Talk:Hero's Epic Fall Damage (5e Variant Rule)

Ratings

	Ghostwheel dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.
	One of the system design philosophies of 5e is that things are streamlined and that they move along quickly and are fairly intuitive. Bringing things that require on the fly division, much less cube roots as this variant requires, don't have a place in 5e in my opinion. This variant is just too finagly and cumbersome to actually be used at most tables.

Hi

Thank you for the feedback and the edits.

I started with a table based on fall velocity. It turns out a better proxy is energy. This system does not require tables and can be performed smoothly and quickly but such tables can and have been made.

The thing that makes really heavy things collapse under their own weight is energy. Then it is the speed with which it stops.

We are taking much into account with the simplest way possible for each item. Why can we ignore weight and terrain but not terminal velocity?

If you want see a more complete version it is out there, which has terminal velocity and much more, everything actually. It is a work in progress.

The version on this wiki is the basic steps from Fall DC to fall damage. A part that is solid. To give the most accurate results and to be enthralling. You do one calculation and everything else is player decisions, dice rolls, descriptions of the terrain, just like other aspects of the game. Who, what, when, where, and why.

I do understand what you are saying, we want things to be accurate and easy to perform.

To use this method without interrupting the flow of the game, the DM will need to download RealCalc before playing, this has a cube root function for your phone, and obtain the weight of the characters, mostly. I suggest height^3 in a pinch or just roll on the character creation tables that randomly assign weights.

For monsters you can use the size table. Some monsters have known weights from earlier editions. You can find other sources online for the weight and will need some general idea about the weight of things. A bullywug weighs 300 pounds, a dragon weighs 30 tons.

As for the need for a calculator, there are portions of the rulebook that obviously require a calculator. Look at encumbrance and tell me it is not in the spirit of the game, but nobody likes encumbrance and this is not encumbrance.

The calculation of the Fall DC, once you know the weight and height, takes all of 8 seconds to perform. That is all you need to do, then just set the calculator down.

Only the DM needs to do this and it keeps the players thinking in terms of height; not calculating damage in their heads. And it works because this is not some arbitrary calculation, it is just an apt description. If you fall 100 feet, what do you THINK is going to happen? 35 damage? No!

The DM will have to familiarize themself with the calculator. I wouldn't recommend downloading the calculator and searching for the cube root button during the game.

I don't know what to say other than without a calculator, there are tables. And how do you know what spells they cast, what their spell DC is, and what your save bonuses are, without just looking it all up on what are essentially tables.

Why should fall damage be really any different? The calculator makes it quick and is more accurate.

It just cannot be simpler, without completely destroying the accuracy. And what is that?

The only way to know if a method is accurate is to check if it matches what happens when you fall in reality.

A world class acrobat can fall 12 feet during a performance and die. An average person can fall 100 feet and live, or 0 feet and go into a coma. These are not freak events, they are common and normal because falls are chaotic. It is not possible to give a number for how much damage a fall produces. Accuracy in this case is a range and a frequency. Hero's fall damage does that, other methods do not.

A horse dives 60 feet without injury. A cat falls 65 onto hard ground and is good. People can dive 35 feet and rip their stomach open and die. They can dive 50 feet and get knocked out and drown. They can dive 60 feet and dislocate their shoulder, or dive 100 feet, performing numerous somersaults, and run back up the ladder to do it again. Many people dive 150 feet and break something. You don't get that at all by basing damage on height or even velocity.

That is not by accident, it is because of each variable being accounted for. Methods that do not, can not.

Other methods fail this test of accuracy and they are the things that are clunky. Hero will not require the DM to explain miracle fall damge results all the time. The results will be in the realm of expectationz. All they need to say is you hit your head on a rock, or that based on your roll, you tumbled gracefully and hit a soft patch of ground. They may, time to time, remind a player how even a short fall in real life can actually be incredibly dangerous, or that weighing 600 pounds changes things.

Entirely Unrealistic

This variant entirely ignores terminal velocity of objects based on their mass, drag coefficient, projected area, the gravity of the plane you're in, and the density of the creature.

Entirely unrealistic, 2/10.

/s --Ghostwheel (talk) 11:44, 18 April 2022 (UTC)