The text explains the rules and limitations of Tenser’s Transformation, a 6th-level spell that grants players the ability to cast spells. Once the spell is cast, players cannot cast spells until they trigger the glyph. They can only cast the spell while wearing heavy armor, but this process takes just as long as the spell lasts. If a player is already proficient with heavy armor, they can cast the spell, but it grants them something they already have.
Until the spell ends, players can cast spells, gain benefits such as attacking twice instead of once, and Divine Smite, which will remain in effect for up to 10 minutes. However, they cannot cast spells under Tenser’s, but they can Divine Smite, giving them some protection.
The spell also requires players to change their mindset to enjoy combat and cannot cast spells from magic items. They gain a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, a +4 natural armor bonus to AC, a +5 competence bonus on Fortitude saves, and proficiency with all simple and martial weapons.
While wearing the ring, players can cast any stored spell stored in it. However, Tenser’s transformation in the third level allows players to wear armor without the chance for spell failure, but this means they cannot cast spells with the appropriate armor.
Players can still cast spells while transformed, but they cannot cast spells while scrolls are transformed. The game no longer prevents players from casting spells if they do so, so it is up to the player whether or not they want to respect the rules.
📹 Tenser’s Transformation 5e: You’re a Fighter, Harry!
Bob and Sam discuss the spell Tenser’s Transformation. Our written review can be read here…
📹 (animated) 5E D&D a great utility spell!
Music: Sneaky Snooper by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license …
I’ve seen it work a few times, 1 we were fighting in a party with only one front line The paladin, 2 rogues and a sorc and the wizard The wizard used this because the paladin went down and we needed to hold a corridor 2nd I’ve used this to challenge a noble to duel as a wizard and the party helped armour him up what we ruled sped the process up
Now this is total homebrew of course, but I think this spell would be so much better if it were tied to an item that players could use rather than a wizard spell list. Give it maybe one or two charges or tie it’s usage to a mechanic like exhaustion. That could be a really fun idea for melee characters that can get their hands on it.
I don’t understand Sam’s problem with this. You say this makes the fighter feel bad while simultaneously saying the spell is not powerful because, well, the wizard is already better than the fighter, thus making the issue rather null. If there is a combat encounter where having double the fighters is good, I’d be happy to have double the fighter. Sounds fun. And it’s going to be a vastly different fighter. You’ve got shit AC, meh combat mods, probably far worse equipment, including weaponry, and no feats that support you. Plus, it’s concentration, so it could suddenly just wear off. All you really have is insane damage. I feel the spell is awesome. It’s a legitimate way to do something totally different with your character at will. Make the dynamic of your group and your playstyle change in an instant. 8/10 for me. I feel it should only be 1/12 damage, and only of the kind matching your weapon. In trade-off, lower the spell slot a level, perhaps.
Actual spell stats at least I hold this as one of the most efficient damage dealers in the game. Bows exist so just hang in the back, boom armor constraint solved. That aside I can’t say I super agree with the premise that you have better uses for spell slots, this implies a sort of linear play style that sounds unfun. Past that the Wizard at this level is so over the top it is kinda hard to not half destroy combat encounters just by wizarding. An upcast fire ball will steal a martial fighters thunder almost as much. Accommodate everyone of course as best you can but not at the cost of feeling like the cool earth shaking wizard you wanna be. There is a middle ground.
You are not wrong. It is a terrible spell. One thing that I think you missed that is kinda hilariious with the armor profiency, is, say you find a way to actually don the spell, then you go into melee, get hit, and loose concentration – you are now a wizard in heavy armor and still can’t cast spells 😅
The funny thing is that this doesn’t even make you a more tanky wizard. You lose the ability to cast shield and absorb elements! Those 50 temp hp will be gone in a blink with your low ac. Horrible spell at all levels of play, one of the few spells that makes you actively worse off when you cast it than you were before.
if you have 6 players and you target 5 of them with feather fall, then could the 6th player climb on one of their backs to slow their decent? Since feather fall prevents damage from them hitting the ground, is that because they are slowed to a speed that wouldn’t harm them; or is it just an effect of the spell that negates the damage. If it is the second one does it effect all objects and creatures on their person? In other words: would the 6th player have to take any damage if they climbed on one of their ally’s back or dangled from a rope tied to a companion?
Here’s a really great use for Feather Fall I found by accident. Let me set the scene. Our group had been sent by the Emperor of the land to investigate a mysterious beam of light that had been piercing the sky for days. Our group traveled through the mountains before coming across the source of the light: a crashed Spelljammer. Once onboard, we began investigating, which was difficult as the crashed ship was nearly vertical, requiring us to climb parts of the way up. Partway through our search, we accidentally triggered the internal defenses and found ourselves fighting several mechanical drones that were clinging to the wall. Finding ourselves unable to fight effectively while clinging to whatever anchored cabinets and railings we could find, we opted to make our way down to the lowest point in this section of the ship and fire upwards at our foes. Bad decision. This bottom point was incredibly small, less than ten feet across, giving us little room to avoid what was coming next. These heavy droids, one-by-one, began releasing their grip from the wall and plummeting down at us, dealing significant damage. After two of the drones impacted, my Kobold Sorcerer, Gnash Grayscale, found himself at single digit hit points. As the DM announced that the third droid began plummeting towards us, I scanned my spell list for a potential spell to help. Shield caught my attention at first, but then, another idea struck me, which sent me to the PHB to check my hypothesis. Welcome to this episode of the Extended Spellbook, brought to you by desperation caused by a lack of hit points.
Now that Xanathar’s guide is no longer an optional book, this spell is exactly useless for falls less than 500′. The verbal component of feather fall can’t start until a targeted creature has started to fall, but verbal components take more time than exactly zero seconds. Xanathar’s guide says that all falling is instantaneous, which means that the target has hit the ground and taken fall damage by the time you’ve finished casting the spell. . . unless they stop 500′ down and you cast the spell on them while you are both falling at a point 500′ below where you started the fall. . .
The ebboron homebrew champain (not AL but using actual champaine world ) we did a heist and it was like tbe movie with huge towers (i forget the name) and we evauated every one the guards were none the siser pluss my gnome had ben artificer and disabled the security system for the entrance to the vault but had reforming golems shaped like bulls lets just say it was fun
CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . We were at the Old Bonegrinder. The windmill caught fire during the fight with the hags, and just as we’re about to get out we hear screaming and crying from up the stairs. The paladin and my artificer immediate rush up to find two children locked in cages, but by the time we get them open the entire bottom of the structure and staircase is on fire. My artificer took her gun and shot out one of the windows while the paladin grabbed the kids. We all jumped through the window and I was able to cast Feather Fall before we hit the ground, making it to safety right as the windmill collapsed under its own weight. That was the most intense moment we had in the campaign to that point.
I used featherfall to airdrop from an airship. It was passing over a Point of Interest, but not stopping there. So we payed for full passage and just jumped off over our destination. Turns our 60ft per turn for 1 minute is 600ft of falling, which is about what you go in 1 round falling normaly. This gives you plenty of time to get of this reaction spell regardless of initial drop height. At worst you can use multiple spell slots, but its a first level spell so its not to hard.
You can also use it to assist in murder. Either convince somebody you are going to cast a powerful, long lasting buff on them (or Charm Person) then when they are willing Dimension Door straight up the maximum height. They shouldn’t be able to grab you with just a reaction, then you Feather Fall while they gain terminal velocity.
One thing that I’ve noticed with every dnd group that I’ve watched and I end up asking the question why? I also want to explain that this is not out of anger or judgment. This is just a legit question and subject that I put a lot of thought into. Why do the players never disguise themselves or do anything to make it so no one can recognize them when they commit a crime or something of the like. No masks, bandanna mask, no cloaks, don’t change their armor/cloths, and maybe a disguise self but that’s rarely used and only one person does it just so they can bugs bunny the guards or something. They do none of these things. So what this results in is them slaughtering everyone that sees their face (the worst thing for both the players and DM because it creates a lot of chaos and a lot of problems later on especially when it is done in major/big cities), they end up leaving the entire area immediately which results in creating problems primarily for the Dm such as they haven’t fleshed out the area the players are now just beelining it towards and they miss out on a bunch of lore, quests, and etc that the DM spent forever putting together(especially if they weren’t prepared for such worst case scenarios), or they end up walking down the street the next day like nothing happened which in either them being arrested/killed or worse. I just never understood why players never do that? You can buy a mask or have one carved relatively cheaply. You can even make so your group have special/unique masks if you want branding in the underworld.
my bard used Featherfall to save himself from the vengeful Strahd, who tried to drop him off the highest tower of the cathedral. this surprised both my DM and him, since he didn’t know/remember I had that spell in my book. That was my 5 minutes of glory, as I mockingly shrugged at him while gliding away to my teammates over there.
I pulled off a moment similar to this in my evil pathfinder game. Two of our party members had botched a stealth mission and got captured, set to be executed in the morning. We knew they were taken to the local fort which would be tricky to get in, let alone out of. Our witch had a climb speed so we studied the guard’s routes for a bit before scaling the wall in a blind spot and had her lower down some rope for the rest to climb up. With some luck we found the holding cells which we managed to get in thanks to some use of alter self to look like the next shift. The guards were suspicious and went to go ask the guard captain just down the hall, which made us have to jump the guards to grab their keys and try to book it before the rest of them closed in. After getting them out of the cell and a few close calls (one of them too close, a crit killed one of the people we were saving at the last second) we ran back to the wall and the witch instructed everyone to jump at once. Managed to feather fall the entire group in a single cast and we glided to the ground as the local mage blindly hurled spells at us in vain. From that point on I always prepare 1 slot of feather fall
I see a Duggar tome would actually be a very handy item for a wizard to have as a back up spell book. Once you use it on your original spell book it becomes linked so any alterations you make to the original go to the Duggar. Sure there are other things you can do with it but the media thing for a wizard would be very handy.
Just a few sessions ago our party was being attacked by a creature that lobbed smaller creatures at us. When they landed they would die and explode dealing damage to creatures around them. I was able to use featherfall to stop them from taking bludgeoning damage when they landed, this preventing them exploding. Since the spell doesn’t need a willing creature to target our DM allowed this. I always enjoy finding odd and niche uses for spells.
In a similar vein – Party was tasked to disguise themselves as a returning patrol, jam the gates of the gate house and keep the gates from closing for 10 rounds while the rest of larger force rushed to it and through. They broke the gates easily enough once they were inside, but instead of waiting for the rest of the force, three of them started an attack up onto the walls. They quickly got overwhelmed, and the minotaur player was knocked unconscious. The spell caster put levitate on the minotaurs body, and they leapt off the wall riding the unconscious minotaur to the ground.
I’ve long since switched to keeping 2 scrolls of featherfall on any character capable of casting spells. Featherfall is INCREDIBLY useful, crucial even, for an extremely niche circumstance. It’s not worth tying up a prepared spell for, those need to be kept free for things that get used on a daily basis, but when it does come up? ABSOLUTELY worth the 10-35GP that a typical 1st level scroll costs.(as per Xanathar’s Pricing for consumable common item) or 25GP and a day to scribe it directly. If your DM is super anal, you may want to specify that you invest in some sort of springloaded scrollcase or something, so you can pull the scroll out as part of your reaction that is used to read from it. It’s a lot like a fire extinguisher, you wouldn’t want to just clip one to your belt, but it’s always nice to have one within arms reach wherever you go.
Feather Fall is by no means a great 1st level spell. It’s the BEST 1st level spell. Once stopped a player, who was actually one of the final bosses in disguise, from killing the whole party with it. Then I later wrestled the 2nd boss off the floating temple to a 1000ft drop and lived with my last level 1 spell slot. This was not even the most impressive session I’ve used the “I don’t die from ledges” spell.
It’s one of those spells where 99% of the time it’s uneeded, and if you’re paranoid enough to have it always prepared it’s just going to be a waste of a preperation. However, when that 1% cernario comes up where you DO need it, it’s literally the most useful spell in the game, and if you don’t have it prepared… Time to roll up a new character!
As a group we were on top of a stone tower. A Roc was diving towards us, intent on the misc enchanted bird nest the rogue had (birds just sensed it and thought it was cool). DM says you see it coming. What do you do. As a bard, I prep featherfall to cast it on the diving Roc when I comes in range. So a very confused giant bird who’s downward momentum suddenly isn’t what he expected crashes into the ground on the first round of combat rather than the deviating divebomb it was intended to be. We did have to sacrifice the magic bird nest to get away. I think the DM pulled this whole stunt cause he didn’t like us using the bird nest to get free food.
1) Make a warlock with dimension door and eldritch blast. 2) Take the Spell Sniper feat and Eldritch Spear invocation 3) Have a friend with feather fall 4) Cast dimension door on yourself and your friend (going straight up 500 ft) 5) Have your friend cast feather fall on himself and you 6) Profit as you cast Eldritch blast 500ft in the air unable to be hit by any melee attacks for about 8 rounds and most ranged attacks for around 6 rounds
So during a skype campaign one of the players disconnected, the dm said that their character was unconscious here’s the twist, we were free falling because of the dm’s story. So the entire party was falling from the sky and one of them was unconscious meaning that feather fall had no effect on him. So i asked the dm how many rounds i had before we hit the ground luckily it was just enough for me to cast spiritual weapon and golf swing the party member towards me, and finally i casted feather fall. And he didn’t die
Levitate spell… Am I wr8ng assuming as new player that the way spell is written it legs you drop milions of feet untill you land seftly after the spell ends? it read something like you land seftly after the spell ends. 1. cast levitate 2. rice to 20ft 3. kick your self against tree off the gliff 4. end levitate 5. drop donw 5min and land seftly. 6. instead of looking down and waitti g the proper moment to cast slow fall and preparing to cast it again? Am I understanding the levitate wrong here? so if the drop is more than 600ft levitate is superior on single target?
Had a cool Feather Fall moment myself once. My Barbarian was on an airship being raided by pirates. We managed to capture one and found they were carrying single-use totems of Feather Fall. The pirates had a massive, chained, wooden harpoon lodged in the airship and were pulling it down. I faced our Druid and said: “Fly with me, bird-man!” and dove off the airship and Feather Falled onto the harpoon and, with the help of the Druid that had wild-shaped into a crow, started hacking away at the harpoon. With the final step from our Sorcerer’s ice spell, who had won over an enemy gryphon to help us, we broke it and went into freefall. The gryphon just barely managed to save all of us at the cost of its life. As soon as we made it to civilisation, I found a blacksmith and had him carve a gryphon symbol onto my handaxe and wrapped some of its feathers to the handle.
feather fall is also a great way to betray someones trust “come with me, i need to get you out of here!” dimension door 5 hundred feet straight up cast feather fall on self after having fell 300 feet watch them fall the full 500 feet taking 49 d6 falling damage and cleaning up the mess from range cause you got a few rounds to chuck fireballs down there without issue
We were one too many for the spell, but had a bag of holding. One of us got in the bag and held our breath while the rest jumped down a cliff. They then nearly forgot to bring the character back out. We go deep into role-playing, so the player didn’t remind anyone else, because his character couldn’t. Luckily, they remembered in time.
I have a utility wizard (lvl6 conjuration wizard, lvl1 (forced) fiend warlock. Armor of Agathys is super overpowered becuase it can stack and you can make it so every time someone attacks you they take a whole bunch of damage). I have like 20% (Or maybe even less) damaging spells and the rest I filled with a whole mountain of utility. My favourite spells are charm person (everyone listens to me), detect magic (I need it to be always active) enlarge/reduce (Giant doggo bashing 30 bandits) and dispel magic (goodbye to all of your magical traps) but I ESPECIALLY like playing with minor conjuration. From disarming traps, distracting guards, providing light and many other things, my favourite use of it is something I read in the fourth (third?) Artemis Paul book, where a sub-dwarf sub-something creature used a hair from his beard to make a key inside a lock. I do they same thing with minor conjuration and it’s SUPERB. Amazing use, really like it. Nuker isn’t always fun, sometimes you should try being a non combat wizard instead.
Recently in a dnd game I had to try to get people out of a prison. There were several problems I had with this -the dm straight up told us if we use any magic it’ll automatically set off an alarm that’ll alert a bunch of guards, which could each individually perform a tpk And, i was playing a sorcerer, so I was about as useful as a common folk with more hp. -the walls were pretty much indestructible – another player fell off said wall and because of the no magic thing, my one chance to actually use feather falling would’ve been a stupid decision -_- – and, apparently they were able to escape without our help in the first place. -i don’t feel like my character should’ve even gone, I just went along because that was where the plot was. Also, earlier in that campain I was a moon druid. She died in a barbarian fight when she couldn’t use wild shape or magic, all she had was deul weilding swords.
Awful science argument on the same level as the peasant railgun: If Featherfall moves you to a static falling speed or velocity that means it completely negates the acceleration of gravity which means as long as you can clear the initial velocity of 60 ft per 6 seconds you don’t fall. The only issue is that it only works on falling creatures so you would already have to be in midair and thus can’t really jump. The solution to that would be to find a way to pole vault or otherwise move while in the air.
I’m a first time player, currently playing a wizard in my first campaign, and this spell has earned a permanent preparation slot. It was one of the first spells I learned, as I saw its usefulness immediately upon seeing it in the PHB. We’re only level 8, but so far I’ve managed to use it to save every single one of my party from hefty falling damage, and one point saved all of us from certain death after causing a castle to fall out of the sky.
My GM homebrewed å high CR old school humungous Sword Spider who had managed to climb above the party and would get a nasty manylegged multi attack with its 8 sharp swordlike legs. As the bastard dislodged itself from the roof ready to bring falling impaling death to the party, my Mountain Dwarf Wizard shouts Feather Fall and he rules that the Sword spider gets his attacks but without the the extra falling impalementt. In effect two caracters took 24 fewer hitpoints each. Saved both characters since that left them at positive hp. The whole party and GM laughed heartily at my creativity. Proud moment!!
I was playing in a Tomb of Annihilation game Some of my party was climbing this high cliff near some bird people. But 2 of us were down below when they were sneak attacked by a fucking mindflayer. Our warlock went down, and failed his death saves 11 times in a row. (the dice gods fucking HATED him) Me and my ally climbing noticed this and he cast feather fall on me. I dived to him my arms outreaceds as i had literal seconds to hit him with reviveify. I made it in time and now he owes me. The spell if useful indeed.
My brother tried to force me into joining some evil guy by starting our campaign. I cast enlarge on our eldritch knight and we burst through the wall. I casted fly on all of us so we can escape. We were about 120 feet or so up in a castle, so we managed to make an escape. I failed a safe travel check and slammed into something. Our Warlock managed to necrotify our enemy while we were on our way out. Everybody had a role to play.
My players once had to get a feather from a bird rock nest high up on a cliff. They cast feather fall on the halfling bard, making him really light and bound him to a makeshift kite to fly him up there. He had a spell ready to talk with magical creatures and just politely asked the bird for one of its feathers. Darn that was a better solution to the adventure than I could have ever imagined or was foreseen in the adventure (it was serpents skull, book 2).
A friend of mine created a spellcaster “game” that he would chalenge other casters to show who had bigger “ion stones”. Simply put it was feather fall chicken. You jump off roof, cliff or other high thing together… And the LAST ONE TO CAST is the winner. You can have multiple players and he used often to belittle other casters.
During a siege one npc that was their employer had manta ray wings and got thrown by a treant he controlled in order to fly over the walls of the city and to the keep, 2 of my players were inspired by this so they scaled the city walls, loaded one of themselves into a ballista, and tied the other to the one in the ballista. They fired the ballista and he cast featherfall on himself and through momentum they were able to glide with the npc, to the keep.
Funny Story: Me any my group were once floating beneath a floating castle (long story, lich involved), but when the lich fled, he tried to drop the castle on top of us, but when I used feather fall we were able to run along the bottom of the castle upside down, barely saving ourselves. Don’t know if this would really work, but at the moment it was just too funny to not work xD
a bardbarian (yes it is written right it is the multiclass based on grappling : barbarian give advantage on strength check and resistance and maybe more and bard give spells like silence and expertise on athletics) should always have feather fall prepared. There is no check for pushing an grappled enney off a cliff if you jump with him. Make for an epic bodyslam. Or an izuna drop. Are you familliar with rock lee from naruto ?
The only time this spell has ever been used practically in the group I play with was last session after we had killed a giant dragon the size of a continent by ramming an air ship through its heart after getting swallowed by it. What happened was our wizard used a spell that passed him and one other target into and out of a different dimension in 10 second intervals but the issue was the fall would take longer to happen than the spell would last so what the wizard did was use the spell to pase out of the dragon taking our paladin with him and passed in and out until they left the dragon. After that happened he waited until they were close to the ground and then cast feather fall. It was one hell of a session looking back on it.
If you want my advice get 1 offensive spell in each spell level and cantrip and the rest as utility spells. Bonus points if you can add variety among your offensive. Things like magic missile for 1st level, flame sphere for 2nd and chill touch for cantrip. That way you have access to force damage, fire damage, necrotic damage and a way to prevent enemy healing with only 3 spells. Also mage hand and invisibility can be used very creatively and can bail you or a teammate out of some pretty hairy situations.
I have a bit of a fun story with Featherfall I was playing a mute bard (he communicated mostly with music and making words appear with Prestidigitation) and had this spell on the ready Now this one-shot was taking place in a cliffside mansion, with water at the bottom of the drop, and at the end of the session we found ourselves facing down the demon responsible for locking us all inside of the mansion Me and another party member, a Tortle who had a bit of a shine for grappling quickly decided what to do, after managing to grab and tie up the demon with some rope the Tortle dragged him over to the nearest window, and jumped out I cast Featherfall on him to let him survive and he proceeded to hold the demon underwater until it drowned, since a Tortle’s lung capacity is nothing to scoff at After the demon was defeated we finished off the session with a style double-20 performance check
One of my characters (half-elf rogue/monk) has a cloak of the bat and a ring of feather fall. This combo became especially useful when being shot out of the air, or flying into a high up antimagic field (which was there for some reason). Every time he fell he would fall 60 feet per turn and then just started flying up again. Super useful!
I used to hate utility spells like featherfall in earlier editions like 3.5. When you had to assign spells to slots when they were prepared, it almost always felt like a waste. If you didn’t know for sure you were going to need it, it felt like throwing away a slot for a “just in case” situation that almost never came up. Or if you happened to need it twice in one day and you only prepared it once, you were in for a bad time. The system in 5th edition is so much nicer. Since prepared spells don’t cost a spell slot to prepare, but only to cast, you can have a bunch of utility spells in your back pocket for emergencies and still use your full arsenal of combat spells. If you don’t end up needing featherfall that day you can still put all your spell slots to use.
As a bard, I used this spell on a fellow Kobold player. You see, there was a rope bridge that was destroyed in an encounter previous from a group of monsters that pursued us, but we needed to go back across to study some ruins that we were tasked to explore. So we had a Fighter with a very high strength and Athletics skill. After having cast Featherfall, the fighter tossed the light kobold rogue animatedly high into the air, well over the distance of the gorge, and he screamed, forgetting that he was simply floating towards the ground and softly tapped his snout into the dirt.. It was a fun experience, and its interesting to see how people can cleverly use spells and abilities to overcome obstacles and certain deadly encounters.
A few seasons of AL back, while playing one of my spell-based characters, I thought a rather nasty combination would be Dimension Door / Feather Fall . It would be a rather nasty way of getting the baddie to agree to doing what you want them to do or tell you. (Baddie) “I ain’t telling youse nuttin’.” (my character) “Okay, suit yourself.” (my character) “Now, are you going to agree to our demands?” (Baddie) “You’re crazy!” (my character) “Really? If you say so.” (Baddie) “You’re nuts, we’re both gonna die!” (my character) “You may be right, I don’t think I have the strength of will to cast that again.” (Baddie) “Okay, okay! I agree!” (my character) “Okay.” (my character) “PHEW! That was a bit close.”
I had my very first dnd charcter have featherfall, the DM hadn’t told me or any of the other players anything about the campaign (all first time players). In the first session I used it at least 4 times, and the dm was really happy that a spell he had asked if I was sure I wanted to get had been that useful. Especially when the other spell caster was about to fall from about 60 feet up in the air during battle, when we were still lvl 1.
In Curse of Strahd, I played an aarakocra. We were in a fight atop a tower, Strahd starts climbing down so I go after him, flying 500+ feet in the air. Strahd casts polymorph. I’m now a cat. I see my life flash before my eyes. The monk uses his last spell slot on Featherfall. The rogue mage hands me up. I owe my life to Featherfall
In one encounter with bulettes, I used a crafty featherfall to neutralize their Deadly Leap, an attack that has them jump 15ft into the air and body slam what was at the time my orc wizard. Another party member, inspired by this, did some quick math to figure out his carrying weight. After taking in his very high strength score, his feature that let him carry as if he was a size category larger, and with the aid of the Enlarge spell, we convinced the DM that it was possible to catch another of these feather falling land sharks and hold it grappled over his head. With some amazingly lucky rolls, he held that bulette over his head the entire fight.
I was a paladin with a ring of feather fall. An army of skeletons were beseeching this town we were in, and across the battlefield my wife was being crucified. So I did the most reasonable thing: I summoned my horse, loaded us both into a catapult, and launched myself as far as I could into the middle of the battlefield. The DM asked how I was going to avoid taking damage. I told him about my ring. He was all, “Cool, but what about your horse?” “Share spells,” I said. He was clearly not expecting this, but went along with it as I gracefully landed… surrounded by an army of skeletons. This also proved futile since I was able to dust the lot of them with my ability to turn undead. The rest of my allies, including the soldiers we had with us in the town, took this as the signal to attack. I led an army through an evil horde, dusting undead as I moved through the crowds, and the enemies had no idea how to handle it since they were expecting a frontal assault. It’s the single most badass moment I’ve ever had as a player, as it literally played out like some action movie scene 😎 Thank you whichever wizard invented the feather fall spell. I owe it all to you!
In the swedish rpg drakar och demoner, there is a spell “Trip” which is fairly cheap but does exactly what it says. You trip one creature in range, making him fall down prone in a direction of your choosing. You can boost the spell with mana to affect more people at once, but this makes it more difficult to succeed casting it. Trough a somewhat generous ruling of the rules by the gm, I managed to combine this spell with the monks class ability in that game, which is to concentrate for up to sixty seconds to get a +1 for every five seconds concentrated to a skill check. (A spell is a exactly like a skill, except instead of a skill value it has a spell value). By concentrating, I could then lower the difficulty enough to offset the extra difficulty from the boosted spell. Once our party was ambushed in a ravine and held at crossbowpoint by a number of orcs. While the party tried to fast talk their way out of it, I closed my eyes and started to concentrate. As negotiations broke down, I snapped my fingers. Bam, seven orcs tripped forward, and fell to their deaths. The fight was afoot! Then the remaining seven orcs killed me. Then they killed the wizard. Then the wizard, in a last dash of suicide empowered arcane might used his specially crafter, super charged magical staff and blew up the mountain. That killed the rest of the party. But for a little while, it was awesome!
So me and my party were in the under dark and we were crossing a chasm the was covered in spider webs. As we were crossing I was attacked by a dark mantle which had wrapped itself around my head. Nat 20ed on the escape roll. The problem with this was a succeeded so well I knocked myself off balance and sent myself tumbling off into the abyss below our wild magic sorcerer seeing this cast feather fall in me so that the rouge who was on a web below us (in order to help prevent exactly this) could catch me. Well that didn’t go so well since wild magic triggered and it was the worst possible in we could have gotten in this situation. She cast fireball on herself. This resulted in the entire party falling about 60ft down into another web except this one actually had enemies on it. About an hour and a half of death and poor decision making later we get to the other side of the chasm. We lost our fighter to a series failed dex checks and our rogue to a group of spiders and 3 npc’s one of which had been our guide to a combination if the above. On the bright side we did eventually make it out of the under dark.
I once used this spell to essentially eliminate a whole group of pirates in a single round! They were boarding our ship by using ropes to swing across the gap separating the vessels so I took the opportunity to cast my newly acquired spell on them. This resulted in them overshooting the deck and falling into the sea on the other side of the ship. They didn’t climb back up…
Playing as a wizard gnome, I snuck up to the barbarian in our party while we were spying on a group of enemies. I told him to throw me as high as he could after I cast the featherfall spell, and from about 30 or 40 feet up I was able to spot all the hidden enemies ready to pounce on us. Then I floated down, informed the party, and our bard snuck away on his own to put all the hidden enemies to sleep. Meanwhile the rest of the party handled the outside enemies. Had a blast hopping on the barbarian shoulders, firing fire bolts left and right, and telling our barbarian, “you’re our tank, I’m your turret.” DnD is great. Thanks for your work on the animated spellbook, really inspired me!
My adventuring party in a campaign I’m in flies around on a skyship. Cool? Yes. Potentially extremely lethal? Also yes. One of my first expenditures was for a ring of feather falling. This practically eliminates your chance of death by spectacular pancake, plus also lets you jump off of buildings, cliffs, or in my case over the side of the skyship whenever you want.
Had a Wordcaster Cleric in Pathfinder named Shinko. She.was so crazy, she willed her own pantheon of gods and goddesses into existence. One of our quests sent us to the Underdark. The entrance was a hole that went straight down hundreds of feet. The other players cast fly and headed down at a leisurly pace. Shinko swan dived past them and cast feather fall 60 feet from the bottom, set up her bedroll, and bluffed waking up from a nap when they all arrived, astonished that she wasn’t a stain on the floor.
One of the things I like about this type of articles is that its short, its sweet, and it does not trail off into 4 or 5 different sub-stories, just the one that is related to the reason of why (said topic) is being shown as its meant to be shown in the article, which in this case it would be “a great utility spell!”
I just had a campaign where I was playing a sorcerer and the party encountered a masked man who was the guardian of a forest. We had just beaten up some bandits when he came in, thanked us, and then moved in to finish them off. Being “lets not kill unless absolutely necessary” types, we didnt want that, but the way the DM described this guy, it seemed like he was pretty high level and we probably wouldnt have gotten out of fighting him unscathed. I came up with the bright Idea to have our paladin and barbarian grab the guy, and throw him into the air, from which point I could cast feather fall, which would make it so that he would hit the ground safely, but very slowly, giving us enough time to grab the bandits and run before he could kill them and/or us. It worked. I love spellcasting.
Does Feather Fall work on movement other than vertical? So if I was launched from a catapult, but cast a Feather Fall on myself, would I leisurely glide through the air upwards or would it only start working after I reach the peak of my trajectory? After the effects ended, would I instantly fall down or would the force of the catapult kick in and accelerate me in the direction I was moving?
In a game I was in over the weekend, our wizard used Rope Trick to create an unmoving, interdimensional anchor point to help scale the last 60 feet of a 250 foot cliff, and I was kind of shocked at the sheer utility that that spell provides. Have you seen this spell used to shocking effect in other situations? Or am I vastly overestimating its usefulness based off this one moment?
Our group managed to weaponize Feather Fall once. We had a rather large and strong Fighter and a very light Monk and a utility-focused Bard. I think you can see where this is going. Big cave, spiders descending from the ceiling. Fighter grabs monk, bard casts Feather Fall on monk, fighter throws monk into the air and monk gets in range to throw his darts at the spiders well before they are in range of attacking any of us, then he just sails back to the ground. We got 3 good rounds of damage in that way before the spiders could counter it.
One thing one has to wonder with feather fall: … Often it is the way I hear about it being usd in game is people casting it /while falling. rather than before And I have to ask, does the spell precise having a shorter casting time than most spell ? Like intantneous, because I don’t remember it being so. But it has to be an average weighted and sized adult has already fallen like, oh 4 to 5 meters (that’s 13 to 16 feet for people of that far off barbaric land kown as ‘Murica’ ), which just a little under two storries. Which kind of make me wonder what makes this one spell special enough to be casted so fast when most other spells require almost a round of talking in odd dead language and gesturing your arms around a lot to be cast. Could it be applied to other spells ? It almost feel like it could be a plot point for … something in a casters heavy campaign.
I’m wondering if featherfall can be used in conjunction with dimension door can be used to kill… well, almost anybody. It says a willing person in dimension door’s description. What does that mean? You don’t have to be touching them. Why can’t you just dimension door with someone you don’t like, take them 500 feet up, then cast featherfall on yourself?
I remember once in a pathfinder campaign i was playing a royal drow necromancer. Royal drows can levitate at will, now for those of you who don’t know, in pathfinder levitate let’s you move vertically in the air, just vertically, you can only go up or down. So i was there, in an alley, both entrances closed by “bad” guys and the enemies were closing in, well, time to go up. The thugs didn’t knew what to do, they were like 4 or 5 meter under me and couldn’t reach me, but, for all intents and purposes i was stuck, so i did what every sane person would do, i took a rake i stole from somewhere from my backpack and started pushing myself from building to building, like a demented version of curling, all the while throwing tiles i took off roofs at them. Eventually i was found by the rest of the party and they helped me dispatch the rest of the thugs. You don’t need fireballs to turn a fight in a complete mess.
The original version of featherfall reduced the targets MASS to that of “A feathery piece of down” Do you know what happens when you reduce an object’s mass? you reduce it’s INERTIA as well. One clever mage figured out that if you enchanted a 10 foot long tube to cast “Feather Fall” on any Object placed within, and a “Push” spell that pushed the object towards the other end, both spells lasting only so long as the object was within the tube, you could accelerate any object that would fit within the tube to nearly the speed of sound. That’s right. A magical Cannon that required no gunpowder. Any pirate that messed with our ship as we sailed to our various adventures literally didn’t know what hit them. We would toss any random junk we had lying around (Bones from last night’s roast hog, spare nails, etc) into this tube and poof…no more pirates.
Our party once used potions of featherfall to chase a witch who could fly. He flew out of an icy tower and down to the courtyard below, meaning escape seemed certain. But three of us leapt out of the tower. We had intended to drink the potions on the way down, since the tower was too tall for us to safely descend before the potion wore off (This is Pathfinder, so the rules might be slightly different). The DM told us we’d have to drink them before jumping, as we wouldn’t be able to coordinate drinking a potion at terminal velocity. So we had to drink before we jumped, meaning we’d run out of featherfall approximately thirty feet off the ground. Not fun. Fortunately my sorcerer liked to dabble in alchemy, so he’d made a little jar of impact foam months before. He threw it down as he was feather falling (Okay with the DM, since all it took was dropping a jar, rather than trying to drink something.) He even had time to fire off a magic missile at our quarry before featherfall gave out and he fell, mostly unharmed, onto his impact foam mattress.
This article is about Feather Fall, but your Duggers Tome is stealing the show. Either as an alternative, backup, or in addition to Sending, have you considered the Duggers Tome’s use in long-range communication? A Duggers Tome used on a blank book makes for a one-way communication system. Two pairs of such distributed properly between two people makes it two-way. And can you imagine the dramatic and plot potential of such? For example, the party could be at a crucial part of a quest when they suddenly receive a message from a separated and distant group member or NPC: GET OUT OF THERE. YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE BETRAYED. CLIENT IS NOT WHO HE SAYS HE IS. — BTW, gotta ask: Where did the name come from? Is Dugger (or Duggers?) a person? If yes, shouldn’t it be “Dugger’s Tome” (emphasis on apostrophe)? — Please keep up the great articles!
I once let a wizard player of mine use feather fall to extend their jump range- they were on the back of a carriage moving at speed, trying to jump to the carriage behind some distance away. They used feather fall to give themselves enough hang time to let the second carriage move under them. Unfortunately they flubbed their dex save to land and missed the carriage, gently falling to the ground, perusal the caravan move on without them haha.
One utility spell that’s my favorite is silence. The simple fact that you can keep everything quiet goes a long way. Like if you cast silence in that tower where you started fighting, you probably wouldn’t have to worry about reinforcements. My DM actually nerfed it a little by making the enemies notice that all the sound is suddenly gone.
Gotta get into the fun effects of Thaumaturgy. It’s useful in so many different social encounters, even combat! Doesn’t necessarily need to go boom and doom with it. Could make yourself glow and reasonant voice like a saint. Give you the childish appearance of innocence, with rosy cheeks and a mischevious twinkle in the eye. Make your voice seem to linger luxuriously, an enticing glimmer in the eye, and warmth through the room. Jabber like a madman, and have the voices echo about, with a queasy lilting of the corridor. Caper about with reckless abandon, and have a chorus of impish voices to encourage the goblins to join! Possibly prestidigitation’s prolific pal for performances!
Utility spells are always useful. My Pathfinder Explosion Mage always made sure to keep Mage Hand in her cantrips, although that was mostly because the DM agreed that it could be used to ensure my cape always flared in a properly dramatic manner. Because if you’re going to magic, you have to do it in style
Heh nice. That reminds me of the time my little Wayang Wizard had to ride an unconscious Cloud Giantess down off a floating demon-summoning pool platform WAY up in the sky and cast Feather Fall before we hit the ground. And for a little guy afterwards he felt pretty DARN proud for coming up with such a big idea… 🙂
Despite my personal love for necromancy, I’ve been playing utility wizards since I started tabletop gaming in the mid ’90s. Funny thing is that my longtime group once made fun of me because I was the only wizard in a party of casters who DIDN’T focus on Evocation. Feather Fall was actually the spell they made fun of the most, as in “when will you ever need it?” My answer: you just never know. Totally going to share this vid with them. 😉 Fast-forward to just last year, and I played Mines of Phandelver for the first time as a Lightfoot Halfling Abjurer who managed to keep a dragon occupied for two rounds through the judicious use of Shield and the Dodge action (along with some taunting) – long enough for the party to get our quarry (a certain bad guy spellcaster) and our injured (pretty much everyone, especially the Fighter) out of the room. It also bought our Ranger time to keep dishing out damage from a distance, eventually causing the aforementioned dragon to leave. Although I’m usually the DM, I tend to play utility and support as a player (so Wizards of Abjuration/Divination/Enchantment/Illusion/Transmutation specialization, Bards, and Rogues, with some Knowledge Cleric or Druid thrown in once in a while). I’m currently playing a Human Abjurer in a high-level Pathfinder game that’s close to ending, where I gave up Evocation and Necromancy and have been serving as the scholar, party buffer/transporter, and primarily the “anti-magic nuker” (heavy focus on the Dispel Magic line of spells and focused on Dispelling and countering magic of all types).
On the subject of spells our DM was running a 1shot where we were all level 20 wizards soooo level 9 spells, which lets be honest should never on any account be given to players… The DM had based it on the Circle of 8, and what had happened was we 4 the players had to fight 3 of the other wizards, one of us got turned evil as well which didnt help, so it was a 3v4 of good vs evil, we were losing quite spectacularly when suddenly one of us used Wish. He wished us to be back in time to before the fighting had started about 20 minutes prior, with all of us having our memories still. Smart move. Until it got slightly out of hand… Because we then managed to screw up again, so someone else used wish to go back in time, thus resetting everyone elses level 9 spell, at which point with every slight thing that went wrong we went back in time to fix it by using another wish and resetting everyone elses level 9 spell slot and the whole thing fell into a slight shambles We have since agreed to never using wish for anything time related ever xD
My most recent character was Divination Wizard 3, Knowledge Cleric 1, Bard 1. Only chill touch and magic missile for damaging spells. EVERYTHING else was either utility, healing, or some variety of information gathering. Feather fall was probably in my top 5 most used spells…. and somehow I was still the one to take down two of the bosses.
My storm sorcerer took the magic initiate feat just to get this spell. (Sorcerers don’t get enough spells to warrant such utility at low levels) a part of my backstory is this was his first spell and used it like an amusement park ride by climbing barns and trees and even the nearby cliff and then freefalling to the ground. Since flying is still several levels away, this is the next best thing.