Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 lady_ishtar Apr 30, 2011 22:09:25	I am trying to make falling damage more... gritty? realistic? dangerous? The way I see it, falling damage should always be a threat, unless you know how to take a fall (trained in acrobatics). On the other hand I don't want this to be too cumbersome, or too lethal. I have noticed that at some point falling damage becomes a non-issue, which kind of sucks in a campagin involving lots of climbing. Falling Damage For every 10 feet you fall, beyond first 10 feet, you take damage equal to 10% of your maximum hit points, rounded down. For example, a character with 62 hit points falls 20 feet. He would take 6 falling damage (first 10 feet is ignored, so 10 feet of the fall causes damage. 10% of 62 is 6.2, rounded down is 6 damage). Same character falling 80 feet would suffer 42 damage (first 10 feet is ignored, so 70 feet of the fall causes damage. 10% of 62 is 6.2, rounded down is 6, times 7 for 70 feet fallen, equals 42 damage). Acrobatics: When you make an Acrobatics check to reduce falling damage, round down your Acrobatics check to the nearest 10. You do not count this distance when determining falling damage. Comments, criticisms, suggestions are welcome.
#2 rampant May 01, 2011 0:58:20	Seems ok, the one real problem I see is that it means that tough guys with lots of hp now fear falling more than did before. This makes having lots of hp marginally less special. Any reason just adding in extra damage doesn't do it for you?
#3 lady_ishtar May 01, 2011 8:49:42	I though about adding extra damage, but that penalizes low hit point characters a lot more than durable, high hit point ones. I am trying to penalize all classes equally.
#4 rampant May 01, 2011 16:05:28	Ok so you've made all classes equally afraid of falling, but compared to the old way the squishy classes fear it less, and the tough classes fear it more. If that's what you're going for then there's nothing wrong with the system.  I warn you though expect your players to start dropping elites and solos over cliffs whole hog. Those guys have enough hp that even short drops with the new falling damage rules are likely to deal more damage than some encounter powers.
#5 lady_ishtar May 01, 2011 17:40:35	Yeah, I though of that, and knowing my players I'm ok with that. I guess too many times I have seen my players drop a creature off the cliff, what should have been pretty devaststing drop, and do less if they did a basic attack. Thanks for the input.
#6 Namagem May 09, 2011 3:14:41	That's a lot of math for something that can happen several times in an encounter.  Instead of making beefier characters take more damage than flimsier characters (which doesn't make much sense), why not have the damage scale exponentially the further the drop is? For example, a ten foot drop could be 1d10 , while a 20 foot drop could be 2d10+10, and a 30 foot drop 3d10+20. This would make falls incredibly dangerous if you weren't able to fall safely, and it would have the effect you seem to want to have (making your players fear falling a bit more).
#7 lady_ishtar May 09, 2011 6:32:39	Problem with upping damage like this, while high hp characters now fear falling damage, low hp characters just die. As for tough character taking more damage, good. Just beacuse you are tough does not mean you know how to take a fall (unless you are trained in acrobatics). That big fall will knock the wind out of you. Sure, the physical damage might not be high, but hit points is not about physical damage alone. As far as complexity, since it uses 10% health per 10 feet the path is simple. As the DM, if I know character has 85 hit points, he just takes 8 damage per 10 feet. And as a DM I should know how many hit points my characters have. Simple multiplication is no more difficult than adding random numbers together.
#8 Reg06 May 09, 2011 10:01:02	So a 110 foot fall is auto kill? No matter how tough, or light, the PC is? Or if they are powerful enough to tear Orcus's neck out with their bare hands? How is a 110 foot fall being an auto-kill realistic within the game world, or even within the real world? And it's pretty messed up that the spindly wizard who has never done anything more strenuous than climb a flight of stairs wouldn't fear a fall as much as the highly athletic, pantherish barbarian. If you want to make it deadlier, change the dice. Maybe d12 Brutal 2 per 10 feet. That's alot of damage, and it never is a soft fall.
#9 pluisjen May 09, 2011 13:10:18	One rule I heard used was that falling was not based on depth but instead categorised by threat according to the DM, and damage done was in Healing Surges, not damage. So you have 4 categories; Hurting Painful Critical Deadly  And each deals a number of healing surges in HP value; so a Hurting fall would cost one Surge Value, and a Critical one would cost 3. A Deadly drop would insta-kill anyone who was bloodied and knock out everyone else. In addition, the Acrobatics skill could be used to reduce the falling damage by making you go up a category if you made a Medium check for your level, or by 2 categories if you made the hard check. If you reduced a fall to less then Hurting then you took no damage and were not prone.
#10 lady_ishtar May 09, 2011 17:17:21	Ohh, I like the idea of categories. I might include another one, Negligible: you take no damage but fall prone (unless you are trained in Athletics). But over all the more abstract way of doing falling damage appeals to me alot. also less math on the DMs part. I need to think on this.