I get the creeping feeling that such bursts of free movements, at least those you can get by jumping, are RAI. Not only because the RAW allows it in such a distressingly explicit way, but because there was an episode of Mike Mearl's Happy Fun Hour some years back where he worked on a Rogue Acrobat subclass that had a very similar feel.
Before anybody tells me its too old to be relevant, many of the things he worked on and/or mentionned in that show appeared in later books, all the way from Ravnica to Tasha's & Fizban's. Some have appeared in different forms (which he did warn about), such as the psionic flavored subclasses, and some haven't even showed up yet in official products but did pop up in relatively recent UA. There was even an episode where he mentions something along the lines of "We [WotC] want to make sure that if we give you planar travel and exploration rules & content, we also give you planes to explore". He mentionned they were working on that back then...
So my main point is this; the acrobat had similar kind of movement shenanigans. Don't get me wrong, they're absolutely not the same, and the hadozee has been around in previous editions and could always glide... but it's not so crazy to imagine these shenanigans to be intently allowed. Considering that the acrobat is one of the few things he worked on that hasn't resurfaced yet, and just how similar the experience is when you jump with the hadozee in combat, perhaps the whooping 5x factor and no movement cost is meant for this kind of... let's say creative use.
Bit of a stretch, I know, but it's a reasonable consideration. Hadozee are and have always been depicted as particularly mobile. And to be fair, they have always been associated with the spelljammer setting. Not particularly easy to fall 500ft in weightless wildspace, but you can fully expect them to glide form mast to mast and move swiftly. Scary and probably intended.
i dont think any of the presented arguments successfully prove the intention of the text, nor clarify what rule is being written. there have been plenty of legal cases that try to determine an unbiased reading of language. luckily we know who the judge will be. to me gliding is not falling, the rate of descent while gliding is up to the DM since it is not stated. that rate will determine the movement available while descending.
I'm not going to argue that the mechanic isn't badly written, since it is. I'm just going to argue that it's differently broken. :)
Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can extend your skin membranes and glide. When you do so, you can perform the following aerial maneuvers:
You can move up to 5 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend in the air, at no movement cost to you.
When you would take damage from a fall, you can use your reaction to reduce the fall’s damage to 0.
The only part of it that refers to falling is the second point. Therefore, we can assume that when the first one applies, you are not falling. You are gliding.
So, what does it mean to be gliding? It means that, for every foot you descend in the air, you move up to five feet horizontally, at no movement cost to you.
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
Under what circumstances can you invoke this ability? Here, we also have no answer.
So, I'm going to argue that it's broken because it doesn't, as written, work on its own. (Except maybe for the bunny-hopping idea, but that's still silly, and therefore will not be mentioned in this post.)
With external sources of vertical movement (fly, levitate), it does work, but that's probably not what was intended, and it's certainly not what players are going to envision when they take the race.
How I'm going to house-rule it:
You can start gliding for movement when you're in the air during your turn. If something causes you to enter the air when it's not your turn, all you can do is not take fall damage.
Absent some other source of vertical movement, while gliding, you can descend up to your movement speed in feet. (My interpretation of the sentence is that it's the five-foot move that doesn't cost movement, not the descent.) I would probably rule that you must descend at least one foot, because you're not powered.
there have been plenty of legal cases that try to determine an unbiased reading of language. luckily we know who the judge will be.
True, well stated, and all anyone needs in order to actually play. Any further criticism should probably be viewed through the lens of design. Or, put another way, pedantry. I suppose it comes down to how much responsibility you feel a mechanic like this should ideally place upon the DM.
I'd say it should take your reaction to glide, that you can't glide on falls of less than 10ft, and probably halve the glide distance. That's enough to remove the broken combo.
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Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
I'd say it should take your reaction to glide, that you can't glide on falls of less than 10ft, and probably halve the glide distance. That's enough to remove the broken combo.
I think the "cleanest" way to homebrew it is to chop the end off the first sentence, starting with the comma. That nullifies the "combo", although frankly there's no combo that needs nullifying, because the best way to game that first bullet is 1-foot high jumps - combining the first bullet with the second isn't very useful in the general case due to a lack of cheap ways to get a lot of vertical movement upward.
New version reads like this:
Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can perform the following aerial maneuvers:
You can move up to 5 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend in the air.
When you would take damage from a fall, you can use your reaction to reduce the fall’s damage to 0.
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
This is what I've been unable to succinctly articulate. Thank you for spelling it out.
Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed, and since Features only say what they do, not what they don't do, Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's "Falling" rules on pg. 77). If the Gliding Feature specified a slowed descent, then Specific would beat General in this case, but since it doesn't, the General rule for descending from an airborne position is 500ft per round.
Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can perform the following aerial maneuvers:
You can move up to 5 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend in the air.
If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 30ft horizontal and 6ft down? If so, you slow a 500ft fall from 1 Round to 83 Rounds!
If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 150ft horizontal and 30ft down? If so, this solution does very little to prevent 1ft bunny hop shenanigans! It would mean both the 1ft jump and 1ft descent count as movement, so you can only get 75ft with these bunny hops, but it's still 2.5x your regular speed, without dashing.
The new version you propose is flawed, either you slow the descent way too much, or you don't fix the broken shenanigans. It only really solves the "I travel 2,500ft in one round as I start the turn 500ft in the air" issue.
Edit: Even if we go with "If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 150ft horizontal and 30ft down" as the new rule, that's still 17 rounds before a creature completes a 500ft descent. More realistic? Probably... Practical in game? Nope!
This rule is a botch. Was it that hard for them to establish that you can glide up to a maximum of your movement per turn? In fact, I am going to interpret it that way, although RAW there is nothing to indicate that. But if not, it is absurdly abusive. Can you move 2500 feet per turn if the height is right? What if you jump into the void (something relatively simple in a setting like spelljamer)? Can you move 2500 feet per turn indefinitely until you die or land?
Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's OPTIONAL "Falling" rules on pg. 77).
FTFY
The basic rules on falling don't indicate a speed, they only cap the damage, and combining that optional rule with the feature doesn't give you a power combo turbo boost
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
This is what I've been unable to succinctly articulate. Thank you for spelling it out.
Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed, and since Features only say what they do, not what they don't do, Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's "Falling" rules on pg. 77). If the Gliding Feature specified a slowed descent, then Specific would beat General in this case, but since it doesn't, the General rule for descending from an airborne position is 500ft per round.
As I said above:
The only part of it that refers to falling is the second point. Therefore, we can assume that when the first one applies, you are not falling.
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
This is what I've been unable to succinctly articulate. Thank you for spelling it out.
Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed, and since Features only say what they do, not what they don't do, Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's "Falling" rules on pg. 77). If the Gliding Feature specified a slowed descent, then Specific would beat General in this case, but since it doesn't, the General rule for descending from an airborne position is 500ft per round.
As I said above:
The only part of it that refers to falling is the second point. Therefore, we can assume that when the first one applies, you are not falling.
Additionally, we can see that the UA version explicitly said "when you fall," and the final version doesn't, so from a RAI perspective, it definitely looks like you're not falling.
Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's OPTIONAL "Falling" rules on pg. 77).
FTFY
The basic rules on falling don't indicate a speed, they only cap the damage, and combining that optional rule with the feature doesn't give you a power combo turbo boost
Okay Anton, let's assume you don't use the OPTIONAL rule from Xanathar's - the designers intent with the base rule is that the assumption is that a creature immediately drops the entire distance - this is even worse than using the optional rules, which actually impose a LIMIT of 500ft per round! Combining the Optional Rule with the Feature LIMITS the "power combo turbo boost", as without it, as written, a Hadozee PC can start their turn 2,000 ft in the area and end their turn 10,000ft away!
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
This is what I've been unable to succinctly articulate. Thank you for spelling it out.
Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed, and since Features only say what they do, not what they don't do, Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's "Falling" rules on pg. 77). If the Gliding Feature specified a slowed descent, then Specific would beat General in this case, but since it doesn't, the General rule for descending from an airborne position is 500ft per round.
As I said above:
The only part of it that refers to falling is the second point. Therefore, we can assume that when the first one applies, you are not falling.
Additionally, we can see that the UA version explicitly said "when you fall," and the final version doesn't, so from a RAI perspective, it definitely looks like you're not falling.
And, as I said: "Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed". Rules say what they can do, not what they can't (unless it's necessary to be specific). We can't "assume" that the first bullet means we're NOT falling, as it doesn't mention it. It simply mentions that there is downward movement, and our horizontal movement is 5x this, without costing movement. Nowhere does it say downward movement is slowed when gliding, so the inference is either to use the base rule - the creature drops the entire distance - or we use the OPTIONAL rule from XGtE - the creature drops up to 500ft.
There is no part of this feature that says "movement is slowed" or "gliding doesn't follow the same rules as falling for descending" or anything at all to suggest "Gliding is not falling". Even if "Gliding is not falling" is the true intent, they neglected to specify what Gliding IS, and therefore the only rules we have that regard the speed at which a creature descends is either the basic rule of "they immediately drop to the ground" or XGtE's optional rule of "they descend by an amount of up to 500ft per round".
And, as I said: "Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed". Rules say what they can do, not what they can't (unless it's necessary to be specific). We can't "assume" that the first bullet means we're NOT falling, as it doesn't mention it. It simply mentions that there is downward movement, and our horizontal movement is 5x this, without costing movement. Nowhere does it say downward movement is slowed when gliding, so the inference is either to use the base rule - the creature drops the entire distance - or we use the OPTIONAL rule from XGtE - the creature drops up to 500ft.
The D&D rules never actually define what constitutes a fall. When no mechanical definition is provided, we default to the normal colloquial usage of the word. If you're gliding, you're not falling. We don't need a rule to tell us this because that's just what the words mean. There was an entire joke about exactly that in Toy Story.
The rules you're citing are only relevant when a creature falls, which is decidedly not the case here. Those rules are thus not relevant, and continuing to reference them doesn't get anyone anywhere.
Okay Anton, let's assume you don't use the OPTIONAL rule from Xanathar's - the designers intent with the base rule is that the assumption is that a creature immediately drops the entire distance - this is even worse than using the optional rules
No, it isn't, because as been pointed out by multiple people in this thread, the first bullet point in the Glide feature says absolutely nothing about falling
If you want to talk about designer intentions, the very clear design intent of that first bullet point is to provide hadozee with a limited form of aerial movement comparable to their walking speed, even if it's phrased poorly and in such a way that people who love to find exploits think they've got a winner
As with too many "RAW" debates, this isn't so much "what does this rule mean?" as "how can I force my DM to allow this ridiculous interpretation?" (The answer -- every time -- is you can't, because the DM is the final arbiter, not randos on a message board or some dude with a YouTube channel)
If the DM is running a game where cartoon physics are encouraged then sure, travel 1500 feet or more in a single round, go nuts. Do 20d6 bludgeoning damage with a death drop onto someone but reduce your share of it to zero with the reaction, what the heck. But stop pretending it's RAW
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If you want to talk about designer intentions, the very clear design intent of that first bullet point is to provide hadozee with a limited form of aerial movement comparable to their walking speed,...
If the DM is running a game where cartoon physics are encouraged then sure, travel 1500 feet or more in a single round, go nuts. Do 20d6 bludgeoning damage with a death drop onto someone but reduce your share of it to zero with the reaction, what the heck. But stop pretending it's RAW
As I posted above, this rule is so badly written that it requires the DM to fix it themselves with one tweak or another. But it very clearly isn't a new form of movement. See above where I list many places (and there's way more) where new forms of movement are introduced, and the phasing used. This rule fails to implement that logic within the writing and is - concretely - the Rule As Written. It's almost certainly not the Rule As Intended, but it's RAW. The written rule does not define the amount of distance down the character is allowed to go in one turn, so the DM must implement their own rule (several good variants of which have been proposed).
But the ability DOES NOT INTRODUCE A GLIDE SPEED. If it did, the rule would call it a Glide Speed, like every other form of movement that introduces a "Speed". "Speed" is a specific word with an explicit mechanical definition. When a form of movement is a "Speed", the rules define that.
Should Glide be a "Speed"? Probably, yes. Will the DM need to fix the rule? Absolutely. Is the rule as written patently silly? Without question.
I didn't read the whole thread but basically you get jump glide, jump glide until you jump 30 feet. Meaning you get to glide150 feet.
Unless the rest of the party can do the same thing, the Yazirian is way away alone from everybody else. Sometimes there is a reason to be far from the rest of the party. Other times not so much.
I understand the kickback on the movement if the glider starts from a high elevation but how many times does that happen? In a dungeon it is very rare. Outdoors, forest, jungle, mountain, and urban it is easy to get high up for a jump. How practical is that really? In order to get super bonus gliding you still have to climb up quite a distance.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I just have a question for all the people who have issues with the gliding:
How are Simic Hybrids with Manta Glide run at your table? This debate is old news.
And before someone comes in with "tHaTs rAvNiCa sPeCiFiC!1", this is spelljammer specific, so the question stands.
I agree it's not built well. I agree it's overpowered in most scenarios. I just wanna know why it's so different from something that was published ages ago and is an improved version.
I just have a question for all the people who have issues with the gliding:
How are Simic Hybrids with Manta Glide run at your table? This debate is old news.
The Manta Glide:
Manta Glide - You have ray-like fins that you can use as wings to slow your fall or allow you to glide. When you fall and aren’t incapacitated, you can subtract up to 100 feet from the fall when calculating falling damage, and you can move up to 2 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend.
Notice the difference? Manta Glide still consumes your Speed. With a speed of 30 feet per round, you can Manta Glide.... 30 feet per round. The Hadozee Glide specifically states that the movement does not consume your speed. Ergo, the distance you can horizontally move is a factor of the height of the fall. Therein lies the problem.
I get the creeping feeling that such bursts of free movements, at least those you can get by jumping, are RAI. Not only because the RAW allows it in such a distressingly explicit way, but because there was an episode of Mike Mearl's Happy Fun Hour some years back where he worked on a Rogue Acrobat subclass that had a very similar feel.
Before anybody tells me its too old to be relevant, many of the things he worked on and/or mentionned in that show appeared in later books, all the way from Ravnica to Tasha's & Fizban's. Some have appeared in different forms (which he did warn about), such as the psionic flavored subclasses, and some haven't even showed up yet in official products but did pop up in relatively recent UA. There was even an episode where he mentions something along the lines of "We [WotC] want to make sure that if we give you planar travel and exploration rules & content, we also give you planes to explore". He mentionned they were working on that back then...
So my main point is this; the acrobat had similar kind of movement shenanigans. Don't get me wrong, they're absolutely not the same, and the hadozee has been around in previous editions and could always glide... but it's not so crazy to imagine these shenanigans to be intently allowed. Considering that the acrobat is one of the few things he worked on that hasn't resurfaced yet, and just how similar the experience is when you jump with the hadozee in combat, perhaps the whooping 5x factor and no movement cost is meant for this kind of... let's say creative use.
Bit of a stretch, I know, but it's a reasonable consideration. Hadozee are and have always been depicted as particularly mobile. And to be fair, they have always been associated with the spelljammer setting. Not particularly easy to fall 500ft in weightless wildspace, but you can fully expect them to glide form mast to mast and move swiftly. Scary and probably intended.
i dont think any of the presented arguments successfully prove the intention of the text, nor clarify what rule is being written. there have been plenty of legal cases that try to determine an unbiased reading of language. luckily we know who the judge will be. to me gliding is not falling, the rate of descent while gliding is up to the DM since it is not stated. that rate will determine the movement available while descending.
I'm not going to argue that the mechanic isn't badly written, since it is. I'm just going to argue that it's differently broken. :)
Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can extend your skin membranes and glide. When you do so, you can perform the following aerial maneuvers:
The only part of it that refers to falling is the second point. Therefore, we can assume that when the first one applies, you are not falling. You are gliding.
So, what does it mean to be gliding? It means that, for every foot you descend in the air, you move up to five feet horizontally, at no movement cost to you.
So, when you're gliding, how many feet do you descend per round? On that, we have no answer. You're not falling, so the falling rules do not help us.
Under what circumstances can you invoke this ability? Here, we also have no answer.
So, I'm going to argue that it's broken because it doesn't, as written, work on its own. (Except maybe for the bunny-hopping idea, but that's still silly, and therefore will not be mentioned in this post.)
With external sources of vertical movement (fly, levitate), it does work, but that's probably not what was intended, and it's certainly not what players are going to envision when they take the race.
How I'm going to house-rule it:
True, well stated, and all anyone needs in order to actually play. Any further criticism should probably be viewed through the lens of design. Or, put another way, pedantry. I suppose it comes down to how much responsibility you feel a mechanic like this should ideally place upon the DM.
This is what I've been unable to succinctly articulate. Thank you for spelling it out.
I'd say it should take your reaction to glide, that you can't glide on falls of less than 10ft, and probably halve the glide distance. That's enough to remove the broken combo.
Panda-wat (I hate my username) is somehow convinced that he is objectively right about everything D&D related even though he obviously is not. Considering that, he'd probably make a great D&D youtuber.
"If I die, I can live with that." ~Luke Hart, the DM lair
I think the "cleanest" way to homebrew it is to chop the end off the first sentence, starting with the comma. That nullifies the "combo", although frankly there's no combo that needs nullifying, because the best way to game that first bullet is 1-foot high jumps - combining the first bullet with the second isn't very useful in the general case due to a lack of cheap ways to get a lot of vertical movement upward.
New version reads like this:
Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can perform the following aerial maneuvers:
Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed, and since Features only say what they do, not what they don't do, Gliding doesn't slow you down, so you still descend at 500ft per round (using Xanathar's "Falling" rules on pg. 77). If the Gliding Feature specified a slowed descent, then Specific would beat General in this case, but since it doesn't, the General rule for descending from an airborne position is 500ft per round.
If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 30ft horizontal and 6ft down? If so, you slow a 500ft fall from 1 Round to 83 Rounds!
If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 150ft horizontal and 30ft down? If so, this solution does very little to prevent 1ft bunny hop shenanigans! It would mean both the 1ft jump and 1ft descent count as movement, so you can only get 75ft with these bunny hops, but it's still 2.5x your regular speed, without dashing.
The new version you propose is flawed, either you slow the descent way too much, or you don't fix the broken shenanigans. It only really solves the "I travel 2,500ft in one round as I start the turn 500ft in the air" issue.
Edit: Even if we go with "If your movement speed is 30ft, does that mean 150ft horizontal and 30ft down" as the new rule, that's still 17 rounds before a creature completes a 500ft descent. More realistic? Probably... Practical in game? Nope!
This rule is a botch. Was it that hard for them to establish that you can glide up to a maximum of your movement per turn? In fact, I am going to interpret it that way, although RAW there is nothing to indicate that. But if not, it is absurdly abusive. Can you move 2500 feet per turn if the height is right? What if you jump into the void (something relatively simple in a setting like spelljamer)? Can you move 2500 feet per turn indefinitely until you die or land?
FTFY
The basic rules on falling don't indicate a speed, they only cap the damage, and combining that optional rule with the feature doesn't give you a power combo turbo boost
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As I said above:
Additionally, we can see that the UA version explicitly said "when you fall," and the final version doesn't, so from a RAI perspective, it definitely looks like you're not falling.
Okay Anton, let's assume you don't use the OPTIONAL rule from Xanathar's - the designers intent with the base rule is that the assumption is that a creature immediately drops the entire distance - this is even worse than using the optional rules, which actually impose a LIMIT of 500ft per round! Combining the Optional Rule with the Feature LIMITS the "power combo turbo boost", as without it, as written, a Hadozee PC can start their turn 2,000 ft in the area and end their turn 10,000ft away!
And, as I said: "Nothing in the Gliding Feature says that downward movement is slowed". Rules say what they can do, not what they can't (unless it's necessary to be specific). We can't "assume" that the first bullet means we're NOT falling, as it doesn't mention it. It simply mentions that there is downward movement, and our horizontal movement is 5x this, without costing movement. Nowhere does it say downward movement is slowed when gliding, so the inference is either to use the base rule - the creature drops the entire distance - or we use the OPTIONAL rule from XGtE - the creature drops up to 500ft.
There is no part of this feature that says "movement is slowed" or "gliding doesn't follow the same rules as falling for descending" or anything at all to suggest "Gliding is not falling". Even if "Gliding is not falling" is the true intent, they neglected to specify what Gliding IS, and therefore the only rules we have that regard the speed at which a creature descends is either the basic rule of "they immediately drop to the ground" or XGtE's optional rule of "they descend by an amount of up to 500ft per round".
The D&D rules never actually define what constitutes a fall. When no mechanical definition is provided, we default to the normal colloquial usage of the word. If you're gliding, you're not falling. We don't need a rule to tell us this because that's just what the words mean. There was an entire joke about exactly that in Toy Story.
The rules you're citing are only relevant when a creature falls, which is decidedly not the case here. Those rules are thus not relevant, and continuing to reference them doesn't get anyone anywhere.
No, it isn't, because as been pointed out by multiple people in this thread, the first bullet point in the Glide feature says absolutely nothing about falling
If you want to talk about designer intentions, the very clear design intent of that first bullet point is to provide hadozee with a limited form of aerial movement comparable to their walking speed, even if it's phrased poorly and in such a way that people who love to find exploits think they've got a winner
As with too many "RAW" debates, this isn't so much "what does this rule mean?" as "how can I force my DM to allow this ridiculous interpretation?" (The answer -- every time -- is you can't, because the DM is the final arbiter, not randos on a message board or some dude with a YouTube channel)
If the DM is running a game where cartoon physics are encouraged then sure, travel 1500 feet or more in a single round, go nuts. Do 20d6 bludgeoning damage with a death drop onto someone but reduce your share of it to zero with the reaction, what the heck. But stop pretending it's RAW
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As I posted above, this rule is so badly written that it requires the DM to fix it themselves with one tweak or another. But it very clearly isn't a new form of movement. See above where I list many places (and there's way more) where new forms of movement are introduced, and the phasing used. This rule fails to implement that logic within the writing and is - concretely - the Rule As Written. It's almost certainly not the Rule As Intended, but it's RAW. The written rule does not define the amount of distance down the character is allowed to go in one turn, so the DM must implement their own rule (several good variants of which have been proposed).
But the ability DOES NOT INTRODUCE A GLIDE SPEED. If it did, the rule would call it a Glide Speed, like every other form of movement that introduces a "Speed". "Speed" is a specific word with an explicit mechanical definition. When a form of movement is a "Speed", the rules define that.
Should Glide be a "Speed"? Probably, yes. Will the DM need to fix the rule? Absolutely. Is the rule as written patently silly? Without question.
I didn't read the whole thread but basically you get jump glide, jump glide until you jump 30 feet. Meaning you get to glide150 feet.
Unless the rest of the party can do the same thing, the Yazirian is way away alone from everybody else. Sometimes there is a reason to be far from the rest of the party. Other times not so much.
I understand the kickback on the movement if the glider starts from a high elevation but how many times does that happen? In a dungeon it is very rare. Outdoors, forest, jungle, mountain, and urban it is easy to get high up for a jump. How practical is that really? In order to get super bonus gliding you still have to climb up quite a distance.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I just have a question for all the people who have issues with the gliding:
How are Simic Hybrids with Manta Glide run at your table? This debate is old news.
And before someone comes in with "tHaTs rAvNiCa sPeCiFiC!1", this is spelljammer specific, so the question stands.
I agree it's not built well. I agree it's overpowered in most scenarios. I just wanna know why it's so different from something that was published ages ago and is an improved version.
Glad you asked. They're not. I think it's stupid there too. But nobody's talking about Ravnica anymore. And it should be fixed by now. It's not.
The Manta Glide:
Notice the difference? Manta Glide still consumes your Speed. With a speed of 30 feet per round, you can Manta Glide.... 30 feet per round. The Hadozee Glide specifically states that the movement does not consume your speed. Ergo, the distance you can horizontally move is a factor of the height of the fall. Therein lies the problem.