Falling from Great Heights

[El Mahdi]

To all the people who dislike that high-level characters can drink acid, swim in lava, survive falls, etc., and all the people who think that a mook stabbing you to death at night should be a threat at every level: Realistic heroes are low-level. By the time you get past 13th level or so, mundane physics don't really matter to characters anymore. That's all there is to it.

No that's not all there is to it.

That's all there is to it in your game.

But D&D Next is not about your game, it's about everybody games. It's about having the ability to be as many different versions of D&D as there are groups playing it.

A base system that is simple and realistic (as possible), with add-on modules to crank it up to any other sort of style or play type, is what D&D Next is striving for.


Whay is this so hard for people to wrap their heads around or accept...

 

[pemerton]

Having my high level PC jump off a 50 foot cliff just to save time is genre-appropriate for say, Toon, but not so much for fantasy.

The problem is with PCs saying "I have 76 HP, I'll just jump down the 120' cliff, and heal the damage at the bottom."

But in the context of a combat or some other desperate moment, this can be pretty dramatic (at least I've found). It's over 25 years since I GMed G2, but I still remember the dwarven fighter seeing the frost giants approaching, looking over his shoulder down the icy cliff, and deciding that he could take the fall better than he could take the giants.

A dramatic moment, and but for it he might not have found the remorhaz.

But if my players were having their PCs jump over cliffs rather than walk down the mountain paths, my first instinct would be to offer them something more interesting on which to spend their hit points!

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ahnehnois - I think that adding in a wounds location system and all those other fiddly bits would turn D&D into GURPS. If you want to see combat grind, try that system. Even a glacially slow D&D combat where players dither over every action is still lightning fast in comparison.

If it's an optional add-on, great, I can ignore it. But, I really hope it never becomes part of the base mechanics because it just slows the game down SOOO much.

I don't play D&D for this level of simulation.

Certainly a fair point, and slowing down play is a huge concern (which is why I've only implemented my injury system for CoC and its very simple characters). My feeling is that for every level of complexity that is added to the attacks (over a very simple baseline), one should be added to their results. It makes no sense to me that we have such complex (and slow) combat rules but no rules for their consequences. In other words, if a player wants to be able to say more than "I attack", a DM should be able to say more than "you hit".

I think this approach would produce a game with simpler combat rules and slightly more complex rules for after the battle. I wouldn't advocate anything close to 100% realism for D&D, but I think if I'm going to play a fighter I want to inflict some real wounds (and have some real scars).

 

[Stormonu]

hmm.. I'm actually not sure about 1 in a milion, I suspect the chance to survive a 200ft fall is more like 1 in 10000.

a friend of mine actually fell 60 meter (about 200ft) after a parachuting accident and survived. he made a full recovery and is now jumping out of planes again. not bad after a broken back and neck.

Let's also make the distinction - surviving such a fall in the real world is far different than the D&D "get up and dust self off afterward" - in less than 6 seconds.

 

[Stormonu]

By level 7, you're a mythical hero. Beowulf died fighting a dragon that works out to roughly Large size in 3e (or perhaps the smaller end of Huge), and one without a breath weapon and spellcasting at that, which puts it around CR 8-10, a boss fight for a level 4-6 solo PC. He also fought a troll, which from its description could be anything from a regeneration-less D&D troll to an ogre or one of the smaller giants, which is again in the lower CR range.

Unless I'm mistaken a CR 8 creature should be an epic fight for a level 5 party, which would make it an epic fight for a lone 8th level character?

 

[triqui]

The thing is that actual real life human beings have survived terminal velocity falls. The idea that a demigod-slaying paladin can't take the same impact is a bit mind-bending.

The thing is no actual real life human has fall at terminal velocity into a pool of lava, and get out of there without dying. Your paladin can.

 

[pemerton]

if a player wants to be able to say more than "I attack", a DM should be able to say more than "you hit".

I agree with this. This is why I find 4e a viable version of D&D, whereas earlier editions - in which combat is overwhelmingly about hit point damage without other effects - do comparatively little for me.

 

[Incenjucar]

The thing is no actual real life human has fall at terminal velocity into a pool of lava, and get out of there without dying. Your paladin can.

Not a fan of Lord of the Rings?

 

[triqui]

The fun thing is not only falling is unrealistic.

At 4'01'' you can see what happen when you are hit by a great sword:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfLZozBVpM]Two Handed Great Sword - YouTube[/ame]

Hit points are unrealistic. Always have been, always will be.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

No the 1e player's hand book says 1d6 per 10' fallen.

The way I see it is that it’s not really a question of “what is an appropriate scale of damage for falling?”, but “why should a 10th level fighter have a better chance of surviving a 100’ drop than a regular person?”

Using HP for falling explicitly means that the fighter has a much better chance of surviving the fall, although there’s no actual good reason for this. His training and experience count for nothing in this scenario, and realistically his chance of surviving should be about the same as any other shmo; maybe a little higher because he’s probably physically tougher.

Now you could take a 4e-esque view that reality bends arounds the character because he’s a ‘hero’. That is, his heroic plot-shield means that in his case maybe there’s a barrel of hay or a pool of water that breaks his fall that wouldn’t be there for a disposable mook. That’s a perfectly legitimate way of seeing things, though not to my taste.