Skyborn Tengu fall immunity with a carried ally?


Rules Discussion


Hi there, I was discussing this with my DM and couldn't find any specific ruling in the books, but if I wanted to take a deliberate fall and carried an ally in my arms whilst doing so, would I also negate their fall damage? Would it count as them falling on me, thus causing me to make the Reflex save? Or would they take the damage normally?


This is very GM-dependent case. But.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Heritages.aspx?ID=79
"You take no damage from falling, regardless of the distance you fall." You. Not your ally. Also this doesn't talk about case when you fall while carrying someone. So it's possible this quality wouldn't work at all in this case for some GMs. Besides what's the point of carrying someone if they would take the damage anyway?

Shadow Lodge

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If I were GMing and had to make a ruling on it, the first thing that I would look at it is carrying capacity/encumbrance, and see if you were capable of carrying the character at all. Because it makes a difference whether we are talking about you carrying a Sprite vs a Minotaur.

I don't know offhand how encumbrance effects flight (if at all) but I would start by checking those rules. My gut tells me that heavy Encumbrance or more you wouldn't be able to do this. Light or less there would be no problem. Medium I'd have to think about it.


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pH unbalanced wrote:
I don't know offhand how encumbrance effects flight (if at all) but I would start by checking those rules. My gut tells me that heavy Encumbrance or more you wouldn't be able to do this. Light or less there would be no problem. Medium I'd have to think about it.

"You can carry an amount of Bulk equal to 5 plus your Strength modifier without penalty; if you carry more, you gain the encumbered condition. You can’t hold or carry more Bulk than 10 plus your Strength modifier."

Ok. I guess if you can carry something at all, it doesn't turn off your other abilities whatever that is. So unless total encumbrance is more than absolute maximum (10+Str or other depending on items and feats), it would be better to just allow flying (or descending in this case) with anything carried, including creatures.


This is an interesting question.

Here is how I think I would rule on it.

First, as pH Unbalanced mentioned, I would see if you could carry the ally in the first place. If you could not, then you could not fall while holding the ally.

Second, you would take no damage. Your wings slow you enough to avoid that.

Third, they would still take damage as normal for falling. However, I would give them a basic Reflex save to negate some or all of that. The feat does not mention allies, so I do not think that it would reduce for allies, unless for some reason, like a familiar or a sprite, you could put them in a pocket, or your pack.


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If your fall is slow enough that it won't deal any damage to you, it won't deal any damage to anything or anyone you're carrying. I'd check encumbrance to see if you can actually carry them, and if you can, cool.

That's how I'd run it.


My gut instinct ruling: You take no damage from the fall, but your ally falls on you, you take the amount of damage from the reflex save result, and the ally takes the rest. You can voluntarily decrease the save result by one step if desired.

So if you fall 30 feet, that would initially be 15 damage. If the save result is a success, then you would take a quarter of that damage (3 points) and the ally would take the other 12 points.

If you elect to decrease your result to a failure, then you take half the damage (7 points) and the ally takes the remaining 8 points.


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Why would an ally [or you] take damage? If you pick up and carry a bulk 6 statue, nothing implies that carried items take damage from a normal fall. Your armor, weapons, backpack [and even fragile glass potion bottles] take no damage. No one says, 'but your familiar takes damage too!' when it's in a Familiar Satchel but people seem to feel having someone in a 'princess carry' either damaged them or somehow falls on you.

IMO, as long as you can carry the bulk, it's no damage all around. The fact that what you're carrying is a creature shouldn't matter.


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So, between six of us the OP has basically all main possibilities, lol.
At least my "This is very GM-dependent case" came true.


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Errenor wrote:

So, between six of us the OP has basically all main possibilities, lol.

At least my "This is very GM-dependent case" came true.

I think the arguments support that what/whom you're carrying would not take any damage. But it feels wiggly/GM-dependent until framed so clearly because there's this reaction as if somebody's getting away with shenanigans. The only trickery is that a PC with wings is carrying their buddy to the ground...a staple in all media featuring winged folk (even if they're poor gliders, etc.). That's the trope the PC paid for with a feat and likely why they'd taken the Ancestry too. Heck, people who can land safely consistently get portrayed catching their allies and breaking both their falls. And yes, most examples break physics, like even for the feat at all, but such is the norm in high fantasy (et al).

So yeah, if they can carry their ally, they can descend with that ally safely much like they can with anything else of that bulk. And they can't if the can't carry them, though I might allow heroic endeavors to mitigate some of that (w/ some rolling & risk involved).


I can see how people would think this can lead to abuse, but honestly, in the rare situations where this comes up, I don't really believe it's that prone to any potential abuse if the Skyborn Tengu can help an ally avoid fall damage by carrying them. After all, with how bulk adds up quickly, and the odds of a Skyborn Tengu even being strong enough to carry a full PC, not to mention their own gear, it's going to be difficult to allow it based on that alone, since Medium creatures are 6 bulk, and can usually carry 5+ bulk on top of them.


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Just wanted to say I appreciate the discussion from you all, I don't want to push the limits as far as possible, I was just curious to know what the general consensus on the ruling would be. After more discussion with the DM, we agreed to the case that I would not be able to protect an ally if carrying them would cause me to become encumbered. Thanks everyone!


graystone wrote:

Why would an ally [or you] take damage? If you pick up and carry a bulk 6 statue, nothing implies that carried items take damage from a normal fall.

IMO, as long as you can carry the bulk, it's no damage all around. The fact that what you're carrying is a creature shouldn't matter.

I'm not trying to handle cases where the combined bulk of both the Tengu's own gear, the ally, and the ally's gear is something that they can fly with. If that is the case, then yeah, I wouldn't expect the Tengu to have problems using their ability.

But none of that is really specified. OP's post didn't mention this being the case. The rules don't really specify the bulk of creatures for carrying purposes - just a recommendation. And the Tengu ability doesn't list a bulk limit.

I'm not convinced that you should be allowed to 'share' your heritage ability with an ally like that in general. Falling damage is supposed to be meaningful.

So in the absence of any solid rules to rely on, I am trying to make a ruling that allows the game to run in a reasonable manner.

How would you run it? - In cases where the carried creature is either bulky enough on their own or carrying/wearing enough gear that the combined bulk stretches credulity that the Tengu character can still float sufficiently well.


I'm in favor of the simple call. As long as they can carry them, go for it


For Skyborn my instinct is that if you could carry them (and their gear) while flying, you can also slow fall with them. For other sources of fall immunity where it may not be that you fall slowly but that you simply absorb impact on landing (for example, Unbreakable-er Goblin) I might be forced to review what I feel like your falling buddy should be able to get away with, but I don't inherently see a game balance harm. If you can't fly, it's a one-way trip for you and one person, and if you can then you'll just ferry the party down regardless of slow fall options.

...There's no actual limits on how much you can carry while flying in this edition, is there? I might be inclined to say that your companion must not be more than your light load (5+Str) to avoid having small, weak characters inexplicably cushion the fall of much larger, heavier characters, but then again I might leave it purely up to max load and let it go.


Castilliano wrote:
I think the arguments support that what/whom you're carrying would not take any damage. But it feels wiggly/GM-dependent until framed so clearly because there's this reaction as if somebody's getting away with shenanigans.

You've basically described my path from shenanigans! paniс to 'it's fine' :)

Castilliano wrote:
The only trickery is that a PC with wings

BTW these tengu specifically can have no wings. It could be even more probable than having them. They could rely on air spirits and such to fall gently.

Doesn't change your quite sound reasoning of course.

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