How does Simic Hybrid’s Manta Glide work

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Simic Hybrid's Manta Glide (GGR p. 20) states the following:

You have ray-like fins that you can use as wings to slow your fall or allow you to glide. When you fall and aren't incapacitated, you can subtract up to 100 feet from the fall when calculating falling damage, and you can move up to 2 feet horizontally for every 1 foot you descend.

When you fall, do you subtract up to 100 feet from the fall distance or the fall damage calculation afterwards (10d6 falling damage)? Both are part of the calculation of fall damage so which step does it apply to?

The first interpretation means that this trait will not have any effect on a fall that is greater than 300 feet because falling damage caps at 200 feet (20d6) whereas the second interpretation will always allow you to subtract 10d6 falling damage from a fall of any height.

Best Answer

Subtract the distance

Your first interpretation would be the correct one as the text says you subtract 100 feet from your fall. It doesn't refer to the damage roll at all unlike the slow fall ability of the monk class.

Yes, it should be able to

Consider it from a practical perspective: if something is gliding (not being propelled), is it moving under its own power really? It doesn't have a flying speed, because it's not really "flying". I would rule that it doesn't consume movement at all, since the only remaining speed (land) certainly doesn't apply here. You're really just steering.

See the spell feather fall:

Its descent slows to 60 feet per round until the spell ends.

Feather fall probably a good place to start, as this spell deals with slow falling and it lists a definite speed for your fall. Other than this, the other source for a falling speed I can find is the XGTE rule (500' per round during free fall). I think it's fair to rule that Manta Glide slows your speed to 60' per round similarly to how feather fall does.

Like this, it would take only one round to finish falling for 50', and during that round you could glide 100' horizontally. It would of course take more than that if you fall from say 120' feet (2 rounds, 240' horizontal motion total, 120' horizontally per turn)

This would be a relatively quick fall, but likely not fast enough for any other characters or enemies to have issues targeting you, if they can reach that high in the air. Your DM is free to make rulings on the specifics of how far you fall per turn, but 60' per round is probably a good starting point.

[RPG] Is this version of the dragonborn race unbalanced

It is fine

Stronger than the original, about the same as a half-elf, which itself is not the best race, so this cannot be overpowered.
This homebrew race is so far from the original in the PHB that I would call it something else entirely, but it is not too strong.

Why is the original weak?

It is not about the number of features a race gets, but how often they come into play and how much they matter¹:

Resistance is rare and powerful in 5e, but of course it is hard to know at character creation what will come up most
Breath Weapon is used with a tertiary stat, has horrible damage, and takes up an action
The abilities are not complementary, only a combination of mental stats (like Int+Cha) would be worse. Beside Paladins, only some niche builds find Str + Cha useful

To make matters worse, Resistance goes against Breath Weapon, in that for the first you should pick something common like fire or poison, for the second something rare like acid. With the current setup, you should prefer Resistance, as Breath Weapon is close to useless for the following reasons:

For any reasonably optimized character, about 3 enemies have to be in the area just to break even with your usual damage output²
- Most of the time so many enemies cluster only around one of your fellow adventurers, whom you do not want to hurt
It costs an action, and very few characters can do something useful with just a bonus action

Yours compared to the original and half-elf

Dragonborn

You replaced the dragonborn's best feature (Resistance) with some new, less useful ones. They come up rarely, and are not really powerful. All things considered, I would say the overall usefulness decreased.

The big change here are the ability modifiers, now dragonborns are good choices for Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Paladins.

Other features

Size. Same as original
Speed. Same as original
Breath Weapon. Same as before (pretty weak, see above)³
Draconic Swimming Training. Very niche, close to inconsequential
Horns. Very few weapons are worse, so why would you use this?
Goring Rush. This is closest to useful from all the features, still significantly worse than Resistance would be. Above level 4, doing 1d6+Str damage is not much better than 0, compared to your usual damage output
Glider Wings. Similar to swimming. Inconsequential compared to Aarakocra
Languages. Same as original

Half-elf

Same ability modifiers, different features.
For most classes, I would still prefer the half-elf, two skills and darkvision come up much more frequently than gore attacks.

Simple fix to the original

Breath Weapon should either do decent damage, or should cost less.

If you want tactics to be relevant, increase the damage die to d10 from d6. In this case 2 enemies are usually worth an action⁴.
If you want it to be easy, leave the damage, but make it a bonus action.

Do not change anything else.

Variant Humans were still the best race for most builds even without the extra skill, with only one feature (the bonus feat)
Dual wielders for example lose their bonus action attack too, if they use their action for breathing
Actually a bit better than the original, at least it does not clash with the Resistance now
Unless you would have advantage on your attacks. Similarly, Breath Weapon can be useful if you have disadvantage on your attacks