D&D 5E Monks breaking gravity
AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
The reason I say horizontal rather than vertical is this:
According to usage of D&D rules, not adjusted in any way for real-world physics, a monk that runs 60 feet up the wall and jumps outward as far as a 16 strength can carry him without a check would end up on the ground a set distance from the wall (after falling slowly). If treating the jump as vertical, the distance from the wall upon landing would be 6 feet. If treating the jump as horizontal, the distance from the wall upon landing would be 16 feet.
The later more closely matches to how real-world physics would work with the body falling in an arc away from the wall rather than separating from the wall slightly and falling straight downward, which makes it more believable even while the rules of the game do not seek to match reality.
Also, if jumping away from the wall in this scenario is treated as a "high jump", that implies that an attempt to jump further upwards along the wall (such as to leap from the very edge of the wall where it meets the roof to an airship hovering above the building) would be treated as a "long jump", which doesn't any sense to me. I suppose one could elect to treat all jumps made, no matter direction relative to gravity, as being high jumps while a creature is moving along a vertical surface... but I don't think that makes sense either.
According to usage of D&D rules, not adjusted in any way for real-world physics, a monk that runs 60 feet up the wall and jumps outward as far as a 16 strength can carry him without a check would end up on the ground a set distance from the wall (after falling slowly). If treating the jump as vertical, the distance from the wall upon landing would be 6 feet. If treating the jump as horizontal, the distance from the wall upon landing would be 16 feet.
The later more closely matches to how real-world physics would work with the body falling in an arc away from the wall rather than separating from the wall slightly and falling straight downward, which makes it more believable even while the rules of the game do not seek to match reality.
Also, if jumping away from the wall in this scenario is treated as a "high jump", that implies that an attempt to jump further upwards along the wall (such as to leap from the very edge of the wall where it meets the roof to an airship hovering above the building) would be treated as a "long jump", which doesn't any sense to me. I suppose one could elect to treat all jumps made, no matter direction relative to gravity, as being high jumps while a creature is moving along a vertical surface... but I don't think that makes sense either.
Illithidbix
Explorer
It depends, any truly wise monk would STUNNING STRIKE! Gravity as their first action before moving so that it is stunned and cannot take actions or reactions until the end of the monk's next turn.
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The Crimson Binome
Hero
It might be a better approximation at an elevation of 60 feet, but it's not so great at an elevation of 10 feet. The elevation should really be a factor in this equation, somewhere.
That's why I went with my "immediately fall straight down when you break contact with the wall" solution. The concept of jumping further up the wall is inherently nonsensical. There's no force that would ever make you come "down" from your jump.
AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
If attempting to model a physics environment, yes. If attempting to have simple, easy to delineate, fun to use rules for a game, no.
And with a height of 10 feet scenario, I presume that the 10 feet moved is being made "up the wall" rather than "across the ground" because "it seemed cool". I'm not in the habit of adding complications as a result of a player trying to add some "cool" to an action rather than performing the same action without any added "cool."
That sounds more like a problem than a solution to me.
No, it isn't. That you find it nonsensical doesn't make it inherently so - and as a person that has previously checked the height I could achieve with a normal jump, running jump, and a "wall jump" in which I ran at an angle to a wall, jump, then pushed off the wall to achieve greater height before, I find there nothing at all nonsensical about the magic which allows someone to run up a vertical surface also allowing someone to jump "forward" while doing so (or, at least nothing more nonsensical than being able to run up a wall in the first place).
The Crimson Binome
Hero
It's a matter of degree. Running up a wall isn't so far off from normal cinematic physics as to be really note-worthy. Jumping from that wall, and then falling back to the surface so you can run up it some more is... like... the next genre over. It's nonsensical in the context of normal kung fu physics, but I guess it's not that big of a deal in a world full of wizards.
For the record, I'm also not a fan of the ability to slow-fall when you aren't even adjacent to a wall. I mean, I get where they're going with that, but it's not a place I enjoy. It seems gratuitous.
I get that the name goes against it, but I read "Slow fall" as more of a "break fall", where you somehow break the fall by rolling or tensing/not tensing your body just right to avoid damage. Or just magic, that works too.
Horizontal (obviously) but no momentum behind it from running up the wall previously, so I would use standing-start jump limit (half STR) for distance covered horizontally at that height. Obviously they'll have gone further by he time they hit the ground below, full STR seems reasonable at the very least.
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Its more of a matter of where they grip it....
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