Anyone else bothered by the falling rules?

[0-hr]

D&D characters past 12th level or so are effectively superheroes, and you have to treat combat that way.

You've summed up very nicely why I don't like "high level" play.

I guess that this is just yet another problem with the hyper-increasing hit point mechanism for level advacement. Ah well, it ain't goin away any time soon...

 

[hong]

You've summed up very nicely why I don't like "high level" play.

I guess that this is just yet another problem with the hyper-increasing hit point mechanism for level advacement. Ah well, it ain't goin away any time soon...

If falling from great heights and walking away unscathed really bothers you, have it deal Con damage. Hit points incorporate an element of combat skill, and it's reasonable to say that combat skill won't help you survive going splat on the ground. Everyone has more-or-less the same amount of Con, OTOH, regardless of skill. The exact amount of damage, and whether it should be temporary or permanent (I'd go for temporary) is left as an exercise.

This _will_ lead to iffy questions as to what sorts of damage should be handled via hit points and what should be Con, so if I were you, I'd file it all in the round file using Hong's Third Law as a precedent, and walk away.

 

[scadgrad]

Dwarfs seem to bounce

Did you apply the Massive Damage Threshold rules?

In the standard rules, if you take at least 50 points of damage in one attack or incident, then the character must make a Fort Save or die due to massive trauma.

You could always lower the 50-point threshold and make it more dangerous, or add a condition even if they succeed the Fort Save since the impact from a fall would definitely take the wind out of you.

Yep, sure did & actually I believe that's a varient rule, not standard. The only problem is that the Dwarf Fighter will make just about all of those Fort Saves. I set the DC at 15 (when in doubt...couldn't find a DC in the DMG) which means he makes it unless he rolls a 1. In retrospect a 20 would have probably been a more appropriate DC given the fact that it was a 300' drop.

I've just looked at the Damage to Specific Areas rule on DMG 66 & think I probably should use those as well. Falls from such heights should break legs, arms, ribs, etc.

 

[scadgrad]

Why not just play Champions...

D&D characters past 12th level or so are effectively superheroes, and you have to treat combat that way. Daredevil, Spidey, Batguy and co would probably not have many qualms about jumping off 4-storey buildings. Neither should your PCs.

Well I don't mind my guys being as heroic as Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli (insert favorite fantasy character here), but I don't want them being on par w/ Spiderman & Thor.

"Mize well play Champions"

I don't mind high level play, there's just a few things that need to be 'tweaked' to make it a bit more reasonable. Falling Damage is certainly one of them.

 

[Tzarevitch]

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

 

[kreynolds]

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.

Somehow I doubt that. Care to explain? I'd like to see the math and damage behind that kind of a fall.

 

[mikebr99]

Somehow I doubt that. Care to explain? I'd like to see the math and damage behind that kind of a fall.

heh... Yeah and the heat buildup damage from re-entry...

 

[Voadam]

Kreynolds,

I can theorize two ways this could work. One is max damage of 20d6 for falling, about 70 points of damage, which is survivable by high level characters. Second, if it was 1 or 2e then a stoneskin would block all the damage from the first impact. Might still take some damage from the bounce but probably livable. Besides, I have not seen any official rule on heat entry, so it probably was not used by the DM.

Tzarevich,

I've been using that factorial falling damage for years (thanks for the reminder of the math term, I hadn't heard it used since junior high), it makes heights much scarier (let the PCs share my rl fear of heights). Nobody has fallen more than 40' before in my games so I have not had to rule on whether to use a 20d6 terminal velocity cap yet.

 

[smetzger]

Warning this is a house rule.
I use the falling damage rule from an old issue of Dragon.

1d20 for every 10 ft divided by 1d6. So a 30 ft fall would be 3d20/1d6. With a mean of 9, minimum of 0, and maximum of 60.

For most falls you will still get about the same damage as the 1d6 for every 10 ft. But there is the small chance that you will take little or no damage or that you will take a whole lot of damage.

 

[0-hr]

Masive damage isn't optional.
The save is Fort(15).

If a character ever sustains damage so massive that 50 oints of damage or more are inflicted in one deduction, and the character isn't killed outright, the character must make a Fortitude save (DC 15). If this saving throw fails, the character dies regardless of current hit points.