D&D 5E Why is there a limit to falling damage?

[robus]

Falling damage doesn't make sense, overall. Force from falling would not be linear at d6 per 10'. Also, smaller and larger creatures should take different amounts of damage for falling, generally. Force = mass * Acceleration, and the acceleration due to gravity is exponential. Accurate rules for falling damage would be cumbersome. The easiest thing to do would be to have sizes and distance and rolls to make to determine damage, but even then it would be awkward to look up and subject to arguments like crazy. In the end, you'd end up with the dragon killing move to be knocking them prone in the sky and letting the fall kill them... kind of non-heroic.

To me, the size of the creature should determine the dice size. So:

Tiny: no damage
Small d4
Medium d6
Large d8
Huge d10
Gargantuan d12 (or d20 depending on the type of creature perhaps)

That would at least partially account for momentum.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

However, I countered, the player was exploiting player knowledge of the rules to benefit his PC.

I disagree. The Barbarian character grew up in a world where he has lived with whatever special rules of physics are modeled by a 20d6 fall damage cap (presumably a lower terminal velocity then is present in Earth physics). In such a world it would be well known that great heroes of his tribe routinely have walked off falls from tremendous heights. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a rite of passage or some other ritualized test in their culture. In a world with extra health at "level-ups" and a firm cap on how much damage falling could ever do that one could eventually outgrow, why would anyone who could not leap from a mountain be deemed fit to be warchief?

The player's mistake, in my book, was not thinking through the cultural ramifications of a 20d6 fall damage cap.

 

[Lanefan]

One possibility that I've heard mentioned at times is that current-edition (and all editions from 2e onward) falling damage rules are based on a misinterpretation of how falling damage was written up in 1e or even earlier, and that the d6 per 10' was originally intended to be cumulative.

So, fall 10' = 1d6. Fall 20' = [1+2]d6. Fall 30' = [1+2+3]d6. And so on. This meant the 20d6 cap was reached with a 60' fall.

And whoeever it was upthread who noted that while PC hit points have increased over the years the damage limit has not is bang-on right. The limit should probably go up to 30d6 or even 40d6; failing that just make it a straight save-or-die-outright with a penalty for each x-distance-fallen higher than wherever the damage limit is reached; and at some point (say, once the save reaches -20?) you don't even get a save.

The OP's Barbarian? 1500 feet? Yeah, no save for you Barbie.

 

[pogre]

I disagree. The Barbarian character grew up in a world where he has lived with whatever special rules of physics are modeled by a 20d6 fall damage cap (presumably a lower terminal velocity then is present in Earth physics). In such a world it would be well known that great heroes of his tribe routinely have walked off falls from tremendous heights. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a rite of passage or some other ritualized test in their culture. In a world with extra health at "level-ups" and a firm cap on how much damage falling could ever do that one could eventually outgrow, why would anyone who could not leap from a mountain be deemed fit to be warchief?

The player's mistake, in my book, was not thinking through the cultural ramifications of a 20d6 fall damage cap.

That's an interesting idea.

Not sure I agree, but I may.

I need to think about it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I disagree. The Barbarian character grew up in a world where he has lived with whatever special rules of physics are modeled by a 20d6 fall damage cap (presumably a lower terminal velocity then is present in Earth physics). In such a world it would be well known that great heroes of his tribe routinely have walked off falls from tremendous heights. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a rite of passage or some other ritualized test in their culture. In a world with extra health at "level-ups" and a firm cap on how much damage falling could ever do that one could eventually outgrow, why would anyone who could not leap from a mountain be deemed fit to be warchief?

The player's mistake, in my book, was not thinking through the cultural ramifications of a 20d6 fall damage cap.

I disagree with this. The game rules are not the physics of the world IMO. At best they're an abstraction for running a game of heroic adventure.

The character sheet may say that the character survived the 200' fall because he's got oodles of hp, and would actually walk off a second fall like that just fine. However, from the character's perspective, they believe they are lucky to be alive.

Obviously, you're free to run the game how you want. If the GM wants the rules to be the physics of the world then they are. However, I don't think that is meant to be the default assumption of the game.

 

[pogre]

I am really sorry to tell you all this, folks, but falling damage is a NARRATIVE element, not a realistic physics simulation or something. Arguments based on physics or realistic modeling do not apply. But then, your hit points aren't just meat and physics, either so...

That cap means that, in terms of narrative... if you are badass enough, that cliff just isn't an important enough piece of the universe to kill you.

You are not sorry.

If I accept it is purely narrative, would you be OK with what the player wanted to do here?

It does not strike me as particularly heroic.

With the caveat I still need to think about the interesting idea up thread of the falling damage mirroring D&D physics....

 

[Shiroiken]

Falling damage doesn't make sense, overall. Force from falling would not be linear at d6 per 10'. Also, smaller and larger creatures should take different amounts of damage for falling, generally. Force = mass * Acceleration, and the acceleration due to gravity is exponential.

According to Gary in an old The Dragon article, originally falling damage was supposed to be cumulative, so a 20 ft fall was 3d6, 30 ft was 6d6, etc. The wording was a bit off from the intent, leaving most to use the linear xd6 damage. IIRC, it was considered for clarification when AD&D (1E) was to come out, but at that point xd6 had become ingrained into the game (just like the million and one uses of the word "level").

Call it "The Rule of Uncool." If what you're doing is too silly to be allowed, it won't be allowed even if RAW would let it be.

I've been dealing with this kind of stuff for almost 30 years. A lot of players always think they can game the system against the DM. This is just part of the DM vs. Player mentality that has permeated gaming for so long.

In my very first campaign, I had a player try to intimidate a shopkeeper, which was fine. However, the frightened shopkeeper pulled out a heavy crossbow, to which the player laughed and stuck his throat on the end. Everyone looked at him and I said "what? Are you suicidal?" He responded that it can't kill him, since it only does 2d4 damage, and he had over 20 HP (critical hit didn't exist yet). He proceeded to taunt the shopkeeper, and I uttered the now infamous phrase "are you sure?" Only he was surprised when I told him the shopkeeper fired the crossbow and that his character died by having his throat ripped out.

I like the phrase Rule of Uncool for when players try to game the system, but I traditionally fall back to both Rule 0 and Wheaton's Law. Fortunately, I game with a much better quality of players (and DMs) these days, so such isn't really a problem.

 

[Umbran]

You are not sorry.

If it causes consternation, I actually am sorry. I am not sorry for being correct, that is true

If I accept it is purely narrative, would you be OK with what the player wanted to do here?

It does not strike me as particularly heroic.

So, not being present, I cannot fully judge. How about I describe a sense in which I do feel it would be okay...

Sometimes, people in fictional worlds get a sense for fate, for destiny, for their place in the Grand Scheme of Things. Surely, the character can get to a place where they look at a kobold holding a pointy stick, and laugh, just brushing the poor wretched CR 1/8 creature aside, right?

This is the equivalent. The character has learned something of fate, and just knows, looking at the mere rocks before him, that this is not his day to die, and steps off.

I could see that working for me. There's a certain bravado to it that many characters posses.

 

[Oofta]

You reach terminal velocity around 1,500 feet.

But let's assume you do the first 10 ft is 1d6 then 2d6 for the next 10 and then 3d6 for the next and so on ... do a little math (okay, spreadsheet) ... it's 39,637.5 damage on average. Splat.

I mean even if you remove the 20d6 limit which never made any sense to me, you get 350 points of damage per 1000 feet on average, which is what I would do if someone is falling that far. Using the alternate calculation it's 192.5 at 100 ft which means that the barbarian could survive a fall most mere mortals could not. Most PCS Better hope there's someone there to heal you up, but it is survivable.

I don't care if you can fight a giant, someone's going to be scraping you up off the ground unless you can cast feather fall if you fall much over a 100 ft in my campaign.

 

[Umbran]

With the caveat I still need to think about the interesting idea up thread of the falling damage mirroring D&D physics....

There's a number of things that go really wonky if you decide that certain things reflect the actual physics of the world. Like, you reach terminal velocity after 200 feet? What does that say about the gravity, or the atmosphere?

The problem is that, since these things don't come out of an actual physical system, that the various arbitrarily assigned physics elements conflict, and become inconsistent.