My player is squishing everything.

[King-Panda]

One of my players is squishing all my baddies. He is literally jumping down onto them, or teleporting a little above them, and flattening them like a pancake. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that he weighs thousands of pounds. Let me explain.

This player is playing a Dwarven Fighter/Dwarven Defender/Pious Templar, level 12 altogether. His goal was to make it very hard to kill. Mountain Plate, Tower Shield, Defensive Stance, the list goes on and on. A side effect of this is that he is carrying a lot of gear, and therefore weighs quite a bit. Here's the crunch.


He himself, his body, weighs 265 lbs.

He has 22 str, giving him a max load of 520 lbs (according to the SRD, I don't have a PHB right now to double check).

When using this tactic, he casts Enlarge Person on himself from an item he made using the item creation rules in the back of the DMG, giving him 24 str (max load 700 lbs), and making him Large (doubling the 700 to 1,400).

All of his gear weighs 255 lbs together, putting him right his max load. By Enlarge Person, his weight (and that of his gear) is multiplied by 8 (for doubling in all three dimensions). 520 x 8 = 4160 lbs.

Given this, he cannot move (4160 compared to a max load of 1400), but he happens to have a pair of boots from the MIC that give him the ability to teleport 20 ft., 5 times a day as a move action(I think they are called dimension stride boots). It says nothing about being able to teleport in three dimensions (as opposed to just teleporting forward, back, etc), and makes sense that he would be able to (to reach a balcony, etc). It also doesn't say he cannot teleport while unable to move due to weight (I believe, don't have the MIC on me).

So, he teleports above the enemy, at least 10 feet to get in the falling damage. Here is his reckoning:

The DMG, page 303, states a falling object deals 1d6 damage per 200 lbs after falling 10 feet or more to a person caught underneath the object. Not counting extra damage from falling higher than 10 ft., 4160/200 = 20.8, or therefore 20d6 points of damage (I think it says in the same paragraph it can't do more than 20d6 damage anyway). He says he would count as a falling object, as long as he intends and acts to land on the enemy as such (falling horizontally, or curling up in a ball).
He also says he wouldn't take the 20d6 damage, or at least not all of it, because most of the weight is from his shield, his weapon, and his armor (of which only half or so is landing on him if he lands horizontally). He says he would only take the 1d6 from falling 10 ft., or maybe a few extra d6's if you count the weight on his back). He has well over 100 HP, so even taking 10d6 wouldn't be bad if it deals twice that to the enemy.

Is this legal? I thought it was funny the first time, but now he's doing it against anyone he thinks would squish well. Any help on the issue is appreciated.

 

[IamTheTest]

How does he get up after? Perhaps fighting more than one enemy at a time would suffice. Or perhaps some aquatic nasties.

 

[azhrei_fje]

Who gave him the enlarge person item? Oh, you did.

Who gave him the special boots? Oh, you did.

Who let 4000+ pounds fall and only do 1d6 damage to the object? Oh, you did.

Well, since you're the DM and what you say goes, it sounds to me like what he's doing is perfectly legal. You let him do it after all.






Personally, I wouldn't rule that way. First off, he gets at least half of the 20d6 damage: that is damage done to the internal organs that are crushed by half of his body weight when he lands. Have you ever seen what rapid deceleration can do to the internal organs of a car crash victim? No, I didn't think so.

I don't know what the item he created actually allows him to do re: enlarge person, but he may have abused the formulaic system for creating magic items. Have you verified the process he used against the rules in the DMG? If not, perhaps you should...

How did he get the magi boots from the MIC? You do realize that many of the books outside the "core rules" are not perfectly balanced for play in all types of campaigns, right?

 

[Zelc]

IMO, he should take falling damage as usual, that is 1d6 per 10' with possible mitigation using Tumble and Jump. Making houserules to fix a perceived problem should be the last resort when it involves taking away a player's big tactic. However, you can rule that his victims should get either a reflex save to avoid it or force the player to roll to hit.

In the grand scheme of things, 20d6 damage (average 70) isn't that much. At level 12, my Druid was dealing over a hundred damage on a pounce after casting Bite of the Weretiger, and he could go on for multiple rounds. There's also Telekinesis cheese if you really want to roll a ton of damage dice. Still, I guess it could be a problem in your campaign, in which case give him a chance of failing and that should do it .

ETA: A CL 1 3/day Enlarge Person item should only cost 1,800 gp as per the pricing guidelines, and takes either a standard action or one round to activate (standard action in Core, but I don't know if it was changed in the Rules Compendium). It lasts 1 minute or 10 rounds.

 

[King-Panda]

Who gave him the enlarge person item? Oh, you did.

Who gave him the special boots? Oh, you did.

Who let 4000+ pounds fall and only do 1d6 damage to the object? Oh, you did.

Well, since you're the DM and what you say goes, it sounds to me like what he's doing is perfectly legal. You let him do it after all.


Personally, I wouldn't rule that way. First off, he gets at least half of the 20d6 damage: that is damage done to the internal organs that are crushed by half of his body weight when he lands. Have you ever seen what rapid deceleration can do to the internal organs of a car crash victim? No, I didn't think so.

I don't know what the item he created actually allows him to do re: enlarge person, but he may have abused the formulaic system for creating magic items. Have you verified the process he used against the rules in the DMG? If not, perhaps you should...

How did he get the magi boots from the MIC? You do realize that many of the books outside the "core rules" are not perfectly balanced for play in all types of campaigns, right?

Thank you for being so snarky, I kinda like it . I actually have seen plenty of post-accident gore-fests. It's wise not to accuse someone of not knowing something unless you have evidence.

I should have said so in the OP, but I told him he would take the same damage as he dealt (by DM fiat). This is when we started arguing. I didn't see what else I could do to stop this tactic, but I plan on sticking to my guns. I guess it makes this whole thread moot really, but that is not the point of this thread.

Your analogy to a car crash doesn't work in this situation; someone falling 10 feet carrying a bunch of gear is a different kind of damage and force than that of a high-speed car crash. Crushing vs Inertia, I would think.

I agree with what you are saying by me allowing everything; yes, it is my fault that he can do this because I allowed for him to have these resources. But let me defend my actions for a second:

The Enlarge Person Item was made using the item creation rules in the back of the DMG. I double-checked his work, and it all worked out. At 12th level, having an item that duplicates a 1st lvl spell twice a day is not game breaking. Even without that item, he could just as easily have drank a potion of Enlarge Person, Used UMD on another item that granted EP, or had one of the casters in the group cast it on him. Therefore, allowing this unique item wouldn't have been any different than going by RAW.

I've read plenty of posts to know that the MIC is a hot topic regarding item cheese and legality. I don't think many people could foresee a pair of boots worth a couple grand being used in a 20d6 damage combo. Even so, If I take away the boots, he could still jump off of things to deal the same damage, and there is a lot of other ways for a party of 12th level characters to get 10 ft off the ground RAW. He wouldn't have as many chances of squishing people, but with help from a caster and terrain it wouldn't be impossible.

I guess what I'm getting at is that this situation could easily come up in anyones game. He isn't really using any special class abilities, and could use the tactic by other means without the two special magic items.

My original intent was not to complain about a player finding a loophole: that happens all the time, and I usually find ways to deal with it, or rule it out by DM fiat. This time though, it was just a surprising/amusing loophole; I thought i'd share it on the board for some smirks, to see if anyone else had this happen, and to get some answers on if it was legal or not.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

1. How does he hit the target while falling? It's not enough to land on the same square, is it? (There are no explicit rules for this, as far as I know, but some kind of attack roll seems appropriate... Otherwise, any attack could be succesfully resolved by moving into your opponent's square.)

2. I think the falling damage rules are applied correctly, even if they make little sense in this case. For most larger/heavier creatures it is more dangerous to fall then for smaller ones, and this should apply to the character, too.

0. If the thing is a problem in your campaign, speak to your player. Tell him that while you like his creativity (assuming you do ), this tactic smells like cheese and you'd like to avoid it. If you don't want to see again, offer him to rebuild parts of his characters that serve no other purpose then supporting this tactic, and then say that it's no longer possible from now on.

EDIT: read your post:

If he can effectively use this tactic only in two combats per day due to the enlarge item limitation (and up to 5 times in total due to the boots), I don't think it should turn out that game-wrecking. Unless you don't run more then 2 combats per day, and most of them against singular foes.

 

[King-Panda]

Zelc: Thanks for all the tips. I like the idea of a reflex save. He started using this tactic to land on/grapple flying casters that (stupidly) got close enough that he could do this. 70 damage is nothing to sneeze at for a caster. The main tactic wasn't to do damage, but merely to get the caster grappled and within reach of all the other melee people. We just realized after the fact that he would deal 20d6 when he did this.

Which really raises another question: If he teleports a square above someone, falling onto them, how would he go about grappling them? I made him make a melee touch attack, and a grapple check if he hit. Does that sound fair?

 

[King-Panda]

Mustrum: Thanks for the advice. I've talked to him since and we've worked it out; now that he takes the same damage, he doesn't plan on doing it again unless he thinks he has to.

RE: 1. I just replied to Zelc saying I asked for a Melee touch attack to grab the creature as he's falling, and a subsequent grapple check to make sure he lands on top of the enemy.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Zelc: Thanks for all the tips. I like the idea of a reflex save. He started using this tactic to land on/grapple flying casters that (stupidly) got close enough that he could do this. 70 damage is nothing to sneeze at for a caster. The main tactic wasn't to do damage, but merely to get the caster grappled and within reach of all the other melee people. We just realized after the fact that he would deal 20d6 when he did this.

Which really raises another question: If he teleports a square above someone, falling onto them, how would he go about grappling them? I made him make a melee touch attack, and a grapple check if he hit. Does that sound fair?

Sounds like a normal grapple attempt to me. Grab him (melee touch attack), then roll for grapple to see if you can hold on.

The question is: If he is beyond his heavy load, can he act at all? I think the rules for "Lift over Head" apply in this case, and I am not convinced that they give room for him making any types of attacks (at least not grapple attempts)

 

[King-Panda]

I didn't think about that. I imagine it wouldn't be hard to grab someone when you are falling onto/past them, but carrying so much weight that you can't move standing up would probably keep you from maneuvering enough in mid-air to allow you to effectively grapple and land on top of your enemy. I'll probably rule the grappling out then, unless he drops his weight down to a manageable level.