Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Having looked at the falling damage for D&D 4e, I feel it's a bit unrealistic that certain classes could survive such ridiculous heights. So this is what I came up with so far for houserules.

Falling into land:

25ft or greater causes broken legs
50ft or greater causes death

Falling into water:

100ft or greater causes death

What do you think DakkaDakka is this realistic enough or not? Also if someone can find more scientific info on the issue it would be much appreciated.

Keep in mind you can crash into plants and other material and survive falling further than you normally could.

Give us some examples of what classes could survive falling at such heights. Monks is the only thing I can think of, and believe me, it makes sense.

juraigamer wrote:Keep in mind you can crash into plants and other material and survive falling further than you normally could.

Give us some examples of what classes could survive falling at such heights. Monks is the only thing I can think of, and believe me, it makes sense.

If the DM rolls low then Defenders (tanky characters) like Warden, Paladins, Swordmages, Fighters, etc can survive ridiculous heights due to their high hp.

Heck, if your DM rolls low on anything they can survive. I don't think I have ever seen a realistic falling damage system anyway. Also, why are you worried about anything realistic in a game about elves and magic?

The Foot wrote:Heck, if your DM rolls low on anything they can survive. I don't think I have ever seen a realistic falling damage system anyway. Also, why are you worried about anything realistic in a game about elves and magic?

Well it makes me cringe when I see PC's walk away from falls of 25ft or greater without broken limbs or worse. After-all this maybe a setting with elves and magic but real-life things still apply such as gravity.

Aren't there some real-world examples of people falling from ridiculous heights (I'm talking thousands) and surviving? Apparently they're the ones who rolled '1's on all the damage dice as well.

One example

One thing you could do is a percentage of maximum health per 10ft increment or something simlilar. Then have some sort of effect for each increment. Figure instead of trolling I could at least give you some help.

Well if you wanted to make a realistic falling system, do damage up to a certain point, then start rolling for breaking bones and limbs. Also roll for what part hits the ground first, with something like a dex check for adjustments.

When falling from very high places, just start rolling for damage and breaking limbs at the same time.

Also, wasn't thinking about how high hp could save you, most falling I've done was 1st edition, 4th just rolls on the hp like a fat kid in an ice creme buffet.

As the saying goes, it isn't the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.

When a body falls through the air it will reach a terminal velocity which depends on its density and configuration. In other words, the terminal velocity for a lead brick is higher than for the same weight of lead made into a balloon, because the balloon has more drag.

The human body has a terminal velocity of about 120mph = 190kmh.

You can easily calculate how far you need to fall to reach this velocity by Newton's Laws of Motion.

To estimate the fatality rate, we can look at cars running over pedestrians. While this is not an exact recreation of a body hitting the ground after a long fall, there are many more examples to work with.

The rule of thumb for car crashes is that the survival rate of the pedestrian is 95% at 20mph, 50% at 30mph and 10% at 40mph.

It is easy to see from that that the chance of survival of a fall at 50mph is going to be very small, and the chance of surviving a fall at 120mph is effectively zero.

There are a very few cases where people survived extremely long falls. Usually it is because they have something like a collapsed parachute which helps slow them down, and they fall into something which decelerates them more slowly than bare ground. Deep snow and pine trees can have this effect.

Water is a tricky case since it's possible to make a controlled dive at quite high velocity and be completely uninjured, because the diver uses technique to protect himself and decelerate safely. A belly flop, however, will cause a lot more damage.

During a Call of Cuthulu session I played our driver had to gimp around with a badly broken leg after trying to jump off a one story building. In other words its fun but can get anoying fast

A one story building? Your PC must've either been either super uncoordinated or really unlucky.

Landed with one foot in a sewer grate

Silly survivability rates are common in game systems that provide hit point improvements based on levels of advancement. It is an indemic problem and one that usually goes hand in hand with a lack of hit location rules as well. Kind of hard to break someone's leg when there is generally no mechanism by which you can even specifically target the leg for breaking in the first place.

I am curious why falling itself is specifically such a big deal to you? Yeah high level characters with crazy stupid hit point totals can fall long distances without breaking limbs or dying. I personally don't understand why that is any more specifically troubling than the fact that those self same characters can be bashed with a large giant's club, that is pretty much a good sized tree with the same limited outcome. Level based HP systems are generally not very well known for realism in damage. If you really want something different, the rough idea you posted early on in the thread is as good a way as any to do it. You could even create a table to roll on to cover the bases. For example:

Fall from 20 Feet (roll d6)
1-5 X rolled damage
6 Random limb broken

Fall from 100 feet (roll d20)
1-2 X Rolled damage
3-10 Many random limbs broken, but alive
11-20 Dead

You can tailor the tables to your preference and there is always a chance, as in real life, that a long fall could end up not killing or even severely hurting someone, but in a small fall you have that chance of landing the wrong way and breaking your ankle or leg.

Generally I love systems like the Call of Cthulhu system. You can advance all you want, get smarter and smarter, and learn all kinds of skills and abilities, but no matter how advanced your character is you are *still* only human and will not usually survive a pointblank shot to the chest from a 12ga shotgun or a fall into the grand canyon.

Skriker