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My character has a Robe of Stars. Our party is currently fighting an Adult Blue Dragon and the DM has a propensity to grab PCs and fly them to 120 ft in the air and drop them. If my character uses the Robe of Stars, while falling, to enter the Astral Plane, does it continue to fall and take falling damage once it enters the Astral Plane? I assume it would continue to fall once returning to the material plane as it states that you return to the location you left from.
Side note: When the PC returns is the fall damage from the full height of the fall or just the height it left/returned from/to?

Nobody the Hobgoblin
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Brauhn
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    Related: Do teleportation spells conserve momentum? – Kirt Jun 12 '23 at 03:38
  • Not really addressing your specific question, but have you considered having your characters hold on to the dragon? Sure, birds of prey crack open turtles this way, but turtles don't have opposable thumbs and the intelligence to use them; non-suicidal adventurers presumably would not just placidly sit there for the round and a half it takes an Adult Blue Dragon to ascend from the ground to 120' altitude. – ShadowRanger Jun 14 '23 at 22:43
  • Well, it's not the PC hanging on to the dragon, but the dragon gripping/grappling the PC. I think I WOULD rather have the PC drop while ascending, but a strength check for a weak sorcerer opposed by an adult blue draon is probably a loss 99% of the time. As far as trying to hold on....I'm not sure remaining within the dragon's grasp while it's rending the PC asunder on each of it's turns is a better option. I'd rather it dropped me and then find a way to alleviate the fall damage...like feather fall if the PC had it. That's why I was looking for options for what the Cloak of Stars would do – Brauhn Jul 12 '23 at 06:15

1 Answers1

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You'll hit the ground before you can activate the robe

According to the core game's falling rules (p. 183 PHB), when you fall you take damage, there is no time to react and do anything in-between. There are optional falling rules in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but even under those rules

When you fall from a great height you instantly descend up to 500 feet.

So in either case, you instantly drop at least 500 feet. If you are being dropped from a height of 120 feet, that means you instantly take damage. There is not even time to take a Reaction in between, and thus you never will even enter the Astral Plane in time.

The robe says you can use an action to enter the Astral Plane. The only way to even try to use an action as a Reaction to being dropped, would be to Ready an action to do so. However, the rules for the Ready say (p. 193 PHB):

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger.

After the trigger of being dropped finishes, you already have hit the ground, as there is no special language in Robe of the Stars that would allow you to use the ability as a Reaction in a way that interrupts the trigger, like for example the Feather Fall spell has.

If you could activate the Robe

If you dropped from a height greater than 500 feet and your DM was using the optional falling rules, then after falling the first 500 feet, or if you cast Feather Fall as a reaction to the fall, you would have time to activate the robe.

Once you enter the Astral Plane, the laws of the prime material plane cease (DMG p. 46f):

The Astral Plane is the realm of thought and dream, where visitors travel as disembodied souls to reach the Outer Planes. It is a great silvery sea, the same above and below, (...) A traveler in the Astral Plane can move by simply thinking about moving, but distance has little meaning.

D&D is not a physics simulation. There are no rules about the conservation of impulse in the game, and even real world physics tells you nothing about how an Astral Plane of dream and thought would interact with impulse. Whatever would happen when you return from there after falling would be up for your DM to decide.

The rules in Robe of the Stars merely state that

You reappear in the last space you occupied, or if that space is occupied, the nearest unoccupied space.

For this DM, this says nothing about you reappearing at a speed you used to last have in the prime material plane, only that you reappear in the same spot, or as near to it as possible.

Nobody the Hobgoblin
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    You can use a reaction to cast Feather Fall “1 reaction, which you take when you or a creature within 60 feet of you falls” – Dale M Jun 12 '23 at 05:07
  • @DaleM, yes, this is one of the cases where the spell explicitly tells you you can do it - actually a better counterexample than shield, I will update to it. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Jun 12 '23 at 05:54
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    OP says: "the DM has a propensity to grab PCs and fly them to 120 ft in the air and [then?] drop them". OP seems to be interested only in the second part of that chain of events: they asked if it would be possible to use the Robe "while falling", and so this answer is built with that scenario in mind. But would it be possible to use the Robe during the first part of the sequence, i.e. while the PC is going *up*? – walen Jun 12 '23 at 09:59
  • @walen The second part of the answer applies, whether you are moving up, down, falling or any other kind of movement. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Jun 12 '23 at 10:06
  • @GroodytheHobgoblin but the second part of the answer just explains what would happen *if you could* activate the Robe. What I am curious about is: *can you, while going up?* I mean, when you're being flung up into the air, you are not technically falling, right? So falling rules do not apply (no instant drop), at least not yet. But I don't know what mechanisms, if any, would allow the PC to use the Robe while going up. Maybe it deserves a different question altogether, but I'm not a player so I wouldn't be able to give any context besides OP's own question. – walen Jun 12 '23 at 10:46
  • @walen I don't believe answering the case of going up would help, especially because the whole point of the question was cancelling the fall by using the robe. Even if it was possible, you'd still return high up in the air... And fall to your doom. – Matthieu Jun 12 '23 at 14:00
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    @walen I think what you can do while grappled/snatched by a dragon is another question. Top of my had, I’d guess grappled doesn't restrain you automatically, so you could activate the robe in response to being snatched, but comments are not for extended discussion of other questions. Best make a new question, if you want to explore it. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Jun 12 '23 at 14:28
  • @Matthieu Well, this answer makes it clear that "There are no rules about the conservation of impulse in the game" and that the rules in Robe of the Stars say "nothing about you reappearing at a speed you used to last have in the prime material plane, only that you reappear in the same spot, or as near to it as possible." So, with that in mind, outcome-wise it'd be exactly the same to use the Robe after falling 115' from the air than before being flung up another 115' from the ground: when you come back, you'd reappear just 5 feet over the ground and take no falling damage at all. Right? – walen Jun 12 '23 at 14:33
  • @GroodytheHobgoblin Thanks, that was what I was curious about. As I said, I'm not an RPG player myself, so I feel like me posting such a question would be kind of misleading for the community. But thanks again for your reply. – walen Jun 12 '23 at 14:36
  • 120 ft is not "great height," therefore Xanathar's Guide is moot. It takes more than 2 seconds to fall with Earth's 10m/s^2 Gravitational pull. The dragon taking the human with the force of a rocket launching (3g+ acceleration) would be an additional ~1 second. That said, if the trigger is being grabbed by the dragon, you have 3 seconds which should be more than enough to react. – user3819867 Jun 12 '23 at 15:12
  • I guess D&D could be a physics simulation if you were playing with a group of Physicists... personally, having taken a couple Physics classes in college, it wouldn't be fun for me to encounter a situation where I fell 500 feet instantly. It would have to be hand-waved away a different way like, "Ok, so you don't fall instantly but when you are falling in the D&D world, time seems to pass at a different rate for psychological reasons, so nobody is actually able to react even though it does take a second or three for you to hit the ground." – Michael Jun 12 '23 at 20:53
  • Or to put it another way, there needs to be a reasonable explanation for why certain things can't be done, otherwise if feels like you keep running into situations where things are arbitrarily counterintuitive and don't make sense. – Michael Jun 12 '23 at 20:55