I had a situation come up this week in my game that stumped me and I was hoping that somebody could point me to an overlooked rule or reference.
A player wanted to jump from a roof to the ground 10 feet below. I couldn't find anything about jumping down, so to speed up the game we just ruled it as working like a high jump. It seemed a bit silly that the only way to resolve it is stepping directly off the roof, taking 5 damage and falling prone.
Was there something we missed?
So far as I know without a feat like Catfall there is no way to lessen fall damage from a situation like this besides Grab an Edge. Though for such a short fall there is little reason to do so.
There are probably also items that could have helped.
You could have also had the character climb down rather than jump.
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Interestingly enough I think rules as written there is nothing to prevent a character from raising a shield or casting the shield cantrip first and then using the Shield Block Reaction (if available) to harmlessly absorb the shock of falling such a short distance (assuming the shield is hard enough).
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Interestingly enough I think rules as written there is nothing to prevent a character from raising a shield or casting the shield cantrip first and then using the Shield Block Reaction (if available) to harmlessly absorb the shock of falling such a short distance (assuming the shield is hard enough).
Nope.
Trigger While you have your shield raised, you would take damage from a physical attack.
Fall damage isn't a physical attack.
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Interestingly enough I think rules as written there is nothing to prevent a character from raising a shield or casting the shield cantrip first and then using the Shield Block Reaction (if available) to harmlessly absorb the shock of falling such a short distance (assuming the shield is hard enough).Nope.
Trigger While you have your shield raised, you would take damage from a physical attack.Fall damage isn't a physical attack.
Good catch. I was so busy looking at the description I didn't thoroughly read the trigger. Followup question though if we're being specific about the physical attack wording does that mean that shield block could not be used to protect against objects (or creatures) falling onto you from above as well? Same with Collapses?
I think you can stride off a ledge and then use your reaction to Grab an Edge. Assuming you succeed at the climb DC, you'll lower yourself 5 feet that way and can then drop the other 5 feet without taking damage.
It feels less fluid than it could, but mechanically it works pretty well.
I am fine with it mechanically, I would just describe the person as having landed on their hands and knees or in a crouched position. Same penalties/options as prone just a different descriptor.
Same with grabbing an edge, the person can just quickly lower themselves down with the action rather than "falling and quickly reactively grabbing". If it is intentional and the mechanics are the same there is nothing gained by forcing a weird flavour thematic.
People may say "but parkour artists and house burglars can easily drop 2 meter / 6ft heights" sure, but they are likely to have the equivalent of the cat fall skill feats :)
I would also like to mention that many characters are carrying a lot more weight ;)
I had a situation come up this week in my game that stumped me and I was hoping that somebody could point me to an overlooked rule or reference.
A player wanted to jump from a roof to the ground 10 feet below. I couldn't find anything about jumping down, so to speed up the game we just ruled it as working like a high jump. It seemed a bit silly that the only way to resolve it is stepping directly off the roof, taking 5 damage and falling prone.
I had a similar situation in my campaign this Friday. A halfling rogue wanted to get down from a roof 10 feet up. I suppose he could have climbed down, just like he climbed up, but my vague memory told me that a Leap was up to 10 feet, so I told the player that her rogue could take a Leap action to jump down unharmed.
I misremembered the Leap action:
LEAP [one-action]
Move
You take a careful, short jump. You can Leap up to 10 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 15 feet, or up to 15 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 30 feet. You land in the space where your Leap ends (meaning you can typically clear a 5-foot gap, or a 10-foot gap if your Speed is 30 feet or more).
If you Leap vertically, you can move up to 3 feet vertically and 5 feet horizontally onto an elevated surface.
Jumping a greater distance requires using the Athletics skill.
The action mentions only horizontal and upward leaps, because "elevated surface" means upward. It does not mention downward. Since 3 feet upward is allowed, 3 feet downward ought to be allowed to. And I think that more than 3 feet downward should work, too, because downward is easier in real life, but the description does not give the maximum downward distance.
High Jump is a Athletics-based varient on Leap that increases the distance. A successful High Jump allows 5 feet upward, so I guess it would also allow 5 feet downward.
The falling damage rules on page 463-464 don't apply because the character is leaping rather than falling. On the other hand, if the character ends his leap before he reaches the ground, he starts falling.
Thus, under current rules, the character could leap 5 feet off the 10-foot-high roof with a succesfful Athletics check and then fall for the remaining 5 feet. Since he fell for only 5 feet, he would take no damage and land on his feet.
Was there something we missed?
Nope, this is something Paizo missed. They forgot to cover leaping downward in the Leap action. The Core Rulebook even mentions Rooftops on page 515, and jumping between rooftops, but not jumping down from rooftops.
For a quick houserule fix, I would add, "A downward Leap can cover twice the vertical and horizontal distance of an upward leap. A Leap that does not reach the ground changes your fall distance by the vertical Leap distance." This avoids having to rewrite other actions such as High Jump and Powerful Leap.
I typically read Leap as just not applying to "jumping down". Since jumping down is really just falling. I would say that leap would be the exact opposite effect than what you intend. You are looking for a way to drop a distance without hurting yourself. That is a feat called Catfall.
I have been meaning post about this grey area for a while. This came up in a game that I have been playing in. Another player wanted to move across a 10 ft high platform and fall off the other side, all in one action. This felt a bit odd to me so I scoured the core rulebook looking for the actual rules after the session. I didn't find a definitive answer but here is what I did find.
Switching from one movement type to another requires ending your action that has the first movement type and using a new action that has the second movement type.
So I thought, OK, when you reach the edge and begin falling your current action ends and you have to use a new action for the falling part. The problem is falling is not specifically called out as a movement type although if I had to choose I would treat it as a movement type because it has it's own speed which is different from your normal speed.
You fall about 500 feet in the first round of falling and about 1,500 feet each round thereafter.
The other players immediately started poking holes in my poorly cobbled together interpretation of the rules.
What if I was blind and accidentally felt off the platform? Then I would use less actions than the person who did it deliberately!
Well, there is nothing in the rulebook that addresses that. I would be tempted to say that anyone who falls at any time has to use a new action for the falling but I am not the GM and we are well into house rules territory now. Some people will think it is harsh losing an action for falling and for getting up from prone is too much of penalty. Also, what do you do if it is an accidental fall as the result of the last action of your turn? You would also have to build a free falling action into other actions like Leap so that people who take Cat Fall and like to do cool parkour type stuff aren't penalised. Now that I think about it, I think I would build a free action falling into the Cat Fall feat so that you don't lose any actions unless you take damage. At this point I have done way too much thinking about this considering I am not even the GM!
This is definitely not house rule territory. Falling is a form of involuntary movement, even if you intentionally walk off the side of a cliff. Pathfinder does not assume looney tunes physics apply.
Unless you have a fly speed, falling takes 0 actions. If you end your movement with nothing under you, or even if you end up in that situation mid move, you begin to fall.
When an effect forces you to move, or if you start falling, the distance you move is defined by the effect that moved you, not by your Speed. Because you’re not acting to move, this doesn’t trigger reactions that are triggered by movement.
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This is definitely not house rule territory. Falling is a form of involuntary movement, even if you intentionally walk off the side of a cliff. Pathfinder does not assume looney tunes physics apply
Well... unless you want to play with loony toons physics and that is your world ;)
But yeah, aside from thematics, the actual mechanics for falling work fine atm. There are exceptions like "forward momentum just stopping at the end of a leap" but this isn't rollmaster and a GM can just adjudicate edge cases like that imo.
Applying momentum and gravity in a 3 dimensional environment is a slippery slope ;) pun 100% intended.
Jumping is not falling, so barring unusual conditions, the falling rules do not apply.
I don't think it was excluded by accident, but deliberately, as the developers likely understood the above.
Unusual conditions being things like jumping over a wall and finding that the other side is much lower than expected, or jumping down only to find that the landing floor was an illusion covered pit, that sort of thing.
If you jump too high and do not have sufficient catfall or some other effect, you take fall damage.
If the distance you fall is no more than the height of your jump, you take no damage and land upright.
Why would this barbarian feat specify that otherwise?
If you leap over a low wall and fall 30 feet, prepare to take fall damage. If you leap off a building and fall 10 feet, prepare to take a bit of fall damage.
We had come across the grab a ledge reaction later in the session (after a player pushed an opponent off the same 10ft tall roof) and thought it might have been useful earlier.
In the future I will allow the use of "grab a Ledge" in order to attempt to reduce the falling damage of a purposeful jump.
Thanks everyone for the response and making me feel a bit better for not missing a glaringly obvious rules reference.
If you jump too high and do not have sufficient catfall or some other effect, you take fall damage.
If the distance you fall is no more than the height of your jump, you take no damage and land upright.Why would this barbarian feat specify that otherwise?
If you leap over a low wall and fall 30 feet, prepare to take fall damage. If you leap off a building and fall 10 feet, prepare to take a bit of fall damage.
A barbarian who jumps up 30 feet and then falls 30 feet using that feat is fine, which lines up with what I was saying. It's only if he jumped off a cliff or something that he is in peril of taking fall damage. That lines up pretty well with what I was saying.
Designers clarify relatively clear things all the time. It can be a bit redundant sometimes, but it cuts down on the confusion. The fact that they mentioned it there doesn't prove anything one way or the other.
When an effect forces you to move, or if you start falling, the distance you move is defined by the effect that moved you, not by your Speed. Because you're not acting to move, this doesn’t trigger reactions that are triggered by movement.
I had not seen the mention of falling under the forced movement rules. That is a good find. I have taken a step back and can see that I am complicating things more than is necessary. Let me double check my new understanding...
Let's say I have 25 feet of movement and the Cat Fall feat. I use 15 feet of movement to Stride off a 10 foot high platform. I do not take any damage because of the Cat Fall feat and therefore I do not gain the Prone condition. Aside from the Prone condition, I do not see anything under the Force Movement or Falling section that suggests that falling disrupts actions so I can then continue my original Stride action for the remaining 10 feet.
Is this a reasonable interpretation of the rules as they are written?
Posting on my phone at the moment, but from what I recall falling during a stride would essentially disrupt that stride at the point you fall, meaning you lose any distance you still had to go.
I'll double check the book when I get home.
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Even though the jumping and leaping rules refer to an "elevated space" there is no reason not to allow jumping down within the same vertical limits as jumping up.
Intentionally jumping down from a roof isn't the same as unintentionally falling.
Now, if the distance you jump down is too great, superior to the vertical distance allowed by an athletics(high jump) check, it seems appropriate to impose falling damage.
I disagree on principle. Falling is falling, whether you are leaping or in a controlled "jump".
I believe that the minimum 5 feet of safe falling distance is intended to cover a characters ability to mitigate falling damage without any outside help, like the Feat Catfall or grabbing an edge.
Ruling otherwise devalues cat fall, and other similar feats.
For more evidence, look at the monk feat Dancing Leaf:
You are as light as a leaf whirling in the breeze. When you
Leap or succeed at a High Jump or Long Jump, increase the
distance you jump by 5 feet. When calculating the damage
you take from falling, don’t count any distance fallen while
you are adjacent to a wall.
Why would this feat include a way of mitigating fall damage if you were unable to take fall damage from jumping?
If for some reason you as a character can Leap 15 feet straight upward, and you don't have any way of mitigating fall damage, you are taking 7 damage and landing prone. If you have Catfall on the other hand, you treat that fall as 5 feet and take no damage, landing on your feet.
If you Leap vertically, you can move up to 3 feet vertically
and 5 feet horizontally onto an elevated surface.
Jumping a greater distance requires using the Athletics skill.
I don't know how you can read that and think, "Yeah, you can probably leap just as far downward with no penalty."
I have never heard of an athlete being tested on their downward vertical jump. Or an "elevated" surface that is below you. Elevated relative to you means up.
When an effect forces you to move, or if you start falling, the distance you move is defined by the effect that moved you, not by your Speed. Because you're not acting to move, this doesn’t trigger reactions that are triggered by movement.I had not seen the mention of falling under the forced movement rules. That is a good find. I have taken a step back and can see that I am complicating things more than is necessary. Let me double check my new understanding...
Let's say I have 25 feet of movement and the Cat Fall feat. I use 15 feet of movement to Stride off a 10 foot high platform. I do not take any damage because of the Cat Fall feat and therefore I do not gain the Prone condition. Aside from the Prone condition, I do not see anything under the Force Movement or Falling section that suggests that falling disrupts actions so I can then continue my original Stride action for the remaining 10 feet.
Is this a reasonable interpretation of the rules as they are written?
This is a hard question, so I can only speculate.
On the first hand, Cast a Spell, Activate an Item, and manipulate actions are fairly routinely disrupted. However, Strides are tougher to disrupt. Neither an attack of opportunity nor the damage from waliking through a Wall of Fire can disrupt a Stride. The monk's Stand Still reaction and the ranger's Disrupt Prey free action can disrupt a Stride.
On the second hand, obstacles can easily cause a character to voluntarily end a Stride. A character Striding up to a closed door needs to end the Stride to Interact to open the door. A character finding her path blocked by a fallen log two-feet thick has to end her Stride to Leap or Climb over the log.
Switching from one movement type to another requires ending your action that has the first movement type and using a new action that has the second movement type. For instance, if you Climbed 10 feet to the top of a cliff, you could then Stride forward 10 feet.
On the third hand, a Stride is also interrupted when the requirements necessary to Stride are broken. Prone condition on page 621 says, "The only move actions you can use while you’re prone are Crawl and Stand," so a character cannot finish a Stride if knocked prone. Likewise, a character hostilely leviated so feet cannot touch the ground cannot Stride. A character who fell into a pit trap but caught the edge cannot complete the Stride.
Harmlessly falling a 5 feet or less while Striding does not officially disrupt the Stride. Nor does it count as voluntarily ending the Stride--though apropros to the topic of this thread, Leaping down the 5 feet would require voluntarily ending the Stride. The fall does not impose the prone condition. During the brief moment when the character is falling, he or she does not have feet on the ground, but those feet immediately resume contact with the ground without the character needing to take a different action.
My best guess is that after harmlessly falling while Striding, the character can continue the Stride action.
I also considered similar cases. Walking down stairs involves always having a foot on a stair, so this form of descent is not the same as stepping off a terrace for a short drop. That counts as an uninterrupted Stride. A one-foot drop could be treated as stepping down a single stair. Movement by skipping is not an official PF2 action, but skipping is a lot like Striding except that the feet are not always on the ground.
ADDENDUM: I talked to two of my players. Their opinion is that a fall should disrupt the Stride action, so we will play it that way in our campaign, regardless of the rules as written.
Several leaping feats mitigate the damage when a PC falls. So you can jump 40' in the air and land with no damage.
Awkwardly, that same person cannot choose to drop 10' unscathed...it's just too darn far?
They also cannot jump 5' up and fall 10' down, since the wording's directly tied to the leap's height.
I first appreciated that leaps no longer injure the leaper (having had one player w/ a Ring of Feather Falling in PF1 so they could survive their own high-level-Barbarian leaps). But now there's this disconnect.
It seems at the very least one would be able to intentionally fall safely as far as they could routinely via leaping.
So for instance, I might subtract the PC's vertical Leap result from the falling distance, if it ever arises. And perhaps their feat leap ability. In both cases, it wouldn't simply be a matter of intention though, but also using the same number of actions.
As an aside, I think the language of the feats would mean the PC lands safely even if they PC falls unconscious mid-leap! Hmm...
Several leaping feats mitigate the damage when a PC falls. So you can jump 40' in the air and land with no damage.
Awkwardly, that same person cannot choose to drop 10' unscathed...it's just too darn far?
They also cannot jump 5' up and fall 10' down, since the wording's directly tied to the leap's height.I first appreciated that leaps no longer injure the leaper (having had one player w/ a Ring of Feather Falling in PF1 so they could survive their own high-level-Barbarian leaps). But now there's this disconnect.
It seems at the very least one would be able to intentionally fall safely as far as they could routinely via leaping.
So for instance, I might subtract the PC's vertical Leap result from the falling distance, if it ever arises. And perhaps their feat leap ability. In both cases, it wouldn't simply be a matter of intention though, but also using the same number of actions.As an aside, I think the language of the feats would mean the PC lands safely even if they PC falls unconscious mid-leap! Hmm...
A reasonable work around would be to let characters with things like Sudden Leap jump downwards, but only if they actually spend the actions to leap. If they just run off a cliff and let themselves fall they didn't brace themselves for the impact.
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Something I recently thought of as a very obvious work around that we may be overlooking and how characters would probably respond to this in a realistic scenario.
I want to jump down from a roof and even though the roof isn't super high up it still feels a bit dangerous for me. I would intentionally grab an edge and dangle off. The actual distance I am falling (depending on my height) generally is decreasing by about 5 or 6ft and giving me a much safer distance to drop down.
If I choose to just leap that same drop and wind up getting hurt I have no one to blame but myself.
Something I recently thought of as a very obvious work around that we may be overlooking and how characters would probably respond to this in a realistic scenario.
I want to jump down from a roof and even though the roof isn't super high up it still feels a bit dangerous for me. I would intentionally grab an edge and dangle off. The actual distance I am falling (depending on my height) generally is decreasing by about 5 or 6ft and giving me a much safer distance to drop down.
If I choose to just leap that same drop and wind up getting hurt I have no one to blame but myself.
Well, an untrained guy (me included) would probably grab an edge and dangle off. However a trained guy (e.g. stunman or martial artist) could probably easily make that jump and roll off the kinetic energy without taking any damage.
The question is are we talking feat or class feature trained or is "just" skill trained (athletics) good enough?
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Something I recently thought of as a very obvious work around that we may be overlooking and how characters would probably respond to this in a realistic scenario.
I want to jump down from a roof and even though the roof isn't super high up it still feels a bit dangerous for me. I would intentionally grab an edge and dangle off. The actual distance I am falling (depending on my height) generally is decreasing by about 5 or 6ft and giving me a much safer distance to drop down.
If I choose to just leap that same drop and wind up getting hurt I have no one to blame but myself.
Well, an untrained guy (me included) would probably grab an edge and dangle off. However a trained guy (e.g. stunman or martial artist) could probably easily make that jump and roll off the kinetic energy without taking any damage.
The question is are we talking feat or class feature trained or is "just" skill trained (athletics) good enough?
Now what you're describing here seems firmly in the Cat Fall territory