Your using a bad rule most people don’t know about, which leads to a lot of bad outcomes, from a source a lot of tables won’t have.

I think it’s truly best for the game to just not use this rule. As in, it’s dumb. The designers clearly agreed, given they didn’t bring this rule forward, but did bring the diving into liquid rule off the same page. TCoE 170.

This rule breaks peoples intuition of how they expect falling objects to behave. It’s harder to dodge a larger falling thing, and that it would do more damage. And of course easier to dodge a smaller falling thing, that would do less damage. Object still follow that rule, per the improvized damage rules, but for some reason creatures don’t? If you take that farther, at some point you’d have to put a stop to it, or else you’d end up ruling it’s a DC15 to dogde a city sized creature creature landing on you. So, where is that line?

If I had known ahead of time that we were using that rule, I wouldn’t have done the above combo. If I wanted to something similar in this scenario, I’d use conjure animals to drop 8 giant owls on top of the BBEG, because size doesn’t matter with this rule. You rolled one 16, but you still have to roll 7 more times to dodge the other creatures falling on you. That’s a potential 80d6 (8*20d6 split between the creature and the BBEG).

In the brontosaurus scenario as above, I would argue the falling player has advantage as a sort of unseen attacker, which means your rolling that saving throw at disadvantage. And most high(er) CR creatures have low dex mods. Doing the math here, this will work 84% of the time. Even if there dex mod is +5, it will still work 70% of the time. Even without advantage, 60%. It won’t be enough damage on to kill everything, but on average you can still kill some creatures up to CR12.

RAW, with only 1 player making 1 attempt with, it’s going to work out most of the time. You can say “you fools, I rolled a 16” all you like, but that only potentially saves your BBEG from the worst version of this combo. That’s without players debuffing dex saves through something like hex, using multi conjure spells, or trying multiple times.

Imagine how you would feel if your players did this to every one of your boss encounters, or even just your BBEG. I don’t think you would feel very respected at that point. I know I wouldn’t.

I’ve never met a player at a table who knows about this rule, the community clearly doesn’t know about this rule, hence the above meme, and the insect plague meme recently, and the old fairy/polymorph memes. Odds are this is going to be a surprise for one party or another, usually both. And it won’t be a fun surprise for either. I’m sure you’ve gone over this niche rule with your tables, but I find it much more likely that players expect to work like described in all these memes and posts, and yeah, they are gonna be mad when it doesn’t work like they would expect it to.

That’s why I’m telling you to not use these rules at all, to just avoid the whole concept that has been problematic for the entire history of the edition. Otherwise the optimal build for every charecter is to get as many 3rd level spells slots as they can.

• That’s what all the new content for the next 10 years will be based on. The old core rules are still there, but everything new will be based on the new books. That’s a lot like saying not everyone will be playing a sequel, which is true, but the community will shift over to it in time. The new PHB is there fasting selling book ever, so that gonna be pretty fast. Especially once more new content comes out and is incompatible with the old rules

• I don’t care about your moral argument here, even if I agree with your stance, that’s not what I’m here for. If your stance is that strong, I would recommend leaving DnD behind and moving to Pathfinder or another alternative, otherwise every new discussion will be covering materials you refuse to consume (for completely understandable reasons). Your players are going to want to something from the new rules at some point, and you will have to be the bad guy there. Even by being here and discussing the game, you are consuming the new rules and driving engagement with them.

• Ok? The new DMG is out. This rule is not in there.

• I find that unlikely. Everyone has the free rules, and a lot of the DMG content is in the free rules. You’d have to find some way of doing encounter math, which the free rules has, but I’m sure a lot of paper players have the DMG, even if just for that.

• They updated falling in the new PHB, including adding a DC15 (Athletics) or (Acrobatics) to change a fall into a dive when falling into a liquid to take half damage. Your telling me they couldn’t have added a very similar rule, or even added onto that section to include falling onto other creatures if they wanted to?

Your right, all of this doesn’t matter. This rule takes the fun out of dropping something big onto someone as size doesn’t matter for fall damage. Players might as well drop themselves onto the BBEG, same effect. You killed my fun, so I’m not participating with you.

If a simple nope ticks you off that much, I’m not sure who you could play with. Do you remember every rule interaction off the top of your head? Never get anything wrong? I play with players and DMs of vastly varying skill and experience levels and everyone gets something wrong every session. If someone corrects them and they snap about respect, whether DM or player, that’s a bridge too far and we would all be having words afterwards, if it didn’t derail the session right then and there.

Respect is something which is earned and goes both ways. Saying your rule is law like your Aku doesn’t seem very respectful.

First of all, lol, we are probably not very compatible.

Secondly, they are literally outdated in an official capacity. I find they are improved for the most part, but have fun being so self-righteous about them.

Thirdly, no, they have improvised damage rules, which they specifically list large objects falling on players as examples. Improvised damage under Combat in chapter 8.

That rule was optional in an add-on book most tables won’t have, and didn’t get brought forward into the new core rules, unlike the other optional rules. There’s probably a good reason for that.

Nope. Those rules are optional, and dumb, and now outdated.

Brontosaurus is gargantuan, so you’d have to do a lot more than side step to get out of the way.

No reason it wouldn’t block it, not sure what OP is on about

Rip, gotta find new players

Mates just practicing there stabbing

Is that first one Samsung or Android?

Like ok Google and Bixby? The only time I remember it coming up on s21 was when I touch earbuds with wet hands.

Yeah that sucks.

Like what? Seriously curious

Good thing they removed it in in the 2024 rules then

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules/character-classes#Barbarian

By Exhaustion undercutting Rage, do you specifically the 2014 Berserker barbarian? That’s the only one I know of that gets exhaustion from Rage, and it’s up to them whether they want to activate that feature( Frenzy) or not.

As some who argues about the rules a lot, most people know close to nothing about the actual, written rules.

If you do want to debate with someone about the rules, feel free to message me, I enjoy it much more than I should.

I’d rather just shuck external HDD than buy refurbs

Oh no

In theory, sure. But not with OP saying “Nah-uh” to everything. There’s just no fun to be had.

And I really enjoy arguing about game mechanics, just look back at me talking about that insect swarm/animal shapes nonsense people who know nothing about the game came up with.

I’d say I’d agree but there is no stretching here, you’d have to rule that a creature that is missing every part of its body is alive. You’d also have to rule that a pile of dust has a maximum HP of more than 0, or else you’d also be dead instantly.

You’d never get a death save, your already dead.

Well memed, but it’s no fun to try to argue with someone who will take everything in bad faith, even as a joke.

Mix equal parts flour and dish soap in seasoned baking tray, let set for 24-48 weeks, then bake in a preheated oven at 400°C immediately

Yes, this is what I live for.

Some of the conjure spells don’t give the stat blocks in the text of the spell, they list and link to the creatures you can summon as it wouldn’t make sense to list them all with the spell. There are usually more creatures than what’s listed, it depends on what creatures were around when it wasprinted, but it does give you stat blocks if it expects you to have a creature

Bag of tricks is particularly bad example as it only summons those monsters which are listed, which is more restrictive than most conjuration spells, and is an item.

Evard’s Black Tentacles and Cloudkill also summon a persisting damaging effect like insect plague does, but I still wouldn’t let you animal shape those.

Unseen Servant doesn’t even summon a full creature but it does list some stats and I’d probably rule you could animal shape as it at least has HP and AC to go off of.

Where in insect plague does it say it summons a swarm of insects? It doesn’t. If it did, it would that it conjures a swarm of insects and hyperlink the monster listing. It repeatedly referrs to the magical effect as either the sphere or the area.

Insects plagues effects also don’t line up the stats of swarm of insects,

4d10 damage, 20ft radius sphere, con save for half damage, cannot move

vs

medium sized swarm of tiny creatures, melee attack +3 to hit, 4d4 damage or 2d4 when >= half hp, can move 20ft

This actually brings up a good point…

How many insects are in a swarm? The stat block doesn’t actually list an amount, so how many (Large or smaller creatures) are going to appear?

And aren’t they going to to appear in the same space, since the swarm is copnglomerate medium creation, that would be several large creatures in one 5x5 space, would they even survive? Or are you going to be raining chunks of horse all over the battlefield?

Even if you said a 20ft radius sphere, there could potentially thousands of locusts in there. If you rule that they all move to an unoccupied space, your most likely going to cover your entire map with horses, horses fall and everyone dies.

On the range, I was just being precise about the real distance, but now that you mention, the druid would have to be within 30 feet to start the combo. Unlike actual summon spells, you have no way of communicating with or commanding the swarm of insects to fall. It can’t speak, with no listed languages and too low intelligence to learn one. Insect Plague is a magical effect with no senses whatsoever, and can’t move.

This loops back around to the whole “willing” part of animal shapes. Swarm of insects has no way of being willing or even communicating it’s willingness to be transformed. You could try charming the swarm of insects, except that they are immune to the charmed condition.

They are also immune to being knocked prone, so you can’t use that to make them fall as you might for another flying creature. Really they are immune to most other conditions, I can’t see one that would let you circumvent the inability to be willing or just mechanically make them fall.

There is no hard rule for one creature falling onto a other. There is however an optional rule in Tashas that states:

If a creature falls into the space of a second creature and neither of them is Tiny, the second creature must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be impacted by the falling creature, and any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly between them. The impacted creature is also knocked prone, unless it is two or more sizes larger than the falling creature.

Without this optional rule, we have no RAW or RAI way of determining the damage this would even cause.

Weight and size do not matter for fall damage, so you would actually be better off using medium creatures as you could hit large or larger creatures multiple times. Elephants are still really funny, although I would have used cows.

The worst part about all this combo that clearly does not work is that it uses a 5th and 8th level spell slot from two different PCs, or one over multiple turns, to do something that you can completely RAW using one 3rd spell slot to cast.

Conjure Animals lets you summon eight CR1/4 creatures, in an unoccupied space with a range of 60ft. Normal falling damage is 1d6 per 10 feet fallen, round down. So one conjured creature could be 5d6 damage. If you have a huge or gargantuan target, or multiple targets, this could be as high as 40d6. That would be enough to kill any gargantuan creature below CR11 assuming average HP.

Sorry if this is incomprehensible or too long, I wrote this over a couple hours in between errands and making dinner, but I did enjoy going over everything that goes into this.

TLDR: You wouldn’t polymorph a fireball.

Basically nothing about this works.

So first off, the insect plague isn’t a creature at all, it’s just a magical effect that appears like a bunch of locusts. It has no hit points or AC or Saving throws or any other game statistics.

When spells do summon a creature of some sort, they list a creature type, a maximum CR (or how many of each CR) you can summon, how to determine their initiative, their disposition towards you and your allies, what happens when they get to 0 Hp and what happens to them when the spell ends.

Animal shapes needs a few things to work that we don’t have here.

First off, the spells says to choose any number of willing creatures to transform, but we don’t have creatures, we have a magical effect. How could you say a magical effect that has no intelligence, will, thoughts, and lacks the ability to communicate in any way is “willing”?

Animal Shapes states the effect last the duration for each creature or until it drops to 0 HP. After that, it states that the creatures assumes the HP of the transformation, and then returns to its original HP when it’s transformation drops to 0 and any excess damage applies to the original form, but the insect plague doesn’t have any HP.

In between the information about HP, it states that it’s game statistics are replaced by the creature choosen, other than alignment and it’s mental stats. What game statistics? Insect plague doesn’t have any. What happens when one of the (Large or smaller creatures) is in the air and has no mental stats? It would either totally unable to act, or dead depending on how you interpret ability scores being zero. If it’s dead right after it gains it new form, it reverts to its original form, so again this just doesn’t work.

The worst part about this combo, is that you could probably do this, just not using insect plague. A couple of the conjure spells summon intelligent or even sentient creatures who could at least be interpreted as being willing. Find one that can fly, send them up in the air, and ready shape animals to cast then they are 30ft away. Note that that doesn’t mean 30ft up, you have to account for horizontal distance as well.