Essentials (Comments)

[Oldtimer]

Instead, damage should be exponential. 20 feet 1d4 damage 30 feet 2d8 damage 40 feet 3d10 damage or some such scale like that.

That would make no sense at all. The kinetic energy at impact is proportional to the distance fallen (discounting air drag). A linear function is both simple and reasonable.

 

[Zaran]

Falling is a strange thing. My daughter's porch has only one small step. Of course, while backing away from her door I fell and broke my leg. That four extra inches put me in a cast

Most non-heroes only have 1 hp. You fell and disabled yourself. Luckily you made you rolled a 20 on your death save.

 

[twilsemail]

Most non-heroes only have 1 hp.

This isn't true at all. At least, it's not set in stone. Most of the NPCs I've seen statted out or statted out myself have dozens or even scores of HP and 1 HS.

Remember, cats are no longer winning in the Cats vs. Commoners Wars. They're patiently waiting for 5e, which is a long way down the road.

Caudor did, however, fail that save vs. slow for a veeeeeerrrry long time.

 

[Dausuul]

Historically, though, people that fell from the back of their horse would generally not die from the fall - yet would be unable to get up. I've heard stories of knights being knocked from the saddle in full plate, surviving, only to drown in a stream a foot deep because they were unable to raise their heads above the water.

Whether that's true or not, I honestly don't know. But I do know full plate is pretty heavy stuff.

If you mean they drowned purely because of the weight of their armor--not a chance. The stuff is 45 to 60 pounds, which is heavy but not that heavy, and it's well distributed over the body. Modern infantry routinely lug quite a bit more than that around with them, and I don't imagine anyone thinks a soldier who trips and falls in full kit is unable to get up again.

Now, if you broke some bones in the fall, suffered a concussion, or what have you, it's conceivable the weight of the armor might tip you over the edge from "able to get up" to "not able to get up." But you'd have to be in pretty rough shape.

 

[WalterKovacs]

As a guy who hangs out with people who regularly (not often, but regularly) wear plate mail, I find this unlikely. Most of them, if the armor is properly fitted, could likely swim in the stuff. It wouldn't be pretty, but they could do it. Someone who was clumsy enough that they couldn't stand up in the stuff would be dead meat on a battlefield.

Alternately, in the military I had to swim 50 meters with 30 kilos of gear (more than the listed weight of plate armor in the phb) before they let me out of training. I'd imagine a knight would have an easier time of it, as their armor was more evenly distributed than my kit.

I don't think it was necesarily a matter of "cannot move in plate armor" as "having fallen off the horse, they've have injured themselves in such a way that, while not lethal, makes it difficult, if not impossible, to move out of the way of immediate danger like a foot of water".

 

[Riastlin]

I'm fairly certain that there were also a number of soldiers who dumped gear in the Channel during the D-Day invasion in Normandy because they had to jump out of the boats early and their gear was dragging them down.

Obviously some of this can be attributed to "panic" or rather having to make a very quick decision (hence the quotes), but it does show that the weight of the gear, while not necessarily immobilizing in and of itself, can become a problem when combined with sufficient other factors. So yeah, as stated above, I could conceive of a knight drowning due to the combination of weight of armor and injuries sustained in combat/fall. I do know that it was common for knights to surrender when they were knocked off the horse because even the peasant with little more than a bow and spear became a dangerous threat.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Against common believe, it is not mass that drags you down in water... you will be in perfectly fine shape carrying 100kg of ice while in the water... 30kg of iron is a different matter...

Armor will hinder your movement quite a bit, due to beeing heavy at your arms... so it is definitively dragging you down. (Like wet clothes (which are not dragging you down a lot because of having a high density.)

 

[Dausuul]

Against common believe, it is not mass that drags you down in water... you will be in perfectly fine shape carrying 100kg of ice while in the water... 30kg of iron is a different matter...

Armor will hinder your movement quite a bit, due to beeing heavy at your arms... so it is definitively dragging you down. (Like wet clothes (which are not dragging you down a lot because of having a high density.)

Granted, but no matter how dense the armor is, it won't burden you more in water than it would in air. If you can stand up on dry land, you can stand up in a stream.

I suppose you might have a problem with the padding under the armor soaking up water and becoming correspondingly heavier. But I still can't believe the extra weight would be enough to prevent you standing up.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Historically, though, people that fell from the back of their horse would generally not die from the fall - yet would be unable to get up. I've heard stories of knights being knocked from the saddle in full plate, surviving, only to drown in a stream a foot deep because they were unable to raise their heads above the water.

That is a mix of urban myth and misattribution. Field Plate wasn't that heavy - people can do cartwheels in it. (The really heavy stuff was jousting plate, but that was for sport rather than war). It would have been useless if it was as horses were relatively easy things to kill. On the other hand, concussions would be superficially indistinguishable from the effect you mention.

 

[BobTheNob]

As a guy who hangs out with people who regularly (not often, but regularly) wear plate mail, I find this unlikely.

You hang out with people who regularly wear plate mail?

No, wait, dont respond. Im not sure I want to know...