Falling Damage House Rule: soliciting feedback

[77IM]

What if you just changed the die size: 1d6 for med/small; 1d4 for tiny, 1d8 for large, etc.

You could use the hit die size: 1d4 for tiny, 1d6 for small, 1d8 for medium, etc.

 

[dave2008]

I have my own house rule.

You can make an Acrobatics check against the amount of feet fallen as the DC. Success indicates no damage. For every foot fallen, you take 1 point of damage. So it's entirely possible for someone with Expertise and a 20 Dexterity at level 20 to jump 37 feet without taking damage, if they roll a 20 on the check. Otherwise, they take 37 points of damage.

But if you fall 200 feet, you're taking 200 points of damage.

So falling a big distance is highly lethal in my games, as it should be.

I like this idea for its quasi-realism and simplicity. But I would suggest a few tweaks:

Falling
1) 1 hp of damage for each foot of distance above 10'

2) Make an Acrobatics or Athletics check

3) Subtract the amount of the check from the total damage of the fall. The result is the amount of damage you take.


​

 

[Lehrbuch]

I would go with 20% of max HP per 10' fall
50' fall is 100% of your HP. dropped to 0
100' is 200%, dead instantly...

Won't Gargantuan creatures be almost killed by tripping over?

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I like this idea for its quasi-realism and simplicity. But I would suggest a few tweaks:

Falling
1) 1 hp of damage for each foot of distance above 10'

2) Make an Acrobatics or Athletics check

3) Subtract the amount of the check from the total damage of the fall. The result is the amount of damage you take.


​

Eh, either you land properly or you don't. There's really no half-way on this kind of thing. And falling ten feet without hurting yourself is actually pretty difficult.

 

[Shiroiken]

In reality (the square peg in the round hole of RPGing) a fall of 60' onto a hard surface is nearly always fatal to a human being. That being just 6d6, less than a fireball and 22hp on average, seems a little lax.

In EGG's Original game, falling damage was meant to be cumulative. 10' = 1d6, 20' = 1d6 + 2d6, etc., so 60' was the max at 20d6. The rulebook in OD&D was poorly written, so everyone assumed that it was feet/10 d6. This quickly became the standard rule, since only those who'd played with Gary knew otherwise. Realize also that everyone had WAY few HP (1d6 HD for everyone, and no real Con bonus)! I'd thought about Houseruling back to this, but capping the damage at 40-50d6 since HP is so much higher.

 

[77IM]

In EGG's Original game, falling damage was meant to be cumulative. 10' = 1d6, 20' = 1d6 + 2d6, etc., so 60' was the max at 20d6.

Oh, that's really interesting. (Except that 60 feet would be 21d6; these are the triangular numbers.) A similar rule that might be easier to articulate is 1d6 for 10 feet, doubling the number of dice for each additional 10 feet (20 feet = 2d6, 30 feet = 4d6, 40 feet = 8d6, 50 feet = 16d6, 60 feet = 32d6, etc.).

I don't see why we put a cap on falling damage or why we ever have. If we're going to cap it, shouldn't it be related to terminal velocity? A human in air reaches terminal velocity at around 1500 feet. That's 150d6 using the PHB system or about 1,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000d6 using the exponential system I proposed above. Of course it's only 11,325d6 using Gygax's original system of triangular numbers.

Larger creatures generally have a higher terminal velocity, and smaller creatures have a lower terminal velocity. This is proportional to the creature's mass and cross-sectional area. Since mass grows cubically with size and cross-sectional area grows with the square of size, each D&D size increase should roughly double terminal velocity, and each size decrease should halve it.

Thus, using the simplistic PHB falling damage (1d6 per 10 feet), we have the following:

Size: Max Falling Damage (average damage)
Tiny: 37d6 (129)
Small: 75d6 (262)
Medium: 150d6 (525)
Large: 300d6 (1,050)
Huge: 600d6 (2,100)
Gargantuan: 1,200d6 (4,200)

 

[Horwath]

Won't Gargantuan creatures be almost killed by tripping over?

It's about the free fall only.

also if you jump down from 10ft and land on your feet, most probably you wont hurt yourself, much.

but if an elefant jumps down 10ft, he will probably break his legs because of his weight.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Big flying creatures will become very vulnerable to proning and other effects. Maybe that's OK, but then I would play most of them fighting on or near the ground to be safe.

But I get the merits of the idea. I think I might go for something less extreme though. What if you just changed the die size: 1d6 for med/small; 1d4 for tiny, 1d8 for large, etc. That adds some realism and tactics without it getting overwhelming.

To me that seems like a good thing. For some monsters, e.g. red dragons, the smartest tactics are snatch-grab-drop and breath-weapon, fly til it's recharged, breath weapon ad nauseum. Neither of these makes for fun fights. If the monsters are a bit more vulnerable, you have a a reasonable excuse to keep them on the ground and have a fun fight.

 

[dave2008]

Eh, either you land properly or you don't. There's really no half-way on this kind of thing. And falling ten feet without hurting yourself is actually pretty difficult.

Yep, I sometimes forget how athletically gifted I used to be. I could jump from 2 stories and once fell 15 feet off a ladder without a scratch (scared the crap out of me though). If I tried either of those now I would probably break my neck!

However, there is a wide range between landing properly, taking no damage, and landing poorly and dying.

 

[Horwath]

Yep, I sometimes forget how athletically gifted I used to be. I could jump from 2 stories and once fell 15 feet off a ladder without a scratch (scared the crap out of me though). If I tired either of those now I would probably break my neck!

However, there is a wide range between landing properly, taking no damage, and landing poorly and dying.

this is true. A 5ft fall on your head can kill you instantly or a little later after few days in coma.

We also as teenagers jumped from 10-15ft just because we could. There were just few sprained ancles and that is it.

Now I would probably snap knee tendons or worse.