Falling damage should not be connected to real quantities

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:06 am

Seriously, it shouldn't. Falling damage should depend on the level of the source and its severity. This applies whether it's you falling onto something or something falling on to you.

Basically, the entire abuse of the falling rules (Damocles' Ingot, the Air Elemental Stamp Drop, and so on) comes from this. Since real-world quantities are subject to real-world manipulations, things meant as utility spells end up doing 50d6+ points of damage, and a simple ability to allow a monster to manipulate your position and put on a small damage over time effect ends up doing five times the damage it's supposed to.

So, instead, what I propose is this:
A fall of normal severity inflicts 1d6 damage times the challenge rating of the source of the fall. A pit trap comes from an Architect with an arbitrary CR anyway, so that much is solved.

If the fall is particularly severe, double (or add half-again) the number of dice and/or increase its level. If it's not serious, halve it, note it as a lower-level fall, and/or make some of the dice nonlethal.

Then you just need a table (mostly flavor text, really) of level-appropriate falls and falling objects. For falls, start with a 10' pit trap (appropriate at level 1), and go all the way up to falling from the upper atmosphere into the Marianas Trench after the oceans have been stolen (severe at level 20). Falling objects are a bit more complicated, but can be fit in.

Then Damocles's Ingot will become balanced with Fireball or Disintegrate, the shrunk item drop will be fixed, and Air Elementals won't be able to kill you on a failed Reflex save.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:11 am

What's the CR of a giant rock?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:19 am

The CR of whatever caused the rock to fall on your head.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:25 am

I'd say it's a decent fix. I mean, I'm fond of Damocles' Ingot (for obvious reasons), but I agree it's rules abuse of some rules which don't make sense.

Still, this would probably need to be tuned up when and if the Evocation overhaul happens.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:39 am

Interesting. So if a high-level character throws you off the bridge to save you from the charging dragon, you take significantly more damage than if a low-level character did the same.

I do like the idea of nonlinear CRs for falls, such that re-entry from space is something like CR 21, whereas the roof of a house is CR 1 and the sea cliff (with sharp rocks) below the parapet is CR 6.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:46 am

Well Catharz, arguably the Dragon was the cause of the push (if not the immediate source) and it would be the same damage for either pusher....

Yeah, I can already see the interpretation and causal chain arguments arising...

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:06 am

Falling damage is one of those things that we can't really tie to level due to the destruction of verisimilitude.

Arrows and Bullets for guns are another mechanism in games that really doesn't contribute very much at all, but due to verisimilitude and our knowledge of how they really work we try to represent them as they are anyways.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:26 am

TarkisFlux wrote:Well Catharz, arguably the Dragon was the cause of the push (if not the immediate source) and it would be the same damage for either pusher....

Yeah, I can already see the interpretation and causal chain arguments arising...

You can head those off by arbitrarily assigning the battle environment a CR based on the EL of the encounter or on its construction (i.e., interpolated from a table of example falls).

But if you put the PCs on a bridge over a CR 8 fall at level 4, you're told what level the fall is appropriate for, and in fact had to pick that level. That's at least better than "you're ambushed on the ledge halfway up a thousand-foot cliff" at that same level, where what was meant as impressive scenery ends up killing the party.

The Dragon's CR is used for the fall if you don't have anything else for it, like if the Dragon picks you up and drops you.

violence in the media · Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:21 am

What if falls dealt damage expressed as a percentage of total hit points, in 5 or 10 percent increments? I know this isn't the way D&D normally does things, and it may be wildly dumb, but here's what I'm thinking:

Any normal fall (minimum of 10') provokes a d10 or d20 roll to determine how much damage it does as a percentage of a character's hit points.

A character may fall their level in 10' increments as a normal fall. A 9th level character could fall 90' with a straight d10 roll.

A light fall is any distance less than a normal fall, and subtracts 1 from the die result per 10' less. Our 9th level character falling 40' would roll d10 - 5 for damage, which could result in 0% damage, but cannot heal the character. At most, such a character would lose 50% of their maximum hp for that fall.

A severe fall is any distance greater than a normal fall, and adds 1 to the die result per 10' more. Our 9th level character falling 150' would roll d10 + 6 for damage, which is likely to kill them outright. The would lose a minimum of 70% of their maximum hp for that fall.

That's the basic idea and you can play around with the math until it does what you want. Maybe short and normal falls deal d10% damage, and greater falls deal d20% damage, which gives people a greater chance of survival for falls over their level. Maybe you put a cap on the damage, such that a fall can only ever inflict 90% damage, or does so up to a certain point. Maybe you change the increments for falling damage variation or for the height of a normal fall.

With such a rule, falling can be universally dangerous, relative to height and level, as opposed to being a non-issue to anyone who can shrug off 20d6 damage. You wind up with low level characters occasionally dying from falls off of barns, and high level characters shrugging off falls of hundreds of feet while still remaining vulnerable to a falls of a certain distance in general.

The downsides to this rule is that it's more complicated relative to other rules, it might make falls too trivial in some cases and too deadly in others, and that some people will have a hard time figuring out 5 or 10% of their character's hit points with a calculator and the internet.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:13 pm

Honestly I'm all for it just being a number determined by size category, with maybe three tables.
light, moderate and heavy.

Moderate would be like any human or monstrous body. Heavy would be a solid block of metal and light would be anything lighter than a human body (some things that are so light they wouldnt' even cause damage, like feathers should be ignored).

Really, I don't know why falling damage suddenly goes by real world measurements. I'd really like it if D&D just ditched the idea of lbs altogether in the rules. Honestly I don't know how heavy that 7 ft tall granite statue is, and neither does the DM. In fact, every player at the table is likely to come up wtih a different estimate for how much they think it weighs. We can however assign a size category to it pretty easily.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 2:57 am

Therefore, Strength and Telekinesis should not designate weight, but rather the size catagory of objects you can pick up, and have damage done not by feet fallen but by object size of the falling object

A medium sized weapon does 2d6 damage, therefore a medium sided creature impacting earth takes 2d6 damage (and does 2d6 damage to the earth before hardness). This has a good probability of killing 1d8 nonclassed humanoid peasants, and PC Higher than level 3 are badass enough to skydive with no parachute, with possible serious complications depending on HD and DR, and 6+ heroes do what they do best and don't care.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 3:25 am

@Violence:
That doesn't really fit with the design goals here.

First, we want to end the abuse where a monster can pick you up, fly you into the sky, and drop you and deal far more damage than it has any business dealing. The problems where the set dressing cliffs have to be really tiny for low-level PCs to be able to survive them and dismounting a mid-level PC from a flying mount is also lethal also need fixed.

Second, we want to make it so that high-level characters deal with progressively more epic falls. If a 3rd level character can survive falling out of a castle tower into the courtyard, a 9th level character should be able to do much more than just fall out of a tower thrice as high; it should be more like spellcasting. A third level cleric can preserve a corpse, predict whether the next half-hour will be made better or worse if they take an action, and consecrate a temple. A 9th level cleric can do all that, and speak with their deity, raise the dead, and travel bodily into heaven and hell. The scale I suggested tops out at orbital re-entry, not falling from a low-flying airplane or dragon.

@RandomCasualty: Size category is good for falling objects. There should probably be a maximum size category difference, though, since if, for instance, a barn or a mountain falls on someone, it'd turn out the same as a house falling on them, just harder to dodge; all that excess size is going to other areas rather than hitting the person.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 3:25 am

I dee kay, I'd almost prefer a set percentage of HP damage done by falls and things. Then again, HP sucks as a system, but cutting out that cancerous root would involve slaughtering D&D. It's best just to treat the smaller tumors.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:13 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Honestly I don't know how heavy that 7 ft tall granite statue is, and neither does the DM. In fact, every player at the table is likely to come up wtih a different estimate for how much they think it weighs. We can however assign a size category to it pretty easily.

That's what I do; an object big enough for a Gargantuan creature to throw does damage as an appropriate Gargantuan-sized improvised weapon. Makes perfect sense to me.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:23 am

Wait a minute ...

First, we want to end the abuse where a monster can pick you up, fly you into the sky, and drop you and deal far more damage than it has any business dealing.

So fall damage is based on CR - higher CR falls do more damage.

Second, we want to make it so that high-level characters deal with progressively more epic falls.

So higher CR falls are from greater heights. But wait, that means falls from greater heights do more damage ... which is how things already work.

Or is "epic falling" separate from height? So if you fall off the storm giant's mountain tower of doooom, that's an epic fall and it does 20d6 damage. But if you fall off the equally tall but not particularly interesting mountain nearby, you just take 1d6 damage?

Personally, I think this makes the world a bit too arbitrary. If 1st level characters are dropping 100 ton lead blocks on people, that's a balance issue. But I don't think "and the block bounces off the dog, giving it a slight bruise" is a good solution. Hell, "the Reflex save to dodge falling objects entirely is DC 0" would be a better one - at least it only stretches the fourth wall instead of shattering it and stomping all over the pieces.

And that's about the only problem it even solves. If you're facing a flying creature that can easily carry you around, in an open area, you're already screwed. All it has to do is grab someone, fly them far away from the rest, and eat them. Repeat as necessary. Falling damage is just the icing on the cake in that instance.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:28 am

Epic isn't just distance, although distance has a lot to do with it (falling into the grand canyon is worse than falling into the ditch in the woods behind my house, for instance).

Basically, I want "pick them up and drop them" to be a level-appropriate attack instead of instant death. I also want higher-level characters to be able to survive progressively more impressive environmental hazards.

If that means that being thrown at the ground by a big dragon hurts like orbital re-entry, I'm not actually worried. Casters have lots of things that hurt like orbital re-entry in the current system.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 7:21 am

IGTN wrote:If a 3rd level character can survive falling out of a castle tower into the courtyard, a 9th level character should be able to do much more than just fall out of a tower thrice as high.

If you want falls to match the CR / level system, you can just set the fall damage to CR # d6, and determine the height from the CR with an exponential formula like fall height = 5 x 2 ^ ((CR+2) / 2). So a CR 1/2 height would be around 10 feet and deal 1d3 damage, a CR 2 height would be 20 ft and deal 2d6, a CR 4 height would be 40 ft, a CR 6 height would be 80 ft, CR 8 would be 160 ft., and so on (or adjust the formula so you get whatever starting point you want and work from there). A CR 20 fall sits at 10240 ft (and would take like 5 rounds, but who's counting), which is close enough to re-entry for me. Hell, you could even pre tabulate the results, and say that falls between this range and this range deal this amount of damage.

It's not as flexible as what you're aiming for IGTN, but it might be simpler and solve the same things you're worried about.

Edit Got bored, figured them out. This is what they look like if you reduce to the nearest 10 ft.

Code: Select all

Fall  Min. Falling
CR    Distance
1     10
2     20
3     30
4     40
5     60
6     80
7     110
8     160
9     230
10    320
11    450
12    640
13    910
14    1280
15    1810
16    2560 &#40;2 rounds&#41;
17    3620 &#40;2 rounds&#41;
18    5120 &#40;3 rounds&#41;
19    7240 &#40;4 rounds&#41;
20    10240 &#40;5 rounds&#41;

It reduces to the old setup for short distances, but still grows to lots after a while. Whether that's desirable behavior or not is up to you.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 3:37 pm

IGTN wrote: Basically, I want "pick them up and drop them" to be a level-appropriate attack instead of instant death.

To a certain extent, it already is. Low CR creatures are generally weak enough that they can't grapple and lift the average PC with impunity (small weak PCs are out of luck, though). It's only very large higher CR creatures that can do that.

I'm sure there are some exceptions, though.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:15 pm

hogarth wrote:
IGTN wrote: Basically, I want "pick them up and drop them" to be a level-appropriate attack instead of instant death.
To a certain extent, it already is. Low CR creatures are generally weak enough that they can't grapple and lift the average PC with impunity (small weak PCs are out of luck, though). It's only very large higher CR creatures that can do that.

I'm sure there are some exceptions, though.

Air elemental Whirlwind (Reflex save, not a grapple check, and there's no escape). Griffon on a regular grapple (+15 bonus at level 4), Hippogriff too (+11 at CR 2). They don't need to be able to grapple the Barbarian to be deadly, either; the cleric works just fine.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:28 pm

hogarth wrote: That's what I do; an object big enough for a Gargantuan creature to throw does damage as an appropriate Gargantuan-sized improvised weapon. Makes perfect sense to me.

Yeah whenever you try to add science to D&D, things get sketchy. If someone throws a gargantuan sized alchemists fire at someone, you dont' go calculate the change in volume and all that crap. You just scale alchemists fire up as a gargantuan weapon. And it makes people's lives a lot easier while also making the game more balanced.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:03 pm

So, let's say you're fighting a CR X monster next to a cliff. If the monster bull rushes you off the cliff, is the damage deteremined by the CR of the mosnter or by the CR of the cliff?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:22 pm

IGTN wrote:
hogarth wrote: To a certain extent, it already is. Low CR creatures are generally weak enough that they can't grapple and lift the average PC with impunity (small weak PCs are out of luck, though). It's only very large higher CR creatures that can do that.

I'm sure there are some exceptions, though.
Air elemental Whirlwind (Reflex save, not a grapple check, and there's no escape). Griffon on a regular grapple (+15 bonus at level 4), Hippogriff too (+11 at CR 2). They don't need to be able to grapple the Barbarian to be deadly, either; the cleric works just fine.

A CR 3 air elemental could kill a halfling or a gnome if it got lucky, I suppose (DC 13, can only stay in whirlwind form for 2 rounds); the CR 5 version has a decent chance at killing anyone with that tactic.

The CR 4 griffon has a decent chance at grappling (especially a small character), although it provokes attacks of opportunity if it tries it. A pouncing full attack is probably just about enough to almost kill a weak character anyways.

The hippogriff is a bit of an anomaly -- an extremely fast and strong flyer with a very low CR.

I guess it depends whether you think save-or-die attacks are "fair" for low CR creatures. What is your opinion on the (CR 4) sea hag's horrific appearance and evil eye powers? Or the (CR 4) harpy's captivating song? Or a (CR 4) pixie's sleep and memory loss arrows? Are those CR-appropriate in your book or not?

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:30 pm

Why not make there be a difference between the carrying weight of a creature and the amount a creature can carry while flying.

Most low CR creatures don't have the strength to life others off the ground if we restrict their load.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:32 pm

Cliffs you fight next to should be your CR.

IE, no fistfights in the Himalayas if you can't take the falls.

-Crissa

violence in the media · Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:30 pm

Crissa wrote:Cliffs you fight next to should be your CR.

IE, no fistfights in the Himalayas if you can't take the falls.

-Crissa

Wait, whut? We don't even need to be talking about the Himalayas, what you're proposing is that PCs shouldn't get into fights on certain walls of Edinburgh Castle.

Under existing rules, what level is an 80+ meter fall appropriate?