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

[Gammadoodler]

In what way is this a tough guy thing? A high level wizard or rogue with a decent Constitution could walk off a cliff and survive. You don't have to be a barbarian to pull it off. The barbarian can simply do it a few levels earlier.

It's a tough guy thing in that the barbarian can do it a few levels earlier, exactly as you described. I don't think that's controversial.

It's not something I've ever seen Conan, an archetypal barbarian, do. Conan might leap off a tall cliff because of reasons, or he might fall, but never because he's simply too lazy to try climbing. That would be absurd and would totally ruin the reader's suspension of disbelief. It's the sort of thing I might expect to read in an exceptionally bad piece of Conan fan-fic. It's certainly not the kind of campaign I want to run though.

So, he's leapt, and he's been thrown from great heights, but you'd assume the one time Conan wanted to cheat on his cliff climbing workout, he'd die?

This is not a martial/caster thing. This is about not blatantly meta gaming. It's about respecting the verisimilitude of the game.

I don't think calling it a nerf is reasonable. It's not intended as a nerf. It will never even come up for a player who takes a campaign like mine seriously, and plays their character like a living person who isn't indestructible

Whether it is intended to be a nerf doesn't matter. It is a nerf. They are limitations layered onto the core rules and specifically they are limitations that have a greater impact on characters with more hp (martials).

I don't begrudge you your campaign where your players have agreed to these nerfs. Have fun. But ask yourself next time the party faces a giant or dragon or army or archdevil, purple worm, lich or whatever, "Should these living non-indestructible people really have more chance of surviving this than if they jumped off a cliff?"

 

[Maxperson]

Correct. And?

And that was her point. Either you misunderstood what she was saying, or you also engaged in a Strawman and argued something she wasn't saying.

1. Is 'Falling expertise' part of the DM handbook? Part of the players handbook? Are we only letting physics majors and forensics scientists play D&D now?

No, but basic common sense is. It's blindingly obvious that falls aren't the same, even if from the same point.

2. Even assuming that we somehow answer 'yes' to question number 1, has someone published a full list of the physical constants and rules for all the imaginary worlds we play in to make such spot-on circumstance-specific rulings?

We don't need to answer yes to your Strawman of my argument. It's painfully obvious to even laymen that falls vary.

3. Assuming we have a 'yes' to questions 1 and 2... somehow.. are we trying to say that it is more realistic that a desperate failed leap onto a moving mythological creature is less deadly than a deliberate planned leap where there are no visible obstacles?

Pardon me. Not Strawman. Strawmen.

 

[Maxperson]

So, he's leapt, and he's been thrown from great heights, but you'd assume the one time Conan wanted to cheat on his cliff climbing workout, he'd die?

Not Conan. Conan's player. This is a metagame issue.

Whether it is intended to be a nerf doesn't matter. It is a nerf.

It "nerfs" virtually every class, magical or otherwise. Only the Bard, Sorcerer and Wizard have feather fall on their spell list, and isn't smart to include Featherfall in the list of prepared spells. It's so incredibly rarely useful that you'd be gimping yourself by taking it.

They are limitations layered onto the core rules and specifically they are limitations that have a greater impact on characters with more hp (martials).

I prefer my martial characters to have better super powers than, "I can splat and live!" I prefer heroes.

 

[Lanefan]

Thats where superhuman levels of luck come in.

And if I was playing or running a supers game, that'd be cool.

I don't see D&D as a supers game, though, despite what 3-4-5e have tried to do to it.

 

[Lanefan]

Martials make more attack rolls than casters, and have more hit points as a class feature.

If you houserule fumbles, martials will fail more than casters than they do under RAW. Fighters and Monks in particular get clumsier as they advance in level.

Obviously, the more opportunities you give yourself to fumble the more often it'll happen, though the odds of fumbling on any given attack or action almost enver change.

Ditto if you make some silly insta-gib houserule. You're depriving classes the advantage of their hit points, a resource that martials get more of.

There are already rules for falling damage, lava and assasination of sleeping or incapacitated creatures in the rule-book. Martials (having more hit points) are more likely to survive all three.

There's a whole lot of things in my game that bypass hit points completely - lava (usually) and assassination or coup-de-grace (always, if successful) are but two. Among the others are some poisons, petrification, drowning or suffocating, being digested by certain creatures, and more. Falls from stupid heights also qualify*, barring a miraculous series of saves to replicate the one-in-a-very-big-number chance of survival seen in reality.

It also might be worth noting at this point that my opinion of 5e is that it's in general far too easy on the characters, which in part is why I don't run it. The falling damage question, however, also spans to the game I do run, hence my jumping in here.

* - a character in my game once fell 10,000 feet onto a stone pyramid. Just for kicks I pulled out all the dice in my bag (all sizes) and rolled them as the damage roll - if I'd rolled all 1s the character would have survived; I probably could have even lobbed a few 2s in there. I actually rolled somewhat below average, but the character still finished at -126 h.p.

They were later (barely) able to scrape up enough bits to allow Resurrection to work.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure.. it is absolutely permissible to play under any set of ground rules (no pun intended) the table agrees to including, 'I, the DM may take away or disregard your class features if I find your descriptions of your actions insufficiently realistic...unless, of course, it's magic..in that case, go nuts'.

Being able to brush off a 1500' fall and walk away isn't a class feature of anyone, therefore I'm not taking anything away.

Sometimes, no matter how many hit points you have, they just ain't gonna help you.

 

[Lanefan]

I prefer my martial characters to have better super powers than, "I can splat and live!"

Yeah, it ain't much of a superpower until not only do you live, but your next action is to jump back up the 1500' cliff in a single leap...

 

[Fanaelialae]

Not Conan, but still Arnie.

John Matrix leaps from the landing gear of an airborne aircraft which has just taken off so is travelling in excess of 200 MPH, and from a height of at least 100 feet (30m at least).

Luckily (i.e. LOTS OF HP) he lands in a swamp and survives.

No offense, but that's totally irrelevant.

Not only is it not Conan, I'm pretty sure he didn't fall into the swamp simply because he was feeling too lazy to walk a few hundred feet.

It's a tough guy thing in that the barbarian can do it a few levels earlier, exactly as you described. I don't think that's controversial.

So, he's leapt, and he's been thrown from great heights, but you'd assume the one time Conan wanted to cheat on his cliff climbing workout, he'd die?




Whether it is intended to be a nerf doesn't matter. It is a nerf. They are limitations layered onto the core rules and specifically they are limitations that have a greater impact on characters with more hp (martials).

I don't begrudge you your campaign where your players have agreed to these nerfs. Have fun. But ask yourself next time the party faces a giant or dragon or army or archdevil, purple worm, lich or whatever, "Should these living non-indestructible people really have more chance of surviving this than if they jumped off a cliff?"

It's not a class feature at all as I see it, and therefore not a nerf. Being able to intentionally walk off a 1500' cliff in order to quickly get down (and survive) is not a feature of any class.

HP still impact everything that they do impact across all classes equally.

Stepping off a cliff is handled the same way for the wizard and the barbarian, along with every other class. That the wizard might have prepped feather fall doesn't change that calculus, any more than if the wizard hadn't but the barbarian was wearing a ring of feather fall (or whatever).

To me, the one time Conan decides to "cheat on his cliff climbing workout" he stops being Conan. That's not something that Conan does, because he's a flesh and blood person (albeit, an imaginary one). If he behaves so, it points out his fictional nature and wrecks the enjoyment of the audience. About the only way to salvage it at that point is to let the fall kill Conan, because suicidal actions taken on the part of a character reasonably lead to deadly outcomes.

By stepping off the cliff voluntarily IMC, you're not acting in good faith if you expect to survive. I run the NPCs as if they were living people (most of my NPCs will try to run away if an encounter isn't going their way, for example) and I expect the players to do the same. By treating the character this way, the player is reducing them to mere stats on a sheet of paper. Guess what, real people, even tough fictional people, do not walk off 1500' cliffs just because they feel lazy, as that behavior is suicidal. They might if they had some form of invulnerability, but as I've explained, HP do not confer invulnerability IMC (and I think this is a fairly standard and reasonable interpretation of hit points).

Yes, absolutely a character should have more chance of surviving a fight with a dragon than they would intentionally walking off a cliff. The former is perfectly within the realm of heroic fiction. It is almost certainly expected by everyone at the table. Whereas the latter is suicidal. It's the equivalent of putting your head between the dragon's jaws and letting it bite down with full force. Guess what, HP won't save you from that one either IMC.

 

[Flamestrike]

Obviously, the more opportunities you give yourself to fumble the more often it'll happen, though the odds of fumbling on any given attack or action almost enver change

A Wizard can get to 20th level without ever making a single attack roll (spamming cantrips and spells with save or sucks), and lose nothing.

A Fighter cant. In fact, as he advances in level, he makes even more attack rolls (as a core class feature) making him.... more likely to fumble as he advances in level.

There's a whole lot of things in my game that bypass hit points completely

And who gets more HP as a core class feature?

So when you choose to ignore HP, who are you punishing here?

 

[Flamestrike]

HP still impact everything that they do impact across all classes equally.

No they dont. Damage disproportionately impacts classes with less HP than it does classes with more HP.

Deal 10 damage to a 1st level Wizard. Now do it to the 1st level Barbarian.

Higher HD is a fundamental class feature of martials, granting them luck and plot armor typical of the sword using hero of fiction on which DnD is heavily based. If you're ruling 'insta-death' for things that RAW are simply HP damage, then you're depriving martials of the advantages of that class feature.