Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Hello, dear developers, administrators, and players of our beloved D&D. I'd like to address a very important and long-standing issue that resonates strongly with a large portion of public opinion.
In the community I'm currently part of, there's a belief that it's impossible to perform an action during a long jump without interrupting the jump. I understand that the rules clearly state that actions can be divided into different acts, but for some reason, a fairly large community on one popular site believes this interpretation requires interrupting the jump.
I'd like clarification and a clear, unambiguous answer for the majority (not a GM's choice, but an answer): is it possible to perform an attack while jumping without interrupting the jump itself?
The PHB and DMG of either edition don't seem to be clear on this, thus it's left to the DM.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I know you don't want a "DM's call" answer, but that's the answer.
The jumping rules are silent on the question. Generalized sense of realism says that you can't do anything complicated, because you are in constant motion while jumping. The rules of drama say you totally can, because it's cool.
Mechanically, one could take the Ready action, saying "I'll attack X when I'm in range", then jump past X, getting a single attack on them.
And I'd be fine with that.
But it's still GM's call.
If the attack is dunking a basketball or shooting a bow, sure.
Anything else, it depends..
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
I would suggest that it should lie in the DM's level of realistic actions in Combat. Well it is easy to interpret it as a compound move, you must realize that in a jumping attack you are sacrificing solid structure and stance for the minimal gain of momentum. so not only is the character trying to concentrate on placing a lot of detail into movement and increase difficulty with accuracy but he is coming at the creatures from weakened structure and less solid energy transference from an attack made from the ground.
If the DM is more Rule of Kool. He Slaughters him with advantage from attacking from above
Attacking during jumping boils down to whether or not jumping is a type of movement that you can break up. I'd argue no because it's not classed as a type of movement—it doesn't use a speed and it has the following clauses:
Compare this to the language for Climbing
For jumping the syntax is shows a conversion between "jump" and "movement, whereas for climbing (and swimming and crawling too), the syntax just refers to movement.
This shows (IMO) that jumping is not movement (it just costs movement) and thus not being movement it does not qualify under the rules for breaking up your movement.
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I've also got to ask:
What are the circumstances where this ever comes up in your group, much less so often that it's a point of contention?
I've had it come up once or twice when a PC wants to attack a flying enemy for example. But it's 100% not a "very important and long-standing issue that resonates strongly with a large portion of public opinion."
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As a DM, I absolutely allow something like a single attack or minor interaction during a jump. You can't make multiple attacks in midair that way, but anyone with Extra Attack can use their other attack(s) for the rest of their turn still when I allow this.
But yes, the rules don't specify this. It's the DM's call.
and also . . .
I agree with both of these takes for how the RAW handles this situation. In these ways it seems that a Jump is resolved in a similar manner to a Fall, which is that the entire motion is fully resolved instantly.
Interestingly, it does appear that you could do this without provoking an Opportunity Attack -- also similar to resolving a Fall.
Unfortunately, it's ambigous if breaking a move to do an action is still considered moving during it, wether walking, climbing, crawling, jumping or swimming. The thing with jumping is if you're not considered moving while in midair, you'll be Falling.
When you move a distance equal to your Speed and your movement include jumping, because each foot you jump costs a foot of movement, you effectively leaves creatures reach using one of your speeds and thus should provoke an Opportunity Attack.
That's a reasonable interpretation actually. I guess Jumping IS movement that uses your Speed after all. However, for the original question I would still rule that that particular mode of movement cannot be broken up via the Breaking Up Your Move rule. When you make a long jump, you leap a certain distance. In my opinion this leap does not end until you "land" and the entire leap must be fully resolved instantly just like how if you Fall a certain distance that entire fall would be resolved immediately.
I would think it would be possible in certain situations. Here is one I think could work:
There is a Young Blue Dragon hovering at ground level but 10' past the edge of a cliff. The over-zealous Monk runs at the dragon and leaps off the cliff, punching it in the face as he reaches the dragon, stunning it, but then begins his fall to the ground off the edge of the cliff.
Mechanically speaking, this could be seen as taking the Ready action to make an attack, then using his movement to make a Long Jump, and finally using his reaction to make that attack, tacking on a Stunning Strike for good measure, then at this point gravity takes over and he falls to the ground. Since the Long Jump was complete as he reached the dragon, his movement was not broken up by the attack. Should work.
Given the example above, do you think that you are considered moving or not when you take an action? I've seen DMs rule either way since 5E released.
While not official ruling per se; if interested here's what the Devs said on Twitter about this very subject in the past;
I think that this shows that Jumping is a mode of movement that is considered to be using your Speed for the purposes of qualifying for provoking an Opportunity Attack.
But this doesn't show that you are moving during an action. You are allowed to move before and after any action. Also, the Attack action specifies that you can move between attacks during the Attack action.
Also, while this shows that in general you can break up any mode of movement, in my opinion the text for Jumping and for High Jump and Long Jump create a specific restriction against doing this:
By default, the Long Jump doesn't end until you land. By extension, this should also be true of a High Jump since they both involve leaping. But the key here is that you "make" one of these jumps while in Jumping mode. So, like "making" an attack or "making" some other type of activity, in my opinion this is something that needs to be resolved before doing other things.
However, as a couple of people have mentioned in this thread, I am on board with taking the Ready action before the Jump is made and setting up a trigger which could occur during the Jump.
Ok, here is where it gets tricky. It's been suggested previously that taking advantage of the Ready action in this way limits you to a single attack. This is not actually correct. What usually causes this limitation is that you are typically triggering your Reaction when it is not your turn and the Extra Attack feature specifies that you must be taking the Attack Action on your turn. But in this case, it IS your turn. The only question remaining is whether or not you could "move" between such attacks while in mid-air during your Jump. By RAW, it seems like the available options are that you can make multiple attacks from one single mid-air position or that additional attacks could be made after landing, but you cannot make additional attacks from another mid-air position because that would require a different trigger and an additional Reaction. It also seems like there is not any way to set up a situation where you've already initiated the attack action earlier in your turn by attacking an enemy prior to your Jump and THEN executing this Jumping attack. The Jumping attack must occur first because you would need to take the Ready action first, otherwise you'd (typically) be out of actions before completing this combination.
Anyway, I think that a DM can simplify all of this while staying pretty close to RAW by just telling the player that what he wants to do in the original post is possible, but it will cost the character his Reaction in addition to his Action in order to execute it.
Unfortunately, Extra Attack is dependent on taking the Attack action. If you are taking the Ready action, you are not taking the Attack action (as you can only take one action on your turn normally), so any features that rely on taking the Attack action don’t apply, even if you make the readied attack on your turn.
That's debatable:
That can certainly be read as you're mechanically taking an action when Ready triggers.
Also, just to preempt a line of discussion: Extra Attack and a lot of other things are keyed not just to taking the Attack action, but to doing so on your turn. Which isn't necessarily an argument in favor of Readied attacks on your turn getting to use EA -- they could have included the specification entirely as a clarifier, because the typical ways of attacking off-turn definitely aren't the Attack action, but not everybody will understand the distinction.
Thanks. Yes: I went back to read the Ready action and I am not sure that I would have stated it as definitively. It isn’t entirely clear that you Ready the Attack action and that it still counts as the Attack action; but it could indeed be read that it does.