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In a one-shot I recently played the players were fighting a homebrewed Weeping Angel. It has a walking speed of 0 ft. and can teleport 80 ft. on its turn under some conditions. One of the players knocked the monster, over by using the shove action. On its turn, the monster was prone with a speed of 0 ft. It then used an ability to teleport away and appear upright again (Impossible Movement).

Now there are three options on how to rule this situation:

  1. The monster uses half of 0 ft., so still 0 ft., to get up from being prone and proceeds as normal
  2. The monster lifts the prone condition simply by teleporting
  3. The monster is prone, and can't get up anymore

I am asking about a general creature that has a walking speed of 0 ft., not explicitly about the Weeping Angel.

According to the rules, which of this rulings (if any) would be correct?

NotArch
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Tobias F.
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3 Answers3

32

A creature with a speed of zero cannot stand up.

The rules for being prone say:

You can't stand up if you don't have enough movement left or if your speed is 0.

To move while prone, you must crawl or use magic such as teleportation.

A creature with a speed of zero cannot stand up.

What if the monster can teleport?

This question establishes that teleporting technically does not help with standing up, but gives a possible solution abusing the falling rules. Szega's answer says:

But there is a way around this. (Inspired by this answer.)

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. (PHB 183)

If you do not teleport onto the ground (and there is no such requirement in misty step), then you will obviously fall and therefore follow the rules cited above. If you do not teleport higher than 10 feet, you take no damage and therefore do not land prone, leaving the only option of on your feet. Since you do not move horizontally, you cannot teleport that far away (deducting 5 feet seems a reasonable approximation).

So to answer your use case, none of 1, 2, or 3 are exactly correct, though 3 is probably the closest.

Homebrewed problems require homebrewed solutions

It's a homebrew monster. If you're the DM, just fix it. Make it immune to the prone condition, or just let it stand up when it teleports.

I can understand wanting to be faithful to the RAW representation of a monster when the monster is in published material. But this is homebrew. The point of this monster is to bring a unique challenge and unique mechanics to the encounter. Just fix it so that your players don't turn a really cool encounter into a juvenile cow-tipping session (unless that's what you're into, which is just fine too!).

V2Blast
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Thomas Markov
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    I'm not entirely sure that "you land prone, unless you avoid taking damage" is the same as "you land standing up if you don't take damage, or prone otherwise". The text talks about possibly adding a condition, not removing an existing one. – Mike Caron Sep 10 '20 at 15:19
5

No getting up by using its movement

The rules on being prone state, in part:

You can't stand up if you don't have enough movement left or if your speed is 0.

This is specifically in the context of combat and movement rules.

In general

The game master might still allow a creature to get up but not in combat-relevant time frames; since combat speed represents movement that happens in the scope of seconds or a few minutes at most, it is consistent with creatures being able to get up slower than that.

Alternatively, the game master might allow getting up via a suitable skill or ability check, such as acrobatics or athletics, if the creature can commit such deeds with their movement speed at zero, and if the fictional circumstances make the action plausible. Scrambling slowly up might not be in the style of the weeping angels.

Creatures helping each other might also be able to get up, again based on the plausibility of the actions.

V2Blast
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Tommi
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0

In description you linked you can read (emphasis mine):

Impossible Movement. If the Weeping Angel is unobserved, it can teleport along with any equipment it is wearing or carrying up to 80 feet to an unoccupied space it can see. Before or after teleporting, the Angel can make one attack. If the Angel has not used the entirety of its Impossible Movement by the end of its turn, it can choose to return its original position if it is 40 feet away or less, or move to an unoccupied space it can see within 40 feet. This is not considered magical.

Hence, even if the Weeping Angel teleported less than 40 feet away, it looks like that it could not stand upright again. There are not any specific rules in the creature description about the prone condition, without them the DM can not apply the Specific beats the general principle. Hence, if a prone creature with speed of 0 feet teleports it will land prone again, unless it abuses the falling rules as reported in another answer.

Tommi
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Eddymage
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