D&D 5E A character in free fall, falls how many feets by turn?

[guachi]

Given the wonders of the internet, it took me less than a round (about 3 seconds, actually) to figure out how far someone falls. Even without it, I and many of my players have memorized the falling formula as it's fairly straightforward. 1/2 x G x T^2. For simplicity just round G to 10 and then it's always 5 x T^2. That's easy math.

1 second = 5 meters
2 seconds = 20 meters
3 seconds = 45 meters
4 seconds = 80 meters
5 seconds = 125 meters
6 seconds = 180 meters

As others have said, basically every fall anyone is ever likely to do takes less than a round.

Conversely, for seeing how long it takes to fall X distance - take the distance in meters and divide by 5 (fairly easy). Then take the square root of that (sort of easy. But really easy if you just round)

 

[Syntallah]

Depends very much on the attitude of the person with respect to the ground. In a head first dive, probably 1000 feet or more. Spread eagled and rafting on the air (make a skill check) maybe around 500. Anywhere in between is a reasonable estimation. Since characters rarely fall more than 100 feet or so, you can assume that falls are basically instantaneous.

While we are on the subject of falling, my preferred methodology is a little complicated.

Roll 1d20 for each 10' of the fall (maximum 20d20). Sum this and divide the total by 1d6. Additionally, have the ground make a 'melee attack' on the character at +3 to hit for 1d6 damage, with a bonus of +1 to hit and damage per 10' fallen (maximum +20). There is a bunch of additional complexity for falling on rough and unusually hard ground, or soft ground, or spikes, or if you are not medium sized, and so forth, but all you really need is the basic idea to use this additional complexity to solve a couple of nagging problems.

a) How is it that falling a short distance is occasionally lethal to ordinary people?
b) How is it that falling a long distance is occasionally lethal to ordinary people?
c) How is it that falling any distance is something heroes can survive?
d) How do we keep players from metagaming 'c'.
e) How do we avoid the problem of needing pits to be 100 feet deep before they are even remotely a threat to high level parties?

The above technique ensures that falling damage remains a frightening thing regardless of level, while ensuring that like the heroes of action adventure movies, PC's can survive falling off things that would normally kill people.

My rules are normally not this complicated, and I hate the idea of using division to calculate something in a PnP game, but it works.

To clarify: do you add the ((1d20per10ft)/1d6) to the Ground Attack (1d6per10ft) for a total damage result?

I am very curious because falling damage has bothered me for 30+ years, and I am constantly looking for a more realistic/deadly answer without massive math to slow down the drama...

 

[jodyjohnson]

I think how this is treated in game should be subject to how the individual table comes down on some of the fundamental and frequently hotly debated positions about the role of the rules.

For our games which lean toward genre-simulation and heroic action - we roll damage, compare to hit point total, and then declare result. If damage is greater than HP then the long fall occurred - character is injured and dying. If not, the character caught a branch or leg, or did some other genre appropriate thing to prevent a literal fatal fall. (For falls over say 30')

I believe this is consistent with the default quick healing rules plus Lingering Wounds from the DMG.

Players who come down differently on Genre Sim vs. World Sim or Meat vs. Mojo or Gritty vs. Heroic would likely resolve it differently.

 

[iserith]

I love this answer. You fall at the speed of plot.

Thanks!

I don't think you could have more directly contrasting answers than iserith's and mine.

Iserith basically says, "It doesn't matter. Drama determines rules."
I basically said, "It matters greatly, because rules determine drama."

Note that we are both prioritizing drama, just with the opposite assumptions.

I'm not sure I'd characterize my post in the same way you have done. As I mentioned in my original response, there are no rules covering this. Therefore, my ruling is to pursue the default goals of play and do whatever will be the most fun for the group and will lead to the creation of an exciting, memorable story as a result of play. Rules can enable us to do this, but there are no rules to cover the speed of a fall for the DM to draw upon in this case.

 

[SteveC]

Time and timing are very imprecise in 5E, so this is actually a little tricky to establish.

The only numbers the game gives us are the round of 6 seconds, so it's pretty easy to see how far the character will fall in a round. For most falls, it means they're going to hit by the end of a single round.

It becomes relevant if there's something that they (or another character) can do about the fall, and that's where I tend to err on the "speed of plot" side.

Can a character cast a spell that's not a reaction to stop their fall?

Can another character who has a similar ability help to stop them?

From my perspective: if it's in the same round I'd say YES, since I want my characters to die in far more interesting and dramatic ways. When in doubt, I'd ask if anyone involved has Inspiration and use that to determine how it works out.

The real issue is that falling is normally so fast (!!) that you'll hit the ground faster than the D&D game mechanics can account for, so I prefer my characters to be Big Darn Heroes and thus have the chance to save themselves.

 

[Celebrim]

To clarify: do you add the ((1d20per10ft)/1d6) to the Ground Attack (1d6per10ft) for a total damage result?

Yes. Total damage is the sum of the two components, loosely the 'sudden stop' and hardness of the thing you stop against. If you fall on to soft turf, you don't take the 'blow' part of the damage. Honestly, as much as anything the extra 'blow' part of the damage is a corrective term that prevents the damage from the other part of the equation from being consistently too low, but it does have nice symmetry with D&D's usual rules for simulating falling on spikes, etc.

I am constantly looking for a more realistic/deadly answer without massive math to slow down the drama...

The math is fairly complicated - it's by far the most complicated math I use - but it doesn't slow play that much. Importantly, because falling tends to be a one time event (as opposed to making an attack, which occurs repeatedly) any extra complexity in the resolution doesn't impact the session as a whole all that much.

 

[Syntallah]

Yes. Total damage is the sum of the two components, loosely the 'sudden stop' and hardness of the thing you stop against. If you fall on to soft turf, you don't take the 'blow' part of the damage. Honestly, as much as anything the extra 'blow' part of the damage is a corrective term that prevents the damage from the other part of the equation from being consistently too low, but it does have nice symmetry with D&D's usual rules for simulating falling on spikes, etc.

The math is fairly complicated - it's by far the most complicated math I use - but it doesn't slow play that much. Importantly, because falling tends to be a one time event (as opposed to making an attack, which occurs repeatedly) any extra complexity in the resolution doesn't impact the session as a whole all that much.

Thank you very much! I am off to post this formula into my new Deluxe DM Screen!!

 

[Celebrim]

The real issue is that falling is normally so fast (!!) that you'll hit the ground faster than the D&D game mechanics can account for...

The real issue for me is that falling is normally so fast, that the victim will hit the ground faster than human reflexes can account for.

In the movies, they always have someone fall off of a roof or something, spend 1-3 seconds establishing that the hero leaps off after the victim, and then the hero's velocity is always uncannily faster than someone who has already been accelerating in a free fall for a couple of seconds. They then spend a couple more seconds establishing that the hero is catching up and building false drama, only to have the victim come to a sudden stop or other dramatic change in their velocity vector mere feet above the ground - neglecting first that this sudden stop or impact with a swinging object at over 100 mph would quite likely snap their spine, given them a serious concussion, and cause all sorts of other internal injuries, and second that for the number of seconds involved in the fall and the apparent height of the start of the fall, the victim should have already hit the ground.

Unless you are consciously emulating a movie or other visual medium, I find this very hard to game. There are lots of things that movie heroes do that depend on suspension of physics, unstated precognitive abilities, or dramatic increases in enemy incompetence when facing 'the hero' that are very hard to port into the medium of a RPG without breaking player suspension of disbelief, GM impartiality, and so forth.

so I prefer my characters to be Big Darn Heroes and thus have the chance to save themselves.

So give them a reflex save to catch a ledge before falling to their doom. If there is one thing you can be sure that Big Darn Heroes do nearly as often as catching damsels that are falling from the sky, it's tenaciously grab on to ledges above high places by the very tips of their fingers. I think Captain Kirk did it like 6 times in the Star Trek reboot.

 

[Paraxis]

The initial question is sort of flawed. A turn is not a precise measure of time, a round is 6 seconds, a turn is part of a round but there are multiple turns happening simultaneously(ish) within a round.

If initiative is going on and someone falls, because things being done by multiple characters all happen within a 6 second round it only really matters that at the end of the round the falling person has gone splat.

I guess what I am saying is if a monster shoves a PC off a cliff, the PC in question will get a save or be able to use their reaction to try and do something, other PC's that haven't acted in the round or have and still have reactions left might be able to do something to save them. So I agree that characters fall at the speed of plot, within a 6 second round as long as at the end of the round they have hit the ground, water, lava, or whatever.

A round is a measure of time, a turn is a measure of action.

 

[SteveC]

The real issue for me is that falling is normally so fast, that the victim will hit the ground faster than human reflexes can account for.

In the movies, they always have someone fall off of a roof or something, spend 1-3 seconds establishing that the hero leaps off after the victim, and then the hero's velocity is always uncannily faster than someone who has already been accelerating in a free fall for a couple of seconds. They then spend a couple more seconds establishing that the hero is catching up and building false drama, only to have the victim come to a sudden stop or other dramatic change in their velocity vector mere feet above the ground - neglecting first that this sudden stop or impact with a swinging object at over 100 mph would quite likely snap their spine, given them a serious concussion, and cause all sorts of other internal injuries, and second that for the number of seconds involved in the fall and the apparent height of the start of the fall, the victim should have already hit the ground.

Unless you are consciously emulating a movie or other visual medium, I find this very hard to game. There are lots of things that movie heroes do that depend on suspension of physics, unstated precognitive abilities, or dramatic increases in enemy incompetence when facing 'the hero' that are very hard to port into the medium of a RPG without breaking player suspension of disbelief, GM impartiality, and so forth.



So give them a reflex save to catch a ledge before falling to their doom. If there is one thing you can be sure that Big Darn Heroes do nearly as often as catching damsels that are falling from the sky, it's tenaciously grab on to ledges above high places by the very tips of their fingers. I think Captain Kirk did it like 6 times in the Star Trek reboot.

For me the issue is, yes, I do want my games to emulate a movie where the characters are the heroes. I prefer a Mary Jane Spiderman ending to a Gwen Stacey ending. If a player asks me "is there a way I can try and save X," I'm going to go out of my way to say yes, that's something you can try. That's not something which will stretch my verisimilitude at all, since I'm taking the action movie reality as a given. D&D does that in so many other ways, I'm always surprised when people pick on one particular thing to stand their ground on. It's not wrong (of course not) but it just makes me wonder why this particular issue is the one to try and be realistic on.