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Let's say you're on top of a slippery slope that might make you prone (and take damage) on a failed save. You want to make yourself prone before the slope in order not to risk taking damage while going through it. But you're also in a hurry, so you want to go faster.

My question is: can you Dash while prone?

SevenSidedDie
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Gael L
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1 Answers1

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Crawling Prone

Yes, you can absolutely Dash while prone. If you don't want to spend half your speed to stand up, you can still crawl (from PHB, 191)

To move while prone, you must crawl or use magic such as teleportation. Every foot of movement while crawling costs 1 extra foot.

To stand up, you use half your speed (PHB, 190)

Standing up takes more effort; doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed.

What this means, and why standing up is probably better.

That is basically turning your movement into difficult terrain, which will effectively negate the dash. If you have a Speed of 30 and take the Dash action, you would now can move a total 60(30 regular move, 30 Dash), but could only move 30'. Alternatively, you could stand up for 15' of movement (half your speed), and then complete your movement (15) and take the dash action(30) for a total of 45.

A related question on the cost of standing up helps to understand this.

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NotArch
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    Generally speaking, it's better to stand up, indeed. But in some situations, standing up might be dangerous. In those exception cases, your answer confirms the possibility of going faster by dash-crawling. – Gael L Dec 11 '17 at 15:43
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    Nitpick: The dash action doesn't change your speed. It just allows you additional movement. Subtle distinction. If it did change your speed, it would require 30' of movement to stand up in your second scenario. (Because by default standing up from prone costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed.) – Zeus Dec 11 '17 at 23:11
  • @Zeus Fixing the speed language, but why couldn't you stand up before taking the dash action? – NotArch Dec 11 '17 at 23:33
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    You could stand up before taking Dash action, but I think the Zeus' comment shows that it is irrelevant detail and not actually necessary. The need to discuss order of movement/actions was introduced by using incorrect rules language. The "Dash does not change your speed" rule has important impact to other rulings too. – Neil Slater Dec 12 '17 at 08:27
  • @NeilSlater You are correct, I'll make some adjustments. I didn't really think about it like that :) – NotArch Dec 12 '17 at 14:43
  • Oooo, I don't like this answer, but I haven't down voted it. If you stand up, you have already spent half your movement. If you dash at that point, you can only double what you have left, not what you started with. I do still believe it's better to be standing up than it is to dash while crawling, you go the same distance, but you are no longer disadvantaged by being prone. – Escoce Dec 12 '17 at 18:31
  • @Escoce I tried to clarify the language, but I guess I didn't :) Standing up is half your speed, not half your movement. Standing up takes half your speed and Dash gives you an increase equal to your speed. – NotArch Dec 12 '17 at 18:51
  • @NautArch yeah, I understand the play on words, but it still doesn't add up. No matter how you slice it or dice it, dash applies to how far you can run. If half your movement is consumed by getting up, you can say from a movement point of view, half of your turn is over. Dash doesn't speed up how fast you get up. Now that you are up, you can double what's left, not triple it. – Escoce Dec 12 '17 at 19:04
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    @Escoce No, Dash and standing from Prone are determined by your speed - not your total movement. So if you have a speed of 30, it takes 15 to stand up, leaving you 15 remaining to move. After you've done that, you take the Dash action,which is based on your speed of 30 (not your remaining move of 15.) Giving you a total of 45 (15 from remaining initial movement and 30 from the Dash speed) – NotArch Dec 12 '17 at 19:06
  • @NautArch I don't agree. If you had a natural speed of 60, standing up costs 30 of those movement points. Your movement is a function of speed. Else, standing up would cost everyone 15 movement, not half. I.e. getting up costs half your turn. IOW you now have half your turn left. Movement although being a different word than speed is sourced from speed to figure out how fast you can go (distance over time) i.e. movement/1 turn = speed. Again I understand how you are parsing the language, but the way you are parsing it is breaking the meaning of the sentence and breaking basic math. – Escoce Dec 12 '17 at 19:16
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – NotArch Dec 12 '17 at 19:17
  • @Escoce There's a chat I set up for us to discuss :) See link above. – NotArch Dec 12 '17 at 19:38
  • But what does a crawldash actually LOOK like? Is it like doing The Worm? – Darth Pseudonym Dec 12 '17 at 22:04