Situation: A character who wears a ring of feather falling casts the fly spell. Can he descend at a rate greater than he could when falling under the effects of the ring only, or is he limited to the rate of descent of the ring ?
To speed play, we simply ignored the "double speed when descending" portion of the fly spell description for the duration, but now that the session is over, I'd like to hear how other groups might have adjudicated.
To be honest this had never occured to me. I've had people that use both the Fly spell (or other related effect) and were wearing a ring of feather falling, but never considered that the ring would interfere with the Fly spell.
I would say that the ring wouldn't prevent you for using any form of flying to the fullest. Either the magic that's bound in the ring innately knows that you're not falling per say, or that people can simply push through the Feather Fall if they want. Given that Fly is of a high spell level than Feather Fall I think it would make sense that Fly be considered first.
In cases like this jsut do whatever is more beneficial to the character.
This ring is crafted with a feather pattern all around its edge. It acts exactly like a feather fall spell, activated immediately if the wearer falls more than 5 feet.
I wouldn't call descending via Fly "falling more than 5 feet".
Flying is not falling!
Exactly.
Last lines of feather fall's spell description: "Feather fall works only upon free-falling objects. It does not affect a sword blow or a charging or flying creature."
I think that is about as clear as it comes.