there seems to be some dispute about this, and it's not super clear, so was just curious to see how folks here would rule on this: what are the ramifications of the Monk's Slow Fall and the Tasha's falling-onto-creatures rules taken together? Is it possible to pull off a "Drop Bear" attack?
Monk class feature:
"Beginning at 4th level, you can use your reaction when you fall to reduce any falling damage you take by an amount equal to five times your monk level."
Tasha's falling rules:
"If a creature falls into the space of a second creature and neither of them is Tiny, the second creature must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be impacted by the falling creature, and any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly between them. The impacted creature is also knocked prone, unless it is two or more sizes larger than the falling creature."
here's how as a player i'd like it to work (and how as a rule-of-cool-forward DM i'd allow it):
4th-level Monk X is in a tree 80 feet above Orc Y.
X jumps out to do a Drop Bear Attack on Y.
the 80 foot fall constitutes 8d6 of damage; let's say it's a slightly-above-average roll of 30 total damage.
Y rolls a DEX save and fails, so that damage is split evenly between X and Y - 15 points apiece.
X *then* uses their reaction to reduce that 15 points of damage to zero, and is unscathed.
But Y takes the full 15 points of damage, getting knocked prone in the process (or dying, if their HP are low enough!).
as far as i can tell, this is a totally defensible, if player-advantageous, reading of the rules that is effective in this narrow but not implausible situation. would be curious how others would read it- if this works and, if not, where in the process they'd rule differently.
bonus q: since Monk X has really only used movement (dropping) and a reaction (slow fall), do they still have the chance to take an action and bonus action, including an attack on the now-prone Orc Y? or is that a step too far?
The falling rules in Tasha's and PHB is based on normal rate of falling. The fall is more or less instantaneous and your reaction of slow fall is when you fall not when you're at a specific point - so it will be used before you reach the target.
Since you reduce the falling damage, you fall safe and sound and harmlessly on the target, who will wonder what the feck you're doing and probably try to give you a well-deserved slap.
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The falling rules in Tasha's and PHB is based on normal rate of falling. The fall is more or less instantaneous and your reaction of slow fall is when you fall not when you're at a specific point - so it will be used before you reach the target.
Since you reduce the falling damage, you fall safe and sound and harmlessly on the target, who will wonder what the feck you're doing and probably try to give you a well-deserved slap.
But Slow Fall only reduces falling damage the monk takes. It doesn't reduce the total falling damage - the monk just takes less, using the same reduction damage mechanic as in heavy armor master. E.g. "Slow Fall" could be the name of a Kung Fu technique which concentrates Ki in your legs so they can take more abuse and it would mechanically work, well, the way it's described. I don't think it necessarily follows that using Slow Fall also protects the other creature from damage.
The falling rules in Tasha's and PHB is based on normal rate of falling. The fall is more or less instantaneous and your reaction of slow fall is when you fall not when you're at a specific point - so it will be used before you reach the target.
Since you reduce the falling damage, you fall safe and sound and harmlessly on the target, who will wonder what the feck you're doing and probably try to give you a well-deserved slap.
But Slow Fall only reduces falling damage the monk takes. It doesn't reduce the total falling damage - the monk just takes less, using the same reduction damage mechanic as in heavy armor master. E.g. "Slow Fall" could be the name of a Kung Fu technique which concentrates Ki in your legs so they can take more abuse and it would mechanically work, well, the way it's described. I don't think it necessarily follows that using Slow Fall also protects the other creature from damage.
It is the Monks Falling damage that is being shared between both the one you land on and the monk. Reducing it would reduce the damage for the one you land on as well. It is not different instances of damage for both. It's just a way to take the damage of the falling creature and split it between it and another. The slow fall would remove all damage as well for the same reason. Since the falling creatures damage would be reduced there would not be enough impact to hurt the creature you fell on either.
It is also not just some supernatural strengthening of your legs. The monk has the requirement of being near a vertical surface. This means that no matter how you actually do it that vertical surface is involved in however you happen to slow your fall. You don't get to turn yourself into an impact weapon without consequences. Remove the consequences for you. Remove them for the other person as well. So Magically strengthening your legs while crushing somebody else does not work.
The falling rules in Tasha's and PHB is based on normal rate of falling. The fall is more or less instantaneous and your reaction of slow fall is when you fall not when you're at a specific point - so it will be used before you reach the target.
Since you reduce the falling damage, you fall safe and sound and harmlessly on the target, who will wonder what the feck you're doing and probably try to give you a well-deserved slap.
But Slow Fall only reduces falling damage the monk takes. It doesn't reduce the total falling damage - the monk just takes less, using the same reduction damage mechanic as in heavy armor master. E.g. "Slow Fall" could be the name of a Kung Fu technique which concentrates Ki in your legs so they can take more abuse and it would mechanically work, well, the way it's described. I don't think it necessarily follows that using Slow Fall also protects the other creature from damage.
It is the Monks Falling damage that is being shared between both the one you land on and the monk. Reducing it would reduce the damage for the one you land on as well. It is not different instances of damage for both. It's just a way to take the damage of the falling creature and split it between it and another. The slow fall would remove all damage as well for the same reason. Since the falling creatures damage would be reduced there would not be enough impact to hurt the creature you fell on either.
It is also not just some supernatural strengthening of your legs. The monk has the requirement of being near a vertical surface. This means that no matter how you actually do it that vertical surface is involved in however you happen to slow your fall. You don't get to turn yourself into an impact weapon without consequences. Remove the consequences for you. Remove them for the other person as well. So Magically strengthening your legs while crushing somebody else does not work.
I do not believe the Slow Fall feature of the monk class has any requirement of being near a vertical surface to slow the fall.
Beginning at 4th level, you can use your reaction when you fall to reduce any falling damage you take by an amount equal to five times your monk level.
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The fall damage has to be split before reductions are applied, otherwise the faller's resistances and immunities apply to the victim too, which makes no sense.
Slow Fall reduces the damage the monk takes. If the damage is being split by definition the monk isn't taking the other creature's share of the damage. If the fall was going to be 40 damage and it got split, the monk's only going to take 20 and they only need to reduce their fall damage by 20 to avoid losing HP and falling prone.
The order of operations should be:
Split the damage.
Non-resistance reductions (Slow Fall, immunity)
Resistance (always goes last, per the rules.)
This isn't as great as it seems at early levels since you still take the full damage if the victim makes their save. If you can only absorb 30 damage and try a 60 damage drop, you'll do 30 damage if you're lucky but take 30 if you're unlucky. You're not just doing 0 when you fail like a normal attack, you're making negative progress. If you play it safe you're limited to 15 damage so you can absorb the full 30 when you fail.
I think the answer to this question is in the name of the skill: SLOW Fall. This indicates that the monk is able to slow his speed of descent, and thus, lessen the force of his fall. This would also negate any damage done to anyone he lands on.
I think the answer to this question is in the name of the skill: SLOW Fall. This indicates that the monk is able to slow his speed of descent, and thus, lessen the force of his fall. This would also negate any damage done to anyone he lands on.
That could be RAI and what the designers were envisioning when they wrote the ability, so I would not hold it against any DM that wants to play it that way.
RAW that may not be the case, mechanically speaking. As InquisitiveCoder pointed out, the monk has to take damage before they can reduce it. You have to determine how much damage the monk takes before Slow Fall activates, and that requires you to apply any other environmental/magical influences to the damage first (such as another creature "cushioning" the fall).
You are not reducing the damage you "would take", you are reducing the damage you "take"
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The name "Slow Fall" is historical. In previous editions you'd use a wall to slow your descent (and were explicitly out of luck if you didn't have one within arm's reach.) This is no longer the case in 5e and without a new explanation for the reduced fall damage, I'd take the name with a grain of salt. After all, Mage Armor doesn't actually give you armor and Shield doesn't conjure a floating tower shield like it used to.
thanks all! interesting discussion and i think there's lots of different ways this interaction can play out according to the rules. i definitely don't think there's any requirement, by the rules, to treat it one way or the other, so it's at the DM's discretion, and will vary table to table. I'm inclined, as i noted in my original post, to read the order of operations the way InquisitiveCoder does, but i also think this is a very good point:
This isn't as great as it seems at early levels since you still take the full damage if the victim makes their save.
which is very true and imposes a high potential opportunity cost on this as a tactic.
and to answer my own bonus question about it: i'd count the Drop Bear Gambit as the player's attack action, not their movement, and not let them take an additional attack action afterward.
I would agree with Lyxen. Figure out what damage the monk takes after slow fall and then split it.
I do recall playing a monk in AD&D where you did have to be near a wall, but 5 E doesn’t have that. I assume it is more akin to someone doing parkour where they jump down from fairly big heights but they know how to land and not injure themselves. But on a greater level for the monk since this is fantasy after all.
The name "Slow Fall" is historical. In previous editions you'd use a wall to slow your descent (and were explicitly out of luck if you didn't have one within arm's reach.) This is no longer the case in 5e and without a new explanation for the reduced fall damage, I'd take the name with a grain of salt. After all, Mage Armor doesn't actually give you armor and Shield doesn't conjure a floating tower shield like it used to.
This is correct in the case of slow fall. And it was my mistake. I've been doing some things with older systems and forgot they took that requirement out of 5e. It was very fitting in older editions to work that way so my brain has stuck with it and I apologize.
However Mage Armor technically does still give you armor. It's just not physical. It's basically a weightless force construct. So it does technically still give you armor.
And shield originally actually started out as placing a momentary wall of force. The aspect of it making a ephemeral tower shield was added in much later. and now it's just evolved into kind of an amorphous magical effect described in lots of ways.
However Mage Armor technically does still give you armor. It's just not physical. It's basically a weightless force construct. So it does technically still give you armor.
In an informal sense, yes. But not for the purposes of any rules that care about whether you're wearing armor or not.
Ultimately the names of features can give you some idea of what they do but they're not necessarily accurate. Another good example is the College of Sword's Blade Flourish, which doesn't require a sword or even a melee weapon, and its Slashing Flourish option works with any damage type. It's really tempting to extrapolate from the name you can only really count on the description.
one of the most valuable things you learn in aikido classes is how to take a fall or get thrown and minimize the impact. "slow fall" is just a name, and flavor-wise at least for my current character i look at this reaction as more about breath control, taking a good landing/roll, and blunting the impact to your body than it is a literal mystical reduction in the velocity of the fall. the fall creates a certain quantity of damage; the monk can just use the reaction to cancel out the damage.
If we assume Aaracokra 20th level monk, they can fly up 80 ft, if they dash as action and use step of the wind that's 240 ft. If they had Boots of Speed and somebody used Haste on them they could get 1,120 feet up. So they can easily achieve the 20d6 max fall damage which is an average of 70. Slow fall would negate up to 120 pts of damage (max of 20d6 is 120, a monk of 20th level is literally immune to fall damage).
The monk would be free to do this every turn for 1 ki point for step of wind, if even needed. Anyone trying to abuse this would probably get the Athlete feat and so doesn't suffer the "half your movement" cost to get up from prone, just 5 ft of movement they could easily spare.
Slow Fall does not mention the means by which the damage reduction happens - and so even by RAW it's a pure DM call.
The RAI is very clear though: the enemy takes the same damage as the falling character, which is half the fall damage.
So isn't it best to say, regardless of rule interpretation: calculate fall damage, if slow fall is used, reduce that damage, split the remainder, if any, between the monk and the enemy - enemy gets to save to avoid it. Restricting dex saves is easy, and a co-ordinated party could easily help the monk with this - so if you ruled the reduction is only for the monk you're basically letting the monk increase average output from 22 average damage across 4 attacks, to average 35 damage from one dex save the enemy can be made to have disadvantage on, -1d4 to or even made to autofail.
Implementing the rule that slow fall reduces the damage for both would prevent any cheesy abuse of this. This was intended as a "hazard rule" not a wrestling move buff for monks.
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If we assume Aaracokra 20th level monk, they can fly up 80 ft, if they dash as action and use step of the wind that's 240 ft. If they had Boots of Speed and somebody used Haste on them they could get 1,120 feet up. So they can easily achieve the 20d6 max fall damage which is an average of 70. Slow fall would negate up to 120 pts of damage (max of 20d6 is 120, a monk of 20th level is literally immune to fall damage).
Slow fall negates 5 times your monk level, which maxes out at 100 points instead of 120.
The monk would be free to do this every turn for 1 ki point for step of wind, if even needed. Anyone trying to abuse this would probably get the Athlete feat and so doesn't suffer the "half your movement" cost to get up from prone, just 5 ft of movement they could easily spare.
The character you are suggesting could abuse this is level 20 and relies on a magic item and a spell cast on them to pull it off (which comes down to DMs discretion and party layout). Dealing effectively 10d6 damage to a creature every turn at level 20 isnt overly OP, even for monks. The cost is a bit higher at 3 ki points, but Quivering Palm deals a minimum of 10d10 necrotic damage, maximum of the creature's HP maximum.
Slow Fall does not mention the means by which the damage reduction happens - and so even by RAW it's a pure DM call.
Slow fall reduces the "damage you take." I can agree that RAI and thematically it feels like the damage the creature should take would be reduced, but RAW for how the falling rules and Slow Fall work it seems like it would only reduce the damage the monk would take and not the target.
Edit: Looking more closely at the Tasha's falling onto another creature rule, I could see the argument that "any damage resulting from the fall" could also account for effects like Slow Fall. If a monk reduces their damage portion to 0, then effectively there is "no damage resulting from the fall" to split between them.
However Mage Armor technically does still give you armor. It's just not physical. It's basically a weightless force construct. So it does technically still give you armor.
In an informal sense, yes. But not for the purposes of any rules that care about whether you're wearing armor or not.
Ultimately the names of features can give you some idea of what they do but they're not necessarily accurate. Another good example is the College of Sword's Blade Flourish, which doesn't require a sword or even a melee weapon, and its Slashing Flourish option works with any damage type. It's really tempting to extrapolate from the name you can only really count on the description.
If we want to go with the formal Sense. The reality is that in older versions where it was more obviously a sense of armor. It actually called out that it it didn't work with things that worked with Armor or the game revolved around abilities talking about specific types of wearable armor that Mage Armor refused to actually fall into because it was usually it's own special type. But in the simpler format of 5e. It still doesn't work with them but instead of because they added in a part saying it doesn't. It's actually instead the fact that they omitted making a distinction that it could. Though in a few instance it is because Mage armor lacks the light, medium, or heavy description once more.
As for Slashing Flourish. I've always considered that one odd. In Older Systems the name would cause issues because it's limiting types of damage though the wording would often be such to try and make only slashing damage plausable. But people would find reasons why they should be able to do other forms of damage if they did it right. We're just trading out arguments in sense with it over the name being misleading instead of allowing other kinds of damage. that ultimately results in "Well they had to call it something" which is probably how it got the name in the first place. Because it was good enough to get the job done and they couldn't think of a better one and now it's too late to change it.
Remember that the slow fall feature of monks does not reduce damage from falling.
It reduces the damage the monk would take from falling.
In the above example there is no way to know this until you determine if the target of the dropbear attack makes it save or not.
Whatever the total fall damage is, you first have to determine if it will be split among two targets or all of it goes to the monk.
Once you know if the monk is taking full damage or half, then and only then do you only reduce the falling damage dealt to the monk.
Except that's not quite how it works. It's not whether the monk is taking full damage or Half. The Monk is taking the Damage regardless. Sharing the Damage is not an application of actually taking half damage but a matter of where some or all of the damage is applied in regards to the two. Applying Damage is one of the last actual steps in the order of Operations. While Calculating the Damage is one of the first. The Problem is that splitting it in this instance is not a matter of damage calculation. It's a matter of applying the Damage. whether it's all applied to the monk or if some is shifted onto the person the monk lands on. However, Reducing the Damage is actually part of calculating the Damage to be applied in the first place so it has to be done before dividing it up.
The amount of damage rolled for fall doesn't independently become two separate amounts of damage. It's literally one instance of damage being split between both when being applied.
I think the answer to this question is in the name of the skill: SLOW Fall. This indicates that the monk is able to slow his speed of descent, and thus, lessen the force of his fall. This would also negate any damage done to anyone he lands on.
You are reading it as "Slow [adjective] fall [noun]" when it should most likely be read as "Slow [verb] fall [noun]". As in, the monk does a roll or some other suitable martial art monk shit when landing. It does not mean that monks suddenly can defy gravity.
Let's look at both, side by side, and figure out when they apply. First up are the rules for falling.
Falling
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.
Next, we have the monk's Slow Fall.
Slow Fall
Beginning at 4th level, you can use your reaction when you fall to reduce any falling damage you take by an amount equal to five times your monk level.
Well, that's interesting. The trigger for Slow Fall is the moment you begin falling, not the moment damage is assessed. The monk doesn't wait until the fall is completed; at the moment of impact.
Lastly, we have Falling onto a Creature, which can be found on page 170 of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Falling onto a Creature
If a creature falls into the space of a second creature and neither of them is Tiny, the second creature must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be impacted by the falling creature, and any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly between them. The impacted creature is also knocked prone, unless it is two or more sizes larger than the falling creature.
Okay, I think I have this. The potential damage dealt is first reduced by Slow Fall, which triggers when the fall first takes place. The feature, essentially, creates a threshold the dice must overcome. The dice aren't actually rolled until the end of the fall. And whatever damage makes it over the threshold is split evenly between the impactor and the impacted; if the impacted fails their saving throw.
But here's where it gets kind of funny. There's no minimum damage which must be assessed, so it's possible for the sum of the roll of the dice to be 1 over the monk's threshold and split to be functionally nonexistent. Both parties can take no damage from the fall, but the impacted character would still be knocked prone. And the monk, having suffered no damage, would not be prone. But the monk cannot also end their movement in another creature's space, so someone is getting displaced.
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there seems to be some dispute about this, and it's not super clear, so was just curious to see how folks here would rule on this: what are the ramifications of the Monk's Slow Fall and the Tasha's falling-onto-creatures rules taken together? Is it possible to pull off a "Drop Bear" attack?
Monk class feature:
Tasha's falling rules:
here's how as a player i'd like it to work (and how as a rule-of-cool-forward DM i'd allow it):
as far as i can tell, this is a totally defensible, if player-advantageous, reading of the rules that is effective in this narrow but not implausible situation. would be curious how others would read it- if this works and, if not, where in the process they'd rule differently.
bonus q: since Monk X has really only used movement (dropping) and a reaction (slow fall), do they still have the chance to take an action and bonus action, including an attack on the now-prone Orc Y? or is that a step too far?
The falling rules in Tasha's and PHB is based on normal rate of falling. The fall is more or less instantaneous and your reaction of slow fall is when you fall not when you're at a specific point - so it will be used before you reach the target.
Since you reduce the falling damage, you fall safe and sound and harmlessly on the target, who will wonder what the feck you're doing and probably try to give you a well-deserved slap.
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But Slow Fall only reduces falling damage the monk takes. It doesn't reduce the total falling damage - the monk just takes less, using the same reduction damage mechanic as in heavy armor master. E.g. "Slow Fall" could be the name of a Kung Fu technique which concentrates Ki in your legs so they can take more abuse and it would mechanically work, well, the way it's described. I don't think it necessarily follows that using Slow Fall also protects the other creature from damage.
It is the Monks Falling damage that is being shared between both the one you land on and the monk. Reducing it would reduce the damage for the one you land on as well. It is not different instances of damage for both. It's just a way to take the damage of the falling creature and split it between it and another. The slow fall would remove all damage as well for the same reason. Since the falling creatures damage would be reduced there would not be enough impact to hurt the creature you fell on either.
It is also not just some supernatural strengthening of your legs. The monk has the requirement of being near a vertical surface. This means that no matter how you actually do it that vertical surface is involved in however you happen to slow your fall. You don't get to turn yourself into an impact weapon without consequences. Remove the consequences for you. Remove them for the other person as well. So Magically strengthening your legs while crushing somebody else does not work.
I do not believe the Slow Fall feature of the monk class has any requirement of being near a vertical surface to slow the fall.
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The fall damage has to be split before reductions are applied, otherwise the faller's resistances and immunities apply to the victim too, which makes no sense.
Slow Fall reduces the damage the monk takes. If the damage is being split by definition the monk isn't taking the other creature's share of the damage. If the fall was going to be 40 damage and it got split, the monk's only going to take 20 and they only need to reduce their fall damage by 20 to avoid losing HP and falling prone.
The order of operations should be:
This isn't as great as it seems at early levels since you still take the full damage if the victim makes their save. If you can only absorb 30 damage and try a 60 damage drop, you'll do 30 damage if you're lucky but take 30 if you're unlucky. You're not just doing 0 when you fail like a normal attack, you're making negative progress. If you play it safe you're limited to 15 damage so you can absorb the full 30 when you fail.
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I think the answer to this question is in the name of the skill: SLOW Fall. This indicates that the monk is able to slow his speed of descent, and thus, lessen the force of his fall. This would also negate any damage done to anyone he lands on.
That could be RAI and what the designers were envisioning when they wrote the ability, so I would not hold it against any DM that wants to play it that way.
RAW that may not be the case, mechanically speaking. As InquisitiveCoder pointed out, the monk has to take damage before they can reduce it. You have to determine how much damage the monk takes before Slow Fall activates, and that requires you to apply any other environmental/magical influences to the damage first (such as another creature "cushioning" the fall).
You are not reducing the damage you "would take", you are reducing the damage you "take"
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The name "Slow Fall" is historical. In previous editions you'd use a wall to slow your descent (and were explicitly out of luck if you didn't have one within arm's reach.) This is no longer the case in 5e and without a new explanation for the reduced fall damage, I'd take the name with a grain of salt. After all, Mage Armor doesn't actually give you armor and Shield doesn't conjure a floating tower shield like it used to.
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thanks all! interesting discussion and i think there's lots of different ways this interaction can play out according to the rules. i definitely don't think there's any requirement, by the rules, to treat it one way or the other, so it's at the DM's discretion, and will vary table to table. I'm inclined, as i noted in my original post, to read the order of operations the way InquisitiveCoder does, but i also think this is a very good point:
which is very true and imposes a high potential opportunity cost on this as a tactic.
and to answer my own bonus question about it: i'd count the Drop Bear Gambit as the player's attack action, not their movement, and not let them take an additional attack action afterward.
I would agree with Lyxen. Figure out what damage the monk takes after slow fall and then split it.
I do recall playing a monk in AD&D where you did have to be near a wall, but 5 E doesn’t have that. I assume it is more akin to someone doing parkour where they jump down from fairly big heights but they know how to land and not injure themselves. But on a greater level for the monk since this is fantasy after all.
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This is correct in the case of slow fall. And it was my mistake. I've been doing some things with older systems and forgot they took that requirement out of 5e. It was very fitting in older editions to work that way so my brain has stuck with it and I apologize.
However Mage Armor technically does still give you armor. It's just not physical. It's basically a weightless force construct. So it does technically still give you armor.
And shield originally actually started out as placing a momentary wall of force. The aspect of it making a ephemeral tower shield was added in much later. and now it's just evolved into kind of an amorphous magical effect described in lots of ways.
In an informal sense, yes. But not for the purposes of any rules that care about whether you're wearing armor or not.
Ultimately the names of features can give you some idea of what they do but they're not necessarily accurate. Another good example is the College of Sword's Blade Flourish, which doesn't require a sword or even a melee weapon, and its Slashing Flourish option works with any damage type. It's really tempting to extrapolate from the name you can only really count on the description.
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one of the most valuable things you learn in aikido classes is how to take a fall or get thrown and minimize the impact. "slow fall" is just a name, and flavor-wise at least for my current character i look at this reaction as more about breath control, taking a good landing/roll, and blunting the impact to your body than it is a literal mystical reduction in the velocity of the fall. the fall creates a certain quantity of damage; the monk can just use the reaction to cancel out the damage.
If we assume Aaracokra 20th level monk, they can fly up 80 ft, if they dash as action and use step of the wind that's 240 ft. If they had Boots of Speed and somebody used Haste on them they could get 1,120 feet up. So they can easily achieve the 20d6 max fall damage which is an average of 70. Slow fall would negate up to 120 pts of damage (max of 20d6 is 120, a monk of 20th level is literally immune to fall damage).
The monk would be free to do this every turn for 1 ki point for step of wind, if even needed. Anyone trying to abuse this would probably get the Athlete feat and so doesn't suffer the "half your movement" cost to get up from prone, just 5 ft of movement they could easily spare.
Slow Fall does not mention the means by which the damage reduction happens - and so even by RAW it's a pure DM call.
The RAI is very clear though: the enemy takes the same damage as the falling character, which is half the fall damage.
So isn't it best to say, regardless of rule interpretation: calculate fall damage, if slow fall is used, reduce that damage, split the remainder, if any, between the monk and the enemy - enemy gets to save to avoid it. Restricting dex saves is easy, and a co-ordinated party could easily help the monk with this - so if you ruled the reduction is only for the monk you're basically letting the monk increase average output from 22 average damage across 4 attacks, to average 35 damage from one dex save the enemy can be made to have disadvantage on, -1d4 to or even made to autofail.
Implementing the rule that slow fall reduces the damage for both would prevent any cheesy abuse of this. This was intended as a "hazard rule" not a wrestling move buff for monks.
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Slow fall negates 5 times your monk level, which maxes out at 100 points instead of 120.
The character you are suggesting could abuse this is level 20 and relies on a magic item and a spell cast on them to pull it off (which comes down to DMs discretion and party layout). Dealing effectively 10d6 damage to a creature every turn at level 20 isnt overly OP, even for monks. The cost is a bit higher at 3 ki points, but Quivering Palm deals a minimum of 10d10 necrotic damage, maximum of the creature's HP maximum.
Slow fall reduces the "damage you take." I can agree that RAI and thematically it feels like the damage the creature should take would be reduced, but RAW for how the falling rules and Slow Fall work it seems like it would only reduce the damage the monk would take and not the target.
Edit: Looking more closely at the Tasha's falling onto another creature rule, I could see the argument that "any damage resulting from the fall" could also account for effects like Slow Fall. If a monk reduces their damage portion to 0, then effectively there is "no damage resulting from the fall" to split between them.
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If we want to go with the formal Sense. The reality is that in older versions where it was more obviously a sense of armor. It actually called out that it it didn't work with things that worked with Armor or the game revolved around abilities talking about specific types of wearable armor that Mage Armor refused to actually fall into because it was usually it's own special type. But in the simpler format of 5e. It still doesn't work with them but instead of because they added in a part saying it doesn't. It's actually instead the fact that they omitted making a distinction that it could. Though in a few instance it is because Mage armor lacks the light, medium, or heavy description once more.
As for Slashing Flourish. I've always considered that one odd. In Older Systems the name would cause issues because it's limiting types of damage though the wording would often be such to try and make only slashing damage plausable. But people would find reasons why they should be able to do other forms of damage if they did it right. We're just trading out arguments in sense with it over the name being misleading instead of allowing other kinds of damage. that ultimately results in "Well they had to call it something" which is probably how it got the name in the first place. Because it was good enough to get the job done and they couldn't think of a better one and now it's too late to change it.
Except that's not quite how it works. It's not whether the monk is taking full damage or Half. The Monk is taking the Damage regardless. Sharing the Damage is not an application of actually taking half damage but a matter of where some or all of the damage is applied in regards to the two. Applying Damage is one of the last actual steps in the order of Operations. While Calculating the Damage is one of the first. The Problem is that splitting it in this instance is not a matter of damage calculation. It's a matter of applying the Damage. whether it's all applied to the monk or if some is shifted onto the person the monk lands on. However, Reducing the Damage is actually part of calculating the Damage to be applied in the first place so it has to be done before dividing it up.
The amount of damage rolled for fall doesn't independently become two separate amounts of damage. It's literally one instance of damage being split between both when being applied.
You are reading it as "Slow [adjective] fall [noun]" when it should most likely be read as "Slow [verb] fall [noun]". As in, the monk does a roll or some other suitable martial art monk shit when landing. It does not mean that monks suddenly can defy gravity.
Let's look at both, side by side, and figure out when they apply. First up are the rules for falling.
Next, we have the monk's Slow Fall.
Well, that's interesting. The trigger for Slow Fall is the moment you begin falling, not the moment damage is assessed. The monk doesn't wait until the fall is completed; at the moment of impact.
Lastly, we have Falling onto a Creature, which can be found on page 170 of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Okay, I think I have this. The potential damage dealt is first reduced by Slow Fall, which triggers when the fall first takes place. The feature, essentially, creates a threshold the dice must overcome. The dice aren't actually rolled until the end of the fall. And whatever damage makes it over the threshold is split evenly between the impactor and the impacted; if the impacted fails their saving throw.
But here's where it gets kind of funny. There's no minimum damage which must be assessed, so it's possible for the sum of the roll of the dice to be 1 over the monk's threshold and split to be functionally nonexistent. Both parties can take no damage from the fall, but the impacted character would still be knocked prone. And the monk, having suffered no damage, would not be prone. But the monk cannot also end their movement in another creature's space, so someone is getting displaced.