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

[auburn2]

The rules are designed to provide a simple easy to follow formula for something that physically has a myriad of conditional variables.

To start with, the rules are soft so you don't wipe out a member on an unlucky die roll. If the party is looking at climbing up to a cave 30 foot up the mountain the wizard might be very hesitant to risk the climb if a fall means near-certain death (as it would in real life), even the burly fighter with athletics proficiency might be hesitant because there is a legit (say 20%) chance of a fall. Do you really want to tell the player - "that is it your done, the rest of us will continue"

Second while it is relatively simple to calculate free fall acceleration, most of the falls are not that. Most of them are fall in a pit trap, fall off a wall you are climbing, slip and fall down the rope. All of these cases are much less ambiguous, because you are sliding, briefly contacting the wall, trying to stop yourself etc. Given the OP example - faced with presumably near-certain death from some monster on the ledge Conan decides to jump off and try to slide down the cliff face. I could see that happening, but it really is dependant on the situation.

Keep in mind on September 11th 2001, some people DID jump out of the windows of the World Trade Center. I believe all of them died, but they presumably did this because they thought they had a better chance then burning/suffocating. So it is not unreasonable that someone would do this even if faced with certain death. If this was the kind of choice the Barbarian was making I would allow him to do it.

What I would do at the table would depend on the situation. Remember and remind the player that the DM is the ultimate judge and if you say the fall is going to kill him then it is going to kill him and I disagree with others that say there is an inconsistency. You also do not have to house rule it either, it could be just for this situation. Just like you don't have to house rule it if two PCs say one of them is going to cut the head off of the other PC and show it to the townsfolk to intimidate them - "Ok Conan cuts off Frodo's head. A greatsword does 2d6, you rolled a 10, so Frodo you lose 10 hp and have 45 hp remaining. Conan you wave Frodo's head in front of the crowd, roll intimidation with advantage .... Frodo it is your turn what do you do?" You wouldn't say that or allow it, this is no different IMO IF the Barbarian was really approaching it in a similar fashion

 

[reelo]

It would be inconsistent for any being to die from a simple fall, if they could otherwise withstand taking a meteor to the face. And, whatever else you may try to do with them, Hit Points are still the metric which is used to govern tolerance against injury.

That's why I said "system shock" needs to come back. De-coupled from hitpoints or loss thereof.

 

[pogre]

This is a case of blatant meta-gaming... on the part of the DM.

Perhaps, but I am satisfied my ruling allows heroic and PC-related motivations to manifest and avoid some player pure nonsense. YMMV

 

[reelo]

...it makes fighting monsters that have knockback on a cliff extremely deadly. Lastly, it can be used to trivialize flying monsters by simply knocking them from the sky.

Fighting monsters with knockback on a cliff certainly should be extremely risky.

Knocking flying monsters from the sky is a viable tactic. It certainly is realistic.

 

[Lanefan]

A Wizard can get to 20th level without ever making a single attack roll (spamming cantrips and spells with save or sucks), and lose nothing.

The odds of that in fact happening are about the same as those of surviving a 1500' fall on to rocks, i.e. miniscule at best.

In my game any ray spell needs a roll for aim, any AoE spell needs a roll for aim, any touch spell needs a roll to hit if the target is in melee or otherwise hard to reach (unless the caster is also the target, but that'd be odd as casting in melee is nigh impossible); and all of these can be - and occasionally, spectacularly, have been - fumbled.

A Fighter cant. In fact, as he advances in level, he makes even more attack rolls (as a core class feature) making him.... more likely to fumble as he advances in level.

And also more likely to crit, for what it's worth, though in either case it's a false premise.

On any given roll the odds of critting or fumbling are, barring external factors, exactly the same as on any other roll. On that basis, the odds of fumbling never change.

Now if you want to aggregate it and look at the odds of fumbling per day or per adventure you can (and it seems that's what you're doing), but doing so gives a faulty sense of the odds of fumbling increasing where in fact they do not.

And who gets more HP as a core class feature?

So when you choose to ignore HP, who are you punishing here?

Everyone equally. In my view there's times when hit points will prevent or delay death and other times when they won't.

The 'class feature' is that in situations where hit points do help, those classes have more of 'em. Going over the side of a 1500' cliff is not one of those situations.

 

[Lanefan]

.. Or I fail to see the significance of the distinction. Players will have their characters do or not do many hazardous things based on calculated risks. A classic is 'Do I take the opportunity attack?'. At certain hp levels the opportunity attack would be life threatening. At others, it would not. In either case the player is using the metagame knowledge of their current hp, and the potential damage to make the choice. Other examples may include 'Do I run through that wall of fire" or "do I try to block that doorway".

Because in the fiction the character there might see a reasonable chance of survival: if I don't trip and get through the fire-wall fast enough I'll only get singed (and might even come through unharmed at all), for example.

And sometimes players in fact want their characters to go the heroic-suicide route. An adventure I ran that went sideways for the PCs some years back eventually saw three surviving but badly hurt PCs trapped behind a Glyph of Warding, with no curing available. They knew what the glyph was, and that it was a one-shot deal, but that to pass through it would kill any one of them. And so one of the PCs passed his magic items off to the others, said "It's been a pleasure knowing you" and took one for the team, allowing the other two to escape back to town.

Somehow it's only specifically 'falling' where this behavior becomes unacceptable?

No character should be able to look over a 1500' cliff and see any reasonable chance of surviving a free-fall to the bottom. This is the difference between this example and the wall-of-fire example that you don't seem to grasp.

Ah. Is it as 'blindingly obvious' as it is that different weapon strikes even from the same wielder (much less different wielders) vary? And yet somehow we don't ask the DM to make a ruling for every weapon strike. Instead we rely on weapon damage tables and rules abstraction to save the day.

It's almost as if D&D is a game rather than a simulation.

When done best, it's both.

You realize this was a direct comparison between the OP's stated scenario and Fanaelialae's acceptably heroic example right? The point is in 'real life' heroic actions are on average more reckless than planned ones and, as such, more likely to fail. Yet here we want to act as if the opposite is true.

I mean there's a question here, are we more concerned with maintaining verisimilitude, or with punishing metagaming?

Given as how the two almost invariably go in lockstep, I'd say both.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Fighting monsters with knockback on a cliff certainly should be extremely risky.

Knocking flying monsters from the sky is a viable tactic. It certainly is realistic.

Even with the existing falling rules those are useful tactics. Making falling capable of an instant kill could make it too good. Certainly a spell like Reverse Gravity suddenly goes from good to amazing.

Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I'm just listing reasons why I prefer the existing rules.

 

[Lanefan]

If your goal is to simply make falling deadlier, then sure.

However, IMO, a feature of the existing system is that it isn't particularly deadly, which mirrors much of heroic fiction (even in the gritty stuff, like Joe Abercrombie's books, major characters rarely die from falling).

Obviously, if you want a more lethal system that's fine. However, at least for myself, making falling more deadly would be undesirable since that might discourage heroic actions (and could be used to decimate flying opponents as well). I like the falling rules as they are; I simply have no desire to see players abuse those rules.

Where I want falling any significant distance to be dangerous no matter what, if for no other reason than to maybe make players think twice before sending their PCs aloft via whatever means (fly spell, levitate, etc.).

And I don't have any safety-nannies on those spells either, unlike the more recent D&D editions: if the spell ends and you're still up there, down you come at the speed of gravity.

And yes, this means Dispel Magic on an opponent who's using magic to fly could be bad news for said opponent, but so what? And if the opponent has DM while you're in the air...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's why I said "system shock" needs to come back. De-coupled from hitpoints or loss thereof.

Not that I completely disagree, but in my experience, any mechanic that bypasses Hit Points can only serve to further devalue their meaning. If you don't want a game where people can survive incredible amounts of trauma, then choosing to play D&D at high levels is incredibly counter-productive.

 

[pogre]

Not that I completely disagree, but in my experience, any mechanic that bypasses Hit Points can only serve to further devalue their meaning. If you don't want a game where people can survive incredible amounts of trauma, then choosing to play D&D at high levels is incredibly counter-productive.

Lately, I have played a lot of high-level D&D and this has not matched my experience at all. The side that gets the drop on the other has a huge advantage and hit points do become trivial in a hurry.

We all have different experiences - as long as we and our players are satisfied and having fun, I think there are several legitimate ways to approach high level play.