D&D 4E How should falling be handled in 4E?

[Kraydak]

I don't think it makes much sense to say that the ability to roll with a blow is more supernatural than the ability to withstand dozens of blows that would kill another man outright...

The point is, there are reasonable occurances where the reaction times and motions (and thus strength) required to roll with the blows is more impressive than the raw durability needed to withstand the blows. Sure, movies can go slow-motion to hide the supernatural element, but it is still there.

 

[Desdichado]

Depends. What are you falling into/onto?

Like, if you fall into lava, you die. No save.

For instance.

 

[Treebore]

Don't forget, people have fallen thousands of feet, and lived. This isn't just Urban Myth, but documented. So it is possible for people to survive huge falls.

I like the cumulative per 10 feet mentioned earlier. 1d6+2d6+3d6+4d6+5d6+7d6+8d6+9d6+10d6. Being nice and assuming terminal velocity at 100 feet. 49d6 should kill most characters.

Give "crit" multipliers based on the "landing material". x10 for molten lava, x3 for jagged rocks, x.5 for deep muddy ground or peat moss.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I don't know about 4E, but Saga uses Fort defenses instead of savings throws. You don't save against poison; the poison makes an attack against your fort defense.

Seems like falling should go the same route. After all, it's not the fall that gets you--it's the sudden impact with the ground.

So, the ground makes an attack against your fort defense. Attack bonus is equal to the number of dice you just rolled (so, +1 per 10ft of height). Damage is 1d6 per 10', like always.

If you fall 20 feet, attack bonus is made at +2. Threatening to a first level guy with a Fort defense of 14, but not too bad. If you fall 200 feet, the attack bonus is +20. Even high level characters are in trouble. Things like spikes or other rough landing surfaces add to both attack bonus and damage. Soft surfaces like water or piles of leaves detract from attack bonus and damage.

If attack fails, you just take the damage. If attack succeeds, you're also crippled (penalty to attacks, speed, and defenses). If attack crits, you're crippled and take double damage.

So even short falls are dangerous if you land wrong (are critted), but not life-threatening: a crit from a 10' fall is still only 2d6, which isn't too bad even for 1st level characters. And long falls are scary, even for high level characters. As they should be. It's cool and fun to push enemies off cliffs, or be in danger of being pushed off a cliff. It's not fun to think "Sure, I could bull rush him off the three story balcony... but he'd only take 3d6. Meh; not worth it."

I like it. And I don't even really care about a change to the current falling rules. (Is there an actual "crippled" condition in SWSE, tho?)

 

[Pale]

Your character runs out over a cliff, then while standing in mid-air, he realizes that there is no ground below him and falls straight down.

Upon striking the ground, a small puff of smoke can be seen. Shortly thereafter, the character will walk away from the fall "accordion style" a la Wile E. Coyote.

 

[Driddle]

Don't forget, people have fallen thousands of feet, and lived.

Yep. You're perfectly fine for those first 999 feet. It's the last one that kills ya.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Don't forget, people have fallen thousands of feet, and lived. This isn't just Urban Myth, but documented. So it is possible for people to survive huge falls.

I like the cumulative per 10 feet mentioned earlier. 1d6+2d6+3d6+4d6+5d6+7d6+8d6+9d6+10d6. Being nice and assuming terminal velocity at 100 feet. 49d6 should kill most characters.

Do air stewardesses have like hundreds of hit points, or is this a contradiction?

Mounting damage will assure PCs die to falls, or are bloody scared of them, which is cool, but it doesn't really allow for the "somehow, she lived", beyond having at least 49 HP and all the dice rolling 1s.

Which is why I suggest save or die. If you save, you take X damage up to a maximum of leaving you on 1hp (or -X hp or whatever one prefers), if you fail, you die. Cripples people in falls, but only kills SOME of them

With SWSE and walking away from a fall with say, a -10 modifier to everything (hopefully including some movement penalties), that'd be fine too, mostly, though I am always leery of fixed penalty systems because it sometimes gets the point where you can laugh them off too.

 

[gizmo33]

If the fighter can react meaningfully to the arrows, he can react meaningfully to the fall).

Yea, and hold up a sign saying "uh oh" I don't really know what he'd do, whereas there is plenty of variability, it seems, with combat. I suppose if you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a fall? I can live with falling doing just hp damage, for the reasons that you point out but it just seems like falling is different. Maybe it's because the ground is pretty much hitting automatically. A "hit" with a sword might just be a glancing blow, but how does the ground do such a thing?

 

[gizmo33]

Not THAT rat.
My mass is 90 kg. If I jump on that rat, considering my feet get 1 meter from the ground, the average force of impact on him will be 8820N.

How do you know the force without knowing the acceleration? And without knowing the elasticity of the ground (and person hitting the ground) how do you know the acceleration? I suppose you were using an average distance between striking the ground and coming to a stop here?

Not that you're saying this, but it reminds me: One of the problems IMO with equating force linearly with damage is that your body can withstand a certain amount of force with no trouble, and then past that stuff starts to break. It doesn't seem like a linear relationship to me. That's why I've been able to live with 1d6/10 ft even though it doesn't equate linearly to the velocity.

 

[HeinorNY]

How do you know the force without knowing the acceleration? And without knowing the elasticity of the ground (and person hitting the ground) how do you know the acceleration? I suppose you were using an average distance between striking the ground and coming to a stop here?

I just used this site to calculate that: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/flobi.html

A character surviving a crush attack from a colossal dragon is believable to me in the D&D fantasy context, so in the same context the same guy falling 300 ft. and surviving is also believable, IMO.

I've already seen a person falling 200ft. +- from a building, I saw what happened to her. A 2 ton creature falling on a person should do much more damage to her. It's not comparable. If a Fighter survives the dragon, falling that height is piece of cake.