Falling from Great Heights

[Morrus]

If you are "hit" by the charging knight with a lance, what happens depend on your hit point total:

1. If it kills you, you were skewered right through internal organs.
2. If you are left with a few hit points, it was a solid hit, but it didn't kill you.
3. If you are left with more than a few hit points, it grazed you to little effect--because of your skill or luck.

It's been like that in all editions of D&D. Just read the section under hit points--why are we talking about this again?

Ah, right--falling. DMs should make common sense rulings. In my games, both in 3e and 4e, great heights kill people that fall from them. I ballpark that at about 100'--but I am not worried about the exact height. Characters (and players) in my games are afraid of falling from great heights.

The PCs are James Bond, Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker. None of those would be killed by a big fall. Something would happen, or they'd do something cool, or land on something lucky. Those are hit points.

 

[Hussar]

I am not talking about a handful country bandits I am talking about what should be overwhelming numbers.

25 trained archers with bows drawn and 4 PCs with no cover should be a threat for the PCs. The problem is DnD does not have a mechanic where one blow can kill a high level character.

I think you missed the point though. 25 trained archers and 25 bandits (a handful - if you have large hands ) are by no means anywhere near the threat of a colossal red dragon. They just aren't.

But, my very high level character is expected to face colossal dragons and win. So, for your archers to be a credible threat, they have to do as much damage as a colossal red dragon.

4e does it one way that a lot of people don't like - the archers are a threat because it's believable, so, the archers become high level minions. It's pure meta-gaming. The "level" of an NPC is relative to the PC's. So, yes, D&D does have a mechanic where 25 trained archers can be a threat - it's called scaling.

If the PC's were 3rd level, the archers would be 2nd level minions - Dead party. If the party is 15th level, the archers are 17th level minions with a handful of standard monsters in there as well. Again, dead party.

The problem is, a lot of people seem to have difficulty wrapping their head around the idea that level is fluid and an entirely meta-game concept.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I think the two of you need to agree on a particular level of adventurer, and argue from that vantage point. I have a feeling you have a different level of capability in mind.

 

[Hussar]

Just because your 15th-level PCs can take over a nation and they know it doesn't mean they actually should, and it seems like that's the root cause people object to--the inability of town guards to stop PCs from being homicidal maniacs--not necessarily the realism of the guards.

This is pretty much the heart of it. I've said it multiple times before, this is a social contract issue. See, this:

I sometimes like to play in a game where PCs are not gods at high levels just well trained and very competent.

has never been represented in D&D in any edition. A 15th level PC in AD&D is a god. Pure and simple. This is a character that can slay gods, has amassed more wealth than empires, and can stare down dragons (multiple). Same goes in 3e. 4e is the same, only it jacks the number up to about 25 because of a flatter power progression.

But, at no time in the game's history was a high level character simply "well trained and very competent".

I really wish I could find the thread that talks about the 20th level lich vs 1 million 5th level characters where it was reasonably argued that the lich had a decent chance of winning.

 

[BryonD]

The PCs are James Bond, Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker. None of those would be killed by a big fall. Something would happen, or they'd do something cool, or land on something lucky. Those are hit points.

Exactly right.

But it is also important that when they face deadly threats they are seriously concerned about it, if not flat out AFRAID.

Heroically surviving extreme situations is awesome. But knowing that they are *the PCs* and thus can dive into these situations with no fear would ruin the movies just as it does gaming sessions.

 

[BryonD]

has never been represented in D&D in any edition. A 15th level PC in AD&D is a god. Pure and simple. This is a character that can slay gods, has amassed more wealth than empires, and can stare down dragons (multiple). Same goes in 3e. 4e is the same, only it jacks the number up to about 25 because of a flatter power progression.

But, at no time in the game's history was a high level character simply "well trained and very competent".

I really wish I could find the thread that talks about the 20th level lich vs 1 million 5th level characters where it was reasonably argued that the lich had a decent chance of winning.

I think you pretty significantly overstate it when you call L15 "gods".

BUT

I agree with the thrust of the point. D&D is about waahoo high fantasy. I completely support a lot of the call for gritty gaming. But D&D just really isn't the ideal home of that.

 

[Minigiant]

I think you pretty significantly overstate it when you call L15 "gods".

BUT

I agree with the thrust of the point. D&D is about waahoo high fantasy. I completely support a lot of the call for gritty gaming. But D&D just really isn't the ideal home of that.

I wouldn't say it is all about wahoo high fantasy BUT as the levels progress it gravitates there.

Levels 1-3: This is gritty normal realistic fantasy. Everything is normal and barely have competency.
Levels 4-7: This is limit of realistic fantasy. Rules are barely broken and everything is a potential threat.
Levels 8-10: This is the end of halfway replication of reality.
Levels 11+: At this point, both feet are in Wahoo Superhumanland.


D&D is a level based game. Most level based games increase something with level. All edition of D&D chose killing power (damage) and survivability (HP). So eventually the level of a character will outpace the killing power of another. Even with 4 HP a level, a 60 HP level 15 PC might need 8 hits of a low level to be killed.

Overall there are questions that need answering.

1) Which mechanics/attributes increase with level?

2) How do lower level threats threaten higher level characters, if at all?

3) How is a character's level made noticeable?

4) Do characters realize how powerful they are in the world?

The only way a semi-realistic version of D&D can exist after ~level 6 is if these questions are answered.

 

[TarionzCousin]

A man fell twelve stories and was unhurt. How was this possible?

[sblock]He fell from the thirteenth floor.[/sblock]

 

[Hussar]

Exactly right.

But it is also important that when they face deadly threats they are seriously concerned about it, if not flat out AFRAID.

Heroically surviving extreme situations is awesome. But knowing that they are *the PCs* and thus can dive into these situations with no fear would ruin the movies just as it does gaming sessions.

And yet, and yet, none of the heroes ever thinks twice about diving into these situations. They never balk at jumping off the bridge, they never stop at the door of the airplane and say, "Bugger that!"

So, it's roleplay. You know that Bond jumping out of the airplane is going to survive, yet, we're all at the edge of the seat waiting to see how he survives.

It's not the results that makes it interesting, it's how they get there.

I think you pretty significantly overstate it when you call L15 "gods".

Really? By L15, the wizard, by himself, can level a city. The fighter can likely decimate a small army all on his own. Given the presumed wealth of that fighter (in any edition - after all, in AD&D, about 75% of his xp came from gold and treasure, which includes magical goodies), he's pretty much invincible. Hit only on a 20, likely regenerating, probably lots of damage resistance, he can stand in the middle of an army, and quite possibly win.

Sure, you always hit on a 20, but, if I've got DR 10/Magic, the army isn't hurting me at all. It might take me all afternoon, but, faced with the army of Gondor, I'm going to munch my way through Pac-Man style.

Of course, let's not forget that the fighter is the WEAKEST of the 15th level characters. Any of the casters isn't even breaking a sweat to obliterate armies.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

First, just to be picky, "in lava" and "in a burning building" are vastly different in ways that make them quite difficult to compare.

But beyond that, I disagree that you have nowhere to go from "if you fall into lava, you die." D&D is all about the exceptions.

If you get a magic charm that makes you immune to petrification, well then NOW you can go see how long it takes for Medusa to blink.
Situations can certainly arise for all kinds of survival in circumstances that are instantly deadly by default.

Someone earlier responded to "What happens to a hero in a burning building?" with "The same thing that happens to everyone else," paraphrasing of course. If the answer to both burning buildings and lava is "you die," there's not much granularity there. Either you die, or you're immune, with no middle ground.

If you try to introduce a middle ground with some magic charm that lets you make a Fort save to avoid petrification, well, why don't you just make that the default again? Getting into a staring contest with a medusa is stupid and unnecessarily risky, but it could easily be something that a hero could choose to do at a certain point.

And, again, I would point out the whole "Perseus was a low-level hero" thing. A 3e medusa has a DC 15 gaze attack; if we're feeling charitable for Perseus, we could stat him as a 5th-level rogue with 14 Con, giving him a +4 Fort. That's a 50/50 shot to save, and with the medusa getting both the passive gaze when he looks at her and an active gaze on her turn, that means that if Perseus looks directly at her he's statistically going to lose that contest in one round. So as far as Perseus and other low-level heroes are concerned, you can't get into a staring contest with Medusa. That shouldn't prevent the Hulk from staring at her nonchalantly and making catcalls because he's just that tough, because the assumptions for realistic vs. superhuman heroes are different.

I talked to the DM later and he was trying to set it up so we would start questioning what we had been told by Mr Bad. He never thought since we were a good party that we would kill the guards this way. He also thought we would have surrendered or left because of the archers.

This. This right here. The problem here isn't that high-level characters are nigh unto gods (which they are) or that bunches of mooks aren't a threat (which they aren't) but that (A) you were metagaming "Oh, the DM wouldn't send a non-level-appropriate encounter against us" and (B) you decided to slaughter the guards despite being a theoretically good party.

Regarding CR, I quite often throw encounters against my parties that are CR +8 or higher by the rules at my party when faced head-on but easier if you take them on intelligently--like the medusa example above, it's possible to take on 1000 archers yourself as a 15th level character, but you'd have to be a moron or suicidal to chance it when there are much better solutions and if you don't just charge in mindlessly it works out to more like a CR +1 challenge. So you were right to note that they were known for their archers and think that perhaps, just perhaps, they might have something that might make them actually a threat; CR is a terrible guideline, and DMs can throw ranges of encounters at you in any case, so it's possible that they could have threatened you.

It's one thing to say "Gee, we've fought archers before, these guys don't have anything indicating that they're exceptional, I doubt they're a threat--kill them!" but entirely another to say "Gee, these guys are known for their excellent archers, and we don't have much experience against massed archers, but the DM wouldn't throw an encounter of too high CR against us! Charge!"

Regarding alignment, what in Baator was your party thinking? Why would your theoretically-good party, when faced with a misunderstanding and offered a chance to just talk to someone or leave, decide on the route of violence? Hell, I'm currently playing in a high-power game as a 10th level "monk" (i.e. a mostly-noncasting multiclassed monstrosity that fights unarmed and unarmored) who is a psychopathic chaotic evil missionary for a chaotic evil religion and who can slaughter pretty much anything with fewer than 7 HD that ends its turn within 100 feet of him, and even he doesn't go crazy and slaughter everything in sight until he knows that they're actually enemies.

The two problems with that scenario are really that your DM was expecting your party to act a lot differently than you did, and that the rogue went off and provoked them without party consensus. If I were the DM in that situation--well, first of all, there is no one in my group with better rules knowledge, so no one would pull the "By the CR guidelines..." stuff with me, but that aside, if I were the DM in that situation, I'd be surprised with a good party suddenly changing their tune as well. I'd say a chat with your group and DM about good vs. bad metagaming and playstyle expectations would be a lot more useful in your case than making houserules to fix what ain't broke.