Gravity

[Rechan]

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.

How many Fantasy Novels/movies have you watched where the Bad Guy fell down a chasm and died, though? Bad guys operate under the same rules as the Heroes.

As a sidenote, I find it particularly humorous that this is being argued in another thread where it's being said that D&D should be more realistic, that 4e is too unrealistic.

 

[Rechan]

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

By "Death spiral", I assume you mean systems that give you negatives to your rolls after you've been wounded?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And being stabbed in the head does 1d8 damage.

Er, no it doesn't. Being stabbed in the head would be a critical hit at the very least, once you have a few levels.

Your HP represent a lot of things, but whilst a level 1 character taking 1d8 HP may be getting stabbed in the head a little, a level 10 character with 60 HP taking 1d8 HP is most certainly not, rather he is avoiding the worst effects of the blow, and perhaps getting a nasty bleeding cut on the face or arm (or a mere scratch, on 1 or 2).

That's precisely the problem.

As I've said, the solution is simple:

Making falling off something always the matter of some kind of save. If you succeed, you take damage, if you fail, you die. With the action/hero points that are bound to be in 4E, maybe have it so you can always spend X amount of them to "just barely survive".

 

[frankthedm]

Best way to take care of this is for you as DM to rule suicide attempts by skilled combatants automatically successful. Willfully falling of a cliff or staving in one’s own skull with a mace result in death, rather than damage.

 

[Morrus]

Er, no it doesn't. Being stabbed in the head would be a critical hit at the very least, once you have a few levels.

Your HP represent a lot of things, but whilst a level 1 character taking 1d8 HP may be getting stabbed in the head a little, a level 10 character with 60 HP taking 1d8 HP is most certainly not, rather he is avoiding the worst effects of the blow, and perhaps getting a nasty bleeding cut on the face or arm (or a mere scratch, on 1 or 2).

Yeah, I know. But it sounded better. My point was that a sword attack that would kill you or me is totally survivable by that character, as is a fall.

 

[HeinorNY]

I knew there was something wrong:

The basic rule is simple: 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6, not 10d6.
Average damage is 70.
The chances of dying from massive damage is quite good.

Cheers.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Friends, this is an artefact of the hitpoint system. To work around this: falling damage is now 1d6 x character level for each 10' fallen. There, you'll find now that pit traps are consistently fatal from level 1 through 20. Your players will hate you, as well.

Sir, that is absolutely brilliant. I am adopting that as a houserule from here on out.

 

[jasin]

As I've said, the solution is simple:

Making falling off something always the matter of some kind of save. If you succeed, you take damage, if you fail, you die.

What happens once you reach the point where you only fail the save on a 1? Sure, there'll be that 5% chance of death, but being able to jump off a cliff and laugh it off 95% is only slightly less silly than being able to jump off a cliff and laugh it off 100% of the time.

The real problem is, of course, someone wanting to be silly and jumping off cliffs just in order to laugh it off, which can neatly be solved by applying frankthedm's advice. In actual play, with a dragon slapping a high level fighter getting off a cliff or something like that, falling is going to hurt plenty, because next round, the dragon is coming down after you, and you'll miss that 10d6 very much.

The rules could stand to model falling damage better (personally, I like the idea from upthread with the condition track). But I don't think this is nearly the problem it's sometimes made out to be.

 

[Grog]

By "Death spiral", I assume you mean systems that give you negatives to your rolls after you've been wounded?

Yeah. It models real life combat well, but IMO it's not fun for a game.

 

[Grog]

I knew there was something wrong:

The basic rule is simple: 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6, not 10d6.
Average damage is 70.
The chances of dying from massive damage is quite good.

Quite good?

Any fighter who can consistently survive 70 damage in a shot can probably also make a DC 15 Fort save in his sleep.