Post/Author/DateTime	Post
shades of eternity 09-30-04, 01:12 AM	Namely, if a monk is above an opponent, can he use the normal falling damage an opponent? Just something that has been bugging me for a while.
mercurywyrm 09-30-04, 01:21 AM	As far as I can tell characters do not count as objects for the purposes of damage when dropped on other characters, and I would consider it jumping on rather than falling in a monk's case, also, I don't think slow falled damage would damage the person they "fall" on. I guess a DM would be reasonable to apply the same damage you take from a fall to whatever you fall on and a monk could conciveable fall/charge unarmed strike someone... I guess...
Gnarl 09-30-04, 04:57 AM	As far as I can tell characters do not count as objects for the purposes of damage when dropped on other characters Why not ? Of course the falling character would also take the damage for falling. Now of course this can get tricky with the slow fall thing. The ability description is: At 4th level or higher, a monk within arm’s reach of a wall can use it to slow her descent. Now of course the true question is, would opponent take full damage from the fall or the same damage as the monk. Well I personaly believe that your opponent would take the same damage as your monk as your monk only learned how to slow down his fall and not avoid the damage. Tumble would work though, the tumbling character would take 1d6 less damage than the guy getting smashed (assuming he made his DC 15 check).
Zelphi 09-30-04, 05:07 AM	I think the distances involved and your weight would probably be the thing that decides A) How much falling damage you'd do B) How much damage you take C) How much you can reduce you're damage by. Killing people by jumping on their heads is mostly left to A) Plumbers B) People with regeneration effects
Thorak 09-30-04, 07:11 AM	If a monk is leaping off a high point to land on someone, he's doing one of two things. Slow Fall, in which case he hits them so lightly he's not doing them any more damage than he'd take hitting the ground (and he's too busy keeping himself from falling faster to attack them properly). Kamikaze jump. In which case, while I'd say he inflicts falling damage on the target, he also takes the same damage himself.
hanbalfrek 09-30-04, 01:40 PM	Killing people by jumping on their heads is mostly left to A) Plumbers Hahahahahaha
thinkhard 09-30-04, 02:16 PM	Personally, i'd treat it like telekenisis. Your opponent would take d6 damage for every 25 lbs you weigh if they failed to move out of the way (treat it like a bull-rush, i'd say; they step out of the way, or be stupid and attempt to hit you, unless they're unaware that you're falling on them). Also, the farther an object falls, the more velocity it has, therefore the more force it hits with. So the falling damage you take for the distance you fell would also apply to the opponent. When you sit down and think about it, this makes sense. A guy falls off a building and lands on someone else. The guy on the bottom broke the other guys fall, so he's hurting pretty bad. But the guy on top would still suffer some injury unless he barely fell that far at all. Maybe limit this option/function of falling on people to only apply to distances of 10ft of freefall or more? OH! and also, i'd make the first 3d6 damage dealt by falling on an opponent always subdual, and all of the damage you deal by your body weight subdual. That way, if you fall a story on a person, you knock em out, not kill them.
Jaytan 10-02-04, 05:51 AM	Also, the farther an object falls, the more velocity it has, therefore the more force it hits with. Actually force is related to mass * acceleration rather than mass * velocity. In simple calculations (i.e. more than sufficient for table top playing) the force would be approximately equal to your weight (which is your character's mass times the acceleration of gravity).
Deladrion Garthin 10-02-04, 06:36 PM	Actually force is related to mass * acceleration rather than mass * velocity. In simple calculations (i.e. more than sufficient for table top playing) the force would be approximately equal to your weight (which is your character's mass times the acceleration of gravity). :teach: The force represented by weight alone would simply be the force the character exerts on the ground when he's just standing there, not falling at all. Velocity comes into play, because that is how fast the character is falling and will affect exactly how much acceleration he has when he hits something. The faster you are traveling before coming to a complete stop (ie. smashing into somebody or the ground), the greater the acceleration and therefor the greater the force... Anyway, I think the best way to deal with it is to assume that all creatures involved take the same amount of damage. They are, after all, striking each other equally as hard. But I agree that Gnarl; Tumble would still reduce the faller's damage by 1d6, while the fallee takes full damage. Edit: Also, I think some sort of reflex save would be more appropriate than a Bullrush-type decision. It would take a complete moron to simply stand there if he had the option of moving aside.
thinkhard 10-02-04, 08:22 PM	I'd treat it as a bullrush because how could you not move out of the way? You'd not move out of the way if you weren't aware they were falling on you until it was too late. So As long as you see the person falling, you'd have complete control over whether you move out of the way or not, thus the bull rush viewpoint rather than a reflex save. If you take a reflex save, you might fail in a situation that doesn't make sense to fail in. Also, you'd both take the same falling damage, as said, but they would take your weight damage. You cant deal damage of your own weight to yourself. Thats why body-slams dont kill sumo wrestlers.
Deladrion Garthin 10-02-04, 08:45 PM	The bullrush mechanic assumes they have the time and wits to react quickly enough. I think that is exactly what the Reflex save is supposed to represent. True, you might fail. This is DnD, :censored: happens. Even epic level characters can fail at the most mundane task at the most inopportune of times. It has to have some amount of random chance involved. Also, you'd both take the same falling damage, as said, but they would take your weight damage. You cant deal damage of your own weight to yourself. Thats why body-slams dont kill sumo wrestlers. So... they both take equal damage... but they wouldn't? :confused: Not sure what you're saying here. And sumo wrestlers don't "body-slam" each other. They push each other out a circle. No falling invovled.
thinkhard 10-02-04, 08:55 PM	So... they both take equal damage... but they wouldn't? :confused: Not sure what you're saying here. And sumo wrestlers don't "body-slam" each other. They push each other out a circle. No falling invovled. No. Think about it. In real life when you drop something on someone, they take damage based upon how heavy that thing that hit them is. Even more so, they also take damage based upon how far the object fell. When you drop an object on the ground, it only takes damage for how far it fell. The only difference between falling on the ground and on a person is that the ground doesn't bleed. This is why you take falling damage, and the person you fell on takes your falling damage and you weight damage.
Deladrion Garthin 10-02-04, 09:18 PM	But both objects (or creatures, if you will) are striking each other with an equal amount of force. Therefor the damage they recieve is identical. Using your example of an object falling on a person or on the ground; an object falls on a person with, for the sake of having a number, 5 newtons. (newton = unit of force) The object strikes the person with 5 newtons, and the person likewise strikes the object with 5 newtons. Equal and opposite reactions. If the object strikes the ground with 5 newtons the ground is still striking the object with the same 5 newtons. There is absolutely no difference in the two situations. The falling object doesn't strike the person harder than it struck the ground. It's just as true to say that the person and the ground struck the object with an equal amount of force; resulting in identical damage dealt to the object and what it hits in both situations. These are some very basic concepts in physics, and are only using Newton's laws. I understand that you're trying to say that weight should be a factor, but it simply isn't when you're dealing with falling damage of a person or creature in DnD. If it were, heavier characters and creatures would take greater amounts of falling damage. But that mechanic doesn't exist, so we have to use the one already in place. Straight d6's based on the distance traveled.
thinkhard 10-02-04, 09:38 PM	You're thinking of this wrong... The more mass something has, the more inertia it has. The more inertia it has, the more force thats required to change its state of motion (i.e. stop it from falling). Sometimes the force being applied to change inertia is actually only an absorbtion of the other force through physical interraction (like in stopping and objects motion by standing in the way). So an object with more inertia would require you to absorb more force, and absorbing force can cause damage (absorbing the force of a moving bullet). Thus, heavier objects would hurt you more than a lighter object, even if they fell the same distance. This is why weight damage is applied as well. An easier way to think of this is that the object on the ground receives not only the force taken to stop the object from moving, but the force the object has based upon its weight because gravity is a constant. And, because this object is pinned between the other and the ground, it doesn't have a way to get rid of the rest of this energy by starting in motion. The object falling on feels the force taken to stop it. So the object in the middle feels more forces, can't get rid of them, and therefore takes more damage.
Deladrion Garthin 10-02-04, 10:27 PM	1) Yes it takes a greater amount of force to stop heavier objects that have fallen a distance as opposed to lighter ones. I agree entirely, but this is not represented in any way in DnD with regard to falling creatures. There is no mechanic for it. That is all that I've been saying. 2) If object A falls on object B, B doesn't experience more forces than A in the initial impact, which is what falling damage represents; and instantaneous collision. Both objects experience equal forces in opposite directions, and so both should sustain identical damage. If you are really dead-set on implimenting weight (mass) into falling damage, then I suggest you look in the DMG. I know there is a table that gives how much d6s of damage an object will deal for each 10' it has fallen; I've used it once before when a player had his dire bear leap off a ledge to crush some orcs below it. This effectively takes into account the objects weight and increases the damage appropriately. I'd give a page number, but I don't have my book, and I have no idea if it could be found in the SRD. I think you can just look up 'falling objects' in the index. If you DO incorporate this into falling damage for creatures, you have to remember that the damage sustained and dealt by the creature is identical. What you suggest with the actual weight of the object causing it to deal more damage to a creature sounds more like you expect it to be crushing whatever it landed on between itself and the ground. I understand what you're saying with this, but as far as I know there aren't any rules for this, so trying to roll this concept into d20's over-simplified falling damage system is probably not a good idea.