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

[Paul Farquhar]

Star Trek teleportation freezes you in place whilst you are being dematerialised. If you move during the process there is a good chance you will rematerialize with your head attached to your butt.

 

[Umbran]

Then what it s the actual point of torturing the spell into exploding the caster for not 'porting far enough if not just to be a pain to them?

Explain the value in your interpretation.

Mod Note:
So, we have a lot of incredibly loaded language coming into this discussion - suffer, torturing - as well as emotionally loaded statements as to the intent of the GM..

This is inserting connotations into the discussion that others may not intend. It clouds the issues. If you want to hav a RATIONAL discussion, you should stop making emotional claims on the intent of others. If you don't want to have a rational discussion... well, then maybe you should take a break from this, hm?

 

[Lyxen]

Star Trek teleportation freezes you in place whilst you are being dematerialised. If you move during the process there is a good chance you will rematerialize with your head attached to your butt.

We are speaking of someone else acting while a caster teleports, though.

 

[Maxperson]

First, you're not doing 6 seconds of actions, you are doing one attack (and not a series of attacks), or one move.

I used the word stroll for a reason. Nothing in the rules says I can't casually walk across the room over 6 seconds for my readied action.

So let's say 3 at most. And in that mindset, if I know that a teleportation is coming, and I start it when the guy is reaching for the button, I bet I can move a fair distance or attack someone by the time a Star Trek teleportation finishes.

No. You'd maybe begin to lift your foot before the teleportation finishes. Unless you're playing Star Trek, which you aren't, because this is D&D where teleportation, UNLIKE Star Trek, is instantaneous.

They had anticipated the disappearance, they were so psyched and ready that when the disappearance started to occur, they were in a sense already moving.

Well, no. 1. You can't accurately anticipate the timing of something that might not even occur. 2. You can't start moving before the trigger happened per RAW. Period. If you're going to try and argue that an instant effect can be interrupted due to RAW on ready saying immediately after trigger, I can hold you to RAW saying you have to wait for the trigger to happen before you can begin your action.

With a Star Trek teleportation, I bet you the contrary.

This ain't Star Trek. It's D&D.

 

[Irlo]

No. No it's not explainable. Like at all. I defy you to come up with a rational explanation for beginning to move AFTER an instant teleport has begun and then do 6 seconds of action before the instant teleport finishes. They could not be moving prior, because the trigger was the disappearance, so that explanation fails.

I can suspend some disbelief, but what you are suggesting goes well beyond the pale. Nobody can interrupt a teleport to take an action before it completes. Except maybe the Flash.

The rules for readied actions and reactions allow for that. We can disagree on the reasonable explanation for the order of resolution of actions and reactions. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong, necessarily. The expectation that a DM makes judgement calls allows one to modify those rules.

 

[Lyxen]

I used the word stroll for a reason. Nothing in the rules says I can't casually walk across the room over 6 seconds for my readied action.

Nothing says it indeed. But then the DM is perfectly entitled to say that since you are strolling instead of moving, you will only move 5 feet. That has nothing to do with readied actions, just about the player describing what he is doing and the DM adjudicating the result of his description after translation in game terms.

No. You'd maybe begin to lift your foot before the teleportation finishes. Unless you're playing Star Trek, which you aren't, because this is D&D where teleportation, UNLIKE Star Trek, is instantaneous.

And instantaneous just means that it happens "in an instant", with no definition of what an instant means. Whereas every reading of genre books will tell you that heroes react in microseconds anyway.

It's all in the fiction, and it works very well to describe fiction of the genre.

Well, no. 1. You can't accurately anticipate the timing of something that might not even occur. 2. You can't start moving before the trigger happened per RAW. Period. If you're going to try and argue that an instant effect can be interrupted due to RAW on ready saying immediately after trigger, I can hold you to RAW saying you have to wait for the trigger to happen before you can begin your action.

Well, what I'm explaining is 100% in line with the RAW. So if you want to apply the RAW, you have two choices, either you assign mathematical values to everything and make computations and realise that it will not work anyway and reinvent many other rules to correct that (and it's fine, the game totally supports that as well), or you use it in the spirit of 5e, weave a story around it because these are heroes, and it actually sounds cool like in the comics/books/movies of the genre, where we all know that it's impossible, but they are cool so we like them anyway.

This ain't Star Trek. It's D&D.

And nothing prevents teleportation to works the same way, it's just that my instants are a bit longer than yours, and that I describe what is happening narratively rather than scientifically (since my view is that you can't play D&D totally scientifically anyway).

 

[Rabulias]

And nothing prevents teleportation to works the same way, it's just that my instants are a bit longer than yours, and that I describe what is happening narratively rather than scientifically (since my view is that you can't play D&D totally scientifically anyway).

In Star Trek, the crew use transporters, not teleporters, and they are not instantaneous. Powerful beings like Q truly teleport instantaneously, and is the closest thing to the magical teleportation that we are discussing here.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Thunderstep spell:

You teleport yourself to an unoccupied space you can see within range. Immediately after you disappear, a thunderous boom sounds, and each creature within 10 feet of the space you left must make a Constitution saving throw, taking 3d10 thunder damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The thunder can be heard from up to 300 feet away.

What if you only move yourself 10 feet, do you take damage from it?

It says immediately after you disappear, not sure if that is before you reappear if you also reappear immediately after you disappear.

I say 'No, they don't', but I can see it both ways. When rules are ambiguous I usually take the interpretation that is more charitable to the player.

However, this is actually a great example of what philosophers are discussing when they're talking about events happening at the 'same time' temporally but where one is metaphysically 'prior' to the other in the sense that the latter event is contingent upon the former event.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules for readied actions and reactions allow for that. We can disagree on the reasonable explanation for the order of resolution of actions and reactions. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong, necessarily. The expectation that a DM makes judgement calls allows one to modify those rules.

No. They don't allow for that. It's pure assumption that @Lyxen is engaging in when he says that you can split an instant action via the readied action. When the trigger happens, it has to complete. That means a teleport as an instant action is completed before the readied action happens.

 

[Maxperson]

Nothing says it indeed. But then the DM is perfectly entitled to say that since you are strolling instead of moving, you will only move 5 feet.

Not without a house rule. The rules allow me to WALK 30 feet. A stroll is indeed walking and if he's going to override the rules that way, he's into house rule territory.

And instantaneous just means that it happens "in an instant", with no definition of what an instant means. Whereas every reading of genre books will tell you that heroes react in microseconds anyway.

There is no common usage of instant that doesn't mean super, duper instant fast. And there is no book I've read where a hero moves that fast without being the Flash or the equivalent.

And nothing prevents teleportation to works the same way, it's just that my instants are a bit longer than yours, and that I describe what is happening narratively rather than scientifically (since my view is that you can't play D&D totally scientifically anyway).

No. If you do Star Trek teleports you are not engaging in instant travel. You are engaging in travel that lasts long enough to be dispelled, hence by RAW not instant. You're welcome to slow down teleport to Star Trek levels as some sort of house rule, but that's not the default 5e uses.