[RPG] Would flying a grappled character hard into the ground deal them extra falling damage

damagednd-5eflightgrapple

Trying to figure out the mechanics of a certain situation. PC grapples enemy and uses a move that doubles movement speed. Following that, a stacked move allows the PC to carry grappled enemy 60 ft into the air. In this situation the PC has an added benefit of not taking falling damage. The goal now is to force the grappled enemy to fall with the PC into a 60 ft slam. Would added flying movement downward add to damage? Also, if using flying to assist the slam, would that remove the benefit of no damage while falling for the PC?

Backround info: PC is a Mystic under Order of the Immortal, using the Body of Wind Discipline which grants no fall damage and ignores difficult terrain just with the Psychic Focus. Also in Body of Wind, Mystics can spend Psi points to gain 20ft of flying speed per Psi point used up to 3.

Best Answer

Id love to go in to the physics reasoning as to why this may work, but unfortunately your character is in the DnD world and physics doesn't always apply. The short answer to your question is No (flying a grappled target harder into the ground would not do extra fall damage).

The reasoning is twofold - grappled targets and falling/falling damage.

First moving a grappled target (from PHB pg195):

Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you.

So your speed is probably halved when you are flying with the target. This has nothing to do with difficult terrain.

But more importantly (and even if your speed wasn't halved), at 60ft per move (120ft double move/round, which is 6 sec), you are traveling at 20ft per sec or about 14 miles per hour. When you are falling, falls are instant or at terminal velocity (this is DMs call as we are in the DnD world not earth), but in a nut shell, you fall much faster than you can slam someone. Thus there is an argument for taking less fall damage by flying someone into the ground than if you simply dropped him from that height.