(Slow) Falling onto a Creature

[Amnestic]

Relevant rules:


Tasha's Page 170:
FALLING ONTO A CREATURE
If a creature falls into the space of a second creature and neither of them is Tiny, the second creature must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be impacted by the falling creature, and any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly between them. The impacted creature is also knocked prone, unless it is two or more sizes larger than the falling creature.


Slow Fall
Beginning at 4th Level, you can use your Reaction when you fall to reduce any falling damage you take by an amount equal to five times your monk level.


Which comes first? The split or the slow fall? I'm of the opinion that the split comes first, but I'm curious if other people would agree.

Follow up question: How would you as a DM (or player) feel if a shadow monk started using this as a damage/prone forcing tactic regularly via shadowstep?


Shadow Step
At 6th level, you gain the ability to step from one shadow into another. When you are in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness. You then have advantage on the first melee attack you make before the end of the turn.

It's limited in environment (requires a high enough ceiling, in dim light/darkness) and costs both a BA and a Reaction. RAW it's not damage from an 'attack', so it will bypass most damage resistance/immunities.

[ShadowSandbag]

I would rule that slow fall applies first. In my mind this is a case of Specific beats General.
Regarding the end question, I would allow a monk to shadowstep into the air, provided it was dark enough. With that being said, I would not allow them to use Slow Fall and deal Fall damage for the reason above.

[chiefwaha]

My opinion would be slow fall activates first. I mean it's call 'slow fall', I wouldn't say the damages gets mitigated after you splat into an opponent. Mechanically, I'm not 100% sure, but makes more sense in my head.

As for using it as an attack... I'd allow it with the above ruling and the understanding that, if the opponent makes their Dex save or not, the monk would be prone at the end of his turn no matter what. Considering with all this, there is a chance the monk could end up prone and doing no damage to the baddie.

So it'd look something like the following:

Monk falls towards baddie(however that happens).
Declares slow fall reaction(and absolutely they could choose to ignore this if they want)
Resolve falling onto a creature rule.

Personally I don't see this as unduly powerful. A high risk, moderate reward maneuver. Basically a more complicated version of a battlemaster trip attack that hurts the monk.

[Bobthewizard]

I think slow comes first since "when you fall" occurs before "a creature falls into the space of a second creature." So you'd reduce the damage and split that.

Otherwise, I'd allow it. I don't know if it's worth it, though.

[Joe the Rat]

I lost my monk player, so that piece wasn't addressed, but I did have a bad case of "jump down the shaft and stab the gelatinous cube at the bottom," which feeds into my thought here - the intention of the action.

If it's just a case of "I want to land on them and have them break my fall," you are taking on hell of a risk, and have little control over the outcome. If you are in a slow fall, then yeah, mitigation before splitting, but regardless of damage, the poor fool is making a roll against getting hit, and even if you negate the damage, they will be proned. You want blue ice falls as a viable tactic, be a Warlock.

But what my gang was doing was jumping to attack - having an attack as part of their heroic leap into becoming some sort of 1950's era Adventurer Aspic Salad. So now we have an Attack action in play, I'm inclined to give you a little more flex - split then apply sow fall if you hit with the attack, and the target doesn't make that dex save. If you want to use all your actions for the round to make a teleport/elbow drop combo, yeah, you can slow fall with it.

But if you want to get a solid ruling, I would ask what the slow fall is supposed to emulate. If it's about gentling the landing, then you are either cutting the speed (original slow fall required a wall nearby to slow, or some sort of "invoke wire-fu" technique), or reducing the shock at the end (rolling out, distributing the shock in a controlled landing, aka "superhero landing"). Slowing your fall, cutting damage happens first. Stopping your damage, the person you hit replaces the ground, so they take as much as the ground might. Cut the damage after.

[Sorinth]

The way it's written Slow Fall would activate first because of the "resulting damage" wording. However the Monk doesn't have to use Slow Fall so you could kamikaze yourself split the damage and then attack.

[sayaijin]

I think arguments for RAW on both sides have already been presented, so I'll give another approach:

Opportunity cost of using bonus action to super jump and attack:

Let's say we use the most player-friendly ruling which is split damage then reduce. For 60ft that's 6d6 split in half, so we'll just say 3d6. A monk using flurry of blows for their bonus action will probably deal more than 3d6 damage, so honestly it's probably pretty balanced as far as damage output is concerned.

[Sindal]

I have nothing to add mechanically.

Because all my brain did when I saw the title was a romantic movie-esque scene involving someone daintily slow falling into someone else's arms or back. Sorry 😄

[Kane0]

I have nothing to add mechanically.

Because all my brain did when I saw the title was a romantic movie-esque scene involving someone daintily slow falling into someone else's arms or back. Sorry 😄

I had a similar thought process, only the monk silently descends onto the persons hat/head and stands there with them not noticing.

[Glorthindel]

I will ignore the first bit, because I think everyone has covered it to a consensus


Follow up question: How would you as a DM (or player) feel if a shadow monk started using this as a damage/prone forcing tactic regularly via shadowstep?

It's limited in environment (requires a high enough ceiling, in dim light/darkness) and costs both a BA and a Reaction. RAW it's not damage from an 'attack', so it will bypass most damage resistance/immunities.

I wouldn't allow this, as Shadowstep specifically prohibits teleporting into an occupied space:

When you are in dim light or darkness, as a bonus action you can teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness.
I would say using it to appear above would be fine for a flying or levitating user, but using it to then drop into the occupied space just looks like trying to pull an end run around the spells wording, so feels to be like going against the spirit of the wording.

[Amnestic]

I wouldn't allow this, as Shadowstep specifically prohibits teleporting into an occupied space:

I would say using it to appear above would be fine for a flying or levitating user, but using it to then drop into the occupied space just looks like trying to pull an end run around the spells wording, so feels to be like going against the spirit of the wording.

That's...a really odd ruling. You're teleporting into the sky, an unoccupied space, and then falling down from it. A teleport-assisted elbow drop, essentially. If you were teleporting 5' above someone...yeah, maybe I could understand your POV, but when you're specifically making use of the height difference I don't see reasoning behind stopping it. Assuming you have any movement remaining you'd still have to move out of their square before the end of your turn.

[Segev]

It might require an extra grapple attempt if your DM forces you to release them to avoid them benefitting from your slow fall damage, but if you grapple, jump into the air, and then drop them, they take damage and go prone with no additional saves.

[Reach Weapon]

It might require an extra grapple attempt if your DM forces you to release them to avoid them benefitting from your slow fall damage, but if you grapple, jump into the air, and then drop them, they take damage and go prone with no additional saves.
Potentially worse, as Slow Fall is movement that uses your reaction, if you drop them high enough, the DM might give them an Attack of Opportunity.

[Segev]

Potentially worse, as Slow Fall is movement that uses your reaction, if you drop them high enough, the DM might give them an Attack of Opportunity.

Not sure how they get an Opportunity Attack; you're not moving out of THEIR reach.

[Reach Weapon]

Not sure how they get an Opportunity Attack; you're not moving out of THEIR reach.
Both vector analysis of the non-involuntary movement and common parlance descriptions of such relational movement may differ on that point.
(I rate it highly improbable a DM would rule this way, but still find it more reasonable on multiple levels than an extra grapple check.)

[Segev]

Both vector analysis of the non-involuntary movement and common parlance descriptions of such relational movement may differ on that point.
(I rate it highly improbable a DM would rule this way, but still find it more reasonable on multiple levels than an extra grapple check.)

Oh, I think you misunderstood. I meant that you would lose your grapple if you had to hurl them down to avoid granting them the benefit of your slow fall. Thus, you would have to grapple them again to reassert it.

[Reach Weapon]

Oh, I think you misunderstood.
Do you mean on the ground after everyone has landed? That would track (even if I'm not sure reestablishing would be the best Monk tactic).

I have to admit that I am warming to the Opportunity Attack idea. While the RAW is tenuous, the idea that a reaction would generally be prompted, and most likely used to attempt a fall saving grapple (Hans Gruber exceptions noted) just feels correct.