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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5355905" data-attributes="member: 4937">If you really believe that, then we have so little in common that we can do nothing but speak past each other.A 30' unexpected fall is potentially lethal to a character of any level in my game.  Granted, the odds are tiny (somewhat less than 1 in 20,000 depending on the assumptions you make), but the possibility exists.  So, to that extent I agree with this claim.To a certain extent, I agree.  I believe that the rules should match the reality being simulated to as great of extent as possible.  That this feeling is common is to a large part why the D&D default rules for falling are so frequently questioned and changed.  Certainly that's why I changed them.Your character only knows what you would know in the same situation.  You can't expect to have perfect information about the environment.  I'm not going to tell you how many hit points the moster has, or how much damage it can do, or anything at all in terms of the rules if I can help it.  In the real world, there are many things you don't know until you try them, and that remains true even after you are experienced with them - which is why even experienced real world  'adventurers' can get themselves into trouble.Because, quite arguably, your character knows that he's escaped all those situations only by at least some reliance on luck and good fortune, and his luck and good fortune might suddenly run out.  The default understanding of hit points is not that they make your character immune to crossbow bolts in the chest, but that they represent to a large extent your heroic luck that protects you so that crossbow bolts fired at you don't hit you squarely in the chest.  But from your character's prespective he knows that on those few occassions he does get squarely hit, he's as mortal as any other man.  So sure, he knows his luck and good fortune protect him, but why should he try his luck?  In point of fact, if your character fell 50' and lived, in D&D that doesn't mean that falls aren't lethal, that the force of gravity is lesser, or that stone is less solid.  So your character doesn't 'know what falls feel like' in the sense that he knows that falling doesn't hurt.  He knows rather, "It's a good thing that I managed to land on that patch of mud, didn't fall head first, was able to slow my fall on the way down, etc. because otherwise I'd be dead."I could be widely off base here, but you bear the marks of a player who has been repeatedly screwed over and even abused by bad DMs.</blockquote>

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