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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9557520" data-attributes="member: 4937">Agreed.  While at the time of the article realism was fetishized as the solution to all table problems, there real and meaningful table problems that they were trying to fix.  They weren't just being realistic for the sake of realism. This particular problem that was trying to be addressed had to do with immersion.  Both players and GMs felt taken out of the game when on a whim, not at heroically dramatic moments but just because they could, players would treat falls as minor inconveniences and chose to do things like deliberately jumping off 60 foot high ledges because it didn't threaten their character.  I think it would have been less of a problem if at a dramatic moment the hero attempted the leap in order to save the innocent and the player was immersed in the fear of that choice and the risk they were taking, but they just were because they could do the math and it wasn't going to hurt them much.I won't call "realism" the solution exactly here because there is nothing about hit points that is realistic per se nor have I ever seen any system that actually has realistic injury and trauma systems, but in this case the general inclination that "falls are risky" that realism promotes is I think the right solution.  In my own system, a 30' fall would probably average about 13 damage which is around what 3d6 would produce, but the maximum damage from a 30' fall in my game would be around 78 damage.  This later result would be extraordinarily rare though, like 1 in 100,000 falls.  I don't use a normalized curve.  The result is that I can have pit traps that have a challenge about like you'd expect but players learn over time, "Falling is bad" because relatively soon they get hit by a 30 foot fall that did say 40 damage and left them near death (or dead) so while the average result doesn't wreck the game, there is a strong incentive not to treat falling as trivial.  Falling becomes 'exciting' in a way real falling is exciting.  "Oh crap!" moments.</blockquote>

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