A Cleric felt down in an undergroud crypt, passing through a small vertical tunnel, 70ft below.
He wants Dimension Door up to the floor from when he came.
He knows that he came from above, but he doesn't know how many feet he felt.
Can he Dimension Door on the floor above, safe and sound, simply saying that he wants wo go up to the same spot from when he came, or does he need to state direction and distance as a vector?
The master is asking to do a check (ability or spellcraft, or what you consider the most reasonable) inb order to allow him to reach the desired spot.
You always arrive at exactly the spot desired - whether by simply visualizing the area or by stating direction.
As long as he can visualize where he fell from, he can just pop back up there with no check.
You instantly transfer yourself from your current location to any other spot within range. You always arrive at exactly the spot desired—whether by simply visualizing the area or by stating direction.
He would state he wants to go back to where he was standing up there and it would work, as long as the distance to where he teleports is less than the maximum range
If you saw the area a few moments ago, it shouldn't take a check to "visualize the area".
*edit ninja'd
While you certainly wouldn't know the exact distance you fell, I think it's reasonable that a character would be able to tell a 70 foot drop is well within the range of dimension door, a pretty long distance spell.
Generally the earliest caster level to access dimension door is 7th. Since it is a long range spell the minimum distance would be 680ft. [400 + (7 x 40)]. I'd think most people could intuitively tell that traveling 70ft is far short of traveling 700ft.
But the point is the difference between "visualize" and "state a direction".
I think that "visualize" means, if not a true line of sight at least the ability to reconstruct in your mind the features of the destination spot. Under some stressing circumstances with fall damage and an immediate direct mortal threat, in a hostile environment, completely unknown and unexplored could a master opt for a check, and consequently ask for a direction, instead of granting automatically the right spell result?
Of course - Rule 0 and all. But it would feel a bit unreasonable to me unless the character had (say) been fleeing panic-strickenly at the point of fall; and even then, I can't imagine requiring a check to "visualize" the last place the character had been walking through/exploring - though I guess this might now be out of range. I would think that PCs in a potentially hostile environment would be paying close attention to their surroundings in general.
Maybe I just have a good group of players, but if I think a GM adjudication on something beyond/outside the rules is necessary, I tend to say: "Hey, this is how the situation feels to me and why - I think after this [you need to make a check to bring the room clearly enough to mind to DD]. What do you think?" If the player disagrees with [some logic that makes sense], I roll with them usually - interests of fun and all.
I tend to go for simple Intelligence tests for recalling (recent) details that a character might have remembered (but either the player forgot or the GM never described); sometimes Wisdom (or even Perception) if it was more perceptive than "memory-ish" in nature. I guess I'd use one of these in the unlikely situation that we decided that was appropriate.