Celebrim said:I personally would scrap the death from massive damage rule. The only reason it exists is D&D handles falling/falling objects so poorly that after a while it gets laughably unrealistic what a high level fighter type can survive.
DM: "Five hundred feet below you can barely make out the form of Shavalian, fleeing from the great tower. It appears he has given you the slip."
PC: "Not this time, he isn't. Sir Edvald leaps from the tower."
DM: "You can't be serious?!?!? I told you it was 500' down. Five HUNDRED feet!"
PC: (nonplussed) "Yeah, but Sir Edvald is at full hit points. I can take 20d6 damage no problem."
If you aren't playing CoC or the like, scrap the death from massive damage rule and use some better falling/falling object rules.
In practice, this sort of thing (people deliberately throwing themselves off great heights) is not likely to a problem. If Sir Edvald is high enough level that he can shrug off 20d6 damage, he's almost certainly going to have winged boots or some other means of flight, and so doesn't have to worry about falling at all. Heck, there's a good chance he can also dimension door, and so can skip that tedious bit about having to cover the distance in between.
At high levels, D&D is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but with plate armour.
Last edited: