Falling from Great Heights

[Savage Wombat]

That reminds me - do we want believable falling damage in 5E?

If people have fewer HP, that'll help, but even in 1E characters jumped from terminal velocity heights all the time.

Is this a bug or a feature?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

To me, the ability for higher level character to fall great distances is a feature, but for a whole lot of other folks, it is definitely a bug. This is another thing where it'd be nice to have an in-built dial, so that you can set the lethality of falling damage as high or low as you like for the style of game that you want to run.

 

[Incenjucar]

The thing is that actual real life human beings have survived terminal velocity falls. The idea that a demigod-slaying paladin can't take the same impact is a bit mind-bending.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't really have a problem with falls from great heights, but I dial up the damage in an exponential manner. 100 feet is 100x the damage instead of just 10x the damage.

 

[Szatany]

The thing is that actual real life human beings have survived terminal velocity falls. The idea that a demigod-slaying paladin can't take the same impact is a bit mind-bending.

I don't think the problem is that a high level character might survive a fall from a great height. The problem is that he will, for certain, survive it. If falling damage was to be more random, if even an epic character would pause before jumping 100 ft. down, then I would have no problem with it.

IMO it would be ideal if corebook had a few modules for varying styles of play.
Cinematic: falling beyond 10 ft. causes damage equal to distance fallen -10 ft.
Fantasy: falling beyond 10 ft. causes damage equal to distance fallen -10 ft. Then roll a 1d6 for every 10 ft. you've fallen and add results to damage.
Realistic: falling beyond 10 ft. causes damage equal to distance fallen -10 ft. Then roll a 1d6 for every 10 ft. you've fallen and add results to damage. For every 6 you roll, roll another 1d6.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

It's a bug. It has always been a bug, an artifact of the wonkiness of HP in general. There are a number of situations, like falling, like lava, where a character's experience, skill and luck (which is what HPs represent) would have no realistic impact on survivability. For the most part we accept this because HP is so damn convenient.

I think the solution is to have some kind of 'save or die' roll after a given fall distance, with the DC increasing by distance. For example, take 1d6 damage per 10' fall; in addition falls over 40' require a DC 12 save or the character dies from massive trauma. For each 10' beyond 40', the DC increases by 2. (I don't know if these are the right numbers BTW; just an example of the kind of model I think should be used).

That way we don't have ridiculous metagamey situations where people can jump from a mountain because they know they have the HP to survive.

 

[Mattachine]

I like how the 3e and 4e DMGs noted that the DM may rule that certain things cause certain death.

Falling damage can scale whatever way you want, but really high falls should just kill. Likewise, immersion in lava kills. The DMG should provide some examples and guidelines, but not everything has to rely on hit points.

 

[Minigiant]

Bug?
What bug?

Heroes leap off the exploding roof or window ledge of the evil headquarters and survive.

You want them to die? That's not awesome.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't really have a problem with falls from great heights, but I dial up the damage in an exponential manner. 100 feet is 100x the damage instead of just 10x the damage.

You should have a cap though.

 

[Dausuul]

My preferred solution is to take, say 1d6 damage per 10 feet fallen, up to a max of 20d6. But the dice explode; if you roll a 6, you roll an extra die, and keep rolling as long as you keep rolling sixes.

The result of this is that you are never guaranteed to survive a fall, but the odds are not slugged overwhelmingly against you. Couple this with a system which keeps PC hit points down to sane values, and I think it works. A 200-foot fall deals an average of 84 damage, with pretty wide variance; enough that no PC can complacently step off a cliff. But you could roll a bunch of ones and very few sixes and walk away.