Subjective Gravity and Falling?

[Christopher K.]

Hey everyone,
This came up in a campaign I was in, so I'll try to cover the scenario before asking my question.

The party was caught up in an impending pirate raid in the Astral Sea, where a blockade of spelljammers prevented anyone getting to or away from a mote. Eventually, as things often do with PCs in the mix, this situation began to boil over, and the pirates began to open fire.

I was playing an Eladrin rogue named Adesh, who focused on infiltration and burglary, and I was led to believe that due to the nature of subjective gravity, Adesh could pull off some Ender's Game-type reimagining of the battlefield to perceive the enemy ship as "down," proceed to "fall" onto it, and use his Feyleaf Sandals to land on the side of the hull with no damage. The DM, unprepared for this, argued that she'd need me to make a perception check in order to hit the ship. This went alright, as I got lucky(Wisdom is not Adesh's strong suit, and his Perception was abysmal compared his other skills), but even in a worst-case scenario where he missed the spelljammer, his target range would essentially be the area of the spelljammer, PLUS another 25 feet for the Feyleaf sandals.

Considering the situation, do you feel that a Perception check was really necessary to fall in a straight line? If so, what would you rule to happen on a "miss?"

[NecroRebel]

Strictly speaking, all subjective gravity means in 4e is that everything is granted a fly speed equal to half their normal speed with both the clumsy and hover traits, or to gain the hover trait if they already have a fly speed. It doesn't actually let you fall in any particular direction, except inasmuch as the fly speed that trait grants characters is fluffed as falling in odd directions. See Manual of the Planes, page 10.

What your DM should have done is made you use a move action to fly towards the enemy spelljammer, being able or unable to reach it in one round depending on your fly speed. The rules don't allow you to choose to fall towards something (though you can stand on any surface) in subjective gravity. My reading is that you fall towards whatever surface you last stood on unless you're close enough to stand upon a new surface, in which case you can stand on it.

[Adoendithas]

Subjective gravity is a fascinating idea that has never worked very well for me in D&D, mostly because I use dungeon tiles and miniatures which constrain the world to a 2-space without really a ceiling or walls. If it came up in my campaign I'd probably require a Perception check just as your DM did, with the amount you missed by determining how far from the target space you landed (roll a d8 for direction and a d6 for distance or something like that).

[Christopher K.]

Strictly speaking, all subjective gravity means in 4e is that everything is granted a fly speed equal to half their normal speed with both the clumsy and hover traits, or to gain the hover trait if they already have a fly speed. It doesn't actually let you fall in any particular direction, except inasmuch as the fly speed that trait grants characters is fluffed as falling in odd directions. See Manual of the Planes, page 10.

What your DM should have done is made you use a move action to fly towards the enemy spelljammer, being able or unable to reach it in one round depending on your fly speed. The rules don't allow you to choose to fall towards something (though you can stand on any surface) in subjective gravity. My reading is that you fall towards whatever surface you last stood on unless you're close enough to stand upon a new surface, in which case you can stand on it.
Fair enough interpretation; I was under the impression that the clumsy fly speed was meant to represent trying to "swim" through the Astral Sea, not thinking about gravity. However, how does this apply to the "walking on weird surfaces" aspect of subjective gravity?


Subjective gravity is a fascinating idea that has never worked very well for me in D&D, mostly because I use dungeon tiles and miniatures which constrain the world to a 2-space without really a ceiling or walls. If it came up in my campaign I'd probably require a Perception check just as your DM did, with the amount you missed by determining how far from the target space you landed (roll a d8 for direction and a d6 for distance or something like that).
One way that this DM represented combat in subjective gravity was to draw the boundaries of an alleyway we were in for an encounter, then where the building would take up space, she drew the side of the building, so that we'd be able to visualize walking on it as well. The downside, of course, was that she could only represent 2 additional faces in the unused space on the map, and some party members walked around on the outside walls of the building. To make up for that, we indicated characters' orientations with the miniatures, and altitude with a d10. It was interesting, but definitely bogged down gameplay towards the end of the encounter when it began to boil down to gritty tactical movements.

[NecroRebel]

Fair enough interpretation; I was under the impression that the clumsy fly speed was meant to represent trying to "swim" through the Astral Sea, not thinking about gravity. However, how does this apply to the "walking on weird surfaces" aspect of subjective gravity?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that... I'll try to answer anyway.

Well, rereading that section in MotP that I referenced before, it says that a creature may have an object exert gravity on them while they are standing on or in it, and that that gravity continues if the creature jumps or flies if they want it to. This implies, to me, that once they stop wanting gravity from an object to continue, it stops, and you can't start it up again until you're again standing on or in it. Presumably, if you wanted to stand on a surface that was at a widely different angle from the one you were previously on, you'd move onto the new surface, make it exert gravity, and make the old one stop exerting gravity.

This does mean that the clumsy flying isn't actually falling towards something, but if you're using it you aren't falling and can't fall until you've stood on something again.