I have personally fallen 35 feet onto a hard, flat surface.
The results:
First off, I was winded, and it hurt. Oh, how very much it hurt.
I had landed on my feet, and my back hurt. But my feet felt okay. That rattled around for a while before I realized that I might be paralyzed from the waist down. Instant panic.
Wriggle the left big toe. Seemed to work.
Wriggle the right big toe. Seemed to work.
Elation! I just dropped 35 feet and I'm okay!
When I tried to get up, however, the fractures in my right heel became a bit more...obvious, shall we say? A shard of bone severed my right Achilles tendon. The heel bone itself was in four pieces (I still have three screws in that foot to this day). This hurt somewhat more than the fall.
At the hospital, I discovered that I had broken my back in four places: L1, L2, L3, and L4 vertebrae. In addition (and much later) I discovered that I had also broken my left ankle....by the time this had been discovered it had already healed badly, and I was given the choice of break & reset (no thank you) or deal with it (yes please). I was told that I would probably never walk without the assistance of a cane, and if I could even walk around well with the assistance of a cane I should consider myself lucky.
I honestly doubt that D&D should model this very well, even if it could be modelled. Better to go the REH/ERG route and say that something happened allowing the PC to survive the fall relatively intact.
(As luck would have it, I healed much, much better than expected, and only when there is a rapid shift in weather, or if I am getting ill, do I even have a noticeable limp.)
RC