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

[Celebrim]

As mourn mentioned earlier in the thread, players are routinely bathed in acid, literally showering in dragon fire, and walk out just fine even if they completely fail their reflex save. But someone falling is what balks people's sense of disbelief.

And Celebrim, though I'm quoting you, this is not directed at you specifically, there are obviously a lot of people that feel strongly about this issue.

Even though I recognize that its directly at the class of players I belong to, and not me specifically, don't worry about hurting my feelings by saying that you don't understand or agree with my position. I'm tough. I'm a grown up.

Perhaps it is the real world aspect of it, we've all taken a fall, but few people here have ever taken an acid bath.

I think that that is part of it. Falling and hitting a hard surface is more concrete than most sorts of D&D damage, and we all know how it ought to hurt. But I think as much as anything it has to do with the nature of D&D's abstract damage system.

Most of the time, you can quite easily describe the action in such a way that the hero escapes most of the damage where the same attack would have killed an ordinary person. But falling is one of those cases where the heroes incredible heroics doesn't seem like it ought to help. In particular, I can roll an attack from a Frost Giant and figure out the damage and whether its going to drop the PC before I describe the event. But falling or being emmersed into something deadly are cases where the event is described explicitly before the damage is generated in so much as the event of falling involves moving from the top to the bottom of the fall regardless of the damage taken, and being emmersed involves being emmersed regardless of the damage taken. Conditions other than the character's hit points have changed in concrete ways.

Let's contrast that. Suppose someone throws a beaker of acid at a character. There are all sorts of explanations for how this doesn't involve the character's face melting off. The beaker could have been swatted aside, partially dodged, could have held a fairly weak acid, the character could have been partially protected by his armor or even clothing, most of the acid could have ended up on the floor, and so forth. Note, how much differently this attack works in D&D if the character is actually helpless. Then, it is 'coup de grace' and is very likely to involve something like the character's face melting off.

Falling isn't like that. Essentially, falling or being emmersed in something deadly contains in it the idea of helplessness already, in so much as the condition change required by the event precludes explaining it away (completely). Something concrete happened, and the expectation is for concrete rather abstract damage and the character's heroic skill just doesn't seem to apply except to avoiding the situation in the first place. Note in fiction that heroes don't normally fall off precipices or into extremely deadly things - villains do. Heroes are threatened by these things, but avoid them and thier foe is sent hurtling to thier doom. The expectation of the story is that if you don't avoid them, it is bad.

With falling, you can occassionally handle unexpectedly low damage by ruling that the character 'fell into a haystack/swimming pool/snow bank' or some other convienent soft thing that happens to be there. But after the third or fourth time this happens, you have a problem with genera blindness in as much as, "Where did that haystack come from? It wasn't there before?" This is a particular problem when the surface being fallen on is well described, ei, "I KNOW that haystack wasn't there before!".

 

[Stalker0]

But after the third or fourth time this happens, you have a problem with genera blindness in as much as, "Where did that haystack come from? It wasn't there before?" This is a particular problem when the surface being fallen on is well described, ei, "I KNOW that haystack wasn't there before!".

Isn't that the same effect as the third or fourth time you miraculously found that small piece of terrain to hide behind as the dragon melts everything but you with its breath weapon?

Here are some story ways to represent surviving falling damage:

1) Haystack
2) Highly muddy ground
3) Body of water
4) Catch onto a branch (the classic story way
5) Fall slowed by an intense gust of wind.

And of course those are the most mundane ways. In a fantastical world, you certainly could toss an even more fantastical reason.

6) Divine intervention
7) The help of a nearby mephit or air elemental
8) You grabbed on to a passing pegasus that was going by.
9) Gravity was weakened in the area, a result of some wizard's experiment.

 

[Nadaka]

This whole issue can be negated by using W/VP instead of HP.
Falling deals wound damage.
Most humans have fewer than 18 wounds.
Most humans will die from a 60ft fall.

To scale that to heroic levels, allow an action point to be spent to deal normal damage instead.

 

[Celebrim]

Isn't that the same effect as the third or fourth time you miraculously found that small piece of terrain to hide behind as the dragon melts everything but you with its breath weapon?

Yes, and no.

First of all, almost all the explanations you give are 'haystacks' of one sort or the other. Almost all of them are going to start looking like divine intervention by the third time that they happen, they are in literature 'deux ex mechina', and to a certain extent that's ok. So let's accept that by suggesting swimming pools, haystacks, and snow banks that I knew ahead of time that I could disguise the haystack in different clothes.

Secondly, let's not make this a discussion about dragon's breathe because I have other specific issues with dragon's breath and I don't want to get sidetracked. The more common example is, 'Why did so-and-so get a saving throw versus a fireball when there was nothing he could have done to escape it?', and if it's ok, I'd rather stick to that one. If not, I'll delve into dragon's specifically.

Thirdly, one of your examples is a cheat. 'Catching on to a branch' implies that the character didn't fall. There is nothing game breaking about having a character not be damaged if they didn't actually fall, but the notion of falling otherwise implies you are now down at the bottom of the drop. In almost every falling circumstance, I tend to give players a chance to make a climb check to grab on to the surface that they are falling off of or down. If they succeed, they don't take damage, or don't take damage for a full fall. This works out well, in that it creates cinematic action and in as much as I've made falling more of a nuisance I don't want to create single roll save or die situations out of falls. So, players generally get 'second chances'. But this really has nothing to do with the problem of the current falling rules.

OK, so, back to the question of 'How is this different than a fireball?'. First of all, falling was as deadly as Dragon's Breath or Fireball has historically been, I doubt the question would have come up. Particularly in earlier editions, either was a save or die situation. Historically, the damage from this sorts of attacks has been high, rather than low. (In fact, 3E explicitly nerfed the fireball it had been such a problem, and I still have the opposite problem with Dragon's Breath which is why I don't want to get side tracked.)

Secondly, we really don't know how hot a fireball is. Certainly it is potentially lethally hot, but we have no real measure of how hot it is and how well a reasonably experienced person might survive that sort of fire (say by not sucking up a big lungful of flame). We can't really say that Fireball burns up everything in the environment, because for one thing according to the rules it doesn't in fact, and for another because average 35 points of fire damage is not enough to burn up all the objects in the environment even if we ruled that fireball effected objects. Likewise, we don't know that everywhere in a fireball (or a dragon's cone of flame) is equally hot. Perhaps some areas are randomly hotter than others? So, the point is that the damage inflicted by fireball is abstract in way that, 'I was at the top of a 100' cliff and now I'm at the bottom.' isn't.

But, you are right that the question of, 'Where did you find miraculously find cover from the attack?' is a good one, it's just that I don't think that its a good criticism of the amount damage done by fireballs or dragon's breath. How hot either is is somewhat arbitrary, and can be accepted at that level. (In the novelization of Dragon Lance there is a scene where they come upon a melted stone town that always annoyed be because it implied dragon breath was so scorching hot that it should never be survivable.) What it is though is a good criticism of the saving throw mechanic, but I agree with Gygax's justification in the 1st edition DMG - heroes should always have some chance of surviving. It's not that I think 100' falls should be invariably lethal to a hero. It's that I think that they shouldn't be invariably safe.

The problem people have with falling isn't that it could allow a saving throw. The problem that they have is with the magnitude of the damage that is usually at stake, and hense, the correspondingly silly depth pits tend to have in D&D in order to make them some sort of threat.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Here's a couple of real life explanations that actually happened to me, that could have just as well been D&D experiences. Once, when I was about 16 or 17, I fell off a 30 foot bluff. As I fell, I instinctively grabbed out for anything I could reach. I happened to grab a small vine that ran up a tree nearby. I swung out about 1 feet and then the vine started slipping. It slipped about 3 feet then caught on something momentarily, slipped another few feet, then again, until it finally gave way nd I fell about 10 feet onto a slope which I then rolled down, which absorbed even more energy from the fall. When I finally stopped rolling, I stood up with hardly a scratch. In D&D terms, the 3d6 came up all ones.

Another time, when I was young and dumb, the truck overheated. I decided to open the radiator cap just a little, to let off the pressure. I turned it just about an inch, and then BAM! The cap blew off and VERY hot antifreeze leaped out at me! I threw my arm up and turned my head away and the result was only a very, very red, and very, very tender arm, and a hell of a lot of pain. Again, I was lucky and made my save, and the dice came up all ones.

A friend of my father's was a paratrooper in WW2. His chute failed to open and he fell thousands of feet and landed in a freshly plowed field. He got up, walked several miles to the nearest town where he was hospitalized with a broken back and spent 6 months in the hospital. I figure he walked into town hanging on to his last hit point, praying a stray goblin wouldn't cross his path.

But, as a couple of people already stated, I was damned scared both times, I didn't just yank the radiator cap off thinking I'd burn an arm hair or two and be about my business. Nor, I am positive, did my father's friend just say "piss on it, I don't need no stinking parachute!" So, haystacks or not, it does happen.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmm.....I think I understand how acceleration works, but I think that fails to take into account that the faster you fall per second, the more distance you will cover before you speed up again. Or to put it another way, while you may be accelerating twice as fast during the 2nd second of falling, your also covering twice as much distance so it would kind of even out on damage per 10 feet.

It's not the distance, it's the speed at that distance that matters.

05 feet: 18 feet per second
10 feet: 25 feet per second
15 feet: 31 feet per second
20 feet: 36 feet per second
25 feet: 40 feet per second
30 feet: 44 feet per second (or 30 miles per hour)

This almost looks linear like you mentioned. However, the problem is that one has to (effectively more or less) cube the velocity to find out how much impact it has on a body. So, although falling 30 feet is only 6 times as far and 2.4 times as fast as 5 feet, it is nearly 15 times as devastating. In real life, 5 foot falls tend to hurt and slightly damage whereas 30 foot falls tend to kill. Going from 30 miles per hour to 0 miles per hour instantly is really harmful. 3D6 damage does not even come close to emulating this. Typically, the main thing slowing a falling person up is the compression of his own body beneath him.

 

[apoptosis]

Yes, and no.

F Perhaps some areas are randomly hotter than others? So, the point is that the damage inflicted by fireball is abstract in way that, 'I was at the top of a 100' cliff and now I'm at the bottom.' isn't.

Though a higher level caster who can throw a fireball (maximize or whatever) that does enough to destroy stone in the area (does enough HP damage) You still have these issues.

We know a fire hot enough to destroy stone that is spread in the area of a fireball is almost invariably going to kill anyone (frankly i believe it probably has a higher % death ratio than the falling examples). There is not a recorded case that i know of, of someone who survived a funeral homes incinerator (of course I could be wrong and this is not exactly the same thing being modeled).

So while I agree with you on some levels, I think in the end the issue of consistency still remains.

 

[mmadsen]

On the other hand, elephants also can kill people very very easily (most dangerous animal at the zoo).

My point was not that elephants aren't dangerous. My point was that large, angry monsters are defeated by avoiding their devastating attacks, not by withstanding them -- and avoiding their attacks is something a human can do in real life without superpowers.

 

[apoptosis]

My point was not that elephants aren't dangerous. My point was that large, angry monsters are defeated by avoiding their devastating attacks, not by withstanding them -- and avoiding their attacks is something a human can do in real life without superpowers.

I just didn't want you dissing on elephants

 

[arscott]

I don't think that damages my main point at all. So, the designers found that in order to justify the very low damage from the main gun of a MBT, they also had to make a 40-60 ton MBT be something that has about the same hit points as a large (non-fantastic) bear.

That's right. Of all the 60 ton 'creatures' you are likely to encounter, the MBT has the least durability.

But the bear doesn't have hardness 20. And given that D20 Modern Damage is typically lower than D&D3.5 damage after 3rd level or so, the hardness means something.

The most important aspect that you're missing though, is that the bear dies at -10 and the tank dies at -60. The vehicle rules were designed to make vehicles easy to disable but hard to destroy. You could argue that vehicles don't work that way, but given that the designer in question commanded a platoon of tanks in Desert Storm, I'm inclined to side with him on this.