Falling Damage
The official rules state that characters takes 1d10 points of damage for every ten feet that they fall. Furthermore, those trained in Acrobatics may make a skill check to reduce the damage by half. This is a pretty standard system that has been around forever.
But It’s a Ridiculous Rule
According to this rule, higher level characters are more resistant to falling damage than lower level ones. They take the same amount of damage, but a higher level character’s increased hit points provides greater survivability. That is blatantly silly. Dumb luck may play a factor but character level shouldn’t allow one character a better chance of surviving a fall than any other character.
Being a fantasy game, many people argue that things like this don’t need to be realistic. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw common sense out the window at every opportunity. A fall that can kill one character should just as easily kill any other character.
An Alternative
I’ve tried a few different systems over the years. One I was fond of was this: Characters can fall up to ten feet without taking damage. Beyond that, they take 1d6 damage, times their level, for every ten feet they fall (beyond the initial ten feet). This levels the field in that all characters, regardless of level, take more or less the same amount of relative damage. It also maintains a bit of randomness. Rolling the dice themselves tends to give players a feeling of control over the outcome. Plus, when their character ends up a pile of gore at the bottom of the cliff, they can blame the dice (instead of the DM).
My New Rule
However, I’ve recently adopted a new rule that I think is going to work out even better. Characters will take a set percentage of their total hit points as damage when they fall.
| Distance | Percentage of Total HP | With Successful Acrobatics Check |
| 10′ | 10% | 5% |
| 20′ | 20% | 10% |
| 30′ | 50% | 25% |
| 40′ | 100% (Dying) | 50% |
| 50′ | 150% (Dead) | 75% |
| 60′ | 200% (Dead) | 100% (Dying) |
| 70′+ | Dead | Dead |
The numbers are easy to calculate. Characters (starting at full hit points) are guaranteed to survive a 40′ drop (60′ with a successful Acrobatics check), although they may require immediate care in some cases. All characters suffer the same consequences of falling, regardless of level. There is no situation where a character could fall hundreds of feet, stand up, brush himself off, and go looking for the healer (as was possible under the official rules). The only thing I don’t like is there is no randomness (for the reason described above) but I think that will be ok.
It probably wouldn’t be a very popular rule in some groups. Fortunately, my group likes realism. At least in the sense that they want to have a consistent, logical, physical world that they can rely on. I think this system will fit that definition.
That seems like a nice simple, effective, and consistent system. I like it. However, I prefer even more realism.
The idea I like best (which I have yet to fully flesh out or implement in a game) is to use Constitution damage. Because Con damage affects hit point maximums (and is slower to heal), it is an excellent model for the broken bones and torn ligaments that might result from a bad fall. One could also institute the Staggered condition (3.5) to model physical movement impediment (Perhaps at half Con).
i use first 10ft free (no damage)
11-20 ½*base hit die per level of character
21-30 1*base hit die per level of charact
31-40 1½*base hit die per level of character
increasing by ½ hit die per 10 feet or part there of
example
a level 1 fighter (2ed rules) hit die is 1d10, falls 11-20 feet, takes 1d5 damage
a level 5 fighter (2ed rules) hit die is 5d10, falls 11-20 feet takes 5d5 damage
a level 1 fighter falling 20-30 feet takes 1d10
a level 5 fighter falling 20-30 feet takes 5d10
a level 1 fighter falling 31-40 feet takes 1d10+1d5 damage
a level 5 fighter falling 31-40 feet takes 5d10+5d5 damage
to a max of 10*hitdice+10 ½ hit dice
this uses the presumpion that some hit points are increased muscle mass and abiltiy to take a puch or three at higher levels, but a fall of 40+feet is considered mostly fatal.
i use different rules for jumping down,. also all hegiths fallen must take into account a hard packed earth type landing, if landing is softer then less damage by up to a factors of 4 or more can be used or more,
for example if one of my players makes an uncontrolled free fall into water at a height of 60 feet then the damage is equivilent to only a fall of 15 feet a factor of divide by 4
it will hurt but not likely to kill you,
a gm can make other factors, like mud, snow, soft sand