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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9813205" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that is fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of simulation and of heroism in the context of D&D.The big misunderstanding here is a 15th level Wizard in D&D can do a passable imitation of Dr. Strange, but DMs want to insist that 15th level fighters are still ordinary mooks and not Captain America.  A simulation isn't an attempt necessarily at modelling this world's reality.  It's modelling the reality of the fantasy world.  And in the fantasy world, big heroes do big flashy heroic things like falling thousands of feet without dying.  That's not doing it wrong.  That's the expected behavior and outcome.  Doing it wrong is just ruling Captain America died because he jumped out of an airplane without a parachute.  A correct simulation says he should just be able to do that, or heck if he can't land in the ocean (which would be as hard as concrete at that speed because water is heavy and has to be displaced) then he can always just land on his shield made of magical metal that only obeys the laws of physics when its wielder wants it to.And I strongly suspect the problem here is not merely "You're a 15th level fighter but you are still a mundane person." but also, "You don't get to ruin my plans and scenes like that.  I trapped you into something and now you are unfairly evading my plans."  The GM that decided "Oh you are just dead" doesn't deserve to have players.  It's a crappy move.  At worst you say, "You know, I hadn't really considered the implications of the falling rules on gameplay, and I don't like them, so expect new rules for falling next session."  Incidentally, I have complex rules about falling precisely because I do care about the implications of falling on game play and I do care about simulating a universe where a ten foot fall can be lethal sometimes (max damage is like 34 with a 1 in 7200 chance of happening) but a ten thousand foot fall is sometimes survivable (min damage is like 3, albeit with like a 1 in 10^25 chance of happening) which makes it very much like this universe.  But while the rules on falling make falling risky what they don't do is routinely kill high level fighters because while the standard deviation is very high the average damage isn't.  So yeah, a fighter couldn't fall thousands of feet without fear of dying at all in my game world because that the way the math works, but nether will they get punished for trying nor would I find it implausible that they do so because what I'm simulating isn't the real world by a world were mere mortals can ascend to nigh demigod status.  And if I didn't want that, I wouldn't be using D&D to do it because that is what D&D simulates.</blockquote>

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