[RPG] How long do you fall at the end of your turn

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Related to this question: How far do you fall per turn?

My friend wants to use the barbarians eagle ability to fly up so high that he would not hit the ground before the end of his turn. Now, Mike Mearls says that in 6 seconds, you would fall 580 feet. Now, my friend states that he would only fall about 32 feet due to the fact he would not fall for a full 6 seconds. So, how long does one fall at the end of your turn.

SA: http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/02/13/how-many-feet-does-a-creature-fall-in-a-single-round/

Best Answer

This is more advice than a hard-and-fast answer, because there isn't a way to tell by RAW when exactly in a turn that something happens; if you knew for certain that, say, the barbarian lost their flight ability one second before the end of the turn, you could calculate it, but that "one second" figure really doesn't exist. So the final answer will have to be a DM call. I'd go one of two ways:

  1. Say that a turn is a turn is a turn, is six seconds: the game is already several layers of abstraction, so precisely timing things in segments smaller than a six-second turn is more trouble than it's worth. Note that you also aren't calculating acceleration due to gravity with this plan already, and that would have a big impact on the distance traveled in the real world.
  2. Being charitable without doing too much math, consider any "partial turn" durations to be halved, so three seconds. You're giving the barbarian player a bit of a break here while keeping the math simple. If they try to cut that down farther, just say no.

Both of these assume that the one making the call is the DM.

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