The rules i am referring to are primarily Flying (and falling), and teleporting.
Flying, a lot of powers have untyped fly types or end times, stating simply move action fly 5 squares. Unfortunately people have become lead to believe that if you fly during your turn more than two squares as said in the flying rules you continue to do so until your next round. Also this brings up another vague subject, when exactly does your flight end, the general consensus seems to be at the end of your turn (unless you have a fly speed type like overland or hover to maintain it), but a lot of people hate this idea due to floating enemies over pits lasting several turns like in the cartoons. Personally i believe emphasis on turn based combat should be addressed, and stated that in fact when an enemy begins to fall at the end of flight or involuntarily he does so at the end of his turn, and only begins to fall immediately if he crashes which is the same as saying if you crash you end your turn and fall. As for the falling itself, another issue has arisen over forced movement. As of know falling is not considered forced movement, seeing that it is not a push, pull, or slide effect, and it is a verticle movement, which it also clearly states that all forced movement must be made along a horizontal plane, aka, no pushing someone in the air, or sliding them verticle. However i would agree that gravity is a pull effect, and perhaps WOTC should add the idea of verticle forced movement as falling. If not clarity would still be much appreciated, as i myself abuse hover to gain AO against falling enemies, a tactic that has many people incited.
Teleportation is a different matter, but still ties in with falling. Many teleport powers have no rules about ending targets location in an unsafe square, although some do. These powers that don't have opened up a whole new can of worms with 3D combat, and we are seeing enemies and allies alike being teleported 5 squares or more into the air, then taking falling damage, or even being out of combat for several turns. I would propose perhaps a stipulation that all teleport powers must end the target in a safe location, or he gets a saving throw, if he fails you can teleport him into an unsafe location, and if he succeeds he just falls prone from a failed teleport.
These are just a few reoccurring problems myself and many, many other gamers are dealing with, because of the vague rule set on these two issues. If anyone can please let me know when WOTC has plans to errata these rules to fix said problems, let me know, i use them a lot.
Actually, yeah, could we get some hard and fast rules on this? Please?
I seem to remember seeing a ruling on Teleport, that you CAN'T use it to drop people, I.E. X squares of movement or less ending on solid ground, but I can't actually point to it.
-If you're over a pit without the means to float (fly, levitate, etc), you fall. Immediately. If you flap your wings to fly and are paralyzed (unconscious, stone, etc), you fall. If you are held aloft by magic and it is dispelled, you fall. If the person sustaining magic on you to allow you to fly, you fall.
-Teleport doesn't let you send people up in the sky (Summons of Khirad, etc). I don't care what RAW is - you're not using these powers to trigger 5d10 damage, or whatever. If you rule differently, recall that each square is 5', and you take 1d10 for each 10'. So, every 2 squares is a d10. That's really the only two rulings you can make though, so take your pick.
-Flying creatures do not "continue to move" into their next turn. They move if they take a move action (or similar) to move. If they do not either move at least 2 squares during a turn or have hover, they crash (immediately).
Please prevent houseruling by the misguided majority...quality errata on the double.
While they're at it, a clarification on vertical movement via Push/Pull/Slide would be nice. We know it can't move you vertically, so no drop tricks, fine. Unfortunately, that same rule makes it technically illegal to used forced movement to shove someone up or down a slope or flight of stairs, or to pull a flyer down to ground level. I doubt either is RAI, but the RAw is clear.
Technically you can do any movement that you like. So in your example as long as they aren't going to take damage you can do whatever to them. The moment you want to cause damage they get a saving throw to end forced movement.
Now about the flying concept. I like the DDM rules on this; however, it makes any aerial combat almost impossible if you have to land every round. I make my plans have to land each round OR they can move half the speed to maintain it till they can move again. So if you can fly 6 squares you can get 6 squares and then land safely or you can move 3 squares and still be flying. I'm just happy that we don't have any people that fly for any length of time. So I don't have to use physics and such.
That means that as a move action I can fly 8 sq. If at 8 sq I'm no on solid surface I'll float down till I'm standing on solid surface. Now if the ability instead just game me a fly speed of say 8 till the end of my next turn it would follow the flying rules, which means that if I did fly I'd have to fly at least 2 sq or else crash immediately unless sometime in the ability or something I had allowed me to hover. Seems pretty clear cut to me, maybe I'm just not understanding what everyone is seeing as a problem.
As for teleportation, sure you do get into the sticky situations of being able to teleport someone up in the air so they take falling damage(if you get them high enough), but seriously 1d10 per 10ft isn't that bad for either side. Especially since most of those type of abilities don't allow you to teleport too many squares. I see no reason to change the rules, you still need line of sight to where you're teleporting. And making it so you have to teleport only to areas where you can stand really ruins the applications of teleporting and the freedom of said abilities, in the game.
In one game we were in a tournament. The arena had pillars about 15-20ft or so high. I was al eladrin wizard going against a warlord. So what did I do? I 'ported up to the space just above the pillar and dropped like 2-3ft onto the surface of the pillar top(5ft sq of space up there). From there I slung spells at the warlord and won. I wouldn't be able to do that exactly, or something similar, if I had to 'port only onto the stable safe surfaces.
The majority aren't capable of figuring out the proper intent on their own, and the suggested houserules throughout the forums are garbage for the most part.
Figuring out proper intent? Heck, the majority don't seem able to even function unless WoTC holds their hand all the way though.
They just don't get it that it's OK to make up an answer that suits the people sitting around their table.
Technically you can do any movement that you like. So in your example as long as they aren't going to take damage you can do whatever to them. The moment you want to cause damage they get a saving throw to end forced movement.
That's irrelevant to my post, and incorrect as well. Read the forced movement rules (PH, p.285) again. You cannot, by RAW, cause any vertical movement with a push, pull, or slide. I'm not talking about causing damage or even knocking a target prone. I'm talking about the fact that you can't legally push a target up a slope or down a flight of stairs, nor can you use pull effects to drag a flyer down into melee range or a burrower out of a hole. You also can't stand directly below someone and push them upward - your only legal option is to shove them sideways at the same height instead.
If that's actually the intent, fine, WotC just needs to clarify it. More likely, it's just a bad piece of rules-writing in need of an official fix. Probably it was intended to minimize falling damage trickery, but it also eliminates a number of reasonable tactics and produces some truly bizarre side-effects as well.
Then they fix forced movement, which needs a little bit of fixing.
That's irrelevant to my post, and incorrect as well. Read the forced movement rules (PH, p.285) again. You cannot, by RAW, cause any vertical movement with a push, pull, or slide. I'm not talking about causing damage or even knocking a target prone. I'm talking about the fact that you can't legally push a target up a slope or down a flight of stairs, nor can you use pull effects to drag a flyer down into melee range or a burrower out of a hole. You also can't stand directly below someone and push them upward - your only legal option is to shove them sideways at the same height instead.
If that's actually the intent, fine, WotC just needs to clarify it. More likely, it's just a bad piece of rules-writing in need of an official fix. Probably it was intended to minimize falling damage trickery, but it also eliminates a number of reasonable tactics and produces some truly bizarre side-effects as well.
Hrmm.
I figured the rules meant vertical relative to the ground. True, that doesn't eliminate all the ambiguities and extreme situations, but it certainly seems to ixnay the silly Mario Bros. glitch of pushing people sideways into the air!As are others, I'm positive more complex rules or elaborations were simply left for later.
It was mentioned somewhere that Flying was limited and left out of the PHB (mostly) on purpose, the intention to keep the battlefield on the ground. The rules stated by Iale seem straightforward enough, and suffices for this edition. I think another poster missed the "moves at least two squares" bit for flying, meaning that the person/creature is moving, it is just that turn by turn structure makes it necessary to have it stop at some point so that others can take their own turn. They are still "moving" as far as it goes, but it has a spot to represent a target until they again take their own turn and move again to keep in the air.
Yes, is this really a point of contention? Since old school, all the actions that PCs and monsters take in a single round or turn "really" happen in a span of like 6-10 seconds. You don't LITERALLY fly, attack, and freeze, waiting for the bad guy to try to hit you back. If you don't land, crash, or intentionally hover, you are still mid-flight in the heat of battle.
Indeed. I'd say the first step is they need to add in somewhere that teleporting a creature that is unwilling is considered forced movement. Makes sense to me.
Sure, if it's not already indicated as forced then that seems to make sense. Now we just need a few powers that teleport offensively up into the air, or change your fall into an attack, or teleport baddies in pieces!
Hrmm.
If it actually said that, I'd be fine with it. But the RAW on forced movement is just...silly. At least in spots. I can appreciate not wanting to let people pushing targets up at a 45 degree angle to trigger falling damage, but that doesn't excuse the problems with pulling flyers. Heck, you can't even do cool stuff like standing at the bottom of a rope someone's climbing down and Thunderwave straight up to send them flying.
Sure, if it's not already indicated as forced then that seems to make sense. Now we just need a few powers that teleport offensively up into the air, or change your fall into an attack, or teleport baddies in pieces![/CENTER]
I'd be okay with Reverse Gravity or somesuch doing exactly that, but only if the power's written and balanced with that intent. Adding vertical-drop damage and knockdown effects that isn't terrain dependent to most teleport effects isn't RAI, and no one will ever convince me that it is.
Q: can you see air?
If answer is no then the location must be something solid in sight
Thus if you are able to see the bottom of a pit you could place them there. You could also place them in contact with a horizontal surface giving them an Athletics check to not fall or up on the ceiling if the teleport reaches that far
Technically you can do any movement that you like. So in your example as long as they aren't going to take damage you can do whatever to them. The moment you want to cause damage they get a saving throw to end forced movement.
No. Per rules as written, you can't force-move a target vertically at all, and you can't move them anywhere they can't walk. I think a creature flying at least 2 squares up in the air is totally invulnerable to forced movement, because it can't walk into any square adjacent to it, although creative interpretations of "walk" fixes this (but not the inability to push someone up a hill).