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

[Blue]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], we were both ending up with big walls of text, so I think I'm going to try to condense to what I think is the underpinnings of the difference in our views. By not quoting everything I will be leaving things out, and if in doing so I misrepresent your side please correct me.

It seems we both agree that player agency and real risk are needed in order for the results to be meaningful. A real chance of failure and consequences are needed, lacking these undermines the players' accomplishments.

My understand on your side is that this flows naturally from the rules (with the DM adding if rules are silent), and that by staying within these you create a consistent and fair place for the players to earn their accomplishments on their own merits. That consistency also builds player trust because they know what to expect and get it. Drama flows from what is there and the knowledge that the PCs may dash themselves on it without reprieve - it's all up to them. Is this reasonable, am I missing anything substantial?

My point starts with the rules, but allows stepping outside them to increase dramatic tension by upping the stakes. It's not giving them something for free, it's allowing them a dramatic sacrifice to go beyond their normal bounds. This reduces the consistency which is a large PRO from your point of view. But it's not in an arbitrary fashion, but using dramatic troupes to ratchet things up.

Realistically, a fight on an airship is deadly. PCs should avoid the railings and rigging where a failure to climb/balance means a fall to their death. But that's not what makes a great story, and the troupes encourage players to do those things because they can expect that one bad roll will not kill them. In this case, the risk = likelyhood * impact. Impact stays the same. Likelyhood is increased by players going to the risky places where they wouldn't, but decreased because by the trope they can expect a chance to grab on to something when falling and hang like Luke under Cloud City. Which also then allows the dramatic rescue. Total risk is unchanged, but the story is enhanced.

I know in the past you have talked about tailoring a cliff to be the right height to give the numebr of actions you'd want, so maybe this is something you'd build in some other way.

An example from a session last year was players deep in a Living Dungeon, attacking a blue crystal spire that was providing power to the mad Derro overlord of the place. Reinforcements were coming and the situation didn't look good if they didn't get out now. The crystal was quite resistant to their attacks and it was slow going, plus they were getting attacked. One character was willing to sacrifice his only magic item, a magic sword (the only magic weapon in the group at the time), abusing it far beyond what a non-magical sword would take. He lost his magic sword but got a hefty bonus to the roll - and that was enough to crack the crystal.

It's funny, typing that second example I'm not sure if it's a place we'd differ on. If for you, that's simply filling in places that the rules don't cover. Or if it's something that we'd differ greatly on - you considering it plot protection and "ashes on my tongue" as unearned vs. me seeing it as a large sacrifice plus having to escape without the use of the sword just for an increased chance to be heroic.

 

[Dausuul]

Wikipedia has a nice little bit on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity

"Based on wind resistance, for example, the terminal velocity of a skydiver in a belly-to-earth (i.e., face down) free-fall position is about 195 km/h (122 mph or 54 m/s).[2] This velocity is the asymptotic limiting value of the acceleration process, because the effective forces on the body balance each other more and more closely as the terminal velocity is approached. In this example, a speed of 50% of terminal velocity is reached after only about 3 seconds, while it takes 8 seconds to reach 90%, 15 seconds to reach 99% and so on."

It then goes on to discuss how speed divers can angle themselves to increase their terminal velocity, but since your falling D&D character is probably not trying to hit the ground as hard as possible, let's go with the belly-to-ground figures. 54 meters per second works out to a shade over 1,000 feet per round, and you'll be just about there by the time you reach 12 seconds (2 rounds). Elsewhere in Wikipedia, near the end of the article on free fall, it says a falling human will fall about 1,500 feet in 12 seconds. Based on all that, I recommend the following falling times as "sufficiently realistic to satisfy my inner science geek while also being easy to remember and use at the table":

1st round: 500 feet
Each additional round: +1,000 feet

Most of the time, of course, you're not going to be falling anywhere near that far, and the fall is effectively instantaneous. You probably have a second or so of clawing at the edge before you go over; plenty of time for anybody with a reaction open to use that reaction and do something. You won't get a chance to take a full turn in the air, though, unless you're falling a long, long way.

 

[Unwise]

I have always just used the rule of thumb, 550' in the first round 1100' every round after that. They will hit terminal velocity around then.

I tend to use hollywood physics though, so if somebody is falling like a dart, then can catch up with somebody that is falling like a skydiver. General rule is you fall twice as fast. So if your friend falls off cloud city, you can dive off to catch them by the 1650' mark, if you dive off one round later.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]It seems we both agree that player agency and real risk are needed in order for the results to be meaningful. A real chance of failure and consequences are needed, lacking these undermines the players' accomplishments.

My understand on your side is that this flows naturally from the rules (with the DM adding if rules are silent), and that by staying within these you create a consistent and fair place for the players to earn their accomplishments on their own merits. That consistency also builds player trust because they know what to expect and get it. Drama flows from what is there and the knowledge that the PCs may dash themselves on it without reprieve - it's all up to them. Is this reasonable, am I missing anything substantial?

No, for once, someone actually reads me. I was beginning to think I had no powers of communication. You deserve XP just for that alone, besides anything else.

My point starts with the rules, but allows stepping outside them to increase dramatic tension by upping the stakes. It's not giving them something for free, it's allowing them a dramatic sacrifice to go beyond their normal bounds. This reduces the consistency which is a large PRO from your point of view. But it's not in an arbitrary fashion, but using dramatic troupes to ratchet things up.

Upping stakes is good story telling, but I prefer to get there by not going outside of the rules but by introducing something new to the setting - reinforcements arrive, the airship is drifting into a sandstorm, one of the villains threatens a hostage, the BBEG sets the airship on fire, etc. And ideally of course these escalations are to make sense in terms of the story, so that they don't feel like something the DM is doing just to screw you or up the stakes, but the logical sort of thing that might happen under the circumstances.

Realistically, a fight on an airship is deadly. PCs should avoid the railings and rigging where a failure to climb/balance means a fall to their death. But that's not what makes a great story...

That's a very arbitrary definition of a great story. It seems to require the PC's doing things that are stupid in order to get themselves into situations of great danger that they could have avoided. I don't honestly think rules exceptions are needed here, and to the extent that you think PC's ought to be able to grab on to things to avoid falling, a rule should be provided for that - I generally use a DC 20 reflex check. Designing the airship I'd consider things like, "If you are bullrushed against the railing, what check should you use to avoid falling over the railing? What sort of rules should I have for grappling an enemy and throwing them? If you are tossed over the railing, what check could be used to grab on? If this is so dangerous, what previsions did the crew have to operate under dangerous conditions - there are probably tie points for ropes or harnesses. If the PC's have a climbing harness, that could be very useful for securing themselves to the ship. When engaged in stressful movement on deck, what balance checks are required?" Players would be expected to behave in ways that would prevent these unfortunate scenarios from happening. I'm certainly not there to rescue them from abject stupidity and unnecessary risk. I'm certainly not looking forward to having one of them hanging over the edge of the airship because I think that makes a good story, which seems to be the direction you are going for here.

Generally speaking, I wouldn't put narrative force on a player to fight on an airship until they could do so with a reasonable chance of success. That is to say, the foozle isn't on the airship until such time that players have the resources to deal with that.

It's funny, typing that second example I'm not sure if it's a place we'd differ on.

I'm not sure it is either, though my preferred way to design such a scenario is cover those possibilities to start with rather than ad hoc allowance just because it appears the story isn't going the way you want. Magic swords would thus perhaps break if power attacked into a crystal, but of course with the advantage that you just overcame the crystals hardness and did significant damage. I'd probably be disinclined to rule favorably on, "Ok, so I try hitting the crystal even harder!", responding with, "You mean you haven't been hitting it with all your might up till now? Why did you roll full damage if you were holding back?", but there are a variety of player resources that they could spend in a pinch here - spend a destiny point, successful appraise check to determine a flaw in the crystal to attack, an appeal for divine intervention, etc. And of course there are various character resources that they might - feats that make you good at breaking things, spells like shatter to help this along, and so forth. More than hitting it harder, I'd be more inclined to rule favorably on a more creative plan, something like "Can I attack the stalagmite that is hanging above the crystal with those magic stonebreaker arrows we found?", particularly if I'd already thought of this feature and mentioned it in the room description specifically for that purpose but certainly if it seemed reasonable that a delicate stalagmite was easier to break than a magically hardened crystal and they had the means to do so, that would be a 'dramatic plan', whether I'd allowed for it ahead of time or not.

 

[Saeviomagy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov
and the articles it links to provide some interesting reading about the results of long falls...

 

[Celebrim]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov
and the articles it links to provide some interesting reading about the results of long falls...

I've been struggling since the '80's to develop a falling damage system I'm happy with. The fact that on the one hand you need mechanics that explain how people die falling off step ladders, and on the other live after falling out of airplanes, was part of what drove me to the current system. I wanted crazy randomness without completely abandoning game balance. I wanted freedom to narrate realistic results - the king falling from his horse and dying - where the system supported that as the result of a freak but not freakish accident.

Chisov rolled a 6 on the divisor die, fell onto cushioned yielding ground, and got an somewhat lucky low total on her 20d20. Combined with a toughness feat (argue that!) and a couple of HD, and you have a very lucky but not inexplicable result. After all, it's not even the only time its happened.

 

[mlund]

"All of them"

Seriously, though, I think you have some room to play with since a turn involves a bunch of simultaneous action over the course of six seconds.

For the sake of drama, I assume nameless enemies fall at the start of middle of the round and drop out of the scene immediately but named enemies and characters end the round tipping over into the abyss. In that regard, by the end of the next round they fall "all the feet" / exit the scene in a "bottomless" fall scenario or hit bottom in any semi-survivable fall. They -do- have some small time to act amidst their fall, perhaps enough to use a movement power (like teleport) or a free action. More importantly, the potential victim's allies have an opportunity to try some sort of heroic intervention on their own turns - like dashing across to the edge of the cliff face and catching them by the collar before they plummet to their death.

Maybe you'd just rather model such an action as a Reaction that costs the PC their next turn's action as well. There are viable ways to model such a cost appropriately.

By the end of the turn after the fall triggers, the victim has dropped "all the way" unless you have a very specific sort of scene in mind, like a huge aerial battle on dragon-back where someone is knocked from the saddle and someone dives down trying to catch them, etc. In that case you probably just need to design a sub-system to fit your tastes. Physics doesn't make those scenes nearly as much fun as they could be.

Marty Lund

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Falls happen then and there for any game I run. I'd let anyone within 5' use their reaction to fall prone & give the faller a save to grab the helping hand. That or somebody can cast feather fall. Failing that, it's D&D, the dead can be raised, heck, at 5th level now. You have a minute to lower the cleric down before it goes from a Revivify to a Raise Dead, chop-chop.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm kind of surprised that nobody has just done the real world approximate math of:

Seconds^2 * 16 feet per second or

1 16
2 64
3 144
4 256
5 400
6 576

At 6 seconds, this last one is only off by 3 feet to reality. So, a 10 or 15 foot drop is done in a second. A 20 to 60 foot drop is done in "2 seconds" (no need to get more granular than that). A 65 to 145 foot drop in 3 seconds, etc. Just print out this chart and attach it to your DM screen (or alter it slightly to make it ranges such as 0 to 20 feet, 25 to 60 feet, etc.).

The difficult part becomes whether another PC can interact quickly enough to help or whether the PC himself (or NPC) has an action before he goes splat.

That is either a DM call, or if you have the init numbers written down, just split all of the numbers into approximate groups of 4 (i.e. 1 to 4 is the last second of a 6 second round, 21 to 24 is the first second of a 6 second round).

Another alternative is that the next two PCs/NPCs in init order go off in the current second, the two after that one second from now, the two after that 2 seconds from now, etc. Divide the number of total NPCs and PCs by 6 to get how much time between each init. For 9 PCs and NPCs, it's 1.5 (i.e. 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1). A little math intensive, but easy if you just make the number 2.


There is no "how many turns in a second?", so the DM has to approximate.

 

[77IM]

1st round: 500 feet
Each additional round: +1,000 feet

I came here to post the same thing. ;}
It's a handy little rule of thumb that's only relevant once in a blue moon, but is accurate enough to shut down most debates on the subject very quickly and keep the game moving.