Falling into water

[quozaxx]

I know when you fall 150 ft (46m aprox) you take 23d6

 

But what if you fall into water?  Without breakfall, acrobatics, diving, or anything else.   Just curious 

 

Would you take any damage?  Less damage?  Or the same damage?

[sentry0]

They say that hitting water with enough velocity is about the same as hitting concrete.  Assuming that's not just an urban legend you would probably be done either way.

 

Maybe if you're feeling generous a die or 2 may get knocked off.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Water is incompressible; that is, it can be displaced, but not smooshed.  If you are moving too fast, you cannot push it aside quickly enough and simply crash into the water, suffering horrible damage before pushing into it.  A fall from 150 feet into water will kill you in real life just as dead as if you hit pavement.

 

However, its routine in movies and role playing games that water is "safe" to fall into, so its up to you as a GM.

[Lee]

The Mythbusters did an episode on this where they tested a fall using Buster and accelerometers. What they found out is that hitting the water is not like hitting pavement--at least not from the same height. The G-loads were considerably lower when hitting water than when hitting pavement from the same height. However, they did not try to determine the different heights that would be necessary to get equivalent G-loads. Maybe you could take the different G-loads they mention and come up with some kind of conversion?

 

I found this clip on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGJqqDaKscQ

 

 

Lee

[archer]

20 minutes ago, Lee said:

The Mythbusters did an episode on this where they tested a fall using Buster and accelerometers. What they found out is that hitting the water is not like hitting pavement--at least not from the same height. The G-loads were considerably lower when hitting water than when hitting pavement from the same height. However, they did not try to determine the different heights that would be necessary to get equivalent G-loads. Maybe you could take the different G-loads they mention and come up with some kind of conversion?

 

I found this clip on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGJqqDaKscQ

 

 

Lee

 

Yeah, as CRT pointed out "If you are moving too fast, you cannot push it aside quickly enough".

 

You probably still push it aside to a certain extent because it's liquid rather than completely solid. The question is whether you can push enough water aside to avoid catastrophic injuries.

 

The world record for surviving a jump into water is something between 172 and 177 feet. From what I understand in the discussion from that video, the controversy on who holds the record comes from whether the person was able to swim out of the water on his own or required assistance, whether he was wearing some sort of reinforced body armor or just a swimsuit, and whether he was jumping into still water or into water that was frothed up with air bubbles in order to decrease its density.

 

Of course all of those people were prepared professional divers who knew what they were doing and who were deliberately jumping rather than a random person jumping into the water during an emergency.

[ScottishFox]

Also, water CAN be compressed.  It just requires stupid amounts of force to get very little compression.

 

Not that I knew this until a minute ago. 

 

Put another way, it takes a bit over 200 times atmospheric pressure to compress water by 1% at room temperature.