Death to Below

[Warlocknthewind]

So I recently watched the film "The Wind Rises" and in the beginning the fellow has a dream of a zepplin-like contraption with many sub-marine like machines dangling from various chain lengths, and I thought Zomg orcs raining from da sky for gett'n ova da humies fort walls"

My question for the forum: Is there a rule-set for free falling in a container? If not, how would you rule it? All of my "sky droppa" orcs are rogue1/barb1's, with Skill Focus:Tumble and full ranks. Orcs in my world are houseruled to rise as ghouls after death if bodies aren't dismembered (fluff tied them into Orcus' plot line and nixed the very dry Gruumsh one). Should I rely on this tactic, and have orcs just kamekazi smash into cities to rise again? Any chance of their surviving a ~ 600' drop in a metal carapace?

I love the idea, but I like to stick to semi-realism (I know it's D&D, where reality means little more than Underpants Gnome's second phase)

Profit

[jiriku]

There are no special rules for falling in a container versus falling in open air. Falling from 600 feet would be quite fatal to them. If they don't need to fall fast, then attaching a feather fall effect to the container would enable them to land unharmed, although they'd spend 5-10 rounds (versus 4 rounds for true free-fall) in the air. If their foes have no meaningful anti-air capability to take advantage of that flight time, it might be acceptable. However, if you want destructive impacts, then it's zombie orcs all the way.

[Warlocknthewind]

M'nalrighty, Huge sized Great Axe heads on the containters it is!

[Flickerdart]

Create a magic trap that zaps the orc with a fell drain sonic snap when the container is released. The orc lands already dead, the impact breaks the crate open, in 1d4 rounds it rises as a wight.

[daremetoidareyo]

Is there a reason why you could give them a modified hang glider and 2 crossclass ranks in using the contraptions? This makes just as hilscaryous as some of them would kinda suck at it and crash and die, but the ones that get into a fortification and rage/sneakattack would be monstrous. These contraptions would probably be cheaper than rings of featherfall, (you don't want that much loot going around anyway). Maybe the handlebar is the great axe, which they can remove after landing as a move action provoking AoS. I would also put a throwing knife/hand axe or two on their belts in case they need to immediately fight before freeing the axe.

Woodshaped (as druid spell) breast plates (for lightweight). For some AC.

As a plot point, you could have a half orc trader in town offering a slightly better than fair price for animal bladders, tar or sap as well as dried tendons as the orcs had successfully hunted/raided everything they could in their homeland to make these gliders. It's not beyond whatever smart leader got these orcs into an airship in the first place to figure out to hire someone to make the orcs fly AND land like birds. Just up the number of attacking handgliding rogue orc berzerkers as PCS use gusts of wind and arrows to try to control the onslaught. You want some of these beasts to land on the ground successfully.

Maybe release a wave of 20-40 at a time. If the PCs + NPCs make short work of the first wave in the air, keep sending waves until they have a scary groundforce, (remember, some of them are going to fail those ride checks and die also) This sets up the PCs to collect more XP depending on how creative they are in taking the beasts out of the air. I would set the airborn handgliders at half to 1/3 of a normal CR xp award, and make the ground troops full XP. In the air, they are flatfooted, and can't really do anything but fly or land.

These ideas would also work with straight up parachutes. Put a high intelligence hobgoblin inventor as an advisor to the bigbad to explain the ingenuity. Maybe with a couple druid or sorcerer levels to explain the woodshaped armor.