[RPG] Can you voluntarily drop prone if it is not your turn

dnd-5emovementprone

When looking through the combat rules I realized under Being Prone it states:

You can drop prone without using any of your speed.

There doesn't seem to be a reference that this needs to be on your turn or during your move or whatever else.
Notably, there are ways to move off of your turn such as dissonant whispers or the Ready action.

Can you voluntarily drop prone when it is not your turn (when no other effect is making you fall prone)?

Best Answer

Short Answer: Just falling to prone counts as movement and still requires to be on your turn, but it's something that can easily be setup as a reaction.

Dropping to prone is found inside the movement phase rules, which means that it is used in your turn's movement:

You can drop prone without using any of your speed.

So consider it an action that is in your movement action, but uses 0 ft. So even if you use your full 30 ft (or however much movement speed your character has), you can still drop to prone at the end, because it costs 0 ft of movement.

Now, I'm glad you brought up the Ready action, because that is exactly what you can do with it.

Sometimes you want to get the jump on a foe or wait for a particular circumstance before you act. To do so, you can take the Ready action on your turn, which lets you act using your reaction before the start of your next turn.

First, you decide what perceivable circumstance will trigger your reaction. Then, you choose the action you will take in response to that trigger, or you choose to move up to your speed in response to it. Examples include "If the cultist steps on the trapdoor, I'll pull the lever that opens it," and "If the goblin steps next to me, I move away."

When the trigger occurs, you can either take your reaction right after the trigger finishes or ignore the trigger. Remember that you can take only one reaction per round.

This means that dropping to prone can either be done on your turn's move action, or during the move action of the reaction from readying an action outside your turn. To do this, you'll give your DM a trigger for your reaction to occur, then go prone. You can even use your movement speed first and then go prone, or go prone and crawl up to half your speed, because dropping to prone uses 0 ft of movement.

And yes, you can use your turn's move, and then move again on your reaction.