Scary situations that aren't

[robus]

Realistically, falling damage should just be a percentage of your maximum HP. After a certain point, falling should always be lethal no matter your size, Constitution, level, or hit points.

That has a definite brutal, simple elegance!

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Barely hanging on the ledge of the 3rd floor (assume 20-foot drop) above a cobblestone street. A fall of that height wouldn't necessarily be fatal, but it would seriously hurt. Like "you're not dead but ain't going anywhere anytime soon" hurt.

That's a good one I hadn't thought of. Unless you have really excessive 'down the ravine' falls then they won't match real world scariness. I agree that's not one worth worrying about, though. Another one is that the 'bad guy has knife at the innocent's throat' technically suffers from the 5e dying rules. It's really a problem, especially since people usually have NPCs die at 0 hp instead of making death saves, I don't think anyone is going to complain about 'throat slit - dead' instead of 'throat slit - make death saving throws' on an NPC.

 

[Guest 6801328]

That's a good one I hadn't thought of. Unless you have really excessive 'down the ravine' falls then they won't match real world scariness. I agree that's not one worth worrying about, though. Another one is that the 'bad guy has knife at the innocent's throat' technically suffers from the 5e dying rules. It's really a problem, especially since people usually have NPCs die at 0 hp instead of making death saves, I don't think anyone is going to complain about 'throat slit - dead' instead of 'throat slit - make death saving throws' on an NPC.

It would be funny to spring that on your party. Half of the orcs they thought they had killed pass their death saves and eventually wake up.

 

[Eltab]

Sunburn has never been handled well by the rules. Following the numbers doesn't feel like the IRL itchy experience. Heat exhaustion, heat stroke are similar.

Drowning can be scary but then again the character is not in any distress at all from the moment it submerges until the critical turn when it 'loses its breath' and goes unconscious / loses HP.
I have been able to manipulate 5e's drowning rules to save my teammate and bring both of us back to the surface on the round before either of us would die. The rest of my group did not know that I had done the calculations, or my conclusions, before I jumped into a 30-foot deep lake wearing plate metal armor.

 

[MNblockhead]

Disease, sickness, and food poisoning

Nobody sprains their ankle no matter what terrain they are on or what actions they take

Pregnancy and giving birth

Breaking taboos, offending the wrong person. Even in the modern world the wrong actions can get you into lethal situations, much more so in the past. Yet in a world with vastly different cultures, characters never seem to have to worry about it. There should be more executions or the threat of such given how most groups behave.

 

[abirdcall]

Barely hanging on the ledge of the 3rd floor (assume 20-foot drop) above a cobblestone street. A fall of that height wouldn't necessarily be fatal, but it would seriously hurt. Like "you're not dead but ain't going anywhere anytime soon" hurt.

I've made my peace with the abstraction of hp but as soon as the PCs are 2nd level, 2d6 damage is no longer a significant threat. I know it's not breaking the game but since we're looking for situations that should-be-scary-but-aren't, a 20-foot drop is not even remotely as threatening in the D&D world. Let alone a 30-foot fall or more.

I'm not convinced anything should be done about it; defenestration shouldn't always be a more effective solution than stabbing someone in the eye but on the other hand, it would be nice if a 10-foot pit trap was a little more than a mere inconvenience, and jumping down from the tower's roof wasn't just a more efficient way to climb down...

All of this stuff happens in action movies all the time.

Stop thinking of D&D as a simulation of real life.

 

[iserith]

But I've seen people comment on this like lack of water is a major problem for all Tier 2 PCs, that it's something that should be a major plot point if it happens and not just 'oh well we'll use up 1 first level slot' or includes a caveat like 'as long as no one has a level of this common class'. It's also tier 2 modules that I've seen with the 'track your water before going into the desert' section in the start. And this isn't just an oddity of 5e, the spell has been around in the same basic form since 1e when clerics were even more likely since party size was assumed to be 6-8 and there were typically fewer classes. People in conversation seem to treat this as a lot more than a 'oh, we'll have to dedicate one first level slot to it' issue.

I think the DM is probably focusing on the wrong kind of challenges if he or she is making players track water late into tier 2. That's just my opinion though. I personally think the characters have moved past such challenges outside of something like traversing a fiery outer plane.

I've never seen an outdoor adventure where players are doing 6-8 non-trivial encounters per day for multiple days. How do you balance the real time needed to run 6-8 encounters that actually use resources per day and also have multiple days of exploration happening? If you're not having multiple days of exploration, then the lack of supplies won't catch up with you, but I really don't see how you'd throw in enough encounters that players notice the lack of a single 1st level spell and also have the exploration phase move quickly enough for the exploration part to actually happen. (This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm really wondering how you manage to pull this off without getting bogged down in tons of encounters or losing the 'exploring lots of land' feel)

Take away long rests outside of safe havens like towns. Increase the frequency of random encounters while traveling and/or increase the reward to incentivize the players to have their characters look for trouble. Make travel distances longer and/or the chance of getting lost greater. Actually use pace from the Travel rules.

 

[MarkB]

You can always re-skin the resource-scarcity situation to use fantasy resources that aren't automatically resolved using low-level spells.

For instance, instead of a mundane desert, the PCs are stranded in a cursed desert that was the battlefield for many terrible magical wars. It's saturated with dark energies which sap the body and mind, causing travellers to quickly become exhausted and makes them vulnerable to necrotic damage, which many of the twisted mutations that inhabit the place have the ability to inflict through their natural attacks.

Certain plants and animals within the cursed wastes have gained a natural immunity to its effects, and a skilled character can harvest them in order to create antidotes which confer the same immunity upon the PCs, for a few hours at a time. In order to survive a trek through the wastes, such curatives must be foraged for and prepared on a regular basis.

Result: Far more unique, oppressive and memorable desert environment, plus all the survival challenges you'd expect, with none of the magical short-cuts.

 

[WaterRabbit]

Barely hanging on the ledge of the 3rd floor (assume 20-foot drop) above a cobblestone street. A fall of that height wouldn't necessarily be fatal, but it would seriously hurt. Like "you're not dead but ain't going anywhere anytime soon" hurt.

I've made my peace with the abstraction of hp but as soon as the PCs are 2nd level, 2d6 damage is no longer a significant threat. I know it's not breaking the game but since we're looking for situations that should-be-scary-but-aren't, a 20-foot drop is not even remotely as threatening in the D&D world. Let alone a 30-foot fall or more.

I'm not convinced anything should be done about it; defenestration shouldn't always be a more effective solution than stabbing someone in the eye but on the other hand, it would be nice if a 10-foot pit trap was a little more than a mere inconvenience, and jumping down from the tower's roof wasn't just a more efficient way to climb down...

I think it has more to do with the disconnect on how hit points are presented. I personally think of hit points more like combat exhaustion. Watching a boxing match where two boxers are barely able to lift their arms to punch at each other is a low hit point situation to me.

The problem with the falling mechanic is the character isn't being worn down but just hit at once.

I personally liked the older method where the damage was cumulative:


10 (1d6 ) = 1d6
20 (3d6) = 1d6 + 2d6
30 (6d6) = 1d6 + 2d6 +3d6
etc.
60 (21d6) = 1d6 +2d6 +3d6 +4d6 +5d6 +6d6

Also terminal velocity for a human in our atmosphere occurs at 60' feet, so it tends to model that fairly well.

 

[Laurefindel]

All of this stuff happens in action movies all the time.

Stop thinking of D&D as a simulation of real life.

I should have made it clearer that I don’t have a problem with falling damage in D&D. D&D is not meant to be an accurate simulation of real life. Other than falling damage, there are many things that makes D&D unrealistic in various ways. I don’t think I need to convince you of this.

Only, this thread is about things that are scary in real life but trivial in D&D. Falling 20 or 30 feet is in real life very scary. 2d6 or 3d6 isn’t for most characters once they hit 2nd level.

If I do have a problem with falling damage, it is a purely gaming one, not a simulation it’s one. I don’t care much for realism, but I do care about giving my players challenging encounters and dangers. And frankly, a 10-foot fall doesn’t provide much for in that department.