To offer an anecdote, I’m specifically working to avoid a recurrence of a scene in years past where a player, to get away from a particularly gruesome fight metagamed and said, “I can survive an 8 story fall, I jump out the window.”
So I’m making falling damage cumulative and discounting the first 10′. So anyone can fall 10′ or less without an issue. For every 10′ farther than that, that they fall, they take 1d10 damage cumulative.
So a 20′ fall deals 1d10 damage. A 30′ fall deals 1d10+2d10 damage. A 40′ fall deals 1d10+2d10+3d10 damage. A 100′ fall deals 1d10+2d10+3d10+4d10+5d10+6d10+7d10+8d10+9d10.
Falling onto a hard surface adds 50% damage. Falling into a soft surface reduces damage by 50%. An acrobatics roll versus DC 15 can reduce the distance fallen by 10′.
This will very quickly make long distance falling deadly even for high level characters.
[Edited]
Per the comment associated with this I offer up the following alternative which I’m consdering -
For every 10′ after the first 10′ falling damage costs a falling character a healing surge value in damage. So a fall of 50′ equals 40′ of ‘damaging’ fall and kills a healthy character. This has the benefit (depending on your point of view) of removing level from the equation. The downside is that this would greatly increase the lethality of even short falls. Teleporting a creature 30′ up would cost it half it’s health with one power regardless of how much half it’s health is. So this might end up being a player’s rule only.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I understand your point but it seems a bit overcomplicated for what you want (yes I know it is actually the old school rules but with d10′s instead of d6′s)
It seems that you want to make falling damage realistic, so how about this for a much quicker and easier way to handle it.
Each 10 feet you fall you loose your healing surge value in damage.
So 10 feet no biggy, 20 bloodied, 30 hurting, 40 dead.
Assume hard surface. Subtract 10 feet for soft surface. Apply skill checks to acrobatics to final damage.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
That is a viable solution. It removes level from the equation completely which I like as I’ve been removing level in other fashions. I’d start the falling damage at 11+ feet though. As a kid we used to jump off the roof of a shed at my grandmothers, no idea why we did it, it was almost 40 years ago but we could do it without taking any ‘damage’. At the same time I once fell about 18′ out of a tree I was trying to climb and landed on my back. No permanent damage but I almost passed out before my lungs started working again.
But I like it. Let me consider it and put it forth to the players. Most of my house rules are approved as a co-op system.
February 21st, 2010 at 11:14 am
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February 22nd, 2010 at 5:25 am
Isn’t it bad to have “players rule only” for such things? It is like saying “you are total suckers compared to this goblin that can fall 100 feet more than you and still live”.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:26 am
It certainly can be bad. Right now I’m treating both sides equally. In our last session, much to the player’s bemusement and amusement, an elite that was dominated and made to walk off a 50′ cliff suffered 55 damage (average of 4+3+2+1 d10′s). Then as he climbed up a ladder that was dispelled as he got about halfway up, took another 16 damage from (2+1 d10′s). All my houserules are works in progress, as they work or don’t work they’re enforced or removed, tweaked where necessary.