Jeff Wilder
First Post
I'm interested in comments on the below. Please don't bother with comments like, "Meh, it's simpler to use hit points, and who cares about realism anyway?" Obviously, I care, to some extent. I'm more interested in comments on whether the mechanics seem sound and represent what I intend for them to represent. I'm also interested in comments on the practical effect such changes would have in a game that had been using the 10'/1d6 rule.
House Rule Proposal -- Falling and Drowning Damage
D&D 3E introduced a brilliant concept into the game: ability damage. The most notable examples of its use are in poisons, diseases, and the damage of some undead, but it crops up occasionally in other places. The intention is that ability damage represents a form of "absolute" damage that the abstraction of hit points can't represent. For example, no matter how many hit points a powerful barbarian may have, he can be felled by deathblade poison that makes it into his bloodstream just as easily (or at least very nearly as easily) as a hardy commoner.
Ability damage effects typically allow some way to avoid the damage completely, but if that avoidance fails, the damage takes full effect. Poison and diseases have saves (in addition to circumstantial ways to avoid them). Undead must typically hit with an attack, and there is often a save as well.
3E missed the boat, however, and didn't use ability damage to its full potential. It can be expanded to cover any situations in which a PC's number of hit points isn't actually relevant to the deadliness of the effect, because the threat -- once it manifests -- cannot be avoided or mitigated by the character's skill at avoiding or absorbing abstract damage. Two areas in which ability damage -- specifically, Constitution damage -- should have been used are drowning (suffocation) and falling.
For drowning, 3E uses a subsystem that is seen in no other place. In the first round of effect, the PC drops to 0 hit points. In the second round, she drops to -1 hit points (dying), and in the third round she dies. Note that this is another way to simulate "absolute" damage to a PC, and it's very strange that 3E used it instead of ability damage.
For falling, 3E simply uses hit points, which leads to ridiculous results. The damage caps out at 20d6 (a 200 foot fall!), which is an average of 70 hit points damage and a max of 120. A high level character can easily and routinely survive falls from 1000 feet, while a commoner will usually die from a fall of 20 feet. Hit points are meant to represent abstract skill and toughness. Skill and toughness will not help someone survive a 200-foot fall (though they may very well help avoid it).
New rules:
Drowning: Once the PC is suffocating (after failing the Constitution check to continue holding her breath), she takes 1d6 Constitution damage per round. If any of this damage remains at the end of the round it is taken, the PC becomes unconscious.
Falling: For each 10 feet fallen, the PC takes 1d6-2 Constitution damage. For each size category smaller than Medium, the damage is one point less per 10 feet, to a minimum of 1d6-4 damage. For each size category larger than Medium, the damage is 1 point higher, to a maximum of 1d6+2 per 10 feet. Tumble and Jump can be used as normal to lessen the effective falling distance. For simplicity's sake, the maximum effective damage is 20d6 (plus modifiers). Finally, a Fortitude or Reflex save (DC equal to half the distance fallen) may be made to leave the PC with 1 Constitution point, and/or (if the PC had hit points remaining before impact) 0 hit points.
House Rule Proposal -- Falling and Drowning Damage
D&D 3E introduced a brilliant concept into the game: ability damage. The most notable examples of its use are in poisons, diseases, and the damage of some undead, but it crops up occasionally in other places. The intention is that ability damage represents a form of "absolute" damage that the abstraction of hit points can't represent. For example, no matter how many hit points a powerful barbarian may have, he can be felled by deathblade poison that makes it into his bloodstream just as easily (or at least very nearly as easily) as a hardy commoner.
Ability damage effects typically allow some way to avoid the damage completely, but if that avoidance fails, the damage takes full effect. Poison and diseases have saves (in addition to circumstantial ways to avoid them). Undead must typically hit with an attack, and there is often a save as well.
3E missed the boat, however, and didn't use ability damage to its full potential. It can be expanded to cover any situations in which a PC's number of hit points isn't actually relevant to the deadliness of the effect, because the threat -- once it manifests -- cannot be avoided or mitigated by the character's skill at avoiding or absorbing abstract damage. Two areas in which ability damage -- specifically, Constitution damage -- should have been used are drowning (suffocation) and falling.
For drowning, 3E uses a subsystem that is seen in no other place. In the first round of effect, the PC drops to 0 hit points. In the second round, she drops to -1 hit points (dying), and in the third round she dies. Note that this is another way to simulate "absolute" damage to a PC, and it's very strange that 3E used it instead of ability damage.
For falling, 3E simply uses hit points, which leads to ridiculous results. The damage caps out at 20d6 (a 200 foot fall!), which is an average of 70 hit points damage and a max of 120. A high level character can easily and routinely survive falls from 1000 feet, while a commoner will usually die from a fall of 20 feet. Hit points are meant to represent abstract skill and toughness. Skill and toughness will not help someone survive a 200-foot fall (though they may very well help avoid it).
New rules:
Drowning: Once the PC is suffocating (after failing the Constitution check to continue holding her breath), she takes 1d6 Constitution damage per round. If any of this damage remains at the end of the round it is taken, the PC becomes unconscious.
Falling: For each 10 feet fallen, the PC takes 1d6-2 Constitution damage. For each size category smaller than Medium, the damage is one point less per 10 feet, to a minimum of 1d6-4 damage. For each size category larger than Medium, the damage is 1 point higher, to a maximum of 1d6+2 per 10 feet. Tumble and Jump can be used as normal to lessen the effective falling distance. For simplicity's sake, the maximum effective damage is 20d6 (plus modifiers). Finally, a Fortitude or Reflex save (DC equal to half the distance fallen) may be made to leave the PC with 1 Constitution point, and/or (if the PC had hit points remaining before impact) 0 hit points.
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) to account for various damage types. In it, falling deals Nd6 damage to Vitality, and N to Wounds. For example, a fall that does 10d6 vitality damage, will also (potentially) do 10 damage to Wounds - enough to significantly injure anyone, whether a commoner or a hero.
On that note, I prefer (something like, for instance) a scaling DC Fort save for stabilisation, *not* the standard system. Blech.
