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

[Lyxen]

Again, because some spells are explicitly for extradimensional function, like rope trick.

Hmmm, strange, but nothing in there says anything about extradimensional "function". Hallow is actually fairly precise, does not talk about function, but about "move or travel. Since teleport is clearly a travel spell, if it was that obvious to be extradimensional, why include it separately ?

The answer is simple, it's because it is not, it does not have to be.

Others are for another function, like teleportation, but which also happen to go through extradimensional space.

You words only, not that of the rules...

 

[Irlo]

Turns are like hit points. They are abstract. If you only move, it took about 6 seconds. If you move and attack, it took about 6 seconds. If you move, attack and take one reaction, it took about 6 seconds. And so on.

We're talking past each other. I agree turns are abstract. I said that earlier in the thread, I believe. My point here is that reactions occur within the 6 second round but outside of the turn. The insistence that a turn itself has a specific, defined duration isn't supported by the rules. And it isn't necessary -- it doesn't add any clarity or functionality to the game.

Yes, a reaction is an instant response to a trigger, but, as usual in the 5e rules, "instant" is not defined and it's not of zero duration.

Parsing the rules as if 5e is a rigorous, consistent, and logical document isn't fruitful.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Indeed, and just a precision, I'm not really trying to simulate "real life", for genre books/movies are not real life and neither are LARPs, what I'm trying to simulate is the natural flow from pillar to pillar.

Cool. I'd take it one step further and that there really is not a true separation of the pillars at all and they are just a shorthand to try to categorize what the adventurers might be doing in any given scene. Indeed, a combat can feature some level of social interaction, especially against intelligent activities. Exploration can feature combat where some hostile agents need to be fought off while the party simultaneously tries to figure out a puzzle or trap. Social interaction can feature exploration... etc

For me, it's a reset in terms of preparation only, which is why the simple fix of allowing ready actions patches that "reset".

Say more about this. I'm not really following what you feel needs to be fixed and how you apply your "action patches" (and, indeed, what these "action patches" are on a basic level).

Sort of, although in that kind of case, it's way more flexible as the DM adjudicates purely based on declarations, not a formal order decided by dices.

Agreed. Although a natural order of declarations can certainly evolve in a non-combat scene, albeit informally.

We use initiative, although we also use every trick of the book (in the section "ignoring dice" in particular) to have initiative conform to what happened when combat started. If someone obviously starts the combat from certain positions (in particular with surprise and preparedness coming into effect), then we sometimes decide to give advantage on the roll or even to put something at the top or bottom of the order (auto success / failure). But in general, we are also happy to let the dice decide, as long as the system does not forget that someone was, for example, watching the door...

Do you grant advantage on initiative for both the PCs and the NPCs/monsters? It's an interesting adjudication.

I certainly wouldn't make it a habit to do so in a surprise situation, though - the mechanics for surprise already strongly favor one side. With the "surprisee" forgoing their action on their first turn, the "surpriser" now has a much better chance to get off two attacks when given advantage on initiative - this is a bit OP, in my opinion. I don't think the players at our table would appreciate it at all to see the DM grant the stealthy monster an even better chance at two (or more!) whacks at them before the surprised PC(s) can even move, let alone act. That said, on the player side, if a player (looking at you Rogue Assassin) wanted to burn an Inspiration to gain advantage on their initiative when surprising a foe, I'm all for it.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

@Maxperson is right regarding turns and rounds:

The Order of Combat (PHB p189):

A typical combat encounter is a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting. The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other.


A round takes 6 seconds. Every participant has a turn in that round. It's all happening at once. And it is a necessary abstraction because we are playing a table-top roleplaying game and not a multi-player video game. Ten combatants do not take 60 seconds of in-world time for a full round of combat. They take 6 seconds of in-world time because a round is... 6 seconds. And, depending on how ready your players are on their turns, that same round can take 6 minutes of IRL time or... ack!

 

[James Gasik]

About teleport, while it's true effects that block planar travel block teleportation, that doesn't actually mean that teleporting is or isn't planar travel. Looking at the text for Forbiddance, I note the spell states: For the duration, creatures can't teleport into the area or use portals, such as those created by the gate spell, to enter the area.

Then the next sentence: the spell proofs the area against planar travel.

If that was all the same, the first sentence wouldn't be needed. That doesn't mean that it isn't, but we can't take it as gospel, since teleport not only doesn't say it has any extradimensional component, but the spell specifically cannot move you out of the the plane you are in.

My personal take is that it warps or folds space, temporarily bridging the gap between where you were and where you find yourself.

 

[Lyxen]

Cool. I'd take it one step further and that there really is not a true separation of the pillars at all and they are just a shorthand to try to categorize what the adventurers might be doing in any given scene. Indeed, a combat can feature some level of social interaction, especially against intelligent activities. Exploration can feature combat where some hostile agents need to be fought off while the party simultaneously tries to figure out a puzzle or trap. Social interaction can feature exploration... etc

Exactly, and yet, the one remaining problem that we had was that, as soon as someone said "initiative", the flow changed completely, some people changed their mode of play and some DMs and players entered some sort of mini-game.

Say more about this. I'm not really following what you feel needs to be fixed and how you apply your "action patches" (and, indeed, what these "action patches" are on a basic level).

The only thing that we are doing is that id someone says "if the diplomat draws his sword, I will cast sleep on the opposing party", when the diplomat actually draws his sword to attack, instead of just letting initiative decide who acts first with no consideration for the preparation done, we let the readied action stand. So when, in the initiative order, it's the turn of the diplomat, if he draws his sword, then the readied action comes into play, even if the guy in question had a lower initiative than the diplomat.

And that's all that it does, it's very specific, and like all readied actions, if the trigger does not occur, then the readied action goes away.

Agreed. Although a natural order of declarations can certainly evolve in a non-combat scene, albeit informally.

Evolution is possible in every direction, theoretically, since this is what would normally happen in the genre, but the formalism of combat sometimes hampers this. It's a bit the same with a chase scene, the mechanic is not exactly the same and it causes the flow to be disrupted if you do not take care.

Do you grant advantage on initiative for both the PCs and the NPCs/monsters? It's an interesting adjudication.

Yes, for both, depending on the situation, it's more a question of preparedness than anything, sometimes the monsters are way more prepared, sometimes it's the players, everyone accepts that at our tables.

I certainly wouldn't make it a habit to do so in a surprise situation, though - the mechanics for surprise already strongly favor one side. With the "surprisee" forgoing their action on their first turn, the "surpriser" now has a much better chance to get off two attacks when given advantage on initiative - this is a bit OP, in my opinion. I don't think the players at our table would appreciate it at all to see the DM grant the stealthy monster an even better chance at two (or more!) whacks at them before the surprised PC(s) can even move, let alone act. That said, on the player side, if a player (looking at you Rogue Assassin) wanted to burn an Inspiration to gain advantage on their initiative when surprising a foe, I'm all for it.

I agree, we don't do it too often, usually when it's a "group" thing actually, otherwise, and in particular the assassination thing, is more in the "readied action" territory, which does the same thing, although a bit cooler.

For example, if you are an assassin, what you would do is wait outside a door, with a readied action to fire your poisoned bolt when the target gets out of the door. That way, even if you lose the initiative, you will still get the bolt out first. But it's not going to be as good as if you actually won the initiative, since you can only fire that one bolt, you don't have a complete round. And if something else happens (for example a bodyguard comes out first), then you will probably lose your readied action.

This rewards preparedness and forward thinking on all parts, for example, if the target knows that an assassin is waiting outside the door, he can prepare to dodge and roll if he is targeted, etc. And in the example above, the assassin should have investigated the presence of a bodyguard, and maybe anticipated it, etc.

 

[Lyxen]

About teleport, while it's true effects that block planar travel block teleportation, that doesn't actually mean that teleporting is or isn't planar travel. Looking at the text for Forbiddance, I note the spell states: For the duration, creatures can't teleport into the area or use portals, such as those created by the gate spell, to enter the area.

Then the next sentence: the spell proofs the area against planar travel.

If that was all the same, the first sentence wouldn't be needed. That doesn't mean that it isn't, but we can't take it as gospel, since teleport not only doesn't say it has any extradimensional component, but the spell specifically cannot move you out of the the plane you are in.

My reading as well. It's true that some previous editions had it go through a transitive plane, but it's not needed by the rules, although you can of course make it so in your setting.

My personal take is that it warps or folds space, temporarily bridging the gap between where you were and where you find yourself.

It's one explanation, another one is that it's magic, you disappear from one location, and reappear at another one. And that's it.

 

[James Gasik]

The way I handle this is, if someone says they "draw their sword to attack", we roll initiative. If that person doesn't actually go first, people can react to them, and their action is set when their turn comes up. I figure since initiative exists as a mechanic to determine when someone is able to react faster than someone else, I might as well use it to resolve these sorts of events.

 

[Maxperson]

And once more, you have failed to prove that the rules support your claim.

I proved it 100% These are objectively perceivable things. Not one thing I mentioned is imperceivable. Therefore, the rules support readied actions, since all a readied action requires is that they are perceivable.

My view is way more nuanced, I just say that sometimes you can, sometimes you can't it all depends on circumstances and therefore, I use the 5e possibility fo make local rulings about this, without even contradicting the RAW.

That isn't nuanced. It's arbitrary.

And that means that you only swing your sword once every six seconds, or actually every 60 seconds if there are 10 combattants ?

Nope. Again, the combat rules don't make sense, which is a necessity in order for combat to run even as efficiently as it does. If you want to run combat as simultaneous, then everyone in the combat would have to be able to move a little bit, and then be given the opportunity to react to things they see unfolding, and then adjust, and then react to the adjustments, and on and on and on. You'd take 10 hours for a simple combat.

Do you claim that dice rolls are perceivable by characters in the game world ?

Nope. But then you 1) know that and 2) are just bring them up as another Red Herring. The events leading to the die rolls are perceivable and happen prior to the die rolls. The die rolls are irrelevant to my argument and at this point your repeated inclusion of them is nothing but a designed distraction from my point.

Shield is different, it interrupts its trigger, as has been pointed out many times, it's not your standard reaction. The explanation for shield is indeed very dodgy and has nothing to do with perceivable circumstances, since the trigger is special.

Shield is not different. It requires that the hit be perceivable PRIOR to damage in order to function. My argument isn't about Shield specifically. My argument points to Shield to show that you can in fact ready an action for that perceivable event. You literally could not use Shield if that event was not perceivable.

Or sometimes you can't, which is why there is a perception skill.

So now you make the PCs roll to perceive events? Do they have to roll to see whether the caster disappeared? I mean, they may be looking in another direction at some other combatant when that happens.

I narrate things exactly the way I want because, contrary to your claims, 5e (and previous editions, by the way) are not prescriptive about this. If two fighters are just trading blows in place, I will probably narrate the simultaneity of their exchanges with the combat going on about them. If something sequential happens somewhere in the fight that affects them, I will make it sequential.

Which is fine, but is not RAW. 5e is not prescriptive, but it does have rules. If you are arguing that no rules are prescriptive and therefore anything you come up with is RAW, then RAW no longer has meaning.

This is a discussion of RAW, so prescriptive or not, how you choose to do things that differs from RAW falls into homebrew territory and isn't applicable to the discussion.

And if your PC is crawling, it's the DM's perfect right to say: "you start to crawl" and then boom, you die. Do you deny this ?

By RAW, yes I absolutely deny it. The boom doesn't happen(by your interpretation of trigger) until my turn is over. That's a hard rule. Saying I die is a house rule, as there's nothing happening to kill me.

Please go and have a look at this video by Matt Colville.

I don't need to. He's about homebrewing things and he and I are usually on the same page. His homebrew doesn't apply here.

And that is exactly what I'm saying. If you describe that your PC is crawling for 10 minutes to do his 15 feet during his move in combat, it's not possible. I'm not saying anything stronger than this.

It's absolutely possible. There's literally nothing preventing it other than death.

Doesn't it strike you as bizarre that millions of people running the game all over the planet have no problem with the 5e system making sense and that you are the only one around (that I know of) that claims that it does not make sense at all ? We must al be complete idiots not to see it.

I've never met anyone who said that 5e combat makes sense as written.

Doesn't another explanation come to your mind, that it makes reasonable sense considering what it's depicting and that it's your view that is overconstrained and causing that "nonsense feeling" just for you ?

Explanations are not RAW. They're fine for your game, though.

 

[Lyxen]

@Maxperson is right regarding turns and rounds:

He said so many things, and actually a number of them were right depending on the circumstances, the main problem is insisting that some are true all the time, I'll show you why below.

The Order of Combat (PHB p189):

A typical combat encounter is a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting. The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other.

A round takes 6 seconds. Every participant has a turn in that round. It's all happening at once. And it is a necessary abstraction because we are playing a table-top roleplaying game and not a multi-player video game. Ten combatants do not take 60 seconds of in-world time for a full round of combat. They take 6 seconds of in-world time because a round is... 6 seconds.

And my point is that sometimes they don't. For example let's say that the first guy in initiative order moves 30 feet, but steps on a trap and dies. Did his turn last six seconds ? Certainly not, because you have all the turns of the other combattants to run, who will do so with the knowledge that the first guy died on a trap, and act accordingly for THEIR full turn.

So, if asked, in that kind of case, and if really pushed (note that I never had to do it as a DM), I would say that the first guy's turn was maybe one second only, not six. There is no general rule about this, in general, it's simultaneous especially when there is no interaction between particular combattants. But sometimes it's sequential, it's just that it's compressed so that, in general, all turns of all participants will fit within an approximately six seconds round.