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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7106707" data-attributes="member: 6787650">It's not really as absurd as all that. By real-world physics, six seconds is enough to attain a falling velocity of 193 feet/second (131 miles per hour), and to fall 579 feet starting from at-rest. That's not an absurd velocity. It's slightly implausible that a large creature like a dragon could instantly shed all that velocity without breaking its wings, but that's implausibility on the same order as not decreasing longbow range when firing straight up--it keeps the game playable without a physics textbook, without materially changing the actual gameplay. In other words, if you did all the physics computations, gameplay would (I think) come out similar, except that &quot;out of longbow range&quot; would decrease to 250' or something and feasible dive-bombing distance would likewise decrease to something comparable. So it would be different, but not actually different, just a lot more work.All I'm really doing by dive-bombing is acknowledging that 5E movement rates are really slow compared to real-world phenomena, including falling, and letting them fall at realistic speeds instead of the 8-16 mph the MM lets them move at.Just be warned: it can make players of melee characters like Barbarians feel kind of sad and left out. Be prepared for them to switch PCs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7106707, member: 6787650"] It's not really as absurd as all that. By real-world physics, six seconds is enough to attain a falling velocity of 193 feet/second (131 miles per hour), and to fall 579 feet starting from at-rest. That's not an absurd velocity. It's slightly implausible that a large creature like a dragon could instantly [I]shed[/I] all that velocity without breaking its wings, but that's implausibility on the same order as not decreasing longbow range when firing straight up--it keeps the game playable without a physics textbook, without materially changing the actual gameplay. In other words, if you did all the physics computations, gameplay would (I think) come out similar, except that "out of longbow range" would decrease to 250' or something and feasible dive-bombing distance would likewise decrease to something comparable. So it would be different, but not actually different, just a lot more work. All I'm really doing by dive-bombing is acknowledging that 5E movement rates are really slow compared to real-world phenomena, including falling, and letting them fall at realistic speeds instead of the 8-16 mph the MM lets them move at. Just be warned: it can make players of melee characters like Barbarians feel kind of sad and left out. Be prepared for them to switch PCs. [/QUOTE]

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