D&D General How Do You Handle Falling Damage?

[Lanefan]

Yeah, the more I think about it, I would not have any roll to survive. After a certain distance you are dead unless you spend inspiration. I'm not worried about hoarding inspiration, because I've always used inspiration as a binary. You have it, or you don't. I don't mind players holding on to it. That's what it is for. Hold on to it until it is really needed. My problem with inspiration is that it has always felt pretty lackluster. Get advantage on a roll. Okay, fine. But I like to find other more interesting and flavorful uses. If I were to use inspiration to allow you to spend inspiration to go into death saves instead of instadeaths, and other similar heroic-incredible-luck-miracle uses like this, I would end my normal practice of players being able to give other players their inspiration. Or maybe not. I'd talk to the players first and see what works for them. Besides, at higher levels there are abilities and spells that greatly mitigate the risk of falling damage.

I understand the sentiment, but I hold a deep dislike of meta-currency mechanics.

On thinking about it, though, I'll probably adopt the idea (which I came up with only while I was typing it the first time, just upthread) that if all the dice come up 1 you survive no matter what. This would reflect that real-world one-in-a-million chance that anyone - even a commoner or 1st-level character - can survive a fall from multi-thousand feet.

 

[Gorck]

I mean 2d6 still averages 7 damage which is enough to drop the average person.

Heck, 1d6 averages 3.5 damage and a Commoner only has 4 HP.

 

[Oofta]

When it comes to falling, damage, and commoners, a lot of this just comes down to oversimplification of damage modeling. One we can either ignore or modify. A commoner has 4 HP because they are not trained in combat, they aren't supposed to be any good at it and are killed easily. A 20th level fighter are the absolute best of the best. They know how to take a blow to lessen the damage, how to deflect, dodge or simply absorb blows.

There's a story about how Dolph Lundgren put Sylvester Stallone in the hospital for 9 days filming Rocky IV because Sylvester told Dolph not to hold back in the initial fight scene. While Dolph is a trained martial artist, I doubt he would have stood a chance against a real boxer. He certainly wouldn't have sent a highly trained boxer to the hospital. The difference is that a trained boxer knows how to defend, how to take a blow, has done exercises that allow them to take blows not just for looks like Stallone.

But this all starts to fall apart when we get outside of combat and there's just not a great way to model falling damage. Falling from great heights doesn't come up often in my games. Fairly short falls I can say that the PC knows how to land when they fall, there's some luck and plot armor. But the above is why if your PC falls a significant distance, they're dead in my games. The only question for me is where to draw that line and what to do about those borderline cases.

 

[ezo]

Reference some online research I did a while back, survival rates IRL average about 50% for a fall of four stories (48 feet) and only about 10% for seven stories (84 feet).

In 5E, for commoners with only 4 hp, if you want to reflect that it depends on if you want to calculate in the odds for making death saves (59.5125%) or not. Regardless, instant death would occur on any damage roll of 8 or higher.

Ignoring Death Saves
If you ignore death saves, 1d6 per 50 feet works well for those two statistics above. At 48 feet, you'd roll 4 or higher 50%, and with 2d6 for a 84-foot fall, you'll roll 4 or higher 91.167% (a bit over the 90% fatality rate, but close considering it would be for falls up to 100 feet.

Given terminal velocity is around 1600 feet IIRC, at 1d6 per 50 feet, that would give you a possible cap of 32d6, or an average of 112 damage.

Including Death Saves
Since death saves are a flat DC 10 roll with survival odds around 60%, any damage reducing a commoner to 0, but not dealing 8 damage or more, we can get similar results by increasing the d6 to d10 or d12 per 50 feet. Using a d10 over the d12 gives a bit better odds towards survival at four stories (53.8% vs. 44.8%) and seven stories (12.1% vs. 8.4%), but both are close enough to 50% and 10%, respectively, that it works well enough IMO.

Again looking at terminal velocity, possible caps at 32d10 or 32d12, would yield average damage of 176 and 208, respectively.

Regardless, I would include @Lanefan's idea:

I'll probably adopt the idea (which I came up with only while I was typing it the first time, just upthread) that if all the dice come up 1 you survive no matter what. This would reflect that real-world one-in-a-million chance that anyone - even a commoner or 1st-level character - can survive a fall from multi-thousand feet.

Which would handle those bizzarre outlier cases, too.

Finally, the statistics in the first sentence average into the account landing surfaces, wind drag, and all other possible variables; in other words, they are all irrelevant--only mortality is ultimately considered. So, including checks or saving throws, advantage or disadvantage, etc. for landing surfaces and other conditions, which could half damage or whatever, would certainly be possible additions to the above if desired.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Honestly, for me, realism or accurate modeling has basically nothing to do with it. It is aesthetic.

Throwing someone from a tower roof one thousand feet in the air should do more damage than one five hundred feet in the air should do more than two hundred feet in the air, because each one is a taller and therefore more difficult task. All of them doing the same damage feels weird. I could argue it makes sense, or alter the damage on a variety of factors, but since it comes up... less than three times a decade, I'm not too worried about it.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm fine with RAW as a solution. We are trying to replicate the heroic fantasy genre, which is full of the cliche "if you didn't see the body, they aren't really dead". Heroes surviving great falls and washing to the banks of a river, villains tumbling down the gorge only to reappear at a later point. And if you're not a hero, villain, or massive creature, RAW will still do enough to kill you off.

Mimicking reality is at best accidentally right for the wrong reasons, when it produces the same results as the genre of the game. And this isn't one of those cases.

So yeah, I'm good with RAW.

My main problem with RAW is that falls aren't very threatening in 5e. I'm all for a hero making a heroic escape, but that only works if their survival was exceptional. Surviving a long fall in 5e isn't exceptional, it's Tuesday. It would be remarkable if you didn't.

It's so unremarkable that it is perfectly normal to plan an action like "I'll jump 50' down and take out their leader; what's that, 17.5 damage on average? No worries." A five story fall shouldn't be casual, is what I'm saying. That lowers the stakes to the point of "why bother with falling damage at all?" It's less fun.

 

[Blue]

My main problem with RAW is that falls aren't very threatening in 5e.

Good, so it's in line with other traps and hazards.

Wading. Through. Lava. does 10d10. Capped falling damage does more than that on minimum, average, and maximum damage.

It absolutely shouldn't be more threatening than that. Even if you want to replicate realism instead of heroic fantasy, lava is molten rock between 800C to 3000C degrees. Just getting near it can kill. It will vaporize flesh and blood and fuse to bone. Wading through it shouldn't be more survivable than a long fall, where we have real world examples of people living, much less heroes.

You statement that it's not very threatening is not in line with the rest of the game. If you want to make that statement you really need to reevaluate hazards and traps, or maybe HPs as a whole. But otherwise it does not hold up.

 

[ezo]

Again, the issue is having damage (or most instances) tied to hit points. Specifically, in 5E it represents a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.

Another issue, because of hit points, people feel falls aren't very threatening in 5E. While I understand the point made by @Clint_L , there's a bit of exaggerating for effect. Taking an average of 17.5 damage isn't what I would call a perfectly viable strategy almost all the time.

Now, statistically, people do survive 50-foot falls about half the time. But how to translate this into D&D when a PC can have 100 hit points or more!? Even at a maximum 30 hit points of damage from falling, most PCs in tier 2 or better have little to fear (although they will not likely appreciate the damage...). And does "survive" mean simply not reaching 0 hp or making it through death saves?

In many cases, as @Blue mentions, other hazards should be just as deadly or more so. BUT, what is the fun in that, right? Few players want to face certain death with no way of surviving it, let alone just having a 1 in a million shot.

Of course, that 10d10 damage is deadly for tier 2. An average of 55 damage can easily knock a tier 2 PC into death saves. And falling unconscious in that lava will kill them quickly.

 

[Lanefan]

Good, so it's in line with other traps and hazards.

Wading. Through. Lava. does 10d10.

Which is also way too low; unless it's 10d10 per initiative pip (i.e. 200d10 every round).

Now if instead the visual is of running across floes of solidified crust on top of flowing lava rather than actually wading in it, 10d10 per round seems a shade more plausible.

You statement that it's not very threatening is not in line with the rest of the game. If you want to make that statement you really need to reevaluate hazards and traps, or maybe HPs as a whole. But otherwise it does not hold up.

5e does need to be made harder on its characters, no argument there.

 

[Lanefan]

Again, the issue is having damage (or most instances) tied to hit points. Specifically, in 5E it represents a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.

Another issue, because of hit points, people feel falls aren't very threatening in 5E. While I understand the point made by @Clint_L , there's a bit of exaggerating for effect. Taking an average of 17.5 damage isn't what I would call a perfectly viable strategy almost all the time.

If I've got 110 hit points and view them purely as a resource, spending maybe 20 of them to immediately get 50' down to where I need to be can often be a (too-)good tradeoff.

Never mind that if I'm really lucky I can land on the foe and squash it.