Mid-air actions for feather falling and levitation

[Lythe Featherblade]

I'm looking to see how feather falling affects actions while you are falling

-if you use ranged weapons, do you have any modifiers due to your movement? considering you aren't actively moving, and it's a controlled descent (not requiring you to maintain balance or an aerodynamic form)?

-Would you use the levitate rule:
"A levitating creature that attacks with a melee or ranged weapon finds itself increasingly unstable; the first attack has a -1 penalty on attack rolls, the second -2, and so on, to a maximum penalty of -5. A full round spent stabilizing allows the creature to begin again at -1."

-Does pathfinder have an elevation bonus, and if so, how does it work, and would it apply here?

-Would the horizon walker ability have any effect for levitation or feather falling?
"Astral Plane: The horizon walker’s fly speed increases by +30 feet on planes with no gravity or subjective gravity."

--assuming no base fly ability, does levitation count for meeting the requirement of it being an area of no subjective gravity
---if the fly speed does apply now, would it give you the stability in mid-air to avoid the cumulative attack penalties?

--when feather falling, would this allow you to affect horizontal movement (for partial or for full value), as this doesn't fight gravity either
---if so, how would this affect a maneuver for jumping down onto or past someone and attacking them

-If under the fly spell, would the planewalker ability speed increase stack with what the fly spell gives you normally?

[reefwood]

I don't know the answers to all these questions, but maybe if I get the ball rolling, others will chime in.

Lythe Featherblade wrote:

I'm looking to see how feather falling affects actions while you are falling

-if you use ranged weapons, do you have any modifiers due to your movement? considering you aren't actively moving, and it's a controlled descent (not requiring you to maintain balance or an aerodynamic form)?

-Would you use the levitate rule:
"A levitating creature that attacks with a melee or ranged weapon finds itself increasingly unstable; the first attack has a -1 penalty on attack rolls, the second -2, and so on, to a maximum penalty of -5. A full round spent stabilizing allows the creature to begin again at -1."

I don't think these is any definitive answer in the rules for modifiers to ranged attacks while falling under the effect of a feather fall spell. Well actually, the spell description does say: "This spell has no special effect on ranged weapons unless they are falling quite a distance." Hmm...what is quite a distance? 50 ft? 100 ft? 500 ft? 1000 ft? And what happens at this point? You could apply the basic -2 penalty for poor conditions, and I think this would be more appropriate than the levitate penalties because falling slowly and floating are two different things.

The only other caveat I would add is from Mounted Combat, and it is that any attacks made while falling must be made halfway through the movement, so if you fall 60 ft, make the attack roll(s) at 30 ft.

Quote:

-Does pathfinder have an elevation bonus, and if so, how does it work, and would it apply here?

You gain a +1 bonus to melee attacks when attacking from higher ground. I don't see why this wouldn't apply to attacking from an elevated position while flying, floating, or falling since you will be at a higher point than the target.

Although, as part of the caveat above, the melee attack would have to come at the halfway point of falling, so if you are falling 60 ft and the target is 55 ft below you, you can't make a melee attack.

Also, there is no higher ground (or elevation) bonus to ranged attacks.

Quote:

-Would the horizon walker ability have any effect for levitation or feather falling?

"Astral Plane: The horizon walker’s fly speed increases by +30 feet on planes with no gravity or subjective gravity."

No for two reasons. First, neither spell provides a fly speed, so there is no fly speed to increase. Second "no" because you are not on a plane with no gravity or subjective gravity, and even if you were, it is still "no" because of the first reason.

Quote:

--assuming no base fly ability, does levitation count for meeting the requirement of it being an area of no subjective gravity

---if the fly speed does apply now, would it give you the stability in mid-air to avoid the cumulative attack penalties?

No. The levitate spell does not say anywhere in its description that it removes gravity. It seems to use magic to lift things, but the magic does not remove gravity, and these are two very different things.

Quote:

--when feather falling, would this allow you to affect horizontal movement (for partial or for full value), as this doesn't fight gravity either

---if so, how would this affect a maneuver for jumping down onto or past someone and attacking them

Do you mean this for someone who is falling diagonally (i.e. down and forward)? This is an interesting question.

I am not sure how I would handle this if someone was thrown forcefully off a mountain side, but if you are trying to jump past an opponent, this would require an Acrobatics check to make the jump. The result of the Acrobatics check will determine how far you can jump horizontally and how high you can jump vertically. But if you start out 100 ft above the opponent, getting vertical height doesn't matter. It is just the horizontal distance that you care about.

If you get a running start and get a result of 30, you can jump up to 30 ft horizontally from your starting point. Once you reach this point, for the sake of simplicity, I'd say you start falling down straight.

But if you want forward movement to continue, I'd say you fall forward diagonally at a 45 degree angle. So every 2 squares diagonally forward-down, it would be 10 ft forward and 10 ft down but 15 ft diagonally forward-down (if total diagonal distance matters for some reason).

Either way, I'd say that the feather fall spell only affects downward movement. Using the first method, I would say that you jump the 30 ft at a normal rate, and then slow to the feather fall rate once you started falling straight down. If you use the second method, I would say that you jump the 30 ft at a normal rate, and then slow to the feather fall rate once you started falling diagonally forward-down, so really, just like the first method because the reason you are still moving forward is because you are falling down, so in this instance, you would only move forward as fast as you fall down. Make sense?

Quote:

-If under the fly spell, would the planewalker ability speed increase stack with what the fly spell gives you normally?

Only if you are in a place with no gravity or subjective gravity. This ability makes you better at flying in this kind of environment, whether you fly with wings or magic.

[Lythe Featherblade]

The main reason I'm suggesting horizontal movement via horizon walker fly bonus is from a physics viewpoint.

The fly speed bonus in areas of no subjective gravity to me gets interpreted as I have the ability to move when there is nothing to push off from, provided that there is no major force (gravity) to counteract my movement. When floating, falling or feather falling, I see that as my vertical movement being established, but nothing (except air friction) hindering horizontal movement. The use of subject gravity (instead of just gravity) is why I am thinking it is the effect, not the presence of gravity that cancels out this ability, and that exists only in an up/down direction. As a result, any spell that counteracts the effect of gravity (fly, feather fall, levitation) would allow the fly speed to apply (partially or fully), provided it is not used for movement in a direction that would conflict with gravity or whatever force is holding gravity at bay.

"This spell has no special effect on ranged weapons unless they are falling quite a distance."
I think this part of the rule is to apply in situations where you'd want to use feather fall to slow down a missle weapon approaching you, otherwise you'd feather-fall boulders giants throw at you, and they'd never be able to hit you.

[reefwood]

Lythe Featherblade wrote:

The main reason I'm suggesting horizontal movement via horizon walker fly bonus is from a physics viewpoint.

The fly speed bonus in areas of no subjective gravity to me gets interpreted as I have the ability to move when there is nothing to push off from, provided that there is no major force (gravity) to counteract my movement. When floating, falling or feather falling, I see that as my vertical movement being established, but nothing (except air friction) hindering horizontal movement. The use of subject gravity (instead of just gravity) is why I am thinking it is the effect, not the presence of gravity that cancels out this ability, and that exists only in an up/down direction. As a result, any spell that counteracts the effect of gravity (fly, feather fall, levitation) would allow the fly speed to apply (partially or fully), provided it is not used for movement in a direction that would conflict with gravity or whatever force is holding gravity at bay.

"This spell has no special effect on ranged weapons unless they are falling quite a distance."
I think this part of the rule is to apply in situations where you'd want to use feather fall to slow down a missle weapon approaching you, otherwise you'd feather-fall boulders giants throw at you, and they'd never be able to hit you.

First, I'm no physics expert, but this is a game where the rules are full of make believe and even reality-based rules are often tweaked to enhance players and/or fit into the system, so real science does not always apply. Especially not to the fake science of magic.

Second, there is a lot in D&D/Pathfinder that is left unsaid because listing every rule in every related spot would make for a much more enormous and too big book, so sometimes you do have to figure out how something works based on information laid out in other parts of the book, but special interactions between spells and/or special abilities are usually listed.

Third, and getting back to this particular example, I believe that a plane with subjective gravity in this game means a plane where the gravity is different than normal. Since this ability increases your fly speed in a plane with subjective gravity, I would *think* that this means planes with less than normal gravity. But I suppose "subjective" could mean more or less, so maybe it even applies to planes were gravity if more than normal? Although, it would seem odd for it to apply to heavier planes, but I don't know if heavier planes even exist in Pathfinder.

And again, one of the requirements is that you are on a *plane* with no gravity or subjective gravity. None of these spells take you to another plane or turn your current plane into another plane or alter gravity. Who knows how the fake science behind these magic spells works, but these spells don't do any of those things.