I'm actually in agreement with the DM and the player.
There's a FAQ that might be of interest to you, but the basic point that you can also find is that someone who fails their check to hover in place will fall.
Therefore, as per the rules of any checks at all, it's entirely reasonable that you can fail the check on purpose. Fail on purpose, be in free fall, then simply stop failing the check on purpose when you finish catching up.
Can a creature subject to invisibility just decide to be visible for a moment?
Can a creature subject to dominate monster just decide to be free-thinking for a moment?
Or do spells do what they say they do?
Relying on an edge condition voluntarily failed Fly check is verging on cheese, though valid. Also, the consequence of falling is... falling. I assume that the PC didn't just "catch up" with the baddies, but impacted the ground, taking damage.
Note: I have - as a DM - used a similar tactic offensively, but in the case of natural flight. I had a white dragon (which can see through snow) drop out of the sky onto a party of PCs. It took the falling damage, they took some crushing damage. But I would not have done that in the case of magic flight.
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Can a character subject to Haste decide to walk slowly for a moment?
Can a caster who has cast Dominate Monster order the victim to do whatever it wants for a moment?
Having the ability to fly doesn't mean you are forced to fly. A helicopter can fly, but if the pilot wanted to plummet out of the sky, that wouldn't be difficult to do. (Difficult to survive, but not difficult to do.)
I suppose the issue here is that different people imagine magical flight in different ways. Do you lose all your weight? Are you propelled upwards by magical winds under your control?
The kicker is that the Fly spell actually has rules for descending - namely, that you can do so at twice the fly speed the spell gives you. To me, this feels like a specific rule that overrides the general, since having rules for descent is kind of pointless if people can freely ignore them to do better. As a general rule of thumb, you should be very careful about allowing creative interpretations that explicitly violate the intended limits of an ability.
I thought of that too, but normal flying (as under the Fly skill) also has rules for descending:
You generally need only make a Fly check when you are attempting a complex maneuver. Without making a check, a flying creature can remain flying at the end of its turn so long as it moves a distance greater than half its speed. It can also turn up to 45 degrees by sacrificing 5 feet of movement, can rise at half speed at an angle of 45 degrees1, and can descend at any angle at normal speed.
So, any creature with an inherit fly speed (be it the winged flight of a giant bat or the magical flight of a ghost) can descend at their flight speed. A creature under the Fly spell can instead descend at double the speed given by the spell.
The fly skill has rules for falling creatures with Fly speeds. A creature with a Fly speed can stop falling with a DC 10 check. So while you're often better of deciding to fall than descending in a controlled manner, there's a risk involved in that. And thus, the Fly spell doubling your descent rate is still relevant - you're less likely to need a deliberate fall and can therefore negate that risk.
I can see no reason to allow deliberate falling for one, but not the other.
There's a rule "A character cannot cast a spell while falling, unless the fall is greater than 500 feet or the spell is an immediate action, such as feather fall."
This is sometimes taken as implying that you fall 500 feet per round.
If magical flight has a speed of 60 feet, then descending has a speed of 120 feet. Most people think you can use the Run action while flying, which allows you to move at four times that speed (480 feet per round) if you're not overloaded, and presumably not taking damage if there's a solid object at the far end. So you don't get much speed benefit by choosing to fall rather than fly down.
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The Fly spell mentions that you cannot fly-Run with that spell.
Controlled downward flight (at double speed, on a Fly spell) still allows you to also move horizontally at the same time. If you drop into freefall you can only go straight down; but faster.
So I don't think the clause in the Fly spell is meant to prevent you from voluntarily going into freefall.
Gah! Flight in Pathfinder is so confusing. I'm always mixing up the rules for Fly (the skill) with Fly (the spell).
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There's a rule "A character cannot cast a spell while falling, unless the fall is greater than 500 feet or the spell is an immediate action, such as feather fall."
This is sometimes taken as implying that you fall 500 feet per round.
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That is pretty much the distance a person would fall in 6 seconds:
Falling: Speed, distance, time
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Sure, you can intentionally fail the fly check...
Fly skill:
Negate Falling Damage
If you are falling and have the ability to fly, you can make a DC 10 Fly check to negate the damage. You cannot make this check if you are falling due to a failed Fly check or a collision. See Falling Damage if you fail this check.
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Yes, its very nonsensical. Seems to only follow the gm's rule of cool.
While it seems like a desperate plan intelegent enemies may have prepared i dont see how it could be done without risk and it lacks rules. A few skill checks make sense...perception to know when to cast the spell , fly to control the free fall, concentration to cast the spell, swim to not drown.
The PC probably has never done this, it is outside of the scope of the fly spell. they dont really need to rush (featherfall is slow and they likely have nowhere to go). The enemy is likely dead anyway, the PC Is risking death in many different ways and cannot catch up to the air ship as the fly spell cannot last long enough to regain that altitude.
The airship will have trouble spotting the pc and has to guess on where to look. It might have trouble stopping, turning around, and might also risk destruction going to low.
I get a 1146 feet in the first six seconds.
That is pretty much the distance a person would fall in 6 seconds:
Falling: Speed, distance, time
its D=(A)x[(T)(T)]
The equation I was taught is s = ut + (att/2)
Where s = distance travelled, u = initial speed (zero in this case), a = acceleration and t = time.You're acting as though the object was moving at its final speed through the whole time period. On average it's moving half that fast.
So with an initial speed of zero it's exactly half what you calculated, 573.3 feet in six seconds. Allow for some air resistance and 500 feet is a good estimate.
Ah, yeah, in a vacuum that'd be about correct.
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its D=(A)x[(T)(T)]The equation I was taught is s = ut + (att/2)
Where s = distance travelled, u = initial speed (zero in this case), a = acceleration and t = time.You're acting as though the object was moving at its final speed through the whole time period. On average it's moving half that fast.
So with an initial speed of zero it's exactly half what you calculated, 573.3 feet in six seconds. Allow for some air resistance and 500 feet is a good estimate.
Both of you are right, This covers the acceleration, assuming a more or less free fall (body horizontal with arms/legs out to catch air) a dive (body vertical head first, arms tight to the body and legs straight) will result in faster acceleration and higher terminal velocity.
Now remember this is just for the acceleration during the first 6 seconds, if a standard skydiving position is assumed. Even then Terminal velocity is about 1,000 feet in 6 seconds. Just like acceleration due to gravity is exponential the speed with which you accelerate as you approach terminal velocity reduces exponentially, so over the next 6 seconds you will continue to accelerate but with the opposite side of the bell curve. So after about 2 rounds you are now falling at terminal velocity.
Unfortunately, none of this has direct bearing on Pathfinder... As falling in Pathfinder has you at some crazy place where terminal velocity never occurs and falling speed is linear and speed increases per 10' (as indicated by damage received from a fall based on distance fell.)
When you're skydiving and you deploy your parachute, do you take damage ? Why would a magic spell, refined by countless casters until it has reached a standard form, be worse ?