Taking Rules to Their Illogical Extremes

[hawkeyefan]

This isn't an illogical extreme, it's the rules functioning as intended.

Ragnar would not "almost assuredly" die from falling off an 80 foot drop, because he has 132 hit points, or less succinctly because he's a name-level warrior whom you would expect to walk away unscathed from the first couple of times he falls off a cliff in a given day.

How is this different than being able to tank a Colossal dragon's breath weapon and then beat the same dragon to death with his bare hands?

Captain America thinks parachutes are for girls. It's a feature.

I get your point, and it certainly depends on your approach to the game, but I don’t know if I agree that this situation is the logical conclusion.

The rules are meant to portray a fictional world not govern it. So for me this is a tail wagging the dog kind of situation.

For me, I think that barring use of magic or some kind of special ability like the monk’s slow fall, a fall from that height is simply lethal.

Now, when this kind of stuff has come up in my game more recently, I’ve never had someone’s pc fall off a cliff and I just say “oh he’s dead...make a new guy.” I’m very open to the possibility of a hero surviving such a fall by whatever combination of skill, desperation, and fortune will work. I’d prefer to set it up as a series of saving throws or skill checks or something similar. And narrate the condition the character is in at the end based on the results of the rolls.

But to simply have falls from that height just do a few HP damage doesn’t make any sense. That kind of fall should be dangerous.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But to simply have falls from that height just do a few HP damage doesn’t make any sense. That kind of fall should be dangerous.

So should a sword, arrow, or dragon breath. Either HP are a perfectly reliable measure of your capacity to withstand injurious force without dying, or they aren't. You can't have it both ways. The HP rules in D&D work pretty well for representing the sort of super-humans who can withstand a dozen arrows before succumbing, but they begin to fail as you move further away from that narrative.

If that isn't how you intend to use the rules, then the "illogical extreme" is simply that a high-level character can have so many HP in the first place. If nobody should be able to withstand ~70 damage from falling, then the real problem is that the rules allow you to have 100+ HP.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So should a sword, arrow, or dragon breath. Either HP are a perfectly reliable measure of your capacity to withstand injurious force without dying, or they aren't. You can't have it both ways. The HP rules in D&D work pretty well for representing the sort of super-humans who can withstand a dozen arrows before succumbing, but they begin to fail as you move further away from that narrative.

If that isn't how you intend to use the rules, then the "illogical extreme" is simply that a high-level character can have so many HP in the first place. If nobody should be able to withstand ~70 damage from falling, then the real problem is that the rules allow you to have 100+ HP.

Sure, that’s kind of the point, I suppose. HP Are an inconsistent abstraction.

And yes, an arrow or a sword can of course be lethal. But they can also very often not prove lethal.However, falls from significant height are nearly always fatal. Sure, there are occasionally those crazy stories about someone falling eleven stories and surviving, or the skydiver whose chute didn’t open but he survived by crashing into some tree branches or whatever...but those seem to be incredibly rare.

What I’m talking about is a person who willingly jumps from an 80 foot cliff because of awareness of the game mechanics and the result. No one in the real world jumps off a cliff without an incredibly compelling reason.

In such a case, I don’t think the DM is out of line to say “the outcome is not in doubt, we don’t need to roll dice here” and that’s that.

Again, if it were my game, I’d likely make that point and then let the player decide if they’d like to do something else.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What I’m talking about is a person who willingly jumps from an 80 foot cliff because of awareness of the game mechanics and the result. No one in the real world jumps off a cliff without an incredibly compelling reason.

In such a case, I don’t think the DM is out of line to say “the outcome is not in doubt, we don’t need to roll dice here” and that’s that.

The question arises of why you or your players would think that they're in the real world, as opposed to some sort of world that was actually consistent with their observations.

I mean, I'm all in favor of the DM saying that the outcome isn't in doubt, but there's literally zero reason to assume death is the logical outcome. Everything we know about their world says that this should be survivable. Why wouldn't the characters know that?

 

[aramis erak]

Sure, that’s kind of the point, I suppose. HP Are an inconsistent abstraction.

And yes, an arrow or a sword can of course be lethal. But they can also very often not prove lethal.However, falls from significant height are nearly always fatal. Sure, there are occasionally those crazy stories about someone falling eleven stories and surviving, or the skydiver whose chute didn’t open but he survived by crashing into some tree branches or whatever...but those seem to be incredibly rare.

Any fall from over 500m but still in breathable air is no different than any other fall from over 500m. At that range, you've hit terminal velocity in ragdoll mode. (In dive mode, terminal velocity is hit right about 550m... but attitude of the body is more significant than the height past that range.)

It's all about how you land. and the speed is about 190 km/h... tho' clothing can reduce that to 100 kmh or so.

 

[Ancalagon]

Guys, guys, you're missing the big picture.

It's night, the moon is full. You look up at the moon. What do you see? A cube.

In 5e, diagonals are the same distance as the side of a square. A circle is defined as a shape where every point is equidistant from the centre. If a diagonal has the same movement cost as moving in a "straight" line (following the lines of the grid on a square map), then a square is also a circle.

Thus, the moon is a cube.

 

[jasper]

Guys, guys, you're missing the big picture.

It's night, the moon is full. You look up at the moon. What do you see? A cube.

In 5e, diagonals are the same distance as the side of a square. A circle is defined as a shape where every point is equidistant from the centre. If a diagonal has the same movement cost as moving in a "straight" line (following the lines of the grid on a square map), then a square is also a circle.

Thus, the moon is a cube.

And Dragons are L7. aka Squares.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Guys, guys, you're missing the big picture.

It's night, the moon is full. You look up at the moon. What do you see? A cube.

In 5e, diagonals are the same distance as the side of a square. A circle is defined as a shape where every point is equidistant from the centre. If a diagonal has the same movement cost as moving in a "straight" line (following the lines of the grid on a square map), then a square is also a circle.

Thus, the moon is a cube.

I'd like to see a mathematical proof on this one, lol.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Thus, the moon is a cube.

That certainly counts as an illogical extreme.

In general, the way to find these sorts of things is pretty straightforward:

1. Look at any isolated portion of the rules.
2. Identify the unstated assumptions by which the rules kinda make sense.
3. Break those assumptions, and try to apply those rules to the resulting void.

Thus, an approximation of distance which is good enough for short ranges, fails to hold up at much longer ranges.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The question arises of why you or your players would think that they're in the real world, as opposed to some sort of world that was actually consistent with their observations.

I mean, I'm all in favor of the DM saying that the outcome isn't in doubt, but there's literally zero reason to assume death is the logical outcome. Everything we know about their world says that this should be survivable. Why wouldn't the characters know that?

Not THE real world. But A real world. Or at least, as real as can be expected. As I said earlier, it depends on the approach you take to the game.

The way I look at it, what’s the expectation you’d have of a person falling off an 80 foot cliff? Not in a game or even in the real world. Let’s say you’re reading a novel and it happens.

My guess is that you have a good idea of what would happen, unless the story allowed for some kind of fantastic reason that a person could survive such a fall (like in the Captain America example mentioned earlier). Barring such elements, you’d likely expect this character to die from the fall.

So to me, the game should ideally have mechanics that reflect that expectation. I don’t expect the physics of the world, and by extension characters expectations and understanding of their world, to be shaped by the game mechanics.