No. There is literally no difference. If so, please explain to me why someone who can jump 20 feet still takes damage from stepping of a 10 feet cliff. The rules doesn't say anything about "uncontrolled landing".
Nor do they say anything about "controlled descent", but you've tried to use that as a counterargument to examples that would count as falls following your chosen definition. Either control and context matter, or they don't.
That said, a character who can jump 20 feet doesn't necessarily take damage from "stepping off" a 10 foot cliff, because that isn't necessarily a fall (feel free to point to the rule that says otherwise); as we keep trying to get you to acknowledge there is a difference between falling from something and moving vertically downwards in a safe (or at least potentially safe) way.
If a character is choosing to jump down from something then it is unreasonable to simply declare that it is a fall as the rules don't tell you to, and it's not how a player would describe it in natural language, nor how most others would either, you would describe them as "jumping down" or choosing to "drop down" etc. Now whether that jump is safe, risky or always dangerous is another matter; again, this is precisely why we have skill checks. The Athletics skill even lists "acrobatic stunts" as an example. And this is a markedly different case to an actual fall such as being pushed off the cliff in which case you have little or no control over how you land, so any check to land safely (if one is even allowed) will be difficult. This is why we have difficulties in checks, and a DM to decide what those will be.
Again, this is supported by plenty of definitions of the word "fall" that are actually useful in practice, which effectively amount to "uncontrolled descent"; for example, the Cambridge English Dictionary defines "fall" as:
to suddenly go down onto the ground or towards the ground without intending to or by accident
Now clearly "intending to" has its limits, as "intending to" land safely when jumping from a 1,000 cliff, and actually succeeding is another another matter entirely; again, this is why we have a DM to decide whether this is definitely a fall, or if a check is warranted (probably not for a 1,000 feet, but there is a judgement to be made on height), whether that check can allow the damage to be mitigated and/or avoided entirely, etc. But this is the kind of definition that is actually useful to us in the game; the much more vague definitions like "to move from a higher to a lower level" are so vague that they can apply to situations that you'll find very few people describing as falling, as I have tried to illustrate several times already.
D&D is a DM led game and there are plenty of rules areas where the DM's judgement is required; given that neither the rules for jumping or falling provide any guidance or rules on when a jump becomes a fall (if at all), this is a very clear example of one such case, which should not be a controversial thing to point out. Sometimes the correct answer to a rules-as-written question is "ask your DM", because that's just the nature of the game.
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There''s no difference between falling on your butt and landing on your feet? Really?
Nice strawman. But are you saying that every time you fall in D&D you automatically land on your butt? Citation, please.
As another user pleasantly pointed out, if you take damage from a fall, you land prone.
If so, please explain to me why someone who can jump 20 feet still takes damage from stepping of a 10 feet cliff.
Ah, that is the problem though, isn't it. This is your entire supposition, and you're just asserting it. No evidence, just statement.
No, it's a question. That no-one has been able to answer as of yet.
Because they jumped. There. It is 100% answered.
The rules doesn't say anything about "uncontrolled landing".
No, the rules talk about jumping and about falling... separately. And the rules say that when you do fall (and take damage), you land prone. Are you suggesting that every high jump of more than 10' ends in the jumper landing on their keister?
I don't, the rules does. Again, when you are jumping upwards and you stop moving upwards, what are you doing then? That's right, you are falling.
If you haven't landed, an average English speaker might say you're still jumping. If I started flying and didn't land yet, that same speaker might say I was still flying.
One would imagine that the jumping rules would tell you something that important.
I honestly don't think that the authors thought they would have to explain basic physics in a game.
Physics? We’re talking about game rules here, not physics.
You might simply consider that if a jump was the same as a fall, we'd not need separate rules for them, and if those rules were meant to interact, they would tell you about that.
And as for the laws of physics, again, there is a difference between a controlled/planned landing from a jump vs the the usually uncontrolled landing from a freefall.
No. There is literally no difference. If so, please explain to me why someone who can jump 20 feet still takes damage from stepping of a 10 feet cliff. The rules doesn't say anything about "uncontrolled landing".
Because the rules do not say that landing from a jump is falling. The rules do not define falling at all.
The rules doesn't define walking either. Does that mean that characters who put one foot in front of the other repeatedly isn't walking? Of course not.
So your argument is that we have to use definitions from outside the game for undefined terms? Yet you refuse to conceed that the definition of jumping is distinct from the definition of falling? If that is where we are, then your argument is so obviously flawed that there is no further need to continue engaging with it.
Is it possible for the OP to add a poll to this thread, or maybe we should post a separate one? Because it feels like lostwhilefishing is literally the only person on the entire forum who disagrees with the overwhelming consensus here, and I don't see how it's helpful to keep going in circles on this. As far as I can see there are basically two positions:
Jumping is always falling.
Jumping normally isn't falling.
I'm pretty sure the majority are backing number 2) here, i.e- that jumping within your normal jump range is fine, only jumps beyond that or in unusual circumstances will (or can) become a fall.
This is my position because Rules as Written the rules for jumping and falling are separate, there is no link between them except what a DM chooses to provide (this is why we have a DM). The rules on falling are literally only what to do once a fall has occurred, meaning the determination of when a fall occurs is entirely up to the DM. So RAW the answer appears to be "it's up to your DM".
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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The DM has the ability to make those rulings, though certainly the designers disagree. The falling rules only say what happens at the end of a fall. If your dm rules that jumping is the same as falling, then that's how it is in their game.
There's not a lot to do to change their mind, and making it into a rules argument isn't going to benefit anyone.
The only thing to do in this situation is to leave, because this DM sounds like they hate fun
But personally I think if you are jumping under your own power then you don’t take damage. You are jumping not falling.
How does the ground know the difference?
RAW you would take damage. Gravity (or whatever its D&D equivalent is) works the same no matter what you do accelerate towards the ground.
If you're going to bring physics into this, the force exerted on your body accelerating to the speed required to reach that height is the exact same (actually slightly more than, accounting for air resistance) as when you hit the ground again. If landing would break your bones, then so would jumping.
I think it's fair to assume that someone who can naturally jump as a Harengon does should have some ability to absorb the blow from a normal jump as long as they land correctly (assumed in normal circumstances, checked in trickier ones).
Now here's an interesting idea: if we abstract the idea of "movement" available to a character as their ability to control movement, you could make a house rule in which a character can expend remaining movement to reduce fall damage. If you make a vertical leap after you have exhausted all of your movement, The descent is uncontrolled. If you land with, say, 10ft left over, you can spend that to control the landing and take no damage. This would be the "rolling" you do to redirect the momentum, and would also reflect how even a professional is a little flat-footed and can't immediately get up and run again after a successful land from a great height.
Hi, I'm a fairly experienced D&D player and I had a question about the Rabbit Hop feature from Harengons. The feature says that it lets you jump a number of feet equal to 5 times your proficiency bonus without provoking opportunity attacks as a bonus action.
Now here's my dilemma: I plan to make a Harengon Drunken Master for a game I'll be joining soon. If my math is correct, at level 17 at least I'll have the ability to jump 30 feet as a bonus action with RH (not factoring in the likes of Step of the Wind or the Jump spell), but I came across a small hole in my plan: fall damage.
So here's my question: If my Harengon jumps let's say 10 feet off the ground and then 10 feet horizontally, would he take fall damage or would he not because the feature works differently compared to rules for high jump?
Hmmmm……. great question.
Since it is a racial feature I would assume they take no damage. Also built into the description is that they have large, long feet and from a casual DM perspective I would say they don’t take falling damage the same way. This isn’t RAW but I think it is RAI.
Because of rabbit hop I would say they can fall extra feet before falling damage applies. Without getting into a long debate about it, I would say their rabbit hop distance plus 10 feet is probably their racial limit for falling. It just makes sense and might be RAI even if it is not RAW.
I think of this as basically similar to a warlock having the Jump invocation at-will that also does no damage.
I would probably also rule that it stacks with jump, though I’d have to try it in practice (have not, this is just theory).
The real issue I’d see with a DM is how this would work vertically, and whether or not feather fall would be beneficial at some point.
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Nor do they say anything about "controlled descent", but you've tried to use that as a counterargument to examples that would count as falls following your chosen definition. Either control and context matter, or they don't.
That said, a character who can jump 20 feet doesn't necessarily take damage from "stepping off" a 10 foot cliff, because that isn't necessarily a fall (feel free to point to the rule that says otherwise); as we keep trying to get you to acknowledge there is a difference between falling from something and moving vertically downwards in a safe (or at least potentially safe) way.
If a character is choosing to jump down from something then it is unreasonable to simply declare that it is a fall as the rules don't tell you to, and it's not how a player would describe it in natural language, nor how most others would either, you would describe them as "jumping down" or choosing to "drop down" etc. Now whether that jump is safe, risky or always dangerous is another matter; again, this is precisely why we have skill checks. The Athletics skill even lists "acrobatic stunts" as an example. And this is a markedly different case to an actual fall such as being pushed off the cliff in which case you have little or no control over how you land, so any check to land safely (if one is even allowed) will be difficult. This is why we have difficulties in checks, and a DM to decide what those will be.
Again, this is supported by plenty of definitions of the word "fall" that are actually useful in practice, which effectively amount to "uncontrolled descent"; for example, the Cambridge English Dictionary defines "fall" as:
Now clearly "intending to" has its limits, as "intending to" land safely when jumping from a 1,000 cliff, and actually succeeding is another another matter entirely; again, this is why we have a DM to decide whether this is definitely a fall, or if a check is warranted (probably not for a 1,000 feet, but there is a judgement to be made on height), whether that check can allow the damage to be mitigated and/or avoided entirely, etc. But this is the kind of definition that is actually useful to us in the game; the much more vague definitions like "to move from a higher to a lower level" are so vague that they can apply to situations that you'll find very few people describing as falling, as I have tried to illustrate several times already.
D&D is a DM led game and there are plenty of rules areas where the DM's judgement is required; given that neither the rules for jumping or falling provide any guidance or rules on when a jump becomes a fall (if at all), this is a very clear example of one such case, which should not be a controversial thing to point out. Sometimes the correct answer to a rules-as-written question is "ask your DM", because that's just the nature of the game.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
It's prone, which is not strictly on the butt, but pretty close. "The creature lands prone, unless it avoids taking damage from the fall."
As another user pleasantly pointed out, if you take damage from a fall, you land prone.
Because they jumped. There. It is 100% answered.
If you haven't landed, an average English speaker might say you're still jumping. If I started flying and didn't land yet, that same speaker might say I was still flying.
Physics? We’re talking about game rules here, not physics.
You might simply consider that if a jump was the same as a fall, we'd not need separate rules for them, and if those rules were meant to interact, they would tell you about that.
So your argument is that we have to use definitions from outside the game for undefined terms? Yet you refuse to conceed that the definition of jumping is distinct from the definition of falling? If that is where we are, then your argument is so obviously flawed that there is no further need to continue engaging with it.
Is it possible for the OP to add a poll to this thread, or maybe we should post a separate one? Because it feels like lostwhilefishing is literally the only person on the entire forum who disagrees with the overwhelming consensus here, and I don't see how it's helpful to keep going in circles on this. As far as I can see there are basically two positions:
I'm pretty sure the majority are backing number 2) here, i.e- that jumping within your normal jump range is fine, only jumps beyond that or in unusual circumstances will (or can) become a fall.
This is my position because Rules as Written the rules for jumping and falling are separate, there is no link between them except what a DM chooses to provide (this is why we have a DM). The rules on falling are literally only what to do once a fall has occurred, meaning the determination of when a fall occurs is entirely up to the DM. So RAW the answer appears to be "it's up to your DM".
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The only thing to do in this situation is to leave, because this DM sounds like they hate fun
If you're going to bring physics into this, the force exerted on your body accelerating to the speed required to reach that height is the exact same (actually slightly more than, accounting for air resistance) as when you hit the ground again. If landing would break your bones, then so would jumping.
Now here's an interesting idea: if we abstract the idea of "movement" available to a character as their ability to control movement, you could make a house rule in which a character can expend remaining movement to reduce fall damage. If you make a vertical leap after you have exhausted all of your movement, The descent is uncontrolled. If you land with, say, 10ft left over, you can spend that to control the landing and take no damage. This would be the "rolling" you do to redirect the momentum, and would also reflect how even a professional is a little flat-footed and can't immediately get up and run again after a successful land from a great height.
Hmmmm……. great question.
Since it is a racial feature I would assume they take no damage. Also built into the description is that they have large, long feet and from a casual DM perspective I would say they don’t take falling damage the same way. This isn’t RAW but I think it is RAI.
Because of rabbit hop I would say they can fall extra feet before falling damage applies. Without getting into a long debate about it, I would say their rabbit hop distance plus 10 feet is probably their racial limit for falling. It just makes sense and might be RAI even if it is not RAW.
I think of this as basically similar to a warlock having the Jump invocation at-will that also does no damage.
I would probably also rule that it stacks with jump, though I’d have to try it in practice (have not, this is just theory).
The real issue I’d see with a DM is how this would work vertically, and whether or not feather fall would be beneficial at some point.