Can you misty step over an enemy and then fall down?

Question

Can you just use misty step to teleport over someone and then let yourself fall down? Or is the "space above someone" also occupied if he just stands on the ground? What's the RAW here?

Answer 1

Yes, you can misty step above someone.

There is nothing in the rules preventing this. Misty step says:

Briefly surrounded by silvery mist, you teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see.

If you can see the unoccupied space, you can teleport to it. The trouble is adjudicating what happens when you fall onto another creature.

Tasha's Cauldron adds an optional rule

What I describe towards the end is how I have done it for a while now, but Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduces an optional rule:

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.

I cannot speak from experience concerning this rule, as I have not used it yet at the table.

In my experience.

The rules are pretty silent concerning 3d space. Prior to Tasha's, there was nothing in the core rules to help us adjudicate the spaces above the ground, so the DM needed to work with the players to determine how to rule this. This silence has led to such Q&As as this one: Does the Evard's Black Tentacles spell affect the 5-foot cubes above its area?

In my games, I have allowed exactly the scenario you describe - using misty step or dimension door to teleport directly above an enemy. In these scenarios, I give the creature on the ground DC 10 dexterity saving throw to take full or half the falling damage the falling creature takes. I use DC 10 because it makes for a pretty easy save, and discourages abuse. My players have always enjoyed doing this and have never taken to abusing it.

So for example, if you use misty step to teleport 30 feet above a creature and fall onto them, they make a DC 10 dexterity save, taking 3d6 on a failure, or half that on a success. I've always used a quick Pythagorean Theorem calculation to determine how high you can appear based on how far away from the target creature you are when you misty step. The formula is:

$$\sqrt{900-d^2}.$$

Where \$d\$ is the ground distance from the creature you are trying to fall on. Here is a quick reference table with the distances I have allowed for misty step:

Distance from Target	Teleport Height	Fall Damage
5	30	3d6
10	25	2d6
15	25	2d6
20	20	2d6
25	15	1d6
30	0	0d6