House Rules for Lethal Fall Damage?

[LeonBH]

I've always applied the RAW restrictions on fall damage, capping damage taken out to 20d6 at 200 ft. I'm not necessarily moving away from that yet as I'm not planning on starting an aerial campaign soon, but I'm pondering some more lethal implementation of it.

What house rules are good to achieve this, and what are your experiences at the table in applying it? Ideally, in my mind, such house rules would:

* Look dangerous

* Be in the neighborhood of 1d6 per 10 ft fallen, in terms of quickness to look up

* Be reasonably lethal

I'm not particularly worried about how closely it resembles gravity, though that would be a nice bow on top of the thing. I'm thinking more along the lines of making falling scarier.

[jjadned]

If you want it to be more lethal just make it every 5ft or change it to a d10.

Less lethal 10-15ft and 1d4

[Zanthy1]

You could alter the ruling so its 1d6 per 5 ft, capped at 20d6. Thats pretty harsh but falling 100ft will do a lot of damage to most things. Mayve have rules for breaking the fall? like if there is a wall or branches you can hit them to slow down, reducing the damage to d4s, or partially to d4s?

Ultimately I would figure out the height at which an unaltered fall would be instant death (making sure All your players know about this ahead of time).

[Joe the Rat]

Massive Damage rule. Anything over a certain threshold requires a Con save or you immediately drop to 0 and start making death saves. If you like, only apply this to fall damage.
20d6 is an average of 70hp - use that to gauge. (This also means on average, a 200+ foot drop will autokill anyone with <35 max hp)

Orbital Insertion rule. Add fire damage to atmospheric re-entry.

Modified Lava Rule. Anything above X feet is death (or to befit the heroic genre, instant 0 + death saves)

Breaking your fall. If there's something to break your fall, make a save to get half damage.

Parachutes.

[MadBear]

if you wanted to make it seem more lethal you could just:

- anything past 100ft takes 10 dmg per 10ft fallen.

So if you fall 200ft it'd be 10d6+100

You could still cap it at 200ft if you wanted too.

[Willie the Duck]

Ultimately I would figure out the height at which an unaltered fall would be instant death (making sure All your players know about this ahead of time).


And honestly, that could be <40ft. Real world cases of people surviving much more than that usually fall into the category of 'not-unaltered' or 'special circumstances.'

...Buuuuut, one should also note that D&D adventures have an amazing ability to greatly overestimate how frequently medieval era individuals would run into situations where they would fall more than 10-20'. 30' castle walls? Sure, there are a few in the world. 60' cliff? Maybe if mountain climbing. Flying animals? Heck, even real world birds don't usually fly all that much higher than the treeline because why would they (other than hawks, where that's the point, they are trying to 'come out of nowhere' from their prey's perspective).

Ultimately, as much as I am for sandboxy, non-railroad-y gaming, a whole lot of what the PCs are going to run into were designed originally around a specific level of challenge, and not a specific realism anyways. The dungeons had 60' pits because they were supposed to be 6d6 damage threats (admittedly, back when 6d6 was a lot of hp), not because 60' drops were realistic (any more than dungeons are, to be sure).

[strangebloke]

Make it 1d6 for every five feet over the first ten, with a DEX save to half. DC for save is 10+distance/10. Cap it at 200/38d6/DC 30.

A 'lethal' height at each level:
Lvl:3
Average HP = (8+2*3+4.5*2) =23
lethal height = 25 feet, 40 feet if you save. DC 12-14

A fall from this height can kill you, but most characters will either have more HP, or enough DEX to make the save 50% of the time.

Level 11
Average HP = (8+2*11 + 4.5*10) = 75
lethal height = 120 feet, N/A if you make the save. 22-30

Very lethal at heights above fifty feet or so, but then, it's supposed to be, right? Even so, a high level rogue or monk can jump from orbit and tumble to safety without taking any damage.

[Marcloure]

I simply use d10 instead of d6 for falling damage. I don't want anything too complex, so I just increase the damage overall.

[MrStabby]

As a house rule I scale by footprint. Large creatures take 4 times as much, huge 9 times...

Regarding scaling...

10 ft is d4
20 ft is 2d6
30 ft is 3d8
40 ft is 4d10
50 ft is 5d12
60 ft is 6d20
Up to 100 ft at 10d20.

Falling in two steps is potentially a lot less painful than in one big fall.

[Nidgit]

What about adding a multiplier every 50 (or whatever) feet?

0-50 is 1d6 per 10 feet
60-100 is 2d6 per 10 feet
110-150 is 3d6 per 10 feet
160-200 is 4d6 per 10 feet

So falling 70 feet would be 14d6 or 49 damage, and falling 140 would be 42d6 or 147 damage.

[Malifice]

A simple houserule is to make falling damage dice explode (6's trigger an additional roll; no limit on how many as long as you keep on rolling them).

That makes falling more scary to the players as it's harder to predict the outcome. You wont see a lot less 10th level PCs jumping down 100' or around 8 stories, thinking they can make it easy. If half your dice come up 6's (and all other rolls are 4's) thats 70 points of damage.

They'll come to fear falls.

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Ive also been thinking of a death spiral/ damage threshold (similar to SWSE) equal to [the higher of (5 + Con) or (1/4 of a PCs max HP, round up)]. If you take damage (after reduction) from a single source that is higher than this figure, you lose a 'Wound level'. Creatures that are immune to exhaustion are also immune to wound levels.

PCs have 6 wound levels (that function pretty much like exhaustion levels). A cure wounds spell of any level restores 1 wound level, in addition to its normal effect. A Heal spell restores all wound levels. You otherwise recover 1 per week, but with medical attention, you can recover one at the end of a long rest if the Medic spends at least 1 hour tending to your wounds during the rest, and succeeds in a DC 15 Wisdom [medicine] check.

[X3r4ph]

One level of exhaustion per 20 feet.

[Gryndle]

And honestly, that could be <40ft. Real world cases of people surviving much more than that usually fall into the category of 'not-unaltered' or 'special circumstances.'


even more specific: as an EMT the standard we had to follow is that any fall of twice your height for an adult or over 5' for a child was classified as a "Significant Mechanism of Injury" requiring c-collar, spineboard and emergency transport to nearest trauma center as studies indicate falls of those heights or higher are most likely to inflict fatal or life altering injuries.

falling is one of those things in life that is just damned dangerous.

anecdotally: in one summer as an EMT at the Zoo, I had three significant fall patients (all unrelated). one fell approx. 12 feet into a dumpster of monkey poo (and yeah my partner and I had to go in, package her up and pull her out), one from creating the roof of a new chimp holding area that fell about 25-30', and one from a bridge between 40-50'. ALL three insisted they were not hurt and had to be convinced to be treated. And all three after x-rays had multiple fractured vertebrae and prolonged recovery. None of those were fatal, but all three have permanent disabilities due to those falls.

back on point: make falling as lethal as you like, its one of the most common types of life altering or ending injuries. Gravity sucks, but Mother Earth is always there to catch you.

[sir_argo]

I would just remove the cap. Adding in other effects just makes it more complicated. It also jacks up the monk feature that is supposed to minimize fall damage. If the proposal is to increase the damage per 10', say roll 1d10 instead of 1d6, you literally lessen the effectiveness of the monk's feature.

Don't do anything that increases damage per 10'. Don't do anything that makes the mechanics more complicated. Just remove the 20d6 cap.

[Eric Diaz]

1d6 per 10 feet fallen.

Every even number is one level of exhaustion.

Roll acrobatics or athletics to halve the number of dice, and then roll Constitution to halve the total damage.

Tune to taste.

Alternatively: 1d6 Constitution damage per 10 feet, if your Con = 0 then your HP becomes 0, and if your take enough excess damage equal to your Con you die immediately.

It is bascially the same rule I use for food, water, asphyxiation, shelter, lack of sleep, etc.

[the secret fire]

My house rules for falling:


Falling damage = sum(previous damage + XdY) where X = total feet fallen/10 and Y equals the damage die (based on the surface you impact; see below).

Type of damage die depends on landing surface. Soft surface (underbrush, hay, water, etc.) = d4; medium surface (grass, marsh, etc.) = d8; hard surface (stone, wood, metal, etc.) = d12
- e.g. 20 foot fall onto medium surface = 1d6 + 2d6 = 3d6 ~ 10 damage; 40 foot fall onto hard surface = 1d12 + 2d12 + 3d12 + 4D12 = 10d12 damage ~ 65 damage

Special: Dex (Acrobatics) check: DC = 10 + 1 per 10 foot increment (max 20) to take no damage from fall into deep water

Dying: damage beyond what is necessary to bring character to 0 HP triggers death save for each increment of 10 damage (round down)

Basically, just make the damage 1 + 2 + 3 etc. per 10 foot segment instead of 1 + 1 + 1 (this simulates acceleration), and throw in alternate damage die depending on the surface. It tends to make short falls quite ok, and can add another tactical layer of trying to look for a soft landing spot (a tree, hay bale, etc...standard heroic stuff), but is also scary lethal if one falls very far onto a hard surface.

[Psikerlord]

Just remove the cap. Problem solved.

[Crgaston]

I recall an old Dragon Magazine article that mathed it out as 1d6 for each 10 feet fallen cumulative. So
10’ 1d6
20’ 1d6+2d6
30’ 1d6+2d6+3d6

Etc.

However, given that this is a fantasy game with magic and stuff, I’ll have to agree with those who are saying “Removing the cap is enough.”

[Eric Diaz]

Brainstorming:

What about a 1 - 2d4 - 3d6 - 4d8 - 5d10 - 6d12 .... and then a d12 dice pool after that?

At least this would ensure that most peasants could have a decent chance of surviving a 10 foot fall without going unconscious. I'm not even sure that is realistic... but the old school "fall 10 feet in level 1 and you're dead" never sat quite right with me.

[Grod_The_Giant]

A simple houserule is to make falling damage dice explode (6's trigger an additional roll; no limit on how many as long as you keep on rolling them).
I kind of like this one. It's quick, it's simple, and it adds just enough danger and unpredictability without really messing anything up.

[Malifice]

I kind of like this one. It's quick, it's simple, and it adds just enough danger and unpredictability without really messing anything up.

Its simple, easy to remember and apply, more lethal, and has an element of unpredictability.

Any fall could kill you. Ergo they become much more scary.

[Rhedyn]

Decide if the fall is

Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very Hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

difficulty to survive and make it a con save.

If this method is good enough for the skill system that normally leads to such falls, then it should be fine as a resolution mechanic.

[Belac93]

My favourite was how they handled it in lamentations of the flame princess, veins of the earth supplement. It was made for realistic falling while climbing through caves.

10 feet is 1d6
20 feet is 1d6x1d4
30 feet is 1d6x1d6
40 feet is 1d6x1d8
50 feet is 1d6x1d10
60 feet is 1d6x1d12
70 feet is 1d6x1d20
80 feet is 1d6x1d50
90+ feet is 1d6x1d100

This makes falling much more swingy and realistic. A 40-foot fall is anything from 1 to 48 damage (as opposed to 4-24 of the standard rules), and averages at about 16 (as opposed to 14), but also has a more even chance for all numbers.