D&D 5E Why is there a limit to falling damage?

[Flamestrike]

Skill and luck. The reason the character isn't killed in a single blow is because the attack is more or less evaded. It would have killed the character (or at least left them dying) had it been a solid hit, but the loss of HP represents the character utilizing skill/luck to avoid those killing blows.

At least that's how I run it.

That's how its supposed to be run. Hit Points are defined in the game as 'Health, resolve, the will to live, and luck'

You get more of them as you level up in experience, moreso if you belong to a martial class that fights a lot, so they also represent skill and experience, and parrying/ dodging/ fighting ability.

When a 20th level fighter gets 'hit' by a Fire giants sword on an attack roll, the blow actually luckily misses him, thundering into the ground next to him, as he twists out of the way, and readies for a devastating counter attack.

When the same blow 'hits' a 1st level Fighter, the poor schmuck is cloven in half.

Its the redshirt/ Kirk effect.

 

[Oofta]

Just to clarify, if the Barbarian was climbing a 1500ft cliff fell to the bottom after he was nearly to the top you would be okay with him surviving?

Potentially. This has never come up so it depends on the specifics of the scenario. Climbing a mountain? Maybe do some subset of damage (i.e. 20d6) and then give them an acrobatics/athletics check to see if they can grab something to stop their fall. Rinse and repeat until dead or holding on to that tree growing out the side of the cliff. What's going to be the most fun and cinematic?

But after a certain point it's not realistic to survive a fall so maybe I'd rely on percentile dice? Give them a 5% chance of survival? I want the game to be fun, but I also don't want to rely on deus-ex-DM to save PCs from death.

I want my games to be reality-adjacent so I don't want to rely on a rule I disagree with. If it came up I'd average dice after 200 feet and not limit to 20d6.

It's never come up in a game but I'd let my players know how I run it before any action was taken. If they were fighting on an airship I'd probably give them the equivalent of a magic parachute or tether.

On a related note, every mod (in all editions) I've ever played where the group is fighting and you can fall thousands of feet the bad guys have some way of surviving if they get pushed off. The PCs, of course, do not.

 

[FrogReaver]

Potentially.

Which is to say that it's not the unrealistic 1500ft fall and survival of it that you have a problem with - but rather the unrealistic action the PC took.

 

[Flamestrike]

Potentially. This has never come up so it depends on the specifics of the scenario. Climbing a mountain? Maybe do some subset of damage (i.e. 20d6) and then give them an acrobatics/athletics check to see if they can grab something to stop their fall.

A PC falls 100' into an active erupting volcano. He takes 100 points of damage from the magma and the fall (luckily he has 120 HP):


If Spock was a Redshirt with 20 hit points, he would have landed directly in the lava, or snapped his neck on the fall. He's not a redshirt, he's a high level hero, with experience, resolve, skill and LUCK (120 points of luck in fact) to survive the fall, luckily landing on an outcropping of rock inside the volcano.

Here is another example, this time Kirk base-jumping from orbit:


Sadly the Redshirt he jumped with didnt have enough HP (resolve, luck, and skill) to survive the fall.

Kirk did. He had a ton more HP. That's why he made it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Then introduce some skill and luck toward turning the solid blow of the ground into a not so solid blow.

In most cases I would (although it would be mostly luck, not skill, in that case).

However, leaving aside the meta-gaming which has already been discussed, there is a big difference between a character who falls off a cliff versus one who leaps off for heroic reasons versus one who just casually walks off because they're too lazy to climb down.

The third case is problematic in my view because it doesn't respect the tone of the game as I run it. It would be like a high level character using a stick of dynamite as a cigar and the player expecting them to survive it. Maybe some people would be okay with that. Not me, unless I were running Toon.

In game, it would mirror the theme in many stories where 'pride comes before the fall'. In this case quite literally. A character walking off a cliff and demanding that fate/luck save them from the 1500' fall is the height of arrogance. Such characters are frequently abandoned by fate/luck when they behave so, and so it would be IMC.

Of course, much like the OP, the player would be given clear warning regarding the suicidal nature of the act they were considering.

 

[Oofta]

Which is to say that it's not the unrealistic 1500ft fall and survival of it that you have a problem with - but rather the unrealistic action the PC took.

Yep.

I once had a PC jump off a cliff in pursuit of a bad guy. Thing is, before he jumped he asked the NPC wizard if he could cast feather fall. Then proceeded to grab the wizard and leap ... the PC was quite pragmatic and didn't really trust the guy to save him unless the wizard had to.

If I had just jumped I wouldn't have had any reasonable expectation of survival.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yep.

I once had a PC jump off a cliff in pursuit of a bad guy. Thing is, before he jumped he asked the NPC wizard if he could cast feather fall. Then proceeded to grab the wizard and leap ... the PC was quite pragmatic and didn't really trust the guy to save him unless the wizard had to.

If I had just jumped I wouldn't have had any reasonable expectation of survival.

Thanks, that definitely makes talking about the issue alot easier.

 

[Oofta]

A PC falls 100' into an active erupting volcano. He takes 100 points of damage from the magma and the fall (luckily he has 120 HP):


If Spock was a Redshirt with 20 hit points, he would have landed directly in the lava, or snapped his neck on the fall. He's not a redshirt, he's a high level hero, with experience, resolve, skill and LUCK (120 points of luck in fact) to survive the fall, luckily landing on an outcropping of rock inside the volcano.

Here is another example, this time Kirk base-jumping from orbit:


Sadly the Redshirt he jumped with didnt have enough HP (resolve, luck, and skill) to survive the fall.

Kirk did. He had a ton more HP. That's why he made it.

Kirk has plot armor, but he also had a parachute. Spock fell, what, 20 feet and had protective gear.

So sure with feather fall and immunity to fire damage the PC would survive as well.

There's a reason why people make fun of the refrigerator scene from the last Raiders of the Lost Arc movie. It crossed the line from heroic frequently over the top action to Bugs Bunny cartoon.

 

[DND_Reborn]

For most PCs to survive a 20d6 fall would be 8-9+ level typically to average over 70 hp. When we talk about the extremely rare occurrences IRL of people who have fallen incredible distances and survived, how common are they? Then ask yourself, how common are PCs or whoever with 70+ hp? In my games, not common at all. So, for them to be one of those rare lucky individuals to survive such a fall is not a big deal really.

I agree with the others of course about the player metagaming it to a point, but if the barbarian has a history of making leaps and falling for any reason, maybe in character he just thought "I think I can make it." Smart? No. Possible? Sure.

 

[Flamestrike]

Kirk has plot armor, but he also had a parachute. Spock fell, what 20 feet and had protective gear.

He falls a lot further than 20' (6 metres) and Kirks Redshirt had a parachute as well.

Plot armor is Hit points. Hit points are [among other things) Luck, with high level PCs having tons of it. Absurd levels of it in fact.

So much luck that high level PCs can fall into active volcanoes, or off mountains, and survive on account of some lucky contrivance.

The trick is in the narration of that lucky contrivance. Did they land on a rocky outcrop and avoid the magma (taking 100 points of 'luck damage' from the magma as they do so) or did they land on the back of a friendly Giant Eagle as they lept off a giant tower (taking 100 points of damage from the fall) as they did so.