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.

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 still a work in progress and much of it is not needed for most games.

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 30 tons.

As for the 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, fortunately,not encumbrance.

The calculation of the Fall DC, once you know the weight and height, takes all of 8 seconds to perform. Then just set the calculator down and start making saves and rolls and describing things.

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.

How do you know what spells they all cast, what their spell DC is, and what your save bonuses are, without just looking it all up on what are essentially tables.

Should fall damage really be any different? The calculator makes it quick and is more accurate, but if you don't want to do the calculation we can put it in a table.

It 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, whereas other methods do not.

A horse dives 60 feet without injury. A cat falls 65 onto hard ground and is good. Hero's does that. Other methods do not.

You don't get that at all by basing damage on height or even velocity.

Other methods fail this test of accuracy and they are the things that are clunky. Our results will be in the realm of expectations based on the situation. Others will not.

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)