D&D 5E Falling Rules and actually Falling

Firstly, I think I would use an idea I've seen suggested a number of times that falling damage be based on size rather than just being d6 per 10'. HD size per 10' seems appropriate: slightly more dangerous for medium sized creatures (d8) and hugely more dangerous for the largest creatures and for creatures below Tiny non-existent (3.x calls these 'Fine' or 'Diminutive' as a size). This falls more under a 'real world physics' type rule.

Secondly, there seems to be a pretty commonly voiced desire to not have characters fall 'lethal' feeling distances without a high likelihood of fatal consequences. A number of threads have proposed solutions that add additional mechanics to result in more lethal consequences for these falls. That said, the issue might be defining a 'lethal distance'.

My proposal is that it be tier based and might vary depending on the level of 'gonzo' for your campaign. For example in a pretty mundane level of 'gonzo':
Tier 1 = 20', for levels 1-3 anything beyond a 20' fall might be potentially lethal in feel.
Tier 2 = 40', levels 4-10
Tier 3 = 60', levels 11-16
Tier 4 = 120', levels 17+

Or alternately just think of it as the height you'd allow a character to fall and still stick a variant of the 3-point or Superhero landing.



Or how high does my level 1, 8 Con Wizard need to fall before he even has a chance of invoking massive death instead of just being prone and waking up after an hour most of the time.

So at this point let's say we picked an increasing distance progression where the feel is right for how far a character can fall before a Suspension-of-Disbelief(tm) threatening event occurs. So beyond that you slap on your Make-It-More-Deadly house rule.

But what else happens when a character falls long distances? In a typical scenario lasting a very short period of time they are out of the encounter. From a narrative or cinematic standpoint they might as well be dead/unconscious. For each tier the characters can fall a certain distance and rejoin the encounter but for many classes it doesn't have to be very far before there are probably done for the fight.

Now some of this depends on how you model hit points and narrate damage. If HP loss requires physical damage and must be commensurate with the cause than this is probably off the table, but if you have your hit point loss be more stamina/luck/ablative then this alternative may be an option.

When a character falls beyond the distance for their tier and the damage total is less than their current hit points they do not actually fall that distance. Instead they subtract the damage and only fall some distance between 0 (catch the edge) or 'grab/are snagged by' something on the way down up to the tier distance and hang there. Alternately some combo of events where they fall the distance but it can be plausibly not fatal (see Peter Parker in Spiderman 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QVjG6V1yqc at the :40 mark).

The character's hit points are reduced (consequence is applied) but they can still participate and the Suspension of Disbelief is not harmed irreparably. This falls more within pretty much every instance of a potential fall in a movie/show short of something like the Hulk, Ironman, Thor, Superman, or other top tier superhero.

In another variant, I might summon the 'Do or Do Not, there is no try' cinematic rule where if a character fails a jump check it instead pulls up short and wastes the action rather then 'hilariously' displaying their incompetence by missing the check and falling to their quite likely minor inconvenience.

Have you taken a look at my alternate falling rules?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1410

They only address the crunch of what you are talking about, but there is different speeds and damage based on creature size and whether the creature has the ability to increase its wind resistance / mitigate damage (cats, falling birds or dragons, etc.). It is loosely based on the falling speed / acceleration of an adult person, and it has a means of using a reaction to make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to mitigate some damage. With this system, characters do not automatically survive falling arbitrarily long distances, but monks, raging barbarians, and high hp fighters still have an advantage over others. The system's damage follows the PBH damage progression up until 200 feet where it keeps on going.

For how high up a creature has to fall and stick a 3-point landing instead of being prone, it depends on whether they are a monk with slow fall, a raging barbarian, or a high DEX character. PCs fall prone if they take any damage from the fall. To jump ahead to your CON 8 wizard who starts with 5 hit points, they could handle a 20 foot fall with zero damage by rolling a 19 or higher on their Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, and they get advantage on that check if they fall the distance on purpose. A 20th level monk can use slow fall to fall up to 220 feet with zero damage, but after that they start to take damage and fall prone. In this system, a commoner has better than a 50/50 chance to jump down 10 feet and take 0 damage. A 10 foot fall is 10 damage, but the commoner has a 55% chance to roll a 10 or better on their Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If they jump on purpose, they get advantage on the check, furthering their odds. They even have a chance to jump down 20 feet and take no damage.

For instant death for your level 1 CON 8 wizard, they could die from a 10 foot fall. The 10 damage from a 10 foot fall is twice the wizard's hp. So if the wizard did not have a reaction to mitigate the damage with a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, they would take 10 damage and die.

This system also handles how many rounds it takes them to fall the distance. So you know how many rounds they are falling, what their status is, and how long it would take for them to get back to the action (with whatever means they chose, if they are in a position to get back and not dead or bleeding out).

I get where you were trying to go with the tiers, but I think the system I came up with does what you are trying to accomplish. It handles creature size, mitigating fall damage, increasing hp from levels, and special class features.

To give you an idea of how it works in play I applied it in two scenarios recently:

1. We were playing Zeitgeist: Bonds of Forced Faith with level 10 PCs a couple months ago. The players were dealing with an annoying witch who had the equivalent of a flying carpet. One of the PCs managed to pull her off the carpet and take control, the witch hung on the edge, and another PC hung on to her. The PC now controlling the carpet took it out past the edge of a 1,000 foot cliff. Seeing the witch hanging on the carpet and the other PC hanging on to her, he said to the other PC, "I am sorry, but you see that the ends justify the means," before he dislodged the witch's hands. She and the PC fell. Because the 1,000 foot fall would take 2 rounds, the witch managed to dislodge herself from the other PC's grapple and fly away using a special feature. The other PC fell to her death. In vanilla 5e rules, she would take 70 average damage. As her max HP is 64, she would fall unconscious and make death saving throws if she had at least 7 hp when she hit the ground. In my modified system, she took 164 damage and died instantly.

2. We were playing Murder in Baldur's gate with level 3 PCs last Tuesday. The Paladin was in a second story window 30 feet up and wanted to quickly join the rest of the group at ground level. He decided to make the 30 foot jump down out the window to help his allies sooner. In vanilla 5e this would do an average of 10 damage. In my system the base damage for a 30 foot fall is 25. He used his reaction to make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check with advantage and rolled a 10. This means he took 25-10=15 damage which took about half his hp but got him out of the building and into the action a round earlier.

This system does have more fiddly bits, but I like how it sticks somewhat closely to the damage curve from vanilla 5e up to 200 feet and then keeps going to a much higher maximum while still allowing certain builds to survive that higher maximum.

EDIT: By the way, I love the squirrel picture.

Both interesting approaches. I actually addressed things a little differently, although I did not account for the size of the creature.

First off, it leverages my injury rules.

Injured
• Uses the Exhaustion Track.
• Level 5 imposes a permanent effect (reduced speed, reduced use of a limb, disfiguring scars, etc.).
• You make a Death saving throw every 24 hours.
3 Successes before three failures. Reduce the level of injury by one.
3 Failures first. Increase the level of injury by one.

Falling
Falling can be fatal depending on height, the surface struck, and the position of the landing. Between 40 and 50 ft. about 50% of falls are fatal. But at 150 ft., 98% of falls are fatal. Otherwise major injuries are more common.
Falling can cause an injury, or even death. If you fall 10 feet or more, you must make a Constitution saving throw or suffer an injury.
The DC is 15 + 2 for every additional 10 feet fallen.
If the saving throws is successful, you take 1d4 bludgeoning damage per 10 feet fallen. If the saving throw fails, you roll for an injury instead.

Falling Damage
Distance...DC...Damage...Injury Severity
10 feet.....8.....1d4.........1d4 – 2
20 feet.....10...2d4.........1d4 – 1
30 feet.....12...3d4.........1d4 – 1
40 feet.....14...5d4.........2d4 – 2
50 feet.....16...6d4.........2d4 – 2
60 feet.....18...7d4.........2d4-1
70 feet.....20...8d4.........2d4
80 feet.....22...9d4.........1d5 + 1
90 feet.....24..10d4........1d5 + 1
100 feet...26..11d4........1d4 + 2
110 feet...28..12d4........1d4 + 2
120 feet...30..13d4........1d3 + 3
130 feet...30..14d4........1d3 + 3
140 feet...30..15d4........1d2 + 4
150 feet...30..16d4........1d2 + 4
160 feet...30..17d4........1d2 + 4
170 feet...30..18d4........1d2 + 4
180 feet...30..19d4........1d2 + 4
190 feet...30..20d4........1d2 + 4

When adjudicating, I apply advantage/disadvantage based on circumstances, such as falling on something that will break your fall. I didn't specifically address monks since we aren't using them.

I'll probably make some tweaks based on some of the ideas in both of your approaches.

Simple solution: falling damage dice explode.

Ovinomancer said:

Simple solution: falling damage dice explode.

Click to expand...

Just to give context, the average damage of an exploding d6 goes from 3.5 to 4.2

So 20d6 changes from 70 damage to 84. Its an increase, but not a huge one if you want to make falling deadlier. Now there is always the chance of getting a crazy good roll, but that much extra damage on that many dice is just statistically extremely unlikely.

Stalker0 said:

Just to give context, the average damage of an exploding d6 goes from 3.5 to 4.2

So 20d6 changes from 70 damage to 84. Its an increase, but not a huge one if you want to make falling deadlier. Now there is always the chance of getting a crazy good roll, but that much extra damage on that many dice is just statistically extremely unlikely.

Click to expand...

Well, no, because you're forgetting the effect on the standard deviation. 20d6 does have an average of 70, with an SD of 7.6. This means 95% of all results will be between 55 and 85.

20d6 exploding on a 6 has, as you note an average of 84, but has an SD of 14.6, meaning it's 95% probability is from 55 to 113.

The probability density function of exploding d6's skews heavily upward, but has a higher variance. It's bottom is still rooted at the same point as non-exploding d6's, but its upper end is much higher than a simple look at the mean would suggest. In fact, the mean of the exploding function is right at the upper 95% boundary for straight 20d6, meaning that, on average, you're at least 50% likely to roll better than the upper 2.5% likelihood on straight 20d6.

And this same pattern holds across all xd6.

The upshot here is that you have a better than 14% chance on 20d6 exploding to roll over 100 damage, and a much less than 1% chance to do so on straight 20d6. You also have an almost 2% chance on exploding 20d6 to exceed the maximum value of straight 20d6.

So, statistically speaking, the chance of better damage is much higher than the means would predict.

Ovinomancer said:

Simple solution: falling damage dice explode.

Click to expand...

Given my player's inability to keep their dice on the table that seems disruptive to play - emergency calls and shrapnel damage would be a session ender.

I think the unpredictability might serve more of a deterrent for intentional falls - which are my main pain point. Such as the above - "it's only 30 feet, I can take that."

Just a side commentary of the frequency of the 1000' foot fall. I've been listening to a lot of Dice, Camera, Action and Critical Role and the 1000' foot fall seems to come up really often.

Partly because it allows the characters to act before the fall meets it's end. 499 foot fall - no chance to officially act. 500+ chance to Act in initiative order. And then it is totally hilarious to have a character take 100d6 falling damage (no cap at 20d6) especially if you haven't announced that particular house rule.

I think normally we've gravitate towards 100' falls but we all know 10d6 isn't killing anyone after level 3.

For sticking a landing after a long fall that seems like a dex save? Once you’re beyond your safe tier make a dex save to halve the damage, difficulty determined by the type of surface you’re landing on. Relatively clear and level? DC 10. Uneven terrain with some rocks to avoid? DC 15. Hazardous terrain, stalagmites, crystal shards, spikes? DC 20(+).

Otherwise I like the idea. Cool

jodyjohnson said:

Partly because it allows the characters to act before the fall meets it's end. 499 foot fall - no chance to officially act.

Click to expand...

What about reactions (if 499 feet or less) such as Feather Fall, are those still permitted?