Falling Damage - Anyone else hopes falling hurts just a little bit more?

[arscott]

Because velocity scales linearly with time while distance scales geometrically, velocity will actually rise slower than distance. So for instance, if you fall 100', you hit with less than twice as much force as if you'd fallen 50'.

For this reason, the 1d6/3d6/6d6/etc falling damage rule makes no sense. If anything, it would make sense to slow down the numbers a little at the higher end - requiring 250' to reach 20d6, for instance. However, the deviation over 200' is not that big, so linear works fine.

But it's the square of the velocity that matters. Have you ever heard someone say that a 60 mph car crash is four times as bad as a 30 mph crash? factor that in, and you're back to a linear scaling.

 

[The Shadow]

I've got a degree in physics, and could easily come up with a 'realistic' damage system for falling if I wanted. But I think, "Why bother?"

Falling damage is totally under the control of the GM. If I want a particular chasm to be a lethal fall, I don't bother giving it a height. Its height is 'lethal' and that's that. The way to survive is not to fall. An action point to save yourself doesn't so much let you survive the fall as *not fall in the first place*, or not nearly so far.

If I want a fall from a cliff to do 6d6 damage (or 8d12 or whatever) on a failed Climb check, I don't try to justify it by making the cliff the "right" height. It's high enough to do the amount of damage I want it to do, and that's that.

Now come the issues with PC's or NPC's picking people up and dropping them. But really, doesn't this boil down to, "Don't be a jerk?" The heroic fantasy genre doesn't really include picking people up and dropping them to their doom - *certainly* not as a strategy of the heroes! Nor is it something villains do to heroes, because that is just plain not a heroic way to die. (Scott Evil really *doesn't* get the way these things work.

If one does insist on a uniform system for falling damage, I think Celebrim was spot on - roll the dice, and if the character doesn't die (or if they spent an action point to minimize damage), find a reason why.

This doesn't have to be the Convenient Haystack, which I agree can be much overdone. It can simply be the hero managing to *not fall* - scrabbling at the brink of doom, hanging on through sheer willpower. This can still wear down hit points - because after all, aren't they supposed to partially represent luck and heroic resolve? As someone said upthread, heroes don't tend to plunge over cliffs at all - villains do. (The rare exceptions - Holmes, I'm looking at you - have this tendency to miraculously survive anyway.

 

[mmadsen]

The heroic fantasy genre doesn't really include picking people up and dropping them to their doom - *certainly* not as a strategy of the heroes! Nor is it something villains do to heroes, because that is just plain not a heroic way to die.

In virtually all sub-genres of adventure fiction, the villain dies by lunging at the hero, missing, and falling to his death.

 

[The Little Raven]

In virtually all sub-genres of adventure fiction, the villain dies by lunging at the hero, missing, and falling to his death.

And often returns later, after everyone thinks he is dead.

 

[apoptosis]

In virtually all sub-genres of adventure fiction, the villain dies by lunging at the hero, missing, and falling to his death.

That is true but is a very different scenario then the villain (or hero) actively levitating (or some similar action) the hero/villain and dropping them.

I think his worry is that if falling is so dangerous then the most obvious tactic is to levitate (or some similar method) and drop the opponent.

 

[The Shadow]

I think his worry is that if falling is so dangerous then the most obvious tactic is to levitate (or some similar method) and drop the opponent.

If you're referring to me, I'm not exactly worried about that.

Mainly because, if I were running a game of heroic fantasy, my group would be on board for that genre from the beginning, and we'd understand that levitating people and dropping them is just Something You Don't Do, even if it *would* be theoretically effective.

If someone were lame enough to try it anyway (but I can't imagine it - I know my group), it wouldn't be effective even theoretically in that situation.

If, instead, we'd decided to play a gritty, no-holds-barred dark fantasy, then we'd be on board for that. If someone wanted to use a levitation spell to drop people to their doom, I'd work out how much damage it could do, same as for fireballs and such. Naturally, using it to drop someone down a cliff would be situationally more lethal, just as fireballing someone sitting on a keg of black powder would be. But barring unusual environments, it would always do XdY+Z. Why should it be more privileged than any other form of combat spell?

Like I said, it's more a matter of "not being a jerk" - being on board with the campaign and its tone and staying consistent - than something that needs an elaborate set of rules.

And since the distance someone falls is entirely up to me anyway, what are those rules really netting me? Why do I need to know how high a cliff is to calculate the damage you take from falling off it? Does any GM really decide to put an 80' cliff in an adventure and then calculate how much damage it'll do if someone falls?

 

[The Shadow]

In virtually all sub-genres of adventure fiction, the villain dies by lunging at the hero, missing, and falling to his death.

Undeniably true, but I don't see how it's to the purpose.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

There's a problem with the argument being made that "you can survive ridiculously lethal things for other types of damage, then why not falling?" Falling is fundamentally different. Due to the abstract nature of HP most "damage" doesn't mean that you were stabbed and somehow survived, it means that some of your luck has run out, you took a minor cut that slowed you down, or something like that. (Yes I know that we all already know this) That doesn't work for falling. If you fall for 100 feet you're going to take physical damage. It's not a near miss. You don't graze the ground. You hit, hard, which is going to do a lot of physical damage. If you're actually taking physical damage then your HP must be all gone.

 

[IceFractal]

Re: Fireball not being all that hot:

It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze.

Now then, on to the main point - surviving a fall is not hard to explain at all. Most falls take place next to surfaces. So the falling character slows themselves down by grabbing at the surface. Not enough to stop their fall, but enough to slow down to a survivable speed.

Sure, sometimes you fall way out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to land on. That's when you pull out the "gust of wind"/"air elemental"/"minor divine intervention" explanation. Unless your campaign is based around falling off of airships, it won't come up enough to be unbelievable.


You want an effect that's hard to explain surviving? Try Acid Fog. This is a cloud of strong acid; strong enough to eat away at metal. And it's staying there, so "dodging behind something" doesn't work. And you can be standing in it talking and casting spells with verbal components, so there isn't even an excuse for why you aren't breathing it and causing your lungs to melt.

Acid Fog should realistically just kill you. Or at the least, burn off your skin, make you blind and unable to speak, and give you breathing problems. But guess what? It just does HP damage. So you can stand in one for several rounds and then walk out and go about your business as normal.

If you want realistic consequences, you need a revamp of the entire HP system, and combat is not going to be something you can have 4/day of and survive.

 

[IceFractal]

And for anyone who need deadlier, but not deeper, pit-traps in dungeons: Spikes! Put spikes at the bottom of your pit, and the problem is solved. Extra-long barbed spikes with poison on them, for good measure. Now that's a pit trap that people will fear.