Death from above, an unorthadox strategy

[myradale]

Ok, a thought experiment.

Consider a 12th level monk with a strength of 18 and ring of feather falling.

During combat, he picks up a huge rock (300lb) and lifts it over his head.
He then dissappears, leaving no trace.

Unbenownst to all, he has used his abundent step feature to dimension door himself the maximum distance (400'+40'/level) a whopping 640' straight up!
(the dimension door spell allows you to carry additional materials up to your maximum load)
He then lets the stone go, and floats gently back to earth to survey the carnage he just caused.

Alright...a 100lb elf character suffers 1d6 damage for every 10' fallen, so even if you were to rule that the rock doesn't fall any faster than a person, it would still do 64d6 (64-384) points of damage to whatever unfortunate bloke it happened to land on! I'll grant that a dropped boulder is pretty hard to aim... but then again, if you used it against a dragon or something else huge or larger, you've got quite a footprint to "aim" at.

Anyone see any rules violations here?
I'm only 7th level right now, but if this looks rational, I'll file it away under "things I really GOTTA try someday"

hee hee hee
never know what hit him.

 

[myradale]

crap...broke my own thread!

ok, just checked the DMs.

seems the limit on falling objects is 20d6. (20-120)
Guess they feel that this is terminal velocity. (at a height of 200' up?)

Oh well, I guess I could always see if I could bring up 2 150 lb rocks instead?

They only do 1d6/20', but with 640' to play with, they'd still do 20d6 damage each.

Or if I could figure out a way to pick up 3 100lb rocks?
They'd do 1d6/30' so each of them would hit terminal by the time they hit!

Beware my juggling teleporting fury!

 

[BSF]

OK, this is the second time today I have looked up Falling Objects. This time, I will copy/paste the relevant sections of the SRD.

FALLING OBJECTS
Just as characters take damage when they fall more than 10 feet, so too do they take damage when they are hit by falling objects.

Objects that fall upon characters deal damage based on their weight and the distance they have fallen.

For each 200 pounds of an object ’s weight, the object deals 1d6 points of damage, provided it falls at least 10 feet. Distance also comes into play, adding an additional 1d6 points of damage for every 10-foot increment it falls
beyond the first (to a maximum of 20d6 points of damage).

Objects smaller than 200 pounds also deal damage when dropped, but they must fall farther to deal the same damage. Use Tableamage from Falling Objects to see how far an object of a given weight must drop to deal
1d6 points of damage.

Table:Damage from Falling Objects
Object Weight Falling Distance
200 – 101 lb.         20 ft.
100 – 51 lb.          30 ft.
50 – 31 lb.            40 ft.
30 – 11 lb.            50 ft.
10 – 6 lb.             60 ft.
5 – 1 lb.               70 ft.

For each additional increment an object falls, it deals an additional 1d6 points of damage.

Objects weighing less than 1 pound do not deal damage to those they land upon, no matter how far they have fallen.

I am almost positive that I once saw a ref save for avoiding falling objects as well, but I cannot find it now. In this case though, I would consider using a to-hit roll for the monk.

By the SRD, the 300 lb boulder would do 1d6 damage + 1d6 for each range increment beyond 10'. In this case, you would max out the damage at 190' feet. The advantage to the monk would be a shorter falling duration. (Feather Fall makes yuo fall at 60'/round.)

 

[Piratecat]

Hmmm. Not to be pedantic, but what's the chance that the falling damage maxes out at 20d6, and the object weight damage doesn't? Any takers?

 

[Fieari]

That seems like a valid interpretation to me... otherwise being hit by a brick falling from a height of 200' and being hit by a Grand Piano or 16 Ton Weight from a heigh of 200' would cause the exact same amount of damage.

By this interpretation, a 400 pound object falling 200+' deals 2d6+20d6=22d6 damage, and a 600 pound object falling 200+' deals 3d6+20d6=23d6 damage.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I like the idea. A couple things I'd rule as a DM:

1) You need to make a touch attack with the rock to hit the space the target is in, because it's difficult to hit the spot where a man sized object is from a few hundred feet up (not sure what the AC would be).
2) The target would get a reflex save to avoid being hit by the rock (DC based off of how far the rock falls).

 

[Eremite]

It is clearly implied in Complete Warrior that the damage caused by the weight of an object is not capped at 20d6. If you check the Character Optimisation boards at WotC you will see some "lovely" examples of this where the Hulking Hurler prestige class is tweaked to inflict literally tens of thousands of hit points worth of damage.

 

[d20fool]

What a coincidence

How happy am I to log on to talk about an incident in my game only to have it already being discussed.

The PCs in my last session where fighting a huge avatar of a god (long story), a fight they where to flee like cowards, BTW. Then the druid gets the hot idea to summon an orca whale as high as he could above the god. After figuring out the 200 lbs per 1d6 thing it comes to nearly 400 points of damage. The sorcerer kicks in my summoning three large earth elementals at an even higher distance (he's flying.) These numbers where well into the four digits. Needless to say, there's a dead god lying around.

My question in retrospect, should there be a reflex save or attack roll involved here? I allowed it without, it was such an innovative solution, but I really need a hard and fast rule here. Any body know where to look?

 

[KerlanRayne]

Then the druid gets the hot idea to summon an orca whale as high as he could above the god.

This actually doesn't work.

A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

So no falling Orca.

KerlanRayne

 

[BSF]

Rereading the SRD does show an explicit differential between the damage from falling w/ "terminal velocity" and the weight. They would stack in this case. Nifty!

Still, I think there would be more value to multiple small rocks from a great height. Assuming you can get more hits on the target, you will do a lot more damage. Bags of holding & Handy Haversacks could be very useful in this case. For a Sorceror/Wizard that is flying, Shrink Item on boulders using the cloth item/command word option could be quite effective.