Anyone else bothered by the falling rules?

[Xeriar]

Doh!

Junior high was a long time ago, is there a term for cumulative progressing addition then?

It's summation.

I like the combination of summation damage and saves/checks to reduce the effective distance myself. I may go a little further than two checks, however, since a people have survived falls from 100 feet or more onto concrete even.

Reflex save for the first 10 feet (here it's your gut reaction. I don't think I'd apply anything but subdual damage to anyone who prepared themselves for a 10 foot fall anyway).

Jump check for the next X amount of feet. Technically there shouldn't be a limit, but anything beyond five times your height should not be in the realm of humanoids.

Fortitude save for the last 10 feet.

Highest I've heard of anyone routinely jumping (onto a hard surface) without injury is 40 feet. 50 feet may be possible for a human, but going beyond that...

The body is very resiliant, true, but there is really only so much it can take.

 

[Macbrea]

Any fall over 650 ft is the same as a fall from 10,000 feet. Terminal velocity is reached for the human body at 53m/s.


Quote from a free fall record site.

Lt. I.M. Chisov was a Russian airman whose Ilyushin IL-4 bomber was attacked German fighters in January of 1942. Falling nearly 22,000 feet, he hit the edge of a snow-covered ravine and rolled to the bottom. He was badly hurt but survived.

Alan Magee, a gunner on a B-17 with the 303rd Bomb Group of the U.S. 8th Air Force, was on a mission to St. Nazaire, France in January of 1943, when his bomber was set aflame by enemy fire. He was thrown from the plane before he had a chance to put on his parachute. He fell 20,000 feet and crashed through the skylight of the St. Nazaire train station. His arm was badly injured, but he recovered from that and other injuries.

In March of 1944, Nicholas Alkemade was the tail gunner in a British Lancaster bomber on a night mission to Berlin when his plane was attacked by German fighters. When the captain ordered the crew to bail out, Alkemade looked back into the plane and discovered that his parachute was in flames. He chose to jump without a parachute rather than to stay in the burning plane. He fell 18,000 feet, landing in trees, underbrush, and drifted snow. He twisted his knee and had some cuts, but was otherwise alright.

 

[Dreaddisease]

The idea of only taking healable hit point damage from a 50+ foot fall. Heck I have yet to see someone not break a leg/arm/neck from a 50 ft fall. The ability dmg is more realistic (not assuming hp and D&D is very realistic but hey), but there needs to be something that says your going to break/sprain something when you fall.

I guess that goes in house rules.

 

[Romotre]

What about keeping the damage AND adding Con damage? maybe 1, d2, or d3 per die. Then a fort save of DC 10 + con damage or the Con damage is permanent. I know permanent damage (even a couple) would scare the crap out of my PC's.

 

[Celebrim]

If you are trying to model debilitating injuries (sprained ankles and so forth), then there are alot better ways to model it than attribute damage.

 

[Romotre]

Dnd does not model specfic injuries under standard rules. maybe do Str damage. maybe do both. but anyway, it would serve its purpose.

 

[Agback]

factorial and triangular numbers

Doh!

Junior high was a long time ago, is there a term for cumulative progressing addition then?

The numbers you get by summing consecutive integers (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78, etc.) are called the 'triangular numbers'. The general formula for the nth triangular number is n*(n+1)/2.

So far as I know there is no widely-recognised term for this function, but since the nth square number is called 'n squared' perhaps you could go with 'triangularised' or 'triangulated'.

Regards,


Agback

 

[ogre]

For all you fans of using ability damage, you can try my method.
I call for a FORT save, DC=damage taken
Each point the save fails by results in 1 ability point damage.
The ability points are taken in order and passes to the next when an ability reaches 0.
First affected is DEX, this is sprains, pulled muscles, bruised bones etc.
2nd, STR. As this is lowered you see broken limbs, ribs and torn muscles
3rd is CON. As you take more CON damage you see more internal injuries, broken backs and head damage.
So, this all boils down to:
Falls from 10-30 feet, FORT saves usually in the 8-13 range, usually only partialy draining DEX
Falls 50-100 feet will do 20-40 damage or so, hard fort saves, but doing in general (for a midlevel dude) 20 ability points, which may actually see broken bones, from reduced STR.
High falls of like 200' will see ~60 points, which will probably produce around 40 ability points damage and more than likey a 0 CON.

Anyway, I hope that made sense ;-)

 

[Greythax]

That reminds me, I ran into a website where the author was claiming that the 1d6 per 10' fallen rule was a typo. He said that the original Gygaxian rule was 1d6 cumulative per 10' fallen. If I remember my math correctly that is called a factorial. Cumulative is not the correct term for what he was trying to express but that is the termhe used. What he meant was:

30' fall is not 3d6, a 30 foot fall is 3d6+2d6+1d6=6d6. A 100' fall (which is usually terminal in the real world) would be 10d6+9d6+8d6 etc. for a total of 55d6. A 200' fall comes out to 210d6.

I don't know if I believe that that is Gygax's original rule, but I do like the rule. I too have had a problem stomaching the stupid falling rule and I plan on using the above as a house rule. I played in a campaign where we went spelljamming and it is possible to fall from a spelljamming ship in orbit and walk away under the standard falling rules.

Tzarevitch

As a long time 1st E player, that was indeed the rule. But, the max dammage was capped at 20d6 due to "terminal velocity".

This is a big problem in any version of d&d, I recomend making the fall "Jagged". Let them fall their 200 feet then OUCH, hit an outcropping of rock, make a reflex save to hold on, oops, you failed, there is another outcrop BAM, so far we are up to 40d6 damage etc etc etc. Sure, 300 ft fall won't kill a lot of characters, but it might be a slight bit more detering.

Greythax