OOTS #1053 - The Discussion Thread

[lenon3579]

Well, don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word.

[zimmerwald1915]

bird is a word.

It certainly is. One of many thousands of words.

[Burner28]

Awesome strip.

[GreatWyrmGold]

It is feather fall, not feather jump.

Eh, the logic works well enough. OotS hasn't consistently followed RAW (Rules As Written), or even RAI (Rules As Intended) but rather RAF (Rules As Funny).

s'been done.

Hm. True, that might be a bit close. I mean, the situation wouldn't be exactly the same (Belkar probably wouldn't jump as high, so he could continue stabbing the first giant a few times), but it's still a consideration.

I believe that the Giant is making reference to a comedy bit by Ben Bailey, where he categorizes the middle finger gesture as falling into that category of birds which are "completely flightless". If that is the case, I tip my hat to you, sir! :D

I've never heard of Ben Bailey, and I found the "wrong bird" bit amusing.
So, clearly the Bailey thing isn't required for the joke to work.

Spoiler: Falling Damage

Show

The second one where people take 1d6--1st 10', 2d6+1d6--2nd 10', etc, but with no silly 20d6 cap. Sure there are plenty of high level fighters who'd still shrug off a 60' fall but it's a lot harder to shrug off 20d6 damage than a measly 6d6 damage.
EDIT: Oh, and several groups I gamed with used the tougher rule. And no damage cap, either. Picture a bunch of cynical 20 something year olds: "Sure, a 100' fall causes no more damage than a 60' fall...riiiiight!."

No "silly" terminal velocity cap. And for the record, real, normal people have survived terminal velocity falls without parachutes.
And just because your gaming group uses a rule doesn't mean Gygax "intended" it. Especially if it blatantly contradicts the reading of one ambiguous rule that sort of supports the not-actually-exponential damage thing.

The problem is that terminal velocity shifts a bit depending on altitude, how you're falling, what you're wearing, etc. If memory serves, it takes you about twenty seconds to hit terminal velocity (~122 mph), at which point you've traveled about 540 meters/594 yards/1782 feet. So the falling damage should keep scaling beyond 20d6 to 178d6 (if you fall that far) before you hit the limit.

Velocity doesn't increase linearly as you approach terminal velocity, though (IE, you won't be falling at 61 mph after falling 10 seconds). The faster you go, the more air resistance impedes gravitational acceleration.
It's worth noting that the damage rules you say you use are literally worse at approximating this than D&D's. In your system, damage goes up faster the farther you fall, which is the opposite of how it would work in real life. (E.g, the difference between 10 feet and 20 feet is larger IRL but smaller in your system than the difference between falling 30 feet and 40. I mean, you could make an argument about +200% versus +67%, but there's still a reasonable way to argue that the difference between 10- and 20- foot falling damage is less than 30- and 40-foot, which doesn't exactly parallel real life in any way.)

So the falling rules don't have much to do with terminal velocity, except as it provides an excuse that sounds better than 'we wanted it that way'. Personally, my games just have you make a save vs massive damage after the 20d6 limit is passed. Save, you have 1d4 hit points left. Fail, you're dead.

"The falling damage rules work like this, which involves scaling up damage from falling in a way that can't be quickly calculated in your head, until they work like this, which arbitrarily does as much damage to wizard or fighter if they make their save."
"...Can we go back to the simpler, self-consistent system?"


It's also worth pointing out that this is a system where a high-level character can wade through lava for a minute and only take the same "ridiculously low" 20d6 damage that you get from hitting the ground at terminal velocity or so. And survive clouds of caustic gas being belched at them from green dragons. And hold their breath, while fighting sahuagin, for minutes at a time. And some of them cast spells or call on the strength of their deity or internal energy, let's not forget that.
It's called high fantasy, and you're worried that the heroes might be able to survive falls almost as well as lucky normal people?

[Darth Paul]

Belkar & Roy bickering during combat is always solid gold.

"Is he flipping me off as he floats gently down to the ground?" may be Roy's best line of all time.

[Rogar Demonblud]

It only takes 8 seconds to reach 90% of terminal velocity.

But 15 seconds to get to 99%, because acceleration is logarithmic.

[Darth Paul]

Well, don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word.

It certainly is. One of many thousands of words.

Correction: The Bird is THE word.

[War-Wren]

Well, don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word.

Correction: The Bird is THE word.

Fantastic... now that's stuck in my head.... thanks guys

Lady on the toilet, the bird is word!

[Shining Wrath]

Terminal velocity is the speed at which the force of drag matches the force of gravity and the falling body no longer accelerates. The force of gravity is proportional to the mass of the falling object. Drag is proportional to the velocity and surface area of the falling object, and also a coefficient of ballistic drag that measures "smoothness" of the object. The density of the atmosphere also enters into it.

Surface area can be varied; a skydiver who adopts a head down posture falls faster than one who spread-eagles themselves.

Crudely, though, there's some speed where gravity and drag balance out - higher for bowling balls, lower for feathers.

[Doug Lampert]

The second one where people take 1d6--1st 10', 2d6+1d6--2nd 10', etc, but with no silly 20d6 cap. Sure there are plenty of high level fighters who'd still shrug off a 60' fall but it's a lot harder to shrug off 20d6 damage than a measly 6d6 damage.

EDIT: Oh, and several groups I gamed with used the tougher rule. And no damage cap, either. Picture a bunch of cynical 20 something year olds: "Sure, a 100' fall causes no more damage than a 60' fall...riiiiight!."

There are cliff divers who routinely jump over 100' into water that's less than 15' deep. I guess they're ROUTINELY taking 55d6 of damage minus a small amount for jumping and for hitting water (say only half damage). So to do this daily or more often they need to be able to recover a couple of hundred HP per night's rest. Wow! There are people who are OVER level 200 in the real world, who knew?

Then there are at least five people have survived falling multiple thousands of feet from a plane with no parachute after being ejected. Those people weren't trained to fall well and probably weren't high level. Others have survived when their chute failed to open. At least two of those with no chute got up afterward and walked away to look for help. One was a stewardess who'd landed in the middle of the Amazon rain-forest in Brazil, fortunately since she had no particularly serious injuries she was able to find civilization.

I guess those people took millions of damage and must be really super-duper epic. Either that, or your allegedly more realistic falling rules are actually far less realistic.

It takes fairly amazing luck to survive a really long fall, fortunately the definition of HP has always included luck. Some people in a realistic world can routinely jump over a hundred feet into water, some people in a realistic world can survive falls of 10,000 or more feet. And in D&D land we call those people who are perfectly realistic in this respect "high level".

There are lots of unrealistic things about a level 15 character, surviving falls isn't on the list (CONSISTENTLY surviving falls is, but that's only a problem if it comes up often, and for that even Belkar figures a ring of feather falling is a good investment).

[NothingButCake]

Belkar's still pretty impetuous - but that's to be expected.

Mitchell and Webb?

[Baphomet]

Where is Mr. Scruffy? BELKAR FORGOT MR. SCRUFFY! Clearly this means he is going to die.

[hamishspence]

Mitchell and Webb?

Never watched or read anything by them - if they made a similar quote, that's a nice surprise though - great minds thinking alike?

[Snails]

It takes fairly amazing luck to survive a really long fall, fortunately the definition of HP has always included luck. Some people in a realistic world can routinely jump over a hundred feet into water, some people in a realistic world can survive falls of 10,000 or more feet. And in D&D land we call those people who are perfectly realistic in this respect "high level".

There are lots of unrealistic things about a level 15 character, surviving falls isn't on the list (CONSISTENTLY surviving falls is, but that's only a problem if it comes up often, and for that even Belkar figures a ring of feather falling is a good investment).

There is a loosey-goosey sense of consistency in D&D. Circa 10th level PCs are consistently succeeding at tasks that are almost-sort-of-possible in the real world or, perhaps, possible with astounding luck, such as: survive a 100' drop, long jump 30 feet, unerringly track someone on a moonless night over hard ground while moving at full speed, become effectively impossible for a merely very competent soldier to kill with one or two blows (unless literally helpless), etc.

That is not a "problem" with the game system. That is implicitly the main feature of progressing well beyond low levels.

If players do not like this feature, they can find a DM who keeps the game at low levels or play a different game system with mechanics that keeps the risk of sudden death high.

In the case of OotS, the Giant chose to progress the PCs from middling levels to highish levels. It is what it is. Wondering about why Belkar or Tarquin can survive a 1000 foot fall, even without the benefit of magic, is like doubting that the stupid kid named Arthur has any business with the cool sword.

[mouser9169]

Long live the sexy, shoeless God of War!!!

[Mortium]

I didn't get the "wrong kind of bird" thing.

Belkar is flipping him the bird.

[Blatt]

Clearly the delightful Belkar is not flipping Roy the bird, he's just showing him the Ring of Featherfall he bought in Gnomeville. And then he's going to use his Ring of Jumping to stab a lot of Frost Giants in the face and perhaps harvest their kidneys.

[Kantaki]

Clearly the delightful Belkar is not flipping Roy the bird, he's just showing him the Ring of Featherfall he bought in Gnomeville. And then he's going to use his Ring of Jumping to stab a lot of Frost Giants in the face and perhaps harvest their kidneys.

Well, guess on which finger(s) he wears the ring(s).

Actually, isn't that where the gesture comes from? Nobles wearing their signet ring on that finger and showing it to indicate rank. (The basic meaning would be the same I guess)

[lenon3579]

Fantastic... now that's stuck in my head.... thanks guys

Lady on the toilet, the bird is word!

It stuck in my head as soon as the first person asked about the bird.

And now it stuck again. Omg, there I go another morning of The Trashmen on endless loop.

[Rift_Wolf]

Actually, isn't that where the gesture comes from? Nobles wearing their signet ring on that finger and showing it to indicate rank. (The basic meaning would be the same I guess)

That sounds like a back-engineered answer like Archers flicking the V. The V is the devils horns; the middle finger refers to genitals. No amount of erudition is going to change that.

[Rogar Demonblud]

No, the V is the archers showing off they still have the two fingers needed to nock and fire an arrow. Guess what the French used to chop off of every prisoner they took.

Devil's horns are something else. An Italian gesture, actually meant to ward off spells, hexes and curses (The Evil Eye). Dio made it a popular move in the Rock & Roll set, and the BADD set...

No, that's recent political stuff. Interesting, but very inflammatory.

[Peelee]

No, the V is the archers showing off they still have the two fingers needed to nock and fire an arrow. Guess what the French used to chop off of every prisoner they took.

Nothing?

Yeah, it's about the "middle finger" origins, but it still skewers the whole "French cut off fingers of captives" bit as well.

[IDrankWHAT]

Well, don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is a word.

aaaaand now that song is stuck in my head....dang it....

[Grey_Wolf_c]

No, the V is the archers showing off they still have the two fingers needed to nock and fire an arrow. Guess what the French used to chop off of every prisoner they took.

[citation needed]

https://bshistorian.wordpress.com/20...glish-history/

GW

[Rift_Wolf]

No, the V is the archers showing off they still have the two fingers needed to nock and fire an arrow. Guess what the French used to chop off of every prisoner they took.

Devil's horns are something else. An Italian gesture, actually meant to ward off spells, hexes and curses (The Evil Eye). Dio made it a popular move in the Rock & Roll set, and the BADD set...

No, that's recent political stuff. Interesting, but very inflammatory.

My understanding is that the Archers etymology only started getting bandied about 1970s among re-enactment circles. Hence it being back-engineered.

Devil's horns was wrong, I'll admit; I thought the V was a variant on the gesture, but can't cite reference.

[Wolfram]

It certainly is. One of many thousands of words.

[Kantaki]

My understanding is that the Archers etymology only started getting bandied about 1970s among re-enactment circles. Hence it being back-engineered.

Wait. They actually cut off fingers during those re-enactments?
That seems a wee bit extreme.

Wow. That. Was. Evil. You are evil.
And I say that as a necromancer.
My poor, innocent ears...

[Peelee]

Wait. They actually cut off fingers during those re-enactments?
That seems a wee bit extreme.

You don't mess around with re-enactors, man. Thems people's serious.

[Kantaki]

You don't mess around with re-enactors, man. Thems people's serious.

And there I thought it was just Larping for*nerds.

people who don't want to admit they are

[JumboWheat01]

You may have an internet today, Wolfram.