Old DH article on alternate Falling Damage rules

[JamesG]

Does anyone remember that the Digital Hero archives used to go back further than 5/11/1999? One of the old articles no longer available discussed alternate rules for Falling Damage that made falls significantly more dangerous than in the official rules. I can’t remember the details, but I believe it involved adding an NND (with Does Body) to the normal damage caused by a fall, with the defense being not having internal organs subject to the shock of impact. So, for one example, characters wearing armor would not be more protected from falling damage than those without.

Anybody happen to have that article handy who could supply more details? Other house rules accomplishing the same goal would also be of interest.

Thanks.

[Lord Liaden]

Unfortunately, most of those articles were already lost when I discovered the archive, well before DoJ took over. Sorry I can't help you there.

One thing that I have used with Falling Damage in more realistic campaigns is to use Hit Locations to determine what part of the body the character lands on; this allows for both instantly fatal landings, and those "miraculous" falls that "no-one could have survived". Alternatively, you could rule that a character falling a significant distance automatically takes a X2 damage multiplier unless he makes a successful Breakfall or DEX roll.

To keep armored characters from walking away from a fall without any Body damage, you could try applying the Hit Location multiplier before subtracting defenses, rather than after.

[slaughterj]

I'd like to see a more realistic damage chart/rule as well (and more realistic leaping distances for Heroic level - I halve the height as it is).

IIRC, 5e (and previous) say 1D6 normal damage / 1" fallen (up to 10"). However, this means an average hero (5 PD) can fall 33 feet without harm on average (well, no BODY), which doesn't sit well with me. I've used a rough rule of doubling the falling damage, but still am not satisfied.

[Gary]

Falling damage is already very skewed because it doesn't fit in with the rest of Hero's damage scales.

A terminal velocity fall is 30 damage classes, but a direct hit from a tank shell is 8d6 rka, or 24 damage classes? A direct hit from a stinger missile is 14 DC's? Somehow I doubt that terminal velocity would do more damage than a direct hit from any missile or piece of ordnance.

Basically, the entire Hero system isn't very realistic when it comes to damage.

[Talon]

If I were going to make falling damage more realistic, I'd start by making it NND or AVLD -- wearing a breastplate isn't really going to help you much. I'd probably just make the defense be PD bought with the limitation "only against falling damage" (or a Breakfall roll, or any other way to avoid the fall). That makes a fall much more dangerous.

[JamesG]

For Heroic level games, I think making Falling Damage NND (w/ Does Body) combined with using the Hit Location table should suffice to make characters have a healthy respect for the hurtin’ a good fall can put on them, without making falls too deadly.

But what about a super heroic game? The genre features Bricks, like The Thing, who should be able to survive long falls relatively unscathed. So the method above makes falls overly dangerous for many Bricks. I thought about making it an AVLD with the defense being “natural” resistant PD (and Combat Luck doesn’t protect here). So Captain America (with his chain mail), Batman and Daredevil would all go splat while The Thing or Hercules would walk away pretty much unscratched.

But then I started hearing in my head the complaints of the player with the Iron Man clone (whose armor is OIHID – powered armor) who isn’t protected from falls while the Thor clone (res-PD, OIHID – change from Dr. Blake to Thor) is. While it is fine for the special effects of a power to have minor in-game effects, protection from falling damage seems like too major an effect.

Making it AVLD with the defense being PD bought with the limitation "only against falling damage" (Geoff’s suggestion) would be fair to all players, but would add yet another thing for them to think about during character creation. And it would reduce the campaign’s portability. By that I mean characters coming into the game from another campaign would be very vulnerable to falling damage, even if the character conception indicates they shouldn’t be, and many Bricks going from this campaign to another would be over-protected from falls.

Hmm, it seems like for a ‘supers’ game, the fixes to falling damage cause more headaches than they solve. That’s one of the reasons I was hoping someone might still have that old DH article, in case it discussed some of these points.

Maybe leave the damage the way it is for the PCs and super villains, but the normals in the world use the method described in the first paragraph. That way the players will need to reconsider letting their DNPC take a moderate fall because they “know” the damage won’t kill, or even seriously hurt, them.

[slaughterj]

I have absolutely no problem with the current rules for supers, and no problem with differentiating falling damage for supers from heroic level games. It's no different than using hit locations in the latter and not in the former, etc.

[Blue Angel]

I recently created an alternate falling damage table which did damage based on the surface impacted. This Ranged from Reduced Penetration Normal Damage for open water, pillows or haystacks to HKA double penetrating+double armor piercing for landing on sharp objects like spears or stalagmites. There are seven catagories in all.

Armor should have an effect to a point since it would spread out the impact, reducing the chance of broken limbs at least on shorter falls. On larger falls it would be meaningless: a 5 DEF vest means little to 30 Damage Classes.

[Gary]

Falling damage is really 2 different damages. The first type is direct impact, which can be reduced by armor. The second type is the near instantaneous deceleration which can't be reduced by armor.

A suggestion would be 2 separate damage rolls, one would be regular damage, and the second would be AVLD does body where the defense is inherent lack of weakness.

[JamesG]

Originally posted by Gary
A suggestion would be 2 separate damage rolls, one would be regular damage, and the second would be AVLD does body where the defense is inherent lack of weakness.

If I remember correctly, that is very similar to what was suggested in the old DH article, except it wasn't a AVLD but a NND with the defense (I think) being not having internal organs that would be damaged by the decel.

Darn, I really wish that article was still around.