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

[Ace]

I would put falling damage at 20% of max HP per 10 ft.
a 50ft drop on your head WILL kill you.

if you jump down intentionally, reduce the fall by 10ft and another 10ft with DC15 athletics or acrobatics check, 20ft less with DC30 check.

The thing is falling is very random. we have instances of a person Vesna Vulovic falling from 2 miles up and surviving. There is also a recent instance of someone falling 90 feet, granted onto snow and walking away.

Personally while the OP can certainly do what he wants in his own game and there is nothing wrong with that its better to tell people up front when you want to change rules. This isn't the OSR where its rulings not rules, its a well defined rules set with most exceptions and structures baked in.

D&D is closer to supers than to fantasy and most attempts to twist anything much above level 6 or so into realism make for an inferior gaming experience.

It can also frustrate players when DM's who can't cope with high power gaming refuse to run high level D&D because they can't relate to it or are afraid of powerful PC's I suspect a lot of people would love to play to 15 or 20 but will never get the chance because DM's lock up and demand whole unnecessary concessions to realism

YMMV but its better for all to accept 5E and other D&D for what they are, power games and if you want verisimilitude or realism in your game, play another game.

 

[Maxperson]

The thing is falling is very random. we have instances of a person Vesna Vulovic falling from 2 miles up and surviving. There is also a recent instance of someone falling 90 feet, granted onto snow and walking away.

And for every one of those stories there are hundreds or thousands of gravestones memorializing the rest that fell that far.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

"As you fall, you strike a glowing discontinuity. Briefly, you feel like you're being turned inside out through your bottom. You catch a glimpse of your own tonsils as you fold upon yourself and back again. For a fraction of a second, you're certain that you're a petunia in a pot falling somewhere. Or maybe a whale? As you come back to yourself, you float slowly to the ground and land safely. You take no damage. Incidentally, that magic Battle-Axe you used to have? You Never had that, but you do have the lovely Ring of Feather Fall you have always had as your only magic item. Enjoy"

 

[Undrave]

The thing is falling is very random. we have instances of a person Vesna Vulovic falling from 2 miles up and surviving. There is also a recent instance of someone falling 90 feet, granted onto snow and walking away.

Personally while the OP can certainly do what he wants in his own game and there is nothing wrong with that its better to tell people up front when you want to change rules. This isn't the OSR where its rulings not rules, its a well defined rules set with most exceptions and structures baked in.

D&D is closer to supers than to fantasy and most attempts to twist anything much above level 6 or so into realism make for an inferior gaming experience.

It can also frustrate players when DM's who can't cope with high power gaming refuse to run high level D&D because they can't relate to it or are afraid of powerful PC's I suspect a lot of people would love to play to 15 or 20 but will never get the chance because DM's lock up and demand whole unnecessary concessions to realism

YMMV but its better for all to accept 5E and other D&D for what they are, power games and if you want verisimilitude or realism in your game, play another game.

And certain conception of 'realism' can often be mistaken. I remember in 4e days a guy on the DnD board insisting that doing archery on horseback should inflict a penalty, that it wasn't realistic to be able to do so...

Cue the posting of a video of a friggin' horseback archery competition with multiple people hitting bullseye while riding across a field.

And as you say, falling is random and it's REALLY dependent on how you land and on what. Snow and tree branches will break your fall quite a lot, but you can also trip on a carpet and smash your head against the corner of a heavy enough table and just die right there.

 

[Umbran]

Huh. Does that mean that the Balor in LOTR was really a Bumble?

It is a balrog. Balor is a D&D term, and while they are themed on the Balrog, we should not mistake the one for the other.

The LOTR is not D&D. D&D is inspired in part by LotR, but also many other things, and is also supposed to be a playable game. So, if you are expecting the game to perfectly emulate everything that happens in those books, you're going to be disappointed. It isn't a reasonable expectation.

Or did Gandalf just know he would only take 20d6 damage?

Quite possibly, as we'll note in a sec....

But he's a fakir.

The word you want is probably "faker". In modern use, a "fakir" is a type of Hindu or Muslim religious ascetic.

So my whole point of this overly long post is that Gandalf is a politician and a fakir.

Again, that's probably not the word you want.

Wait ... no that wasn't it. It's that in the fiction everybody thought Gandalf should die falling that far.

So, here's the thing - Gandalf is a minor angel. A "Maiar" in Tolkien's terms. So, we can have a few explanations:

1) The other characters in the Fellowship probably range from 1st level to 10th, and the falling damage there would surely kill them. Gandalf is the only one who's this massive 20th level (or equivalent CR, as he probably isn't a PC). Sure, they think he's gong to die, because they've never seen someone of his power before. Gandalf, however, knows his chances here, and he's okay with the risk. And maybe the GM didn't roll so hot on the falling damage.

2) He does die. And he's either resurrected or death means something a bit different where he comes from (because, as noted before - angel).

3) For reasons Gandalf actually mentions in the books, he is restricted in use of his power - if he uses too much, Sauron will know where he is, and the jig, as they say, will be up. If he's about to die anyway, though, it hardly matters, so he busts out a whole whopping feather fall on the way down. But, since Tolkien isn't writing about his angels, but about people, that's off screen.

4) Both the Balrog and Gandalf are angelic beings. On the way down, their struggle becomes more metaphorical than physical, and they never really hit bottom anyway.

 

[Umbran]

So, a long time ago, I was playing D&D. 1e. The party was name level or better, but not in the upper teens.

The party finds an incredibly deep (possibly literally bottomless) pit, 30' or more across, with a spiral staircase wrapping around the inside. Being high level, we bust out some magic to quickly fly us down the pit to the dungeon entrance we know is there. We do a whole bunch of adventuring in this dungeon. After we actually find what we came for, we run into a purple worm. The worm chases us full tilt down the corridor to the dungeon opening. Reaching the entrance in the pit, the nearly tapped out spellcasters manage to get everyone but my character quickly to the top.

I run out of the dungeon full speed, make my dex check and get onto the staircase. Just behind me the purple worm comes crashing out, unable to stop it's momentum, and it plummets down the pit, into the darkness.

And my character has to start climbing the quarter-mile or so of stairs to the surface. I had an 18 Con. NO biggie. But I grumble all the way, because stupid party members just left me to friggin' walk...

I get to the top, and as my head clears the edge of the pit, I start giving the party a dressing down for the annoyance... when I run into the actual first trap in the dungeon. The top two steps of that spiral staircase were illusory. And I step on them... and plummet...

...five miles down...

...onto the first layer of Hell... Of course, the pit goes all the way to Hell, literally.

The DM rolls the falling damage, and I am at the cap, but... it isn't enough to kill me.

We all had to sit for a moment or two to figure this out - how the heck does that work. Until we remembered the worm. It had been killed by fall, where I hadn't. So, we figure, I landed on its corpse, which was massive and fleshy enough to break my fall, with my magic armor basically keeping me together. I wake up in a crater of worm guts, in literal Hell.

And now I really had a reason to give the party a piece of my mind for leaving me behind....

The damage cap can make for great war stories. Rather than chafe at it, use it!

 

[Maxperson]

And certain conception of 'realism' can often be mistaken. I remember in 4e days a guy on the DnD board insisting that doing archery on horseback should inflict a penalty, that it wasn't realistic to be able to do so...

Cue the posting of a video of a friggin' horseback archery competition with multiple people hitting bullseye while riding across a field.

But that's basically a white room competition. I'd be curious to see how accurate they were with other people shooting lethal arrows back at them.

 

[Maxperson]

So, here's the thing - Gandalf is a minor angel. A "Maiar" in Tolkien's terms. So, we can have a few explanations:

1) The other characters in the Fellowship probably range from 1st level to 10th, and the falling damage there would surely kill them. Gandalf is the only one who's this massive 20th level (or equivalent CR, as he probably isn't a PC). Sure, they think he's gong to die, because they've never seen someone of his power before. Gandalf, however, knows his chances here, and he's okay with the risk. And maybe the GM didn't roll so hot on the falling damage.

2) He does die. And he's either resurrected or death means something a bit different where he comes from (because, as noted before - angel).

3) For reasons Gandalf actually mentions in the books, he is restricted in use of his power - if he uses too much, Sauron will know where he is, and the jig, as they say, will be up. If he's about to die anyway, though, it hardly matters, so he busts out a whole whopping feather fall on the way down. But, since Tolkien isn't writing about his angels, but about people, that's off screen.

4) Both the Balrog and Gandalf are angelic beings. On the way down, their struggle becomes more metaphorical than physical, and they never really hit bottom anyway.

We don't know how far he really fell, but he landed in water. Then he and the Balrog climbed the Endless Stair* to the top of the mountain and continued their fight.

*They were not near the top of the mountain, but Endless Stair makes it seem like it was a pretty far drop.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I guess I wonder what was the narrative/mechanical purpose for the presence of the gorge. Basically what does it break for a character to descend that fast and survive?

If the answer is 'nothing', and the player is willing to spend the hp, go nuts. They take their 20d6 damage, and then they get to explain to their healers why they need to blow resources to get him back to full (not to mention whatever they had to spend to safely keep up).

 

[Gammadoodler]

The whole 'are you committing suicide' question is pretty dang silly when applied to D&D adventurers. A realistic answer would almost always be 'yes' based on the shenanigans they get into. On the list of things that would for sure kill/severely injure all people.

-Being inside a fireball (for reference..incendiary grenades).
-Being doused in strong acids.
-Exposure to many poisons (a common means of modern execution)
-Electrocution (also a common means of modern execution)
-Exposure to extreme cold.

Yet these are all reasonably common experiences for a D&D adventurer (See the dragons list). To have a 'Cliffs.. the most deadly enemy of all' approach to character boundaries is a kind of nutty bit of worldbuilding.