Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Another Airship Encounter
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5107402" data-attributes="member: 15470"><p>We've gone with a bit of a cartoon-esque mechanic:</p><p></p><p>Free-fall is a free action which happens automatically at the end of your turn if you haven't had physical support at any point during your turn.</p><p></p><p>Basically, fall on your turn, its generally because of a failed skill check during an action, so not falling on that turn gives every other PC once chance to save you .. </p><p></p><p>.. That puts a compelling tactical mini-game into play: "Save Fred or he falls to death!" .. and ensures that Fred's player will get one creative chance to save himself, even if he's knocked off the dragon's back by the dragon's action.</p><p></p><p>You can expect to see <strong>all</strong> sorts of creative aspects from your characters with that kind of thing: the most obvious, to me, being shooting Fred with a harpoon, but throwing him a rope, teleporting him back to the airship, teleporting myself to him, triggering a magic item, flying under him so that he falls onto me, and many others come to mind!</p><p></p><p>(<em>And if we're help to our "height" idea from earlier, Fred at terminal velocity can only change two height levels .. so he's still not off the battlefield after one turn of falling, he's just a <strong>lot</strong> harder to save!</em>)</p><p></p><p>Note, also, that Fred might, say, Grab an adjacent dragon as a Standard, try to Climb onto its back as a Move, fail by lots, and "start falling again" .. but because he had support at any point during his turn, he doesn't actually fall at the end of his turn.</p><p></p><p>That makes falling a lot less deadly (and makes the scene more cinematic in feel), which lets us use the standard Climb rules, e.g., fail by 4 or fewer = failure to move, fail by five or more = lose your grip and "start falling". </p><p></p><p>Then you can really apply that same basic mechanic to all of the skills involved: a Grab failure by four leaves you "hanging on for dear life" while a Grab failure by five leaves you "falling" .. </p><p></p><p>You might even enjoy scaling your Athletics check to jump onto the dragon, to take into account a phenomenal success: </p><p> Success to the Hard skill check level / natural 20 = landing on its back (supported), standing in a fencer's crouch. </p><p> Success to the Medium skill check level = landing on its back (supported), prone</p><p> Success to the Easy skill check level = landing on its back (supported), but prone and sliding off</p><p> Failure by four = landing on the tail (unsupported), need to Grab hold</p><p> Failure by five / natural one = wow, you missed the dragon entirely.</p><p></p><p>Not that you have to have those rules in place and formalized ahead of time: you can always run that kind of thing "off the cuff", I'm just tossing ideas around because this is a lot more fun than work! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Amaroq, post: 5107402, member: 15470"] We've gone with a bit of a cartoon-esque mechanic: Free-fall is a free action which happens automatically at the end of your turn if you haven't had physical support at any point during your turn. Basically, fall on your turn, its generally because of a failed skill check during an action, so not falling on that turn gives every other PC once chance to save you .. .. That puts a compelling tactical mini-game into play: "Save Fred or he falls to death!" .. and ensures that Fred's player will get one creative chance to save himself, even if he's knocked off the dragon's back by the dragon's action. You can expect to see [b]all[/b] sorts of creative aspects from your characters with that kind of thing: the most obvious, to me, being shooting Fred with a harpoon, but throwing him a rope, teleporting him back to the airship, teleporting myself to him, triggering a magic item, flying under him so that he falls onto me, and many others come to mind! ([I]And if we're help to our "height" idea from earlier, Fred at terminal velocity can only change two height levels .. so he's still not off the battlefield after one turn of falling, he's just a [b]lot[/b] harder to save![/I]) Note, also, that Fred might, say, Grab an adjacent dragon as a Standard, try to Climb onto its back as a Move, fail by lots, and "start falling again" .. but because he had support at any point during his turn, he doesn't actually fall at the end of his turn. That makes falling a lot less deadly (and makes the scene more cinematic in feel), which lets us use the standard Climb rules, e.g., fail by 4 or fewer = failure to move, fail by five or more = lose your grip and "start falling". Then you can really apply that same basic mechanic to all of the skills involved: a Grab failure by four leaves you "hanging on for dear life" while a Grab failure by five leaves you "falling" .. You might even enjoy scaling your Athletics check to jump onto the dragon, to take into account a phenomenal success: Success to the Hard skill check level / natural 20 = landing on its back (supported), standing in a fencer's crouch. Success to the Medium skill check level = landing on its back (supported), prone Success to the Easy skill check level = landing on its back (supported), but prone and sliding off Failure by four = landing on the tail (unsupported), need to Grab hold Failure by five / natural one = wow, you missed the dragon entirely. Not that you have to have those rules in place and formalized ahead of time: you can always run that kind of thing "off the cuff", I'm just tossing ideas around because this is a lot more fun than work! ;) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Another Airship Encounter
Top