Crazy Jerome
First Post
That is what the book clearly says. Rumor has it that Gygax intended for it to work the escalating way, but that intent got lost/dropped at some point in the process of getting the rules down in print.
Falling from Great Heights
- Thread starter Savage Wombat
- Start date
That is what the book clearly says. Rumor has it that Gygax intended for it to work the escalating way, but that intent got lost/dropped at some point in the process of getting the rules down in print.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
Here's a possible way out I haven't seen suggested:
1. Put in some nasty, almost real-world version of falling damage (and lava damage and anything else that fits). If you fall at terminal velocity onto rock, your only way out is if your group is using some kind of optional, additional narrative plot points--e.g. a Hero Point lets you walk away from certain death with some nasty complication instead, or you can escape death N times during the campaign, or whatever. In any case, the falling itself is extremely dangerous.
2. However, there is also an optional system for using your hit points to avoid this fate. How you narrate this and what limits are on it, are up to you. The damage is more like traditional D&D falling damage--perhaps the 1d6 per 10 feet fallen.
For example, if you want the heroes to be more like demi-gods, you can play this more or less the way it has always been played. You are a hero. So you invoke the heroic falling system, and don't take that nasty damage.
However, you can also play it as avoiding going over the edge by scraping and clawing. This is the "Die Hard" version. On a 100 foot fall, you don't roll 10d6+modifiers for a huge fall onto rocks. You roll 10d6 to grasp the edge with your fingernails, slide over, bounce off a few rocks, grab some foliage to slow your fall, and then grab hold of a narrow ledge with your last strength. It hurts, and you are still in a bad spot. But you didn't fall all the way onto those rocks.
Then if the fiction makes this impossible--tied up, suspended by a rope head down, well away from the edge, and someone cuts the rope--well, you go back to the base, nasty version of damage. Better be really lucky.
Essentially, the "Die Hard" version is that you have to lobby within the fiction to use the more friendly numbers, and how you lobby determines what nasty position you are in aftewards. Convince the DM (or table) that your action is plausible, you get to take a lot of damage and be in a bad spot. Fail in your lobbying, you get to take almost certainly fatal damage. The "Demigod" version is that your lobbying attempt atomatically succeeds by virtue of that is what the group is playing--even if tied up over the pit. Now all you have to do is narrate how it works, however implausible.
1. Put in some nasty, almost real-world version of falling damage (and lava damage and anything else that fits). If you fall at terminal velocity onto rock, your only way out is if your group is using some kind of optional, additional narrative plot points--e.g. a Hero Point lets you walk away from certain death with some nasty complication instead, or you can escape death N times during the campaign, or whatever. In any case, the falling itself is extremely dangerous.
2. However, there is also an optional system for using your hit points to avoid this fate. How you narrate this and what limits are on it, are up to you. The damage is more like traditional D&D falling damage--perhaps the 1d6 per 10 feet fallen.
For example, if you want the heroes to be more like demi-gods, you can play this more or less the way it has always been played. You are a hero. So you invoke the heroic falling system, and don't take that nasty damage.
However, you can also play it as avoiding going over the edge by scraping and clawing. This is the "Die Hard" version. On a 100 foot fall, you don't roll 10d6+modifiers for a huge fall onto rocks. You roll 10d6 to grasp the edge with your fingernails, slide over, bounce off a few rocks, grab some foliage to slow your fall, and then grab hold of a narrow ledge with your last strength. It hurts, and you are still in a bad spot. But you didn't fall all the way onto those rocks.
Then if the fiction makes this impossible--tied up, suspended by a rope head down, well away from the edge, and someone cuts the rope--well, you go back to the base, nasty version of damage. Better be really lucky.
Essentially, the "Die Hard" version is that you have to lobby within the fiction to use the more friendly numbers, and how you lobby determines what nasty position you are in aftewards. Convince the DM (or table) that your action is plausible, you get to take a lot of damage and be in a bad spot. Fail in your lobbying, you get to take almost certainly fatal damage. The "Demigod" version is that your lobbying attempt atomatically succeeds by virtue of that is what the group is playing--even if tied up over the pit. Now all you have to do is narrate how it works, however implausible.
I guess because it is an optional rule as well. It would be great if they can really do a modular game that makes most people happy.
fenriswolf456
First Post
I'm finding it difficult to know just what you're arguing for.
I think that's why El Mahdi was saying that HP worked fine for poison. One bonus of having an abstract HP system, is that it can take a lot of fine details of certain effects and make them abstract too. Drinking that poison didn't kill you? It must have been a lighter dose, or your body chemistry wasn't as affected by it, or maybe the saliva of that Chimera bite you took twenty minutes ago helped counteract the lethality of the poison.
And yes, most poison in the D&D are not real, but we can draw on real world poisons and draw parallels, and realize that not every drop of poison is instantly lethal.
Are your dungeons really that filled with pools of acid? I think I've seen one pool in the entirety of my game play over 28 years.
What about them? They take continual fire damage until they escape or die, just like any regular person would. The only difference being that a hardened adventure may have the wherewithall to struggle to get out, rather than succumbing to smoke and pain as most normal people would.
No, El Mahdi said that luck plays a part in things, just like in Real Life. HP loosely reflect this variability in life. There are countless cases of people taking what should be far beyond lethal hits and surviving ... multiple stab wounds, spikes through the eye, run over by cars, falling tremendous distances. And yet people have died from a single stab, or slipping on the floor and hitting their head. It's that fact that keeps us from running around willy-nilly and jumping off buildings. Sure, we know that one _can_ survive, but it's not assured, and so we logically don't risk it. Just like most people don't stand naked and unmoving in a fight. And in a fight, you're talking a humungous range of variables; dodging, parrying and deflecting blows, luck, attacker's skill, ability to roll with the hit, armour, and so on.
I think the desire for 'realistic' falling damage stems from the potential to meta-game. If you look off the side of a 100' building, you are probably going to think that there's no way you're going to survive jumping down, even if there are stories of people who have survived such falls. PCs should really be no different, but the game gives us knowledge of what will happen... 10d10, so 100 damage ... my 22nd level character can survive that, and we're resting soon, so wheeeee!
If it hits solidly, in just the right way, sure. Or it could cripple, or just pin the character, or maybe the character reacts instinctively to the sound of falling rock and danger from their years of adventuring to get out of the way in the nick of time. Not every falling boulder instantly and automatically hits a target below it.
A wall also cannot move, dodge, parry, threaten, and is unlikely to have much luck or divine intervention.
I think you're wrong in this regard ... people have and will continue to face real world menaces that some would regard as hopeless or insurmountable or extremely dangerous. Sure, not every single person, but there are those few who will find it within themselves to push on despite the odds. That's why the PCs do the things they do, because they have that drive in some form or another.
Real world people have gone up against fully armoured tanks with nothing more than a rifle and a bottle of flaming alcohol. A real world person stepped in front of a moving tank, not knowing for sure that it would actually stop. Real world people have gone into flaming buildings on the verge of collapse. Real world people do go after dangerous persons for rewards.
If there were D&D menaces in the real world, like dragons say, I am more than confident in betting that there would be real world people willing to try killing them.
I think that's why El Mahdi was saying that HP worked fine for poison. One bonus of having an abstract HP system, is that it can take a lot of fine details of certain effects and make them abstract too. Drinking that poison didn't kill you? It must have been a lighter dose, or your body chemistry wasn't as affected by it, or maybe the saliva of that Chimera bite you took twenty minutes ago helped counteract the lethality of the poison.
And yes, most poison in the D&D are not real, but we can draw on real world poisons and draw parallels, and realize that not every drop of poison is instantly lethal.
Are your dungeons really that filled with pools of acid? I think I've seen one pool in the entirety of my game play over 28 years.
What about them? They take continual fire damage until they escape or die, just like any regular person would. The only difference being that a hardened adventure may have the wherewithall to struggle to get out, rather than succumbing to smoke and pain as most normal people would.
No, El Mahdi said that luck plays a part in things, just like in Real Life. HP loosely reflect this variability in life. There are countless cases of people taking what should be far beyond lethal hits and surviving ... multiple stab wounds, spikes through the eye, run over by cars, falling tremendous distances. And yet people have died from a single stab, or slipping on the floor and hitting their head. It's that fact that keeps us from running around willy-nilly and jumping off buildings. Sure, we know that one _can_ survive, but it's not assured, and so we logically don't risk it. Just like most people don't stand naked and unmoving in a fight. And in a fight, you're talking a humungous range of variables; dodging, parrying and deflecting blows, luck, attacker's skill, ability to roll with the hit, armour, and so on.
I think the desire for 'realistic' falling damage stems from the potential to meta-game. If you look off the side of a 100' building, you are probably going to think that there's no way you're going to survive jumping down, even if there are stories of people who have survived such falls. PCs should really be no different, but the game gives us knowledge of what will happen... 10d10, so 100 damage ... my 22nd level character can survive that, and we're resting soon, so wheeeee!
If it hits solidly, in just the right way, sure. Or it could cripple, or just pin the character, or maybe the character reacts instinctively to the sound of falling rock and danger from their years of adventuring to get out of the way in the nick of time. Not every falling boulder instantly and automatically hits a target below it.
A wall also cannot move, dodge, parry, threaten, and is unlikely to have much luck or divine intervention.
I think you're wrong in this regard ... people have and will continue to face real world menaces that some would regard as hopeless or insurmountable or extremely dangerous. Sure, not every single person, but there are those few who will find it within themselves to push on despite the odds. That's why the PCs do the things they do, because they have that drive in some form or another.
Real world people have gone up against fully armoured tanks with nothing more than a rifle and a bottle of flaming alcohol. A real world person stepped in front of a moving tank, not knowing for sure that it would actually stop. Real world people have gone into flaming buildings on the verge of collapse. Real world people do go after dangerous persons for rewards.
If there were D&D menaces in the real world, like dragons say, I am more than confident in betting that there would be real world people willing to try killing them.
Aenghus
Explorer
The setting has a lot to say about how often this issue arises. A setting with huge chasms, towering cliffs, floating islands or flying ships has many more opportunities for a sudden plunge to an almost certain doom. However, part of such settings is making such falls potentially survivable, by magic, parachutes, last second grabs of hanging vegetation, hidden ledges etc etc.
4e specifically had rules to avoid putting fatal falls into encounters, given there are far more ways in 4e to throw people or monsters over precipes.
I think the issue is a bit of a red herring. Jokey or gamist games where PCs blithely jump off cliffs generally don't coexist with players who object to such shennanigans. I have seen PCs jump off cliffs as the lesser of two evils, but generally they either have feather fall or equivalent or expect their PC to die or the referee to throw them a bone.
4e specifically had rules to avoid putting fatal falls into encounters, given there are far more ways in 4e to throw people or monsters over precipes.
I think the issue is a bit of a red herring. Jokey or gamist games where PCs blithely jump off cliffs generally don't coexist with players who object to such shennanigans. I have seen PCs jump off cliffs as the lesser of two evils, but generally they either have feather fall or equivalent or expect their PC to die or the referee to throw them a bone.
"Rumour" including Gygax saying this in public at a TSR(UK) GamesFair in Reading in the early 80s. This was written up in Imagine magazine IIRC.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
I once saw a D&D character around 6th level, cornered and facing no other way out of a lethal fight, jump to certain doom because several of the other characters had mentioned too many times how they were looking forward to looting some of his nifty magic items when he eventually bought it. His last words were something like, "Good luck finding the body!" Ah, those Killer DM days really changed the nature of play.
Eldritch_Lord
Adventurer
It's a feature and not a bug in your game. In mine, and many other games, it is a bug. Without that qualifier, your statement is not correct.
It's a small yet very important distinction. One that I feel is crucial to remember.
Again, in your game.
The only shoulds that exist as far as D&D goes is that each and every individual group has the right to decide how D&D should be played at their table.
The only big picture being missed by anybody here is that.
Neither the rules nor anybody else, get to decide the way that D&D should be played.
[...]
I don't believe the power curve should stay where it is, but it's certainly your right to disagree with me. It does appear though that Monte and Company don't agree that everything should stay where it is as far as the base game. It does however mean that you will be able to play your game using D&D Next, and I will be able to play my game using D&D Next. I'm expecting that a need for houserules will be greatly mitigated in the next edition of the game. So far, my expectations seem like they will be fulfilled.
But, as to play what you like...
Mmmm Hmmm...play what I like, just as long as I (and everybody else) remembers the way the game should be played...?!?
Sorry, but putting a caveat such as this on the end of continued statements about how the game should be played, does not make one tolerant of other styles and ideas. It just means that one recognizes what's correct, whether they agree it's so or care about being correct themselves.
So, Sorry. I'm just not buying it. I don't believe you actually mean that.
Let me rephrase in bullet points to make sure my point gets across loud and clear:
--D&D has always had a power curve where you go from "bound by normal physics" to "bound by action-movie physics" to "Greek mythic hero" to "superhuman" to "godlike." The game fluff matches this power curve, and codifies levels by things like BECMI and Heroic/Paragon/Epic and such.
--In that context, survivable falls aren't a bug, they're a feature; they would be a bug if they were the only mechanic like that, but the whole game works that way at those levels, and part of the reason many people play D&D as opposed to more realistic fantasy RPGs is exactly that power curve that lets you go from "zero" to "hero" and not from "zero" to "one" or "hero" to "more hero".
--Many people don't like that and think D&D should be "grittier." Statements by these people often imply that, in their opinion, 20th level is just 1st level with bigger numbers and that high-level heroes should be bound by realism. Yet they also expect high-level heroes to face the challenges that high-level character do and survive. It is appropriate in this case to point out, as I did, that mechanically and flavor-wise high level PCs have bypassed human limits a long time ago and that if you want a more realistic game you have to take that into account.
--Some of those people think that the base D&D game should be grittier and that the heroic stuff should be added on later. This often takes the form of reductionist base rules (e.g. acid and lava = death) which provide a framework upon which it is difficult to build more heroic rules for people who want them. It is appropriate in this case to point out, as I did, that it is much easier to add simpler/realistic rules variants (not just rip out the more complex ones, as you stated) than it is to try to expand simpler/realistic rules into more complex/heroic rules variants.
--Because of this issue of complexity, and the fact that if you start at "realistic" it's much harder to reach "godlike" but if you start at "heroic" it's easier to go both in the "realistic" and "godlike" directions, it is better for the game to start in the middle with heroic PCs and a ramping-up power curve and allow for variations up and down. It is appropriate in this case to point out, as I did (but perhaps not clearly enough), that if you start at "realistic" you can't really accommodate people on both ends of the scale as much as you can if you start in the middle, so if D&D Next is trying to be as inclusive as possible (and it claims it is) it should start in the middle.
So, to sum up: You like "realistic" games, someone else likes "mythic hero" games, I like being able to do both. If you keep the D&D power curve, you can play your game at low levels and they can play their game at high levels, and you can houserule mid levels to look like low levels and they can houserule mid levels to look like high levels, and I can enjoy both without much houseruling. If you change D&D to be gritty by default, you can play your game at low levels and mid levels and maybe even high levels, but I'm getting less of the parts of the game I enjoy and Mr. Mythic Hero doesn't really get to enjoy his favorite parts of the game at all. So if every individual group should be able to determine how D&D plays at their table, as you said, then we absolutely should keep the middle ground and leave high-power/low-power/high-magic/low-magic/etc. for expansions instead of favoring one end or the other.
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
All of which is well and good, but not the direction that D&D Next is taking in it's design.
I'd suggest reading up on where Monte and Company are going with the game, because with the exception of a couple of your more minor points, the game design is quite contrary to what you describe.
The base game is not going to be "in the middle".
It's going to address the lowest common denominator, and allow each group to alter it from there.
I disagree with your ideas and reasoning. It also appears that WotC disagrees with your ideas and reasoning.
I do hope that you are able to play the game that you want with D&D Next. I believe you will, but only you will be able to say for sure.
So, let's just leave it at that.
Aaron
First Post
Unfortunately, a high level character can drink a carboy of poison, no matter his body chemistry, or other curious coincidences.
So no, the HPs can't support the "poison is ok, but 200' fall is not".
But here we are underlining that huge amount of poison aren't lethal.
That has nothing to do with the fact that drops of poison can be non lethal.
Again, if you think that 200' fall are lethal, you must make your game inherently coherent and make acid, fire, poison, giant's club hits and so on lethal too.
I have encountered more pools of acid than 200' cliff.
How many rounds should this "regular person" resist?
How many of them have taken hundreds of lethal hits and survived?
The same should go for the thousands of lethal menaces in D&D.
Does this mean that PCs never suffer a good hit?
What about their opponent's critical hits?
Stop there: why?
The same happens with many more variables, so what?
In real life no one would ever face a Trex, but in D&D a high level character can easily defeat it alone, and would know it.
If a high level PC get threatened by a dozen country bandits armed with crossbows he would never acquiesce to their demands, because he would know that he can single handendly defeat all of them in a bunch of rounds.
And how do you handle this scenario in game?
But what if the boulder's thrower hits with a critical hit, and the PCs failed his spot/listen/perception/whatever check?
I can't see how acid, fire, and so many other things could differentiate the damage between a wall and a barbarian.
Not to mention that luck isn't something related to living beings.
Divine intervention? Isn't it the deus ex machina that the "200' fall and survive" critics oppose?
24/7?
24/7?
You live in a wonderful world.
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