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The PHB and basic rules state about falling:

At the end of a fall, a creature takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 feet it fell, to a maximum of 20d6. The creature lands prone, unless it avoids taking damage from the fall.

The bullywug's statblock (MM, p. 35) mentions:

Standing Leap. The bullywug’s long jump is up to 20 feet and its high jump is up to 10 feet, with or without a running start.

So if a bullywug high-jumps as high as it can, would it take 1d6 damage and fall prone?

V2Blast
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Pink Sweetener
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2 Answers2

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No.

As Dale mentions in his related answer, "Jumping" and "Falling" are not the same thing. The books do not define "falling", so we go to the usual English definition.

Fall. move downward, typically rapidly and freely without control, from a higher to a lower level.

Using Dale's words because honestly he put it better than I could: Jumping is voluntary and in control, falling is involuntary and out of control. So the first does not automatically lead to the second to my mind.

Additionally, it seems illogical to give a creature a feature that it can't use without a considerable downside (free damage and loss of half their movement).

For reference, Crawford agrees with that

In such a circumstance, I'd consider a fall to be a drop that exceeds the distance of the jump.

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HellSaint
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    Good points, particularly the Crawford quote. Just two notes:

    If I purposely step down from a 20 foot ledge, am I falling or jumping?

    Also, a jump height sufficient to injure a creature could still be useful for grabbing onto a high ledge, because the creature would not subsequently fal.

     – Pink Sweetener Nov 19 '18 at 16:58
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    @PinkSweetener While it's a deliberate choice, you still have no actual control over the fall, so I say it's still falling (although we might call it jumping). The difference here is that when you jump you control how high you jump, thus how high you will fall later - any value from 0 to your max jump height. Jumping from a cliff does not offer the same control, the difference between ground levels control that height and you only can choose to step down or not. – HellSaint Nov 19 '18 at 17:51
  • Thank you, that makes perfect sense. I understood intuitively what you meant, but it feels better to have a distinct rule to follow, as you have just provided. – Pink Sweetener Nov 19 '18 at 18:45
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Probably not

The normal rules do not mention fall damage when jumping straight up. And to take a modern day comparison, we all know that there is a difference between jumping of a table and falling of a table.

Given that, as a DM I would say that if an ability allowed you to make this jump and did not mention falling damage you should not take damage. I mean, in our current world there are animals that can jump 25 ft. without taking damage.

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Dinomaster
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