"A bright streak flashes from your pointing finger to a point you choose within range and then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame. Each creature in a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target takes 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

"The fire spreads around corners. It ignites flammable objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried.

"At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd."

There are some parts that are clearly hard mechanics. The Dex save. The 8d6 fire damage. The higher level spell slot scaling. The rest of it is not really explicitly one or the other. Even the most descriptive and least crunchy elements like the "bright streak [that] flashes from your pointing finger" have a real effect in-game. It's extremely difficult to visually conceal the source of a fireball, even if it's cast from a dark corner. Most people rule that the "spreads around corners" rule means that cover doesn't apply. Do fireball or the Cover rules ever actually state that explicitly? No!

How about this: An Order of Scribes Wizard uses Awakened Spellbook to cast a cold fireball by way of glyph of warding. Does it still ignite flammable objects? An extremely literal interpretation says yes, but is that really creating a credible game world? How about the fact that wall of fire, a spell that literally creates it's namesake for a much longer timeframe than fireball... and it does not say that it ignites flammable objects. If I evoke a wall of fire in a room filled with gunpowder, is it credible that nothing happens to the powder? Does that create a world that feels real? Does that tell a story that makes sense? Have you used the game rules to invent a game world that provides verisimilitude? Sure, magic isn't obligated to make sense. But it isn't truly about being maximally nonsensical.

And if we don't value that verisimilitude or that realism in the game world, then why are we playing a role-playing game at all? How can we expect that taking creative actions outside the red box or having our characters behave as though everything is real will even work at all if we demand all mechanics to be complete and comprehensive and deterministic? Is it the game's job to do that? I don't think so. That's why they put a referee at every D&D table.

Indeed, I don't think it's even following the plainly given rules for How To Play D&D from the first pages of the Player's Handbook:

1. The DM describes the environment.
2. The players describe what they want to do.
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.

The rest of the game is a framework or toolkit designed to facilitate this basic system. This is the root of the game. This is the core. Not the dice. Not the character sheet. Not the classes or spell descriptions or equipment lists. If this is the turtle's back, why do we treat subjective DM interpretation or in-game lore as something to be avoided or diminished?

 

[James Gasik]

New player hears about this Critical Role thing from friend, buys the PHB, MM, and DMG to start playing with friends. An issue with a spell bamfing a player from one spot to another comes up.

He goes online to ask and gets told "well you see, if you check the books from 30 years ago, the answer is obvious".

Yeah I'm going to say there's a problem with that no matter how you slice it.