D&D 5E Can you use misty step to arrest a fall?

[Paul Farquhar]

View attachment 145531

I've tried to teach it often enough to 1st year A level physics students, I'm used to faceplanting.

 

[Maxperson]

No it's not, it's moving in the opposite direction.

Why would the planet change direction of rotation? It doesn't matter which way the teleporter goes, the world still rotates in the same direction. The sun doesn't rise in both the east and west, depending on where you are.

 

[embee]

This would happen anyway. If you're at the equator of a spinning planet, you're moving roughly 1,000 miles per hour in the direction of the spin. Let's say it's dawn where you are; that movement is pointed straight toward the sun. What happens if you teleport to the other side of the planet, to a place where it's dusk? If momentum is conserved, you are still moving 1,000 miles per hour straight toward the sun, but everything at your destination is going 1,000 mph straight away from the sun; you are suddenly traveling 2,000 mph relative to your surroundings. Splat.

Even if you only teleport a couple hundred miles, you will experience a sharp, and probably very painful, change in relative motion. The only way for this to be averted is for teleportation to "align" your momentum to the destination. Whether it does so by trying to mimic your original momentum somehow (if you were falling, you're still falling), or simply overwriting it with the momentum of your new surroundings (if you were falling, you are now at rest), is an open question. Either one is equally valid.

As for portals, they clearly do not work the same way as teleportation spells. Transiting a portal is a continuous process, not an instantaneous one--there's a point when you are half on one side and half on the other--and it requires you to physically move. A portal is best understood as a wormhole, splicing together two separate points in space, and conserving your momentum relative to the portal itself.

This is also why most time travel tropes fail. Transporting to the exact same coordinates at a different point in time leaves you in empty space.

 

[S'mon]

This is also why most time travel tropes fail. Transporting to the exact same coordinates at a different point in time leaves you in empty space.

HG Wells time machine works fine, though!

 

[Mannahnin]

Why would the planet change direction of rotation? It doesn't matter which way the teleporter goes, the world still rotates in the same direction. The sun doesn't rise in both the east and west, depending on where you are.

East in Asuncion is the opposite direction of East in Taipei. East represents one direction AROUND a spherical object. But two arrows both pointing AROUND a sphere in a continuous line on opposite sides of the sphere are also pointing opposite directions in space.

If you're suggesting that rotational momentum is conserved when I teleport from Madrid to Wellington, I appear moving ~1,000 miles an hour in the wrong direction; ~2,000mph relative to the arrival point. (Edit: Correction; those are equatorial speeds. When I added specific cities for illustrative clarity, I sacrificed accuracy re: speeds. They're still high speeds, though).

That's leaving aside ~67,000mph of an Earth-analogue's presumptive orbital speed around the Sun, of course.

Of course, for practical purposes we ignore all this stuff with fantasy teleportation.

 

[Lyxen]

Pulling back for a blow is the beginning of resolving the attack

No, it's not. Again, you are way too technical about this, but RAW does not support you. I have proven to you that both spells and abilities can interrupt an attack resolution sequence anyway, so why are you still fighting this ?

, and you don't generally point a weapon at someone before they swing. By the time that happens, you've already been chosen as the target, bonuses have been added and the attack is happening. That finishes with the attack roll.

Never argued that.

Nope. Once more, you just wish it did and are acting like your wants and desires translate into RAW.

The problem is that, just as with the discussion about counterspell that you lost, and just for the same reasons, you think that RAW is supporting you, but it does not. In particular, both for counterspell and this case, the RAW does not dictate what a character can perceive and what he cannot, it's 100% in a DM's hand, about what he describes to the character.

What RAW says, however, is that if you can trigger a readied action on any perceivable event. So, totally independently of the attack resolution sequence, if a character can perceive that he is being targeted, then he can use this as a trigger. That is purely RAW, and I hope that you are not going to discuss this any further.

On this case, however, you are even more wrong than on the counterspell thread, because in this case I have shown you, RAW, that an attack sequence can be interrupted and that even a hit can be stopped by a reaction. So even if you were such a technical DM that you would not allow someone not perceiving that he is being targeted for an attack (and this being an explicit step of an attack resolution), one could trigger a reaction on being hit (as shield and deflect missile), and misty stepping away would do exactly like shield and deflect missile and protect you from damage as you would simply not be there to receive it.

That being said, at this stage, I doubt that you are discussing in good faith. On some threads (counterspell) you argue for total omniscience of characters on the battlefield to be able to hear a caster that he cannot even see on the other side of a battlefield, on this one, a character cannot even discern when someone next to him is targeting him for an attack...

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My thought is that, momentum cannot be conserved, teleportation must match your velocity to the target location. Consider teleporting to the other side of a (spherical) world. If momentum where conserved you would now be moving relative to the ground at double the rotational velocity of the planet! Clearly, this does not happen, ergo the spell must match your velocity to that of the target location.

Which means that if you teleport onto the ground part of the magic of the spell sets your velocity of zero relative to that ground. i.e. no falling damage.

I dunno why you are quoting me, I pretty much agree with you.

To paraphrase the post you quoted; The magic handles the momentum issue so that you arrive at the destination at rest relative to the local ground (Adding or bleeding off energy (momentum) as necessary).
The spell caster works out the math that allows for a safe transfer to the destination. This pretty much rules out any teleportation spell as a single action spell. They would have to be rituals. and you would need tools to determine your current location on the globe and your destination location to pretty fine precision.
Or a hybrid where the destination teleport circle has the magical tools to allow the necessary corrections.

 

[Dausuul]

This is also why most time travel tropes fail. Transporting to the exact same coordinates at a different point in time leaves you in empty space.

"Exact same coordinates at a different point in time" is contextual anyway. Time and space are a continuum. To me, two events might happen at the same place and different times--but to you, if you're moving in a different direction or speed, they'd happen at different places*, and per Einstein, your frame of reference and mine are equally valid.

Bonus points for a time travel writer who takes this into account and requires time travelers to accelerate to a particular speed--say, 88 miles per hour--in order to arrive at the desired location.

*Note, however, that there is no frame of reference where those events happen in different places but at the same time, unless you can go faster than light.

 

[Maxperson]

No, it's not. Again, you are way too technical about this, but RAW does not support you. I have proven to you that both spells and abilities can interrupt an attack resolution sequence anyway, so why are you still fighting this ?

Probably due to lack of proof on your part. You have repeatedly in threads issued a declaration or veeeeery subjective and creative interpretation and then declared to be fact. It's not.

What RAW says, however, is that if you can trigger a readied action on any perceivable event. So, totally independently of the attack resolution sequence, if a character can perceive that he is being targeted, then he can use this as a trigger. That is purely RAW, and I hope that you are not going to discuss this any further.

What is there to perceive? That he glanced your way. That he's looking at you? Those aren't proof of impending attack. By the time he draws back the bow aimed your way or starts his swing, he's in phase three and only the attack roll is left to conclude the beginning of the attack.

because in this case I have shown you, RAW, that an attack sequence can be interrupted and that even a hit can be stopped by a reaction.

So two things. First, Shield very specifically UNWINDS the attack. It does not interrupt it. The attack roll and hit have already happened, but the casting of the spell backs that up to prior to the hit and perhaps turns it into a miss. Second, Ready specifically does not do that, so even if you want to think that Shield interrupts the attack between the beginning the attack during the resolve the attack phase and the hit or miss, Ready says that you have to wait for the attack to be over. So you're wrong on both counts.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I dunno why you are quoting me, I pretty much agree with you.

Do you have to disagree with someone in order to quote them?