My Falling Damage House Rules

[KarinsDad]

In addition, they aren't consistent with the rest of the rules. While with your rules, A fall can reduce my mobility and health in addition to the damage taken (talking about the con and dex damage), I can be crit'ed by a scythe-wielding barbarian, losing much more than the equivalent of 100 ft falling and bringing me to within an inch of my life, and suffer no ill effects - no bleeding, no strength or dexterity lost due to severe bloodloss, need to hold in my intestines, or lost limbs.
Why has falling to be so much more lethal than being head-on with several ft of sharp metal (make that several yards witha titan's sword)?

In my game, there is less inconsistency.

I also have a house rule that when you take damage, you have to make a Fort save or be staggered. I also have a house rule that when you are 1/3rd damaged, you are at -1 to all rolls, -2 at 2/3rds, -3 at 0 hits or less.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=68478

Getting damaged in my game is "painful".

For example, our party of 6 4th level characters walked into a warren with 27 Dire Rats in it.

The party Monk immediately went into Fight Defensively mode. Why? Because it is better to not get hit at all in my game than it is to take an opponent out quicker. Once the party had wiped out about 20 of the rats or so, then the Monk went back to fighting normally.

The other aspect of my fall rules is that players dread falling. It has only happened something like 3 times in about 50 hours of gaming in the current campaign and only a handful of times in the previous campaigns of hundreds of hours. I do not worry that the rules are a little more complex because it rarely happens. Since I have a copy of my house rules at my side, it is much faster to look up a house rule than it is to look up a core rule (fewer pages).


The reason I do CON/DEX damage on big falls is because your entire body is taking the fall, not just one portion of your body getting hit (like with a weapon). Even a Fireball does not cook your insides like a fall splatters them. If you get hit in the arm with a weapon, you will not get a concussion. If you fall 30 feet, you will almost always get a concussion in real life. If you fall 50 feet onto a hard surface, your intestines will almost always be hanging out in real life. I consider falls to be deadly (like coup de grace) and unavoidable once you are in the situation. I consider sword swings to be less lethal on many parts of the body and easier to minimize the damage (partially parry, dodge, deflect, absorbed by armor, etc.), even when you are hit.

 

[AeroDm]

I think the 'spirit' of your rules are right on. They make it more lethal and add an element of suprise to what is currently a mathematical process. Barbs look at a 30' fall and laugh, now maybe they won't.

However, they really do seem too complicated for their worth. The scaling dice that have been suggested (1d6 at 10, 3d6 at 20, et al) is very simple and has much the same affect without the stat damage in so much as adding lethality and improving the worth of skills.

Perhaps a conjunction of the two systems. Off the top of my head I'd say something akin to a DC equal to 10 + dice rolled reflex save or you suffer dexterity damage equal to dice rolled. A 10' fall would be DC 11 or lose 1 dex, while a 50' fall would be DC 25 or lose 15 dex. Scales quite severely.

I like this because it adds quite a penalty to large falls while only slightly threatening the shorter falls. Your jump skill to drop off 10' from the 50' fall just dropped the DC by 5 and the penalty by 5 points of dex, making it quite worthwhile. Finally, dealing damage and con loss in the same move is just too damn harsh. The last thing I want is to make falling more deadly than combat.

 

[KarinsDad]

Perhaps a conjunction of the two systems. Off the top of my head I'd say something akin to a DC equal to 10 + dice rolled reflex save or you suffer dexterity damage equal to dice rolled. A 10' fall would be DC 11 or lose 1 dex, while a 50' fall would be DC 25 or lose 15 dex. Scales quite severely.

Not a bad idea.

The only thing I do not like about it is the "roll a 24, take 15 dex damage, roll a 25, take 0 dex damage".

Instead, a system of "you take 15 dex damage on a 50 foot fall, roll DC 25 reflex save to take half damage" would work better.

And, of course, I would make it that you take CON and DEX damage being the rat bastard DM that I am.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

In my game, there is less inconsistency.

I also have a house rule that when you take damage, you have to make a Fort save or be staggered. I also have a house rule that when you are 1/3rd damaged, you are at -1 to all rolls, -2 at 2/3rds, -3 at 0 hits or less.

Then, as I said, I merely put in: I like it easy and heroic.

The other aspect of my fall rules is that players dread falling. It has only happened something like 3 times in about 50 hours of gaming in the current campaign and only a handful of times in the previous campaigns of hundreds of hours.

Well, this is still more often than it has happened in all our campaigns. I can't remember more than one or two fall situations. (And one was so extreme that we were happy about feather fall)

I do not worry that the rules are a little more complex because it rarely happens. Since I have a copy of my house rules at my side, it is much faster to look up a house rule than it is to look up a core rule (fewer pages).

Bigger books don't necessarily mean longer looking up, cause of index and all that.

Also, the reasoning that rules that get used more often have to be less complex is a bit weird: stuff that happens all the time can be a little more complex, for you will have to memorize it anyway. But stuff that happens almost never shouldn't be very complex, for you'll look it up only a couple of times, and then you'll have to look up something complex on the fly.

The reason I do CON/DEX damage on big falls is because your entire body is taking the fall, not just one portion of your body getting hit (like with a weapon). Even a Fireball does not cook your insides like a fall splatters them. If you get hit in the arm with a weapon, you will not get a concussion. If you fall 30 feet, you will almost always get a concussion in real life. If you fall 50 feet onto a hard surface, your intestines will almost always be hanging out in real life. I consider falls to be deadly (like coup de grace) and unavoidable once you are in the situation. I consider sword swings to be less lethal on many parts of the body and easier to minimize the damage (partially parry, dodge, deflect, absorbed by armor, etc.), even when you are hit.

A crit with a greatsword might well cleave you in half or split your skull. I personally consider such a hit more lethal than a fall from the second story.

And if falling gives you additional penalties for the whole body, other hits should give you penalties concerning the body parts hit. So if your arm is hit for x % of your hit points, it is severed, and you lose the use of this hand, and/or dex. If your leg is hit, your speed is decreased and so on. And this all will lead to big great charts. And since I don't like it half-baked, e.g. detailed damage effects for falling but none for other hits, but like it all or nothing, I choose nothing, for simplicity's sake.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Players don't have direct experience of falling meteors and scythe-wielding barbarians, and so are willing to accept a more abstract treatment. Falling, however, is within our experience, and a little more detail helps us suspend our disbelief.

But players are usually bright enogh to know that they'd die if a meteor hit them, or if their body or head got split in half by a scythe. And while falling as much as 6 feet might be in the experience of many (personally, I haven't really fallen down great depths, maybe a 3-ft wall, and jumped 5m tops - into a deep pool in the open-air swimming pool), they probably have no personal experience of falling something like 30 ft. You may see it in the news, but the news also tell of people hit by big heavy objects (like these darvin award aspirants who got killed by a drinks dispenser) or cut in half.

On the other hand, sometimes there's stories of poeple surviving great falls. So even the suspension of disbelief wants all-or-nothing (especially if the the players are like "Hey, I can take a direct hit by a giant who wields a fraggin' tree without the slightest discomfort, but once I fall down a couple of feet I suddenly become frail and clumsy".)

 

[KarinsDad]

Then, as I said, I merely put in: I like it easy and heroic.

That's fine KY. We find challenges overcome to be heroic in our game, not easy being heroic. Damage is challenging with these types of house rules. Damage is at most an annoyance until it gets real low in core rules.

If you don't like these types of rules, don't use them. That's why this is called the house rules forum.

Bigger books don't necessarily mean longer looking up, cause of index and all that.

Must be the advanced math. Two lookups, one index and one rule (presuming the lookup is the one you want and not some other one) vs. one lookup (when you wrote the rules, you tend to know exactly where they are and even if you don't, you are only thumbing through an extra page or two).

 

[Piratecat]

I think in your game I'd play a wizard with access to reverse gravity. I know one thing: rings of feather-falling get to be a lot more important!

I remember when I was writing Of Sound Mind, one of the first encounters involved a simple climb down a rope. Then my playtester pointed out that even with traditional climbing and falling rules, I had about a 40% chance of killing at least one member of the party. Yeek, talk about embarrassing. The rope quickly became a knotted rope - which, I imagine, your players tend to prefer as well.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

We find challenges overcome to be heroic in our game, not easy being heroic.

IMC, it's easy to be heroic, but it's not easy to be a hero.

Damage is challenging with these types of house rules. Damage is at most an annoyance until it gets real low in core rules.

Damage is challenging in my games, too. It might be an annoyance until it gets real low, but it can get real low real fast.

Well, it's really a preference thing: I keep the rules as they are and challenge players with powerful - and smart - enemies. Except for the occasional dumb monster they encounter, the enemies don't behave like dumb monsters. They are usually smart and often experienced, and therefore have good tactics. My players might find damage only annoying, but they tend to find my enemies more annoying.

 

[Tarril Wolfeye]

...stuff that happens all the time can be a little more complex, for you will have to memorize it anyway. But stuff that happens almost never shouldn't be very complex, for you'll look it up only a couple of times, and then you'll have to look up something complex on the fly.

That's an insight for any game rules designer. May I steal it for my sig?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

That's an insight for any game rules designer. May I steal it for my sig?

Be my guest (and by that I mean "Yea, go ahead, put it in your sig, and don't forget to put my name in, I crave attention " and not "Come over here, sit on my couch in your underpants, eat my food, drink my beer.." and so on. Just to be sure ;-))