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

[Darrin Drader]

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.

That might work for a guy jumping off a cliff and living once. But D&D characters can do it over and over and over, and so long as they rest up first, their survival is almost guaranteed. That stretches the verisimilitude just a little too far for me personally.

 

[Lurker37]

Perhaps a rule that being able to survive the fall is one thing, but being able to just get up and walk away is another?

I have more trouble with the idea of falling long distances without breaking anything than falling long distances without dying. The latter has been known to happen in real life, the former, not so much.

But I don't recall much in the way of rules for broken bones in 3.5 core. It doesn't mesh well with the abstract hit points system. I'm really not sure how to introduce this even as a house rule without it cascading into a new layer of complexity the rules really don't need: "I hit him for ten points of damage with my war hammer - is his arm broken yet?" "No, but in return the ogre hits your leg for 20 with the tree he's wielding - your leg's definitely broken." "Oh, damn!"

Just throwing another idea into the pot - maybe someone can do something with it.

 

[apoptosis]

That might work for a guy jumping off a cliff and living once. But D&D characters can do it over and over and over, and so long as they rest up first, their survival is almost guaranteed. That stretches the verisimilitude just a little too far for me personally.

You can make that arguments though for most all the deadly things that happen to characters.

Fireballs, lightning bolts, being impaled, head crushed by a giants club.

HPs either has to be a measure of toughness and high level characters really are that tough.

or they are abstract and are different measures of toughness, luck, protagonist virtue

My favorite definition for hp is "the ability to survive till the end of the story"

For me there is a disconnect to say that since no one should reliably be able to survive 100' fall it shoudl surpass the HP mechanic unless you are going to apply that to all scenarios where someone shouldnt survive some horrible certain doom.

 

[StarFyre]

falling

I am all for adding realism and depth to games but...

even in real life, there are videos of sky divers who have chute issues, etc and live after falling 1000s of feet. The example of the guy who fell 500 is another.

I think the key is that it's super rare.

Religious people say god saved them or it's a miracle. SCience types say due to wind, baggy clothes, a perm, etc whatever, slowed him down, etc...whatever it is. and people like me, don't really care and would rather have a video of them splatting into the ground

Anyways, point is, since there is a chance to live in real life, as long as there is a chance for characters in D&D to live, and I would say raise the chance a bit more since they are well above average people..hell, they are above the world's best athletes and soldiers, i think 1d6 or even 2d6/level is good. Or you could do a special, save or death, or whatever you like, as long as there is a chance to live.

Sanjay

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I like the idea of the using the increasing damage dice, along with a HR I have that any damage that deals more that 10 dice, any 1's deal CON damage. This replaces the massive damage rules, and IMHO handles the suspension of disbelief issues with falling huge distances with apparent impunity.

Unfortunately this HR is only theoretical so far as I haven't had anyone take that many dice in damage yet. :\

If combined with the increasing dice option, that would mean any fall over 50' has the chance to be hazardous to the character. Which, in my limited experience at rock climbing, fits nicely.

 

[Nyeshet]

Man falls 500' and lives. Last December in Manhattan. 50d6? That would probably kill most heroic characters.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/03/skyscraper.fall.survivor.ap/

Dr. Herbert Pardes, the hospital's president, described Moreno's condition when he arrived for treatment as "a complete disaster."

Both legs and his right arm and wrist were broken in several places. He had severe injuries to his chest, his abdomen and his spinal column. His brain was bleeding. Everything was bleeding, it seemed.

In those first critical hours, doctors pumped 24 units of donated blood into his body -- about twice his entire blood volume.

They gave him plasma and platelets and a drug to stimulate clotting and stop the hemorrhaging. They inserted a catheter into his brain to reduce swelling and cut open his abdomen to relieve pressure on his organs.

Moreno was at the edge of consciousness when he was brought in. Doctors sedated him, performed a tracheotomy and put him on a ventilator.

His condition was so unstable, doctors worried that even a mild jostle might kill him, so they performed his first surgery without moving him to an operating room.

Nine orthopedic operations followed to piece together his broken body.

Yet, even when things were at their worst, the hospital's staff marveled at his luck.

Incredibly, Moreno's head injuries were relatively minor for a fall victim. Neurosurgeon John Boockvar said the window washer also managed to avoid a paralyzing spinal cord injury, even though he suffered a shattered vertebra.

"If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one," said the hospital's chief of surgery, Dr. Philip Barie.

New York-Presbyterian has treated people who have tumbled from great heights before, including a patient who survived a 19-story fall, but most of those tales end sadly.

The death rate from even a three-story fall is about 50 percent, Barie said. People who fall more than 10 stories almost never survive.

[snip]

Alcides Moreno, whom his wife described as strong and athletic, may have clung to his scaffolding platform as it dropped. It is possible that the metal platform offered him some protection, although doctors said they were unsure how.

[snip]

The injured window washer spent about three weeks on a ventilator, unable to speak, and initially his only means of communication was by touch.

[snip]

He was scheduled to undergo another spinal surgery on Friday, and he will need another operation to reconstruct his abdominal wall. There is a chance he could develop complications, even life-threatening ones, during the months ahead.

Moreno will remain in the hospital for at least a few more weeks, doctors said. After that, he will need extensive physical rehabilitation. It may be another year before doctors know how much he will improve.

The medical staff was guarded Thursday about his prospects for returning to a normal life. Doctors said they believe he will walk, but they also suggested that some of his injuries are likely to be lifelong.

His survival is astonishing, but consider the work needed to keep him from dying during the following hours (effectively replacing all the blood in his body - twice, nine operations needed to put his body back together again, etc). Of course, from how he is described ("strong and athletic"), it would seem he had above normal physical ability scores (at least in Str and perhaps in Con) and - from their statement of this still seeming to be a miracle, perhaps he used an action point. Granted, I tend to think that an actual miracle likely was involved.


More interesting to me, however, is the offered statistic. (Who knows how accurate it actually is, however.) Those falling from 30 ft (3 stories) tend to have ~ 50% survival rate. Those falling 100 ft (10 stories) almost never survive (so ~1% survival rate?).

Perhaps from these we can begin to put together a more realistic damage setup for falling?

I'm of the opinion that perhaps for falling we should bypass hp and go directly to Con - perhaps using Fort saves for every 5 feet after the first 5 ft, with a loss of 1 Con for every save failed. While it could explain someone surviving such vast distances as shown above (he made enough saves to keep from losing all Con and dying), it would still suffer from paragon level heroes likely having high enough fort saves to survive any fall with little damage. (I'm not worried about epic tier heroes surviving with little damage; in fact, I expect them to do such.)

So perhaps some Con damage is nearly automatic? Or perhaps the Fort save increases for each save, such that hero tier PCs are likely to fail most saves, paragon tier PCs are likely to succeed in the saves at first but after a while begin to fail them, and epic tier PCs might actually be able to make all (or nearly all) saves from nearly any height. Perhaps to simulate terminal velocity we could state that the fort save DC increases by +1 until it reaches +20, at which point it no longer increases?


I'm just brainstorming ideas at the moment, so I expect there are still numerous problems with what I have suggested, but perhaps it is worth further consideration.

 

[mmadsen]

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.

Of course, you could turn all damage into a saving throw.

 

[The Little Raven]

Simple. We have no experience of any of that other stuff, but everyone knows that falling hurts. It's the same reason that no one bats an eye when Bruce Willis gets shot at in Die Hard, but everyone cringes when he walks on the glass with bare feet. We know how that would feel.

A Serbian stewardess fell 33,316 feet (roughly 6 miles), breaking both legs, fracturing her skull and breaking three vertebrae. She was temporarily paralyzed, but regained full mobility after surgery. If a civilian in the gritty, real world can survive a fall of 6 miles and recover fully with treatment, then I see no reason that a hero in a heroic fantasy setting can't fall 100 feet and walk away.

 

[mmadsen]

If a civilian in the gritty, real world can survive a fall of 6 miles and recover fully with treatment, then I see no reason that a hero in a heroic fantasy setting can't fall 100 feet and walk away.

But should he be able to fall 100 feet and walk away with zero fear of even twisting an ankle. Should he be able to drink a healing potion to heal his non-wounds and do it again? And again? And never break a bone?

 

[Darrin Drader]

Of course, you could turn all damage into a saving throw.

Of course. That's how True20 handles it, and right now my gaming group and I are enjoying that system immensely.