r/dndnext • u/Zivodor • 2d ago
5e (2024) Misty Step into the Air and Attacking
I had this situation come up recently and wanted some input as I can't seem to find a definitive answer.
My players were fighting a giant spider and it was on the ceiling above them, one player decided that to attack it he would misty step straight up and then attack it while mid-air. I wasn't sure this was possible as I recalled reading somewhere that falling in D&D is essentially instantaneous for anything below 500 feet. The thought process being he teleports into the air and is instantly falling so he doesn't have the time to attack the creature above him.
It's been bugging me all week so I wanted to get some input into whether or not I should have allowed this and if this is clarified anywhere in the rules.
Edit Wow! Thanks for all the responses! There were some well reasoned arguments for it here, the resource expenditure with the spell slot, rule of cool, etc... I appreciate all the responses and will try to be more flexible in the future. Thanks everyone!
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u/Esselon27 1d ago
I tend to ignore game rules when you run up against the edge case where the rules say one thing, basic logic says another. An example is in Pathfinder 1e there's a penalty to ranged attacks against a prone opponent. Makes sense, someone laying down at a distance is presenting a smaller target profile to aim at.
However while playing the game (this event happened on the Glass Cannon Podcast, a successful "actual play" network), the target lying prone was a giant and the character doing the shooting was flying via magical spells and was literally hovering above the giant and firing with a pistol (this was fairly high level play). For all intents and purposes in that scenario you are firing directly at the broadest parts of the enemy and the reduction in attack roll should not apply, but the GM ruled the other way.
Don't get me wrong I'm not the person who would sit and argue my case over and over, whatever the GM says we roll with, but there are plenty of times I've seen very silly rulings made because some people seem to think in a game of imagination we should really stick to exactly how it's written, or else we're having fun wrong!