D&D 5E - Feather Fall hanger on | Page 2

Posted by Almeda Bohannan on Sunday, May 5, 2024
Let's see if I understand the situation correctly: it's the bard's turn, he uses his action to cast thunderwave which pushes the baddy off the top of the tower into a long fall. The baddy uses his reaction to cast feather fall, but it's still the bard's turn.

Having used his action, the bard still has a free object interaction, a possible bonus action and a possible reaction, as well as his movement, assuming that he hasn't already used some or all of these. Let's say he has all of these things available.

He can move and jump off the tower, aiming for the gently falling baddy, just by using his movement. But in 5E creatures only have a bonus action if another rule gives them one to use, and the same applies to reactions.

As far as I can tell, the bard has no bonus action or reaction that would allow him to attempt a grapple (which takes an Attack action). Although an enemy moving past you (out of your reach) grants you a possible Opportunity Attack as a reaction, the reverse is not true; falling past an enemy does not grant you a reaction to attack/grapple it.

On a related note, when I cast feather fall I'm not foolish enough to cast it as soon as I fall when it's a known, long fall. I the drop is more than 600 feet then the spell will end and I'll resume falling, and my slow fall exposes me to missile fire from my enemies for longer. Instead, I HALO to near the ground (between 10 and 60 feet) and only then do I cast feather fall, which instantaneously and safely changes my rate of descent from terminal velocity to 60 feet per round. I land sooner and safer.

This can be used as a way to initiate an attack on an enemy base, if you can arrange the fall.

When I played that spire scene, the whole party held hands and jumped simultaneously, only casting feather fall 30 feet from the ground. We avoided a mid-air encounter where we would have been relatively helpless. The DM ruled that the monsters followed us to the ground and attacked us there, but we were now standing on solid ground and our melee fighters were in a much better position to make mincemeat out of our attackers.

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