But then again, this is where the idea of "common sense" is supposed to override the RAW
Plus the ability to homebrew. However this is the Rules and Mechanics section.
"The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game."
"The rules don't account for every possible situation that might arise during a typical D&D session. [...] How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you."
Those ARE rules, right? They're from the Dungeon Master's Guide (Introduction, pt 3: Master of Rules). They seem like rules to me.
Just do a long jump and say you jump pretty high when you do it. The only time it would even matter is clearing an obstacle. If you’re jumping a significant distance you’ll need some height on that jump anyway.
I disagree very strongly with this. If I can jump 5, 10, 20ft in the air, then i can withstand the landing. it took as much energy to get me that high, as i will have, when i reach the ground, on top of the fact, i can roll, to extend the time of the impact.
The jump spell lasts for 1 minute. meaning, you are gifted with leg strength, or a gravity debuff (ie, .3xgravity or something),etc. Since you arent getting lighter, i don't believe this to be the case, as they would have worded it that way, if you could use it on inanimate objects. their arent any "kick" conditions that differ from punches, so we can't really use this as any context clues (ie, no strength bonuses using your legs over your arms). This means, adding strength to just your legs still will fall within the bounds of the gameplay, as it won't effect combat, other than movement distance(also strength doesn't effect move speed, but DOES effect jumping distance, something we can lead us to the logic of, "jump enhances leg strength")
Jump does not indicate "how" it lengthens the jump, only that it does. As a DM you would have to find some kind of logic in how that would work. There are no rules pertaining to jumping being the same as falling. In no cases would the energy be higher at the moment of landing, then the initial jump(except some circumstances, ie, you jump through the air to grab _____ and ______ added to your weight).
"but the falling rules say-" no, we are jumping. meaning we have input the force needed to reach the height, with the same means we will use to land(ie legs, back, etc), and as long as the spell is still active, those same effects are still in place, meaning we can withstand the impact of the "fall"...
CLARIFICATIONS: No, you can't jump off a 400ft wall, because you had the strength to step off, this is an obvious mental disconnect with what i have said...
but, if you have the capability of jumping that high.... you can land from that high. If you want to add some contingency for the roll while landing, taking a reaction, and movement speed from the next turn... im all for it... but to sit here and pretend we have to follow the rules, when they stand in utter contrast to reality(and at the expense of players having fun), i have to tell you no. not just no, but **** NO. "Magic isn't within the bounds of real-" no, shut up. We aren't talking about some figurative thing, we are talking about projectile motion. This is something we can definitely back up with science. In fact, i can PROVE to you, that the initial jump had "more" force than the landing... with real life science.
Now, if they jumped through the air, and clipped something, throwing off their balance, inhibiting their landing, you got it, i agree, fall damage, 100%, they "fell".
So, i ask you, do you really want to deny reality, because the rules don't specify the difference between jumping and falling, and based off the rules of "falling" it says this_____.
On top of all that... this is just making the game "less" fun... its not only inhibiting players (with incredibly unsound logic, btw), but inhibiting creatures too. A house cat can't jump 10ft off a wall without taking damage?.. This game is given a BASE set of rules, and lets DM's use these to their own discretion(to give it a real feel, in case of rules not specifying something, and for players to have a little more fun). We can say "rules" all we want, but their is no definitive answer to this. SO, its left to the DM, and IMO, any DM ruling this, is denying reality, and ive seen people in this very thread saying,
"The maximum “natural” jump height is exactly 10 feet for a 20th-level barbarian with a strength of 24, and I would absolutely inflict the 1d6 damage on them if they were to jump their full maximum jump height, because they’d have HP out the ass and it would be hilarious."
It just feels like some DM's just want to cause issues, because its funny to them, and it won't hinder the player "that much"... in other words, it amuses them. If your players finds that funny, and the barb does it, just to get a laugh out of the group, thats awesome. all the power to you goofballs, i love it. But, someone who wants to jump into combat, cause he finds it cool, and youre gonna fuddyduddy them with illogical non-specified rules. You are the problem player at the table.
The only rule this goes in contrast to is you can't use more than your movement on a jump. Personally, i wouldn't care, especially if you used a spell to gain this extra movement lol... like come on. if you do care, however, force them to use their dash, to do this, if the movement is still beyond that, they lose their bonus action, or reaction, or both, because they had to roll, into a standup position. Hell throw a dexterity/strength check onto it, if they fail, they are prone.
At the end of the day, if you are the DM, it is up to you, but I would want to look for a new DM, if i was at your table, even if i wasn't the guy who wanted to do the jumping stuff.
That thing is a mess of rules headaches. It's best not to think about it, if you can. Though, if it can't be avoided, then my suggestion is to give up on trying to deduce RAI for Echo Knight -- it comes from a different design team with different goals and practices, after all, so your ordinary tools for coaxing out RAI don't apply -- and simply rule in all cases according to this principle: The echo isn't real, but it can make attacks as if it were real, and it moves the same way the Fighter moves.
I can't claim that's how it was meant to work, as I just explained, but it'll make your life less painful I think.
I would say that a "jump" begins and ends on the ground. Everything else just gets too complicated.
If I have 20 ft jump,
I can jump UP 10 ft (and down 10 ft) with a full 20 ft of movement landing on the ground where I started. (This is a normal jump with 20 ft of movement.) I can jump UP 15 ft (and down 5 ft) falling 10 ft and taking 1d6 and being prone on the ground. (So yes, you can jump to your maximum. Your landing becomes increasingly uncontrolled. In this case, total movement of 30 ft exceeded the jump distance by 10 ft, so that last 10 ft is falling.) I can jump UP 20 ft, (and fall 20 ft) and take 2 d6 damage + prone on the ground. (Or I can land on a surface 20 ft above where I started - so jump up to a tree branch...) I can jump OFF a 20 ft cliff and take no damage because my air time was covered by my jumping. (I would let you jump off of something to full distance without the 10 ft running start to generate the distance.)
Jump is air time, in control without damage and begins and ends on a surface.
If you let someone jump up full height, they really traveling on the map twice as far as they should - which is perfectly fine if your DM allows it. As this thread proves, trying to physics it is just going to make it hard at the table.
Kobysan, have you read through the 3+ pages of this thread you necroed? Most ov this has been hashed and rehashed in those pages. For the physics the rules are based on go back and read post 63 on p3.
If a character can somehow jump 20 feet straight up, no way am I making them take damage when they come down that same 20 feet.
A fall from a great height is one of the most common hazards facing an adventurer. At the end of a fall, a creature takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 feet it fell, to a maximum of 20d6. The creature lands prone, unless it avoids taking damage from the fall.
I do not interpret these rules for falling as being written to apply to landing from a jump unless your guy is over here doing the Fosbury flop.
Agreed.
Apologies for reviving an outdated thread, but since the 2024 rules for Falling remain largely unchanged, I believe this topic still holds discussion value.
To your argument, I’d like to add:
Flying Creatures and Falling
A flying creature in flight falls if it is knocked prone, if its speed is reduced to 0 feet, or if it otherwise loses the ability to move, unless it can hover or it is being held aloft by magic, such as the fly spell.
If you'd like a flying creature to have a better chance of surviving a fall than a non-flying creature does, use this rule: subtract the creature's current flying speed from the distance it fell before calculating falling damage. This rule is helpful to a flier that is knocked prone but is still conscious and has a current flying speed that is greater than 0 feet. The rule is designed to simulate the creature flapping its wings furiously or taking similar measures to slow the velocity of its fall.
As XGE’s rules for Flying Creatures remain relevant (with many XGE expansions incorporated into the 2024 PHB), this text retains interpretive weight. Notably, XGE specifies:
A conscious flying creature with current flying speed > 0 can subtract that speed from fall distance before calculating damage.
This simulates efforts to slow descent (e.g., wing-flapping).
Extending this logic, Jumping—a movement mode parallel to Flying—might similarly mitigate fall damage. For example:
Treat High Jump as quasi-Flying, allowing subtraction of remaining jump/movement speed from the post-apex fall distance.
Which metric to use (jump height vs. movement speed) would depend on DM adjudication of jump-based damage reduction.
Kobysan, have you read through the 3+ pages of this thread you necroed? Most ov this has been hashed and rehashed in those pages. For the physics the rules are based on go back and read post 63 on p3.
The rules are explicitly NOT a physics simulator. Attempts to argue from that perspective run directly counter to the advice given by the new 2024 rules.
Anyway. You have control of your movement while jumping if you have movement left to spend. The entire distance is a "jump" if you're using your movement to move it. You only "fall" if your jump ends while you're still in the air, because you ran out of movement or similar reason.
Running out of movement while mid-jump is would result in an uncontrolled landing. Aka a fall. This wouldn't need an acro check like you ask for. It would just happen automatically. If in air, and not using movement, and not have a fly/hover/etc ability? You fall.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
You’re right Rav, the game is not a physics simulator. What it does is extract a simplified set of rules from the physics to make it simple and easy to play while allowing folks to extrapolate from their own real world experience ( the real physics simulator) for what to expect given the character actions. For instance (again) - a 1 round fall from 0 speed: 6 seconds X 32 ft/sec/sec acceleration is a final speed of 192 ft/s and an average speed of 96 ft/s. Distance fallen = t x avg V so 6x 96=576 ft fallen, so the game has rounded down to 500 ft and makes it all happen at once. Same kind of thing for the high jump: the world record is just over 8ft for a running high jump and that is the also the max height for a 20 strength running high jump. Real world physics simplified for game ease. The hard part is handling magic since we have none in this world. But even there much of it can be extrapolated - take fireball, the magic is in making an instantaneous heat only explosion with a 40’ diameter, the real world comes into play in how it fits around corners etc. a true explosion would have both heat and force damage so the magic is limiting it to heat only. ( maybe the force/thunder damage is magically transferred to someone elsewhere’s Thunderwave spell. ) I did have a mistake - the long jump should actually have as close to a 45* takeoff angle as possible so you get the max height and distance, height determines how long your flight time is which determines how far you can jump. Game rules limit the long jump to 20’ clearing a height of no more than 5’. This actually makes since if you consider that the PCs doing it are weighted down with armor?, weapons and equipment. The Olympic record is just over 28 ft and the theoretical max is close to 40 ft (for some one hitting USAIN Bolts max speed at takeoff and hitting that perfect 45* takeoff angle ignoring air resistance) . Are the rules a perfect simulation? No, of course not but they mimic reality well enough that folks can use their own experience to judge what is and isn’t possible in the vast majority of situations. why do high jump (and pole vault) “pits” have cushions to land on? Simple, if you land on your back prone from even 5-8 ft high jump heights (let alone pole vault’s 15-20 ft heights) your going to get hurt without something to ease the landing significantly.
to extrapolate from their own real world experience ( the real physics simulator)
When it comes to these sorts of things, the real world (Earth) does not even come close to estimating the physics that are estimated by the game. The game runs in something much more akin to Earth's moon gravity. That's the only explanation for why some people can jump so high and why people in the game are routinely able to splat onto concrete from extraordinary heights and easily survive with full functionality.
Same kind of thing for the high jump: the world record is just over 8ft for a running high jump and that is the also the max height for a 20 strength running high jump.
This, of course, is an extraordinarily poor comparison. People in the real world who complete an 8-foot High Jump in a Track and Field competition do not even come close to jumping 8 feet into the air. They execute a running vertical leap of maybe 4 1/2 feet or so and then they are able to quickly contort the rest of their body to traverse over a bar that is set 8 feet into the air.
In D&D 5e, these characters can jump 8 feet into the air -- like, remaining in a vertical position and their feet are now 8 feet off of the ground. Assuming that they are 6 feet tall, they can then reach up and grab onto an overhang that is 17 feet off of the ground. No human on Earth is ever coming even close doing that. Moon gravity for the win.
I personally feel like they could have done a far better job with these particular rules, but as it is now, we have a choice of either playing by the RAW or house-ruling something that makes more sense for the particular gravity that we want our game world to have -- such as Earth-like gravity, for example.
Running out of movement while mid-jump is would result in an uncontrolled landing. Aka a fall. This wouldn't need an acro check like you ask for. It would just happen automatically. If in air, and not using movement, and not have a fly/hover/etc ability? You fall.
Also, I don't think that this sort of thing can be done intentionally. The movement rules state that jumping uses a certain amount of movement. Like any other movement, if your Speed is too low and / or you do not have enough remaining movement to complete your jump, then you simply cannot execute that particular movement (the jump) on this turn. You would have to wait for your next turn before you can attempt to jump.
Even if we use a RAW interpretation where you could attempt a jump with only a fraction of the required movement, I would rule that you do not "fall" from mid-air, but your jump would stop when you run out of movement and you would land directly below wherever you are -- as if you were actually attempting a smaller long jump or a lower high jump than you intended. Warning the player of this outcome in advance of course.
Also, in the case of a High Jump, only the "upward" movement counts against your movement. Coming back down is still part of your jump in that you are not falling during this time, but coming back down from the top of your High Jump doesn't cost any movement.
There are a lot of edge cases that the rules do not adequately cover on this topic which the DM will have to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis.
In your example I think that it is reasonable to apply 20 feet of falling damage.
In a different scenario where there is no illusion and a player declares that their character wants to "jump" downwards into a 20-foot-deep pit, I feel like a fair ruling would be to apply the first few feet downwards for "free", equal to how much a character descends when jumping upwards. For example, a character with a +5 modifier would be able to make a controlled descent of 8 feet downwards for free. Then, if the remainder of the descent is 10 feet or more then falling damage is applied. So, in this case of a descent of 20 feet, the character would take 1d6 falling damage for falling at least 10 feet but less than 20 feet. If instead the descent was only 15 feet, then this character could jump downwards for that distance without taking any falling damage since he jumped downwards for 8 feet and fell for 7 feet. But another character with a +0 modifier attempting to jump downwards 15 feet would take 1d6 falling damage since he only gets the first 3 feet downwards for free and then falls the additional 12 feet.
The game basically has explicit rules for what should happen "when a creature falls" but does not explicitly define what constitutes a fall and/or when "falling" actually begins -- so that aspect of the "starting point" of a fall has been left up to the DM to determine based on the situation.
Up2ng, referring back to your post #79 welcome to why PCs are in many ways akin to superhero’s. They get away with so much bad physics that the “regular” folks of the world can’t. One of the few times of actual real world physics actually applying to a superhero was the first Spider-Man’s end - where his webs catch Gwen but then the force of her fall stretches them so she still impacts the floor killing her. ( hated that ending but I applauded the physics actually working properly)
Just want to point out that trying to apply physics to this stuff is just another way that martials get the short end of the stick. Sure, let the wizard call down meteors from space but gods forbid the fighter tries to jump farther or higher than an Olympic athlete!
Jumping has rules and falling has rules. Trying to use physics to add to or amend those rules is not the same as filling a gap in the rules. You fall when the rules say you fall, and you don't when they don't.
I love physics, but keep it out of my fantasy game thank you very much.
The dnd worlds don't use real world physics and attempts to force them to result in so much homebrew you're not even playing dnd anymore. And for what?
The game is abstraction. It is fun action and adventure. No one needs to calculate their exact fall velocity, convert to a force equation based on their character weight, then do ananother impact and force distribution calculation based on the composition of their own body and the material and angle of impact. Stop. With all that.
Just roll a d6 for every 10ft you fall. And you fall anytime you're suddenly in the air and not under your own movement anymore.
The game is easy. Intentionally.
Does it result it weird superho stuff sometimes? Yeah. It does! And... that's awesome. There are dudes in the other room launching meteors at people by wiggling their fingers and humming. Who cares if you jump a few feet higher than IRL people can...
Edit: Superhero* but we keeping it because it is hilarious.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
1) Yes superhero stuff is great fun when it happens. 2) No, the game isn’t a detailed physics simulation, even I leave that for my classrooms not my game rooms. 3) the point it feels like folks are missing or ignoring is that if the game rules stray to far from what we, the players, normally experience we have greater problems projecting what to expect our characters to be able to do successfully. So keeping the physics in mind when discussing how to deal with edge cases like jumping down a (dry) waterfall beyond 10’ high or making hulk- like leaps can help provide ideas about how to handle the situations.
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Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
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so can elephants jump SUPER high because of their strength score, and cats cant jump because of THEIR strength score?
But then again, this is where the idea of "common sense" is supposed to override the RAW
"The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game."
"The rules don't account for every possible situation that might arise during a typical D&D session. [...] How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you."
Those ARE rules, right? They're from the Dungeon Master's Guide (Introduction, pt 3: Master of Rules). They seem like rules to me.
Just do a long jump and say you jump pretty high when you do it. The only time it would even matter is clearing an obstacle. If you’re jumping a significant distance you’ll need some height on that jump anyway.
I disagree very strongly with this. If I can jump 5, 10, 20ft in the air, then i can withstand the landing. it took as much energy to get me that high, as i will have, when i reach the ground, on top of the fact, i can roll, to extend the time of the impact.
The jump spell lasts for 1 minute. meaning, you are gifted with leg strength, or a gravity debuff (ie, .3xgravity or something),etc. Since you arent getting lighter, i don't believe this to be the case, as they would have worded it that way, if you could use it on inanimate objects. their arent any "kick" conditions that differ from punches, so we can't really use this as any context clues (ie, no strength bonuses using your legs over your arms). This means, adding strength to just your legs still will fall within the bounds of the gameplay, as it won't effect combat, other than movement distance(also strength doesn't effect move speed, but DOES effect jumping distance, something we can lead us to the logic of, "jump enhances leg strength")
Jump does not indicate "how" it lengthens the jump, only that it does. As a DM you would have to find some kind of logic in how that would work. There are no rules pertaining to jumping being the same as falling. In no cases would the energy be higher at the moment of landing, then the initial jump(except some circumstances, ie, you jump through the air to grab _____ and ______ added to your weight).
"but the falling rules say-" no, we are jumping. meaning we have input the force needed to reach the height, with the same means we will use to land(ie legs, back, etc), and as long as the spell is still active, those same effects are still in place, meaning we can withstand the impact of the "fall"...
CLARIFICATIONS: No, you can't jump off a 400ft wall, because you had the strength to step off, this is an obvious mental disconnect with what i have said...
but, if you have the capability of jumping that high.... you can land from that high. If you want to add some contingency for the roll while landing, taking a reaction, and movement speed from the next turn... im all for it... but to sit here and pretend we have to follow the rules, when they stand in utter contrast to reality(and at the expense of players having fun), i have to tell you no. not just no, but **** NO. "Magic isn't within the bounds of real-" no, shut up. We aren't talking about some figurative thing, we are talking about projectile motion. This is something we can definitely back up with science. In fact, i can PROVE to you, that the initial jump had "more" force than the landing... with real life science.
Now, if they jumped through the air, and clipped something, throwing off their balance, inhibiting their landing, you got it, i agree, fall damage, 100%, they "fell".
So, i ask you, do you really want to deny reality, because the rules don't specify the difference between jumping and falling, and based off the rules of "falling" it says this_____.
On top of all that... this is just making the game "less" fun... its not only inhibiting players (with incredibly unsound logic, btw), but inhibiting creatures too. A house cat can't jump 10ft off a wall without taking damage?.. This game is given a BASE set of rules, and lets DM's use these to their own discretion(to give it a real feel, in case of rules not specifying something, and for players to have a little more fun). We can say "rules" all we want, but their is no definitive answer to this. SO, its left to the DM, and IMO, any DM ruling this, is denying reality, and ive seen people in this very thread saying,
"The maximum “natural” jump height is exactly 10 feet for a 20th-level barbarian with a strength of 24, and I would absolutely inflict the 1d6 damage on them if they were to jump their full maximum jump height, because they’d have HP out the ass and it would be hilarious."
It just feels like some DM's just want to cause issues, because its funny to them, and it won't hinder the player "that much"... in other words, it amuses them. If your players finds that funny, and the barb does it, just to get a laugh out of the group, thats awesome. all the power to you goofballs, i love it. But, someone who wants to jump into combat, cause he finds it cool, and youre gonna fuddyduddy them with illogical non-specified rules. You are the problem player at the table.
The only rule this goes in contrast to is you can't use more than your movement on a jump. Personally, i wouldn't care, especially if you used a spell to gain this extra movement lol... like come on. if you do care, however, force them to use their dash, to do this, if the movement is still beyond that, they lose their bonus action, or reaction, or both, because they had to roll, into a standup position. Hell throw a dexterity/strength check onto it, if they fail, they are prone.
At the end of the day, if you are the DM, it is up to you, but I would want to look for a new DM, if i was at your table, even if i wasn't the guy who wanted to do the jumping stuff.
What about echo knight's echo
That thing is a mess of rules headaches. It's best not to think about it, if you can. Though, if it can't be avoided, then my suggestion is to give up on trying to deduce RAI for Echo Knight -- it comes from a different design team with different goals and practices, after all, so your ordinary tools for coaxing out RAI don't apply -- and simply rule in all cases according to this principle: The echo isn't real, but it can make attacks as if it were real, and it moves the same way the Fighter moves.
I can't claim that's how it was meant to work, as I just explained, but it'll make your life less painful I think.
Rules are kind of opaque.
I would say that a "jump" begins and ends on the ground. Everything else just gets too complicated.
If I have 20 ft jump,
I can jump UP 10 ft (and down 10 ft) with a full 20 ft of movement landing on the ground where I started. (This is a normal jump with 20 ft of movement.)
I can jump UP 15 ft (and down 5 ft) falling 10 ft and taking 1d6 and being prone on the ground. (So yes, you can jump to your maximum. Your landing becomes increasingly uncontrolled. In this case, total movement of 30 ft exceeded the jump distance by 10 ft, so that last 10 ft is falling.)
I can jump UP 20 ft, (and fall 20 ft) and take 2 d6 damage + prone on the ground. (Or I can land on a surface 20 ft above where I started - so jump up to a tree branch...)
I can jump OFF a 20 ft cliff and take no damage because my air time was covered by my jumping. (I would let you jump off of something to full distance without the 10 ft running start to generate the distance.)
Jump is air time, in control without damage and begins and ends on a surface.
If you let someone jump up full height, they really traveling on the map twice as far as they should - which is perfectly fine if your DM allows it. As this thread proves, trying to physics it is just going to make it hard at the table.
Kobysan, have you read through the 3+ pages of this thread you necroed? Most ov this has been hashed and rehashed in those pages. For the physics the rules are based on go back and read post 63 on p3.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Agreed.
Apologies for reviving an outdated thread, but since the 2024 rules for Falling remain largely unchanged, I believe this topic still holds discussion value.
To your argument, I’d like to add:
As XGE’s rules for Flying Creatures remain relevant (with many XGE expansions incorporated into the 2024 PHB), this text retains interpretive weight. Notably, XGE specifies:
A conscious flying creature with current flying speed > 0 can subtract that speed from fall distance before calculating damage.
This simulates efforts to slow descent (e.g., wing-flapping).
Extending this logic, Jumping—a movement mode parallel to Flying—might similarly mitigate fall damage. For example:
Treat High Jump as quasi-Flying, allowing subtraction of remaining jump/movement speed from the post-apex fall distance.
Which metric to use (jump height vs. movement speed) would depend on DM adjudication of jump-based damage reduction.
The rules are explicitly NOT a physics simulator. Attempts to argue from that perspective run directly counter to the advice given by the new 2024 rules.
Anyway. You have control of your movement while jumping if you have movement left to spend. The entire distance is a "jump" if you're using your movement to move it. You only "fall" if your jump ends while you're still in the air, because you ran out of movement or similar reason.
Running out of movement while mid-jump is would result in an uncontrolled landing. Aka a fall. This wouldn't need an acro check like you ask for. It would just happen automatically. If in air, and not using movement, and not have a fly/hover/etc ability? You fall.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
You’re right Rav, the game is not a physics simulator. What it does is extract a simplified set of rules from the physics to make it simple and easy to play while allowing folks to extrapolate from their own real world experience ( the real physics simulator) for what to expect given the character actions. For instance (again) - a 1 round fall from 0 speed: 6 seconds X 32 ft/sec/sec acceleration is a final speed of 192 ft/s and an average speed of 96 ft/s. Distance fallen = t x avg V so 6x 96=576 ft fallen, so the game has rounded down to 500 ft and makes it all happen at once. Same kind of thing for the high jump: the world record is just over 8ft for a running high jump and that is the also the max height for a 20 strength running high jump. Real world physics simplified for game ease. The hard part is handling magic since we have none in this world. But even there much of it can be extrapolated - take fireball, the magic is in making an instantaneous heat only explosion with a 40’ diameter, the real world comes into play in how it fits around corners etc. a true explosion would have both heat and force damage so the magic is limiting it to heat only. ( maybe the force/thunder damage is magically transferred to someone elsewhere’s Thunderwave spell. )
I did have a mistake - the long jump should actually have as close to a 45* takeoff angle as possible so you get the max height and distance, height determines how long your flight time is which determines how far you can jump. Game rules limit the long jump to 20’ clearing a height of no more than 5’. This actually makes since if you consider that the PCs doing it are weighted down with armor?, weapons and equipment. The Olympic record is just over 28 ft and the theoretical max is close to 40 ft (for some one hitting USAIN Bolts max speed at takeoff and hitting that perfect 45* takeoff angle ignoring air resistance) . Are the rules a perfect simulation? No, of course not but they mimic reality well enough that folks can use their own experience to judge what is and isn’t possible in the vast majority of situations.
why do high jump (and pole vault) “pits” have cushions to land on? Simple, if you land on your back prone from even 5-8 ft high jump heights (let alone pole vault’s 15-20 ft heights) your going to get hurt without something to ease the landing significantly.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
When it comes to these sorts of things, the real world (Earth) does not even come close to estimating the physics that are estimated by the game. The game runs in something much more akin to Earth's moon gravity. That's the only explanation for why some people can jump so high and why people in the game are routinely able to splat onto concrete from extraordinary heights and easily survive with full functionality.
This, of course, is an extraordinarily poor comparison. People in the real world who complete an 8-foot High Jump in a Track and Field competition do not even come close to jumping 8 feet into the air. They execute a running vertical leap of maybe 4 1/2 feet or so and then they are able to quickly contort the rest of their body to traverse over a bar that is set 8 feet into the air.
In D&D 5e, these characters can jump 8 feet into the air -- like, remaining in a vertical position and their feet are now 8 feet off of the ground. Assuming that they are 6 feet tall, they can then reach up and grab onto an overhang that is 17 feet off of the ground. No human on Earth is ever coming even close doing that. Moon gravity for the win.
I personally feel like they could have done a far better job with these particular rules, but as it is now, we have a choice of either playing by the RAW or house-ruling something that makes more sense for the particular gravity that we want our game world to have -- such as Earth-like gravity, for example.
Also, I don't think that this sort of thing can be done intentionally. The movement rules state that jumping uses a certain amount of movement. Like any other movement, if your Speed is too low and / or you do not have enough remaining movement to complete your jump, then you simply cannot execute that particular movement (the jump) on this turn. You would have to wait for your next turn before you can attempt to jump.
Even if we use a RAW interpretation where you could attempt a jump with only a fraction of the required movement, I would rule that you do not "fall" from mid-air, but your jump would stop when you run out of movement and you would land directly below wherever you are -- as if you were actually attempting a smaller long jump or a lower high jump than you intended. Warning the player of this outcome in advance of course.
Also, in the case of a High Jump, only the "upward" movement counts against your movement. Coming back down is still part of your jump in that you are not falling during this time, but coming back down from the top of your High Jump doesn't cost any movement.
Unless you don't know... You can say "I jump on this platform".
Then the DM says: "You jump on the platform, which turns out to be an illusion. You fall 20ft below."
There are a lot of edge cases that the rules do not adequately cover on this topic which the DM will have to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis.
In your example I think that it is reasonable to apply 20 feet of falling damage.
In a different scenario where there is no illusion and a player declares that their character wants to "jump" downwards into a 20-foot-deep pit, I feel like a fair ruling would be to apply the first few feet downwards for "free", equal to how much a character descends when jumping upwards. For example, a character with a +5 modifier would be able to make a controlled descent of 8 feet downwards for free. Then, if the remainder of the descent is 10 feet or more then falling damage is applied. So, in this case of a descent of 20 feet, the character would take 1d6 falling damage for falling at least 10 feet but less than 20 feet. If instead the descent was only 15 feet, then this character could jump downwards for that distance without taking any falling damage since he jumped downwards for 8 feet and fell for 7 feet. But another character with a +0 modifier attempting to jump downwards 15 feet would take 1d6 falling damage since he only gets the first 3 feet downwards for free and then falls the additional 12 feet.
The game basically has explicit rules for what should happen "when a creature falls" but does not explicitly define what constitutes a fall and/or when "falling" actually begins -- so that aspect of the "starting point" of a fall has been left up to the DM to determine based on the situation.
Up2ng, referring back to your post #79
welcome to why PCs are in many ways akin to superhero’s. They get away with so much bad physics that the “regular” folks of the world can’t. One of the few times of actual real world physics actually applying to a superhero was the first Spider-Man’s end - where his webs catch Gwen but then the force of her fall stretches them so she still impacts the floor killing her. ( hated that ending but I applauded the physics actually working properly)
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Just want to point out that trying to apply physics to this stuff is just another way that martials get the short end of the stick. Sure, let the wizard call down meteors from space but gods forbid the fighter tries to jump farther or higher than an Olympic athlete!
Jumping has rules and falling has rules. Trying to use physics to add to or amend those rules is not the same as filling a gap in the rules. You fall when the rules say you fall, and you don't when they don't.
I love physics, but keep it out of my fantasy game thank you very much.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The dnd worlds don't use real world physics and attempts to force them to result in so much homebrew you're not even playing dnd anymore. And for what?
The game is abstraction. It is fun action and adventure. No one needs to calculate their exact fall velocity, convert to a force equation based on their character weight, then do ananother impact and force distribution calculation based on the composition of their own body and the material and angle of impact. Stop. With all that.
Just roll a d6 for every 10ft you fall. And you fall anytime you're suddenly in the air and not under your own movement anymore.
The game is easy. Intentionally.
Does it result it weird superho stuff sometimes? Yeah. It does! And... that's awesome. There are dudes in the other room launching meteors at people by wiggling their fingers and humming. Who cares if you jump a few feet higher than IRL people can...
Edit: Superhero* but we keeping it because it is hilarious.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
1) Yes superhero stuff is great fun when it happens.
2) No, the game isn’t a detailed physics simulation, even I leave that for my classrooms not my game rooms.
3) the point it feels like folks are missing or ignoring is that if the game rules stray to far from what we, the players, normally experience we have greater problems projecting what to expect our characters to be able to do successfully. So keeping the physics in mind when discussing how to deal with edge cases like jumping down a (dry) waterfall beyond 10’ high or making hulk- like leaps can help provide ideas about how to handle the situations.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.