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

[Craw Hammerfist]

The way to deal with falling damage is to pick a rule, any rule, and then design around the rule. When you are designing the encounter or setting, the potential for falling damage is there for a reason. You fit the potential damage (and thus the fall length) to the purpose. Want a pit trap that deals 4d6? Make it 40' deep. If the rules are changed to make falling damage 1d6, 3d6, 6d6 etc., then you make the trap only 23' deep.

Do you want a "certain death if you fall off this ledge" location? Make it as deep as you want. I wouldn't even bother with a depth. I'd just tell my players that "one peek over the edge was enough to convince you that certain death lay that route down."

 

[mmadsen]

I'd just prefer falling to be a little more painfull. With first level PCs able to take a bit more abuse maybe a bump to falling damage is in order. Or maybe a round or two of stunning.

I think this issue goes well beyond falling to the larger issues of realism, heroism, and abstract hit points. At any rate, surviving a great fall is one of the very deadly things we know people have nonetheless survived. As always, the issue isn't that a high-level D&D character can survive a great fall; it's that no "fresh" high-level D&D character can die from a great fall. There's not enough variance in outcome.

 

[Warbringer]

Been playing that way for years. Won't go back, either.

And I've been DMing that way

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Yeppers. I remember hearing/reading Gary saying that about falling damage. Same here..Ive used it since 1e or so. Makes falls a little more interesting anyway.

So- do you cap damage (say 20d6) or let it go higher?

I cap it at 10d6, which means 10d6+9d6+8d6, etc. Comes out to like 48d6 iirc.

 

[apoptosis]

Sure, as long as being set on fire, dragon bites, poison gas, rolling boulders with spikes, volleys of arrows, lightning strikes, and acid are all made more deadly as well.

Frankly, adventurers shouldn't be able to survive almost any of what they face on a daily basis, but somehow they do. I don't see why being able to survive a 100' fall is any more unlikely than surviving burning alive for an entire minute, being immersed in acid, or taking the full force of a blast that can melt gold - all of which do the same 10d6.

And keep in mind that falling is already deadly to 99%+ of the populace, perhaps moreso than in reality, in fact.

This has always been my position. Otherwise the best spell is aways make them fall from great height spell (guess they kinda had that in reverse gravity).

 

[Plane Sailing]

The rule that I've used to good effect is as follows

1d6 damage per 10ft fallen

but you receive 1d6 injuries, and you roll the falling damage per injury.

so a 10ft fall you might take 1 injury (1d6), 6 injuries (6d6) or anything in between.

A 50ft fall you might take 1 injury (5d6), 6 injuries (30d6) or anything in between.

This helps to account for low level people sometimes surviving longer falls, and gives an added edge of uncertainty to the potential damage you might receive, depending upon how badly you land.


Personally I hope that 4e comes up with a better thing for falling damage than 3e has, but if it hasn't I'll stick with my method above.

Cheers

 

[Zaruthustran]

I'd like to see the falling damage die increase to a d10, but I want the game to keep the simple "1 die per 10 feet" rule.

Also, I think that the core game rule for falling should include something like the following: "Before damage dice are rolled, a character may spend an action point to halve all falling damage."

This would provide a mechanical reason for both how the hero survives the 100' leap into water, but also give a reason why the mooks don't jump after him.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I had the ever popular experience of actually falling off a roof, which was about 10 ft high. I broke my damn shoulder and was incapacitated, and I'm pretty sure I have a few more than 6 HP. Personally, I think a reasonable way to handle it that would take into account height as well as the possibility that someone could fall literally miles and not die is to change falling damage into a saving throw, with a sliding scale for damage. For instance, make a Fortitude save at DC 15 for a 10 foot fall. make the save and you get lucky to land without problems. Miss the save and you suffer an amount of damage that scales by how badly you missed your save. For instance, say you roll a 1. Oops, broken neck. Your hit points drop to zero and you are now dying. Miss by 10 and you take 1d6 points of damage for every hit dice. Miss by 5 and you take 1d4 HP damage for every hit die you possess. Miss by less than 5 and you merely take 1d6 points of damage.

Now as you increase the falling distance, you would need to make the save tougher. The question is how much tougher? Adding +1 to the save for every 10 feet seems like not enough, but +5 per 10 feet might be too much. Also, I'd think that the save DC would increase more for the first few increments of 10 than the last few increments of 10 until one hits terminal velocity. So there would probably be a chart that would determine the save DC. Rolling a 20 would always result in your character surviving, no matter how high the save DC is. So, if your party were on the space shuttle when it broke up on re-entry, there is a chance that there might be a survivor, but the odds against the whole party surviving are pretty astronomical.

 

[BASHMAN]

I hope that falling damage not only scales by distance, but the size of the faller-- d6/increment for medium, 1d4/small, 1d8/large, d10 huge, etc. The bigger they are the harder they fall. To that end, bigger creatures should have climb penalties that at least equal their STR boost from size (and small creatures get climb bonuses).

 

[robertliguori]

I had the ever popular experience of actually falling off a roof, which was about 10 ft high. I broke my damn shoulder and was incapacitated, and I'm pretty sure I have a few more than 6 HP. Personally, I think a reasonable way to handle it that would take into account height as well as the possibility that someone could fall literally miles and not die is to change falling damage into a saving throw, with a sliding scale for damage. For instance, make a Fortitude save at DC 15 for a 10 foot fall. make the save and you get lucky to land without problems. Miss the save and you suffer an amount of damage that scales by how badly you missed your save. For instance, say you roll a 1. Oops, broken neck. Your hit points drop to zero and you are now dying. Miss by 10 and you take 1d6 points of damage for every hit dice. Miss by 5 and you take 1d4 HP damage for every hit die you possess. Miss by less than 5 and you merely take 1d6 points of damage.

Now as you increase the falling distance, you would need to make the save tougher. The question is how much tougher? Adding +1 to the save for every 10 feet seems like not enough, but +5 per 10 feet might be too much. Also, I'd think that the save DC would increase more for the first few increments of 10 than the last few increments of 10 until one hits terminal velocity. So there would probably be a chart that would determine the save DC. Rolling a 20 would always result in your character surviving, no matter how high the save DC is. So, if your party were on the space shuttle when it broke up on re-entry, there is a chance that there might be a survivor, but the odds against the whole party surviving are pretty astronomical.

I vote that we take a shortsword and stab you for comparison purposes. In the name of science. Optionally, we can set you on fire.

As mentioned, there are any number of things that adventurers can do that should be fatal. I personally see it not as a weakness of the rules that they aren't; I see it as an expression that you are simply that inhumanly tough. Or, if you like, you're that guy, who manages to walk away from an auto accident, or getting struck by lightning, or getting attacked by a shark. It's not that these things aren't dangerous; on average three HP is all it takes to incapacitate in most cases. It's that you are that badass.