Gravity

[jasin]

Yep, this is a pet peeve of mine as well. Of course, you might as well add other types of damage as being wimpy as well- like fire doing 1d6 a round or taking forever (in D&D time) to drown. Falls over 20 feet onto hard surfaces are routinely fatal in real life.

But then, so are fights against lions, getting stomped on by an elephant, explosions, fights against half a dozen of moderately trained soldiers, getting struck by lightning, contracting the plague...

 

[Grog]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic

A flight attendant can fall 33,316 ft. and survive, yet your heroic fantasy fighter shouldn't be able to survive a 300 ft. fall?

I would have no problem with a character having a (very remote) chance to survive a freakishly long fall once.

But under the rules of D&D, a high level fighter can take that freakishly long fall as many times as he wants and it will never, ever kill him. So long as he gets healed between each jump, he can pitch himself off a 10,000 foot high cliff once an hour, every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for an entire year, and he cannot die under the current rules. That's a problem.

 

[Grog]

I don't see any problem.
If a normal human being can survive a 12,000 ft fall, what's the problem with an almost super-hero character surviving a 300 ft fall?
Sometimes it happens.

There's a difference between "sometimes" and "every time."

 

[Rechan]

Hence the part of my post you seem to have ignored, which talked about conditions based on hit point loss.

It talked about that for 4e. A "possible future solution". I was responding to what bothers me about the existing rules.

 

[Sir Brennen]

The issue for me isn't that he can survive it, but that he can just stand up and go on swinging his sword like he was at max HP.

Again, the real issue then seems to be the hit point system, not falling damage. A fighter can be stabbed 10 times by a short sword, be taken down to one point, and go on swinging like he's at max hit points as well.

Even a simplified condition track, such as the "bloodied" condition hinted at when one is below 1/2 hit points, is at least a step to correcting this.

 

[HeinorNY]

Sometimes would be fine. The problem is here that it's entirely level-related, and a case of "nearly always", not "sometimes". I mean, if you don't have a problem with PCs regularly dying to the various HP-dodging "instant death" attacks and spells, why do you think it's not okay for players to die instantly from something that, with even the faintest hint of realism, would kill all but the luckiest?

It's bizarre. If any other abilities "dodge HP", so should falling damage.

It sometimes happens with normal people. To super heroic people it should almost never occur IMO. It would suck to see spider man dying because he run out of fluid.

 

[Shayuri]

He can. It'd be freaking lousy roleplaying, but he could.

Realism arguments tend to fail to persuade me, where D&D is concerned. D&D is not trying to model reality. It's trying to model heroic fantasy. Things like falls really shouldn't be fatal to a powerful fantasy warrior...try to remember the last heroic fantasy novel you've read where the bulging barbarian hero slipped, fell down into a chasm and died. The end. Oops.

Well, obviously a story hero won't, because the narrative won't let him. If he did, story's over. But RPG's introduce randomness into the mix, so there's suspense and surprises. This also means though, that the heroes of the story (PC's) can die for non-plot reasons. Good for suspense, bad for story. So they compromise.

They made heroes larger than life, and biased the world so it's not as dangerous as it realistically should be. The result is that the heroes are HARD to kill...much harder than is realistic. That means players aren't afraid to take risks (like making that Climb check to go over the rope over the chasm) because their characters are tough enough to survive a bad dice roll or two. At the same time, it means the heroes aren't constantly requiring raising or replacing...which screws up stories and plots.

If you want brutal realism, try a low-point game of GURPS. Still very fun, but it favors a -hugely- different playstyle.

 

[Rechan]

Again, the real issue then seems to be the hit point system, not falling damage. A fighter can be stabbed 10 times by a short sword, be taken down to one point, and go on swinging like he's at max hit points as well.

Given that I've been arguing in another thread about how unrealistic HPs are, yes, I know this.

 

[Morrus]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but...

Falling 100 feat does 10d6 damage? Really? That's an average of about 35 damage. The fighter in my party could fall 300 feet and still be ok. That makes NO SENSE.

Fix this, 4e!

And being stabbed in the head does 1d8 damage. Your fighter can withstand being stabbed, blown up, electrified, crushed, immersion in lava, and a billion other things.

 

[Grog]

Again, the real issue then seems to be the hit point system, not falling damage. A fighter can be stabbed 10 times by a short sword, be taken down to one point, and go on swinging like he's at max hit points as well.

I don't like this either, but I think it's a necessary evil to avoid the "death spiral."