Part of an ongoing series of 5e Rules notes.

This actually doesn’t come up very often, unless you have flying characters (insert cat hissing here). But sooner or later, at the very least you will encounter flying enemies — or else you’ll have people shooting down (or up) at you from a ledge in a big chamber, or things like that.

And inevitably the question will be asked: “How far away are you?”

So let’s consider a couple of approaches, since the question of how to deal with it is not addressed in RAW that I’ve been able to find.

How far away are you?

Let’s assume you are:

• shooting at something that is
• A feet away from you horizontally, and
• B feet above you (or below you) vertically.

For range purposes, what is the actual distance C you are firing/throwing?

1. Pythagoras

Huzzah for ancient Greek geometers. The actual distance C is the square root of (A² + B² ).

This is geometrically accurate, but also requires a calculator (or a right angle calculator).

2. Diagonals

This is actually a pretty clever workaround:  C = (A + (B/2)).

This “works” from extending the grid system and using the DMG 252 optional rules for diagonal movement (treat the first diagonal as 5 feet, the second as 10 feet, etc.).

In my games, we don’t use that style of movement because it’s a PitA and the basic grid rules on PHB 192 are fine enough — but for these purposes it makes for an easy head calculation.

But there’s a problem here we’re not talking about

This is all cool if you are just shooting lasers (or firing spells) — weapons that ignore gravity.

But a lot of these use cases are for when you twang with your bow, or throw something (often pointy).

Gravity is your enemy if you are twanging/throwing upward. It’s your friend, to a degree, when twanging/throwing downward.

Amusing memes aside, the high ground does carry an advantage.  But beyond that, aiming at things above you (or below you) isn’t something that most people train on.

So that brings us another suggestion:

3. Simple Math

If you are twanging/throwing at something higher than you, the effective distance C is (A + B).

If you are twanging/throwing at something lower than you, the effective distance C is the greater of A or B.

This takes into account that gravity is a bitch (harder uphill ranges), while keeping things easy and rewarding the high ground.

Let’s Test It.

Target	1. Pythagoras	2. Diagonals	3. Simple Math
100 ft away, 30 ft up	104	115	130
30 ft away, 100 ft up	104	115	130
100 ft away, 80 ft up	128	140	180
100 ft away, 100 ft down	141	150	100

Which is “best”? Whichever one is easiest and feels right. My house rule inclination is to go with Option 3 for everything, or, if you are feeling a bit more adventuresome, use Option 3 for thrown/twanged attacks, Option 2 for magic attacks.

Note that this affects the Bad Guys as much as it does you.