There's 2 factors - the force imparted by the accelerating object when it stops falling and then afterwards when it hits you the continual force of the object crushing you via gravity acting on its mass.
As mentioned a 6lb mace at high velocity can kill. We know that bullets are not massive but are very fast and kill people. So without breaking out the physics text books I'd look at crushing wall trap unless the ground was squidgy or something.
It's worth keeping in mind that 1000 lbs. seems like a huge number...but maybe not as huge as we imagine it. Comparable items include a grand piano, a bear, a horse...here's a super-rando URL for ya.
Really, though it is a huge number. It's a massive weight. It's a half ton. It only takes a 6 pound mace blow to the head to kill you, and the same effect can be accomplished with even lighter objects. Thing is: all those things you listed will kill you if they fall on you from a height more than a few feet. Dropping such an item from 60 feet will reduce whoever it falls on to paste. The only reason it might fail to kill a player character(keyword being "might") is because player characters, at level 1, are stronger than most other humans, and continue to grow stronger as they level.
Other things that will kill you if they fall 60 feet on top of you:
Bowling ball. 16 lbs.
a (single) brick. 3.5 lbs
a load of bricks. 7-350 lbs.
Scaffold. 50 lbs.
Other human beings. 120-230 lbs. Incidentally, said other human being will also likely be dead, or at least critically wounded
Hay bale. 100 lbs. The fact that it's softer than other things on this list won't actually help you.
Watermelon. 20 lbs.
A sufficiently massed amount of water. Let's say 10 gallons worth, 83.4 lbs.
Scuba tank. 35 lbs.
A bull shark (dead or alive). 280-300 lbs.
A mimic disguised as any of the above....
The list goes on and on.
I'm only being pedantic here (I totally agree that most 1000lb objects falling from 60ft will kill a person) but a hot air balloon weighs less than 1000lbs, and if one of those dropped onto you from 60ft, whilst it would certainly make the situation difficult, I doubt it would cause any physical harm!
a 1000lb marshmallow would also be less than fatal, though it may suffocate the target!
It's about density and hardness as much as anything - almost everything you've listed above is hard, harsh, and in all honesty much more likely to be used as a telekinesis weapon than, say, a giant marshmallow, or a block of compacted snow, or a 1000lb parachute, or a giant jelly, or all manner of things which wouldn't cause massive bludgeoning trauma on impact!
It's worth keeping in mind that 1000 lbs. seems like a huge number...but maybe not as huge as we imagine it. Comparable items include a grand piano, a bear, a horse...here's a super-rando URL for ya.
Really, though it is a huge number. It's a massive weight. It's a half ton. It only takes a 6 pound mace blow to the head to kill you, and the same effect can be accomplished with even lighter objects. Thing is: all those things you listed will kill you if they fall on you from a height more than a few feet. Dropping such an item from 60 feet will reduce whoever it falls on to paste. The only reason it might fail to kill a player character(keyword being "might") is because player characters, at level 1, are stronger than most other humans, and continue to grow stronger as they level.
Other things that will kill you if they fall 60 feet on top of you:
Bowling ball. 16 lbs.
a (single) brick. 3.5 lbs
a load of bricks. 7-350 lbs.
Scaffold. 50 lbs.
Other human beings. 120-230 lbs. Incidentally, said other human being will also likely be dead, or at least critically wounded
Hay bale. 100 lbs. The fact that it's softer than other things on this list won't actually help you.
Watermelon. 20 lbs.
A sufficiently massed amount of water. Let's say 10 gallons worth, 83.4 lbs.
Scuba tank. 35 lbs.
A bull shark (dead or alive). 280-300 lbs.
A mimic disguised as any of the above....
The list goes on and on.
I'm only being pedantic here (I totally agree that most 1000lb objects falling from 60ft will kill a person) but a hot air balloon weighs less than 1000lbs, and if one of those dropped onto you from 60ft, whilst it would certainly make the situation difficult, I doubt it would cause any physical harm!
a 1000lb marshmallow would also be less than fatal, though it may suffocate the target!
It's about density and hardness as much as anything - almost everything you've listed above is hard, harsh, and in all honesty much more likely to be used as a telekinesis weapon than, say, a giant marshmallow, or a block of compacted snow, or a 1000lb parachute, or a giant jelly, or all manner of things which wouldn't cause massive bludgeoning trauma on impact!
Pendantic or not: I'm still asserting that 1,000 pounds is a 1,000 pounds, and a 60-foot drop is a 60-foot drop.
If crashlanding, a hot air balloon likely won't weigh 1,000 pounds at the instant of impact, as hot air remaining in the envelop will continue to provide it with buoyancy. This buoyancy and spread of weight (if people are being landed on by the envelope and not the basket) decreases the chances of fatality, but does not actually eliminate it. Hot air balloons have landed on an killed people before; and recently (statistics found here). The same can't be said for a giant marshmallow, which has no lighter-than-air buoyancy. It's softness in this scenario would cushion the blow, perhaps preventing fractured bones, but would not prevent someone underneath it from being crushed and vital organs being severely damaged. The suffocation part only comes in to play for the really unfortunate person to have survived the impact.
This is about force and inertia (physics) and the ability of human physiology to withstand those forces. Hardness has little to do with it. Density does, but increasing an object's speed can compensate for a lower density to make it just as lethal.
A visual example might be what 100 gallons of water (about 833 pounds) dropped approximately 30 feet doing THIS to a car.
Human bodies are, ultimately, a great deal more fragile that fantasy games give them credit for. It doesn't take much mass or speed to utterly destroy a skull. It only takes a little pressure moving a joint or bone in a direction it isn't adapted to move in or support weight from direction it normally doesn't. That why when the odd person survives something that is so usually fatal that it's a big deal and makes international news: because its a miracle. They defied overwhelming odds.
A player character is by default not the average person. They are that one-in-a-million person who survived the fall from the cliff. The person to walked out of the build after the bomb went off. The one who a piano landed on, and walked away. And they do this thing with incredible regularity, because they are exceptional mortals, and by no means the norm.
I feel like this is a time to point out that we are all commoners. 4d10 damage is highly likely to kill an average human many times over. We don’t think of our PCs as the superhumans they are, but even a level 1 adventurer is extremely exceptional compared to the bulk of humanity/elfdom/dwarfdom/etc
So I work in an industry in which safety is really, really important. And because of the vertical nature of the plant, dropped objects are a huge focus - to the point that there is a great deal of research on the subject. Source: https://www.dropsonline.org/
Did you know that a blunt object weighing about 0.7 kg, falling 15 metres will almost certainly kill you even if you are wearing a hard hat? Sharp objects are even worse.
A 450 kg (1,000 lbs) object falling 60 feet will turn you into red paste. Doesn't really matter what the object is made of, unless it is shaped to have specific aerodynamics to cause it to fall very slowly. Even then, you'd still be crushed (assuming the full weight of the object is applied to you on landing).
In terms of the ingame ruling - for a standard medium humanoid I'd say make a DC10 DEX save to avoid instant death.
So I work in an industry in which safety is really, really important. And because of the vertical nature of the plant, dropped objects are a huge focus - to the point that there is a great deal of research on the subject. Source: https://www.dropsonline.org/
Did you know that a blunt object weighing about 0.7 kg, falling 15 metres will almost certainly kill you even if you are wearing a hard hat? Sharp objects are even worse.
A 450 kg (1,000 lbs) object falling 60 feet will turn you into red paste. Doesn't really matter what the object is made of, unless it is shaped to have specific aerodynamics to cause it to fall very slowly. Even then, you'd still be crushed (assuming the full weight of the object is applied to you on landing).
In terms of the ingame ruling - for a standard medium humanoid I'd say make a DC10 DEX save to avoid instant death.
5e doesn't really like instant death, and in a game where characters can be bleeding out, stabilized in 6 seconds, conscious in 1-4 hours and in full fighting shape the next day after 6 hours of sleep (and that's not even factoring in magic), full on realism is not really the point.
Damage scaling is not really linear in the game anyway. per the DMG, being crushed by a moon (aka, the Chewbacca Killer) is only 24x as damaging as being hit by a bookcase, and the bookcase could very well be fatal to the "commoners" of the world (since the bookcase can do a possible 10 damage against the commoner's max of 8 (avg 4), while a PC can possibly withstand the moon crushing by 3rd/4th tier (24d10 avg 132 damage). The adjudication for the 1000 pound object is comparable to a collapsing ceiling in a tunnel for 4d10 (avg 22 damage) which is more than enough to kill most "normal" humans (even the CR 1/8 and 1/4 ones) several times over.
Honestly, if you realistically applied what would kill a normal human in the game, most PCs wouldn't make it through their first wolf encounter, and that's an attitude towards play that might have existed in early versions, but not in 5e.
Because when you play D&D, you’re not normally playing to be “just another average guy”. You are a hero. An exceptional individual. The laws of physics take a back seat to the laws of tropes and rule of cool where you are concerned.
the commoner NPCs, however... not so much. Because most of them are the average joes. The ones who die because a brick fell off a 10-foot roof at exactly the wrong moment or because they slipped and hit their head on the bathroom sink.
RAW, falling damage is unrelated to size, so it's 6d6. That's nonsense, but D&D has always including an element of luck and evasion in damage, and isn't meant as a reality simulator. If you cast Transmute Rock on a dungeon ceiling and drop 40' of mud on creatures in the area (depending on the mud, something like two tons per square foot), they take 4d8 damage on a failed save. If you use Earthquake it's 5d6 damage.
So I work in an industry in which safety is really, really important. And because of the vertical nature of the plant, dropped objects are a huge focus - to the point that there is a great deal of research on the subject. Source: https://www.dropsonline.org/
Did you know that a blunt object weighing about 0.7 kg, falling 15 metres will almost certainly kill you even if you are wearing a hard hat? Sharp objects are even worse.
A 450 kg (1,000 lbs) object falling 60 feet will turn you into red paste. Doesn't really matter what the object is made of, unless it is shaped to have specific aerodynamics to cause it to fall very slowly. Even then, you'd still be crushed (assuming the full weight of the object is applied to you on landing).
In terms of the ingame ruling - for a standard medium humanoid I'd say make a DC10 DEX save to avoid instant death.
5e doesn't really like instant death, and in a game where characters can be bleeding out, stabilized in 6 seconds, conscious in 1-4 hours and in full fighting shape the next day after 6 hours of sleep (and that's not even factoring in magic), full on realism is not really the point.
Damage scaling is not really linear in the game anyway. per the DMG, being crushed by a moon (aka, the Chewbacca Killer) is only 24x as damaging as being hit by a bookcase, and the bookcase could very well be fatal to the "commoners" of the world (since the bookcase can do a possible 10 damage against the commoner's max of 8 (avg 4), while a PC can possibly withstand the moon crushing by 3rd/4th tier (24d10 avg 132 damage). The adjudication for the 1000 pound object is comparable to a collapsing ceiling in a tunnel for 4d10 (avg 22 damage) which is more than enough to kill most "normal" humans (even the CR 1/8 and 1/4 ones) several times over.
Honestly, if you realistically applied what would kill a normal human in the game, most PCs wouldn't make it through their first wolf encounter, and that's an attitude towards play that might have existed in early versions, but not in 5e.
Yeah, if you are playing a game of D&D which is much more high-fantasy and heroic than I tend to do then absolutely. RAW 5e is written in the way you describe, it's just that I don't really enjoy that (especially the mechanics around resurrection - but that's a different discussion). I prefer a more dark fantasy/gritty setting, and will tend to choose internal consistency over rule of cool if they are in conflict. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
Regarding the first wolf encounter - I possibly also think about hitpoints differently than other people do, I'm not really sure, but my interpretation is that you aren't necessarily literally being wounded every time you lose hitpoints, it's more of an abstract. So to me it's not that 1st level characters are superhumans that can survive being bitten by wolves repeatedly - it's that the 1st level characters are using their wits/reflexes/strength to avoid a bite at the last second, wearing down their endurance. Also, wolves are quite capable of killing a 1st level character, if things go badly!
Regarding the first wolf encounter - I possibly also think about hitpoints differently than other people do, I'm not really sure, but my interpretation is that you aren't necessarily literally being wounded every time you lose hitpoints, it's more of an abstract. So to me it's not that 1st level characters are superhumans that can survive being bitten by wolves repeatedly - it's that the 1st level characters are using their wits/reflexes/strength to avoid a bite at the last second, wearing down their endurance. Also, wolves are quite capable of killing a 1st level character, if things go badly!
I think you're confusing Hit Points for Armor Class. Armor Class accounts not only for the durability and protection of armor, but takes other defensive measures into account to represent a character's grand sum total ability to avoid getting hit. In older additions, a combination of Intelligence and Dexterity gave you a "Reflex" score, which was used to calculate your AC. In 5e, it's simplified to Dex only, unless you're in heavy armor, or have a class feature that says otherwise; which to be honest, makes more sense.
Wits don't stop knives from piercing you. Your instinctive, involuntary response to move away from perceived danger (your reflexes) can at least try to get you out of the way.
A character tha avoids a wolf's bite, avoids the wolf's bite. Hence, no reduction in hit points. A character that fails to avoid the wolf's bite is bitten by a wolf, and is injured to a degree as a result, represented by a loss of hit points. The severity of the injury inflicted is represented by the wolf's damage roll, which is deducted from the character's representation of wellbeing: their hit points.
However, one thing many people confuse for each other is "health" and "pain". You can feel pain without endangering your health, and vise versa: you can feel no pain and yet be teetering on the verge of death. Though pain is a common indicator that health is in jeopardy, they are not actually one and the same.
Regarding the first wolf encounter - I possibly also think about hitpoints differently than other people do, I'm not really sure, but my interpretation is that you aren't necessarily literally being wounded every time you lose hitpoints, it's more of an abstract. So to me it's not that 1st level characters are superhumans that can survive being bitten by wolves repeatedly - it's that the 1st level characters are using their wits/reflexes/strength to avoid a bite at the last second, wearing down their endurance. Also, wolves are quite capable of killing a 1st level character, if things go badly!
I think you're confusing Hit Points for Armor Class. Armor Class accounts not only for the durability and protection of armor, but takes other defensive measures into account to represent a character's grand sum total ability to avoid getting hit. In older additions, a combination of Intelligence and Dexterity gave you a "Reflex" score, which was used to calculate your AC. In 5e, it's simplified to Dex only, unless you're in heavy armor, or have a class feature that says otherwise; which to be honest, makes more sense.
Wits don't stop knives from piercing you. Your instinctive, involuntary response to move away from perceived danger (your reflexes) can at least try to get you out of the way.
A character tha avoids a wolf's bite, avoids the wolf's bite. Hence, no reduction in hit points. A character that fails to avoid the wolf's bite is bitten by a wolf, and is injured to a degree as a result, represented by a loss of hit points. The severity of the injury inflicted is represented by the wolf's damage roll, which is deducted from the character's representation of wellbeing: their hit points.
However, one thing many people confuse for each other is "health" and "pain". You can feel pain without endangering your health, and vise versa: you can feel no pain and yet be teetering on the verge of death. Though pain is a common indicator that health is in jeopardy, they are not actually one and the same.
I'm possibly not explaining myself very well - not surprising as this is all extremely abstract. It also doesn't really matter - I DM 5e using the same rules as everyone else does regarding rolling to hit and dealing damage.
However, here goes:
In my head, beating a character/creature's AC represents not simply hitting the thing, but threatening to hit the thing in a place that is not protected by armour (or protected by something else). Once you've beaten the AC, you are then subtracting "damage" from the creatures health pool. In my head, a sword cut to the neck will kill you whether you are a commoner or a level 10 adventurer, and so I make sense of that by abstracting damage to not be literal physical damage to a body, but a general wearing down of the ability to survive. Like I said, it doesn't really matter as we both will end up running a combat the same way - this just is how my brain interprets and assimilates the mechanics of D&D.
No one talks about the key issue. Unless the target is tied down, the point is quite possibly moot. The target can either avoid this falling object, or the caster now has to make an attack roll at some massive DC level to precisely calculate the time it takes for the object to fall to the ground, coupled with the ground speed velocity of the target. And for those non-math people, velocity is made up of speed AND direction.
Unless the caster has done this a ton of times before, the correct answer is "The 1000 block comes crashing down beside the target." Sorry, rule of cool does not allow auto-kills.
No one talks about the key issue. Unless the target is tied down, the point is quite possibly moot. The target can either avoid this falling object, or the caster now has to make an attack roll at some massive DC level to precisely calculate the time it takes for the object to fall to the ground, coupled with the ground speed velocity of the target. And for those non-math people, velocity is made up of speed AND direction.
Unless the caster has done this a ton of times before, the correct answer is "The 1000 block comes crashing down beside the target." Sorry, rule of cool does not allow auto-kills.
Have you heard of flechettes? They used them since world war one and I tell you barely anyone heard them coming
There are plenty of ways to kill someone with falling stuff without them noticing
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Telekinesis allows you to lift a 1,000 lb. object up to 60-ft. in the air. How much damage would that do if it falls onto a creature? Dexterity save against caster's DC? I've seen mentions of using trap mechanics but that just doesn't sit right with me. On the other extreme end, someone did up a chart that would have the object doing 150d6 damage. Which, you know, seems a tad excessive for a 5th-level spell.
Effectively the caster is setting a trap for the victim. Trap mechanics could work just fine. You might also consider an improvisation on the Falling onto a Creature rule in TCoE.
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Okay, I just did a little "research" on this topic. Of course, none of this is exact by any means. However, we need some basis for comparison, right? So, I compared a 4 lb mace swung at 40 mph (58.7 ft/s) to a 1000 lb boulder dropped from 60 ft (which would hit a ground-level target at 62.14 ft/s). Assuming a couple of things are equal (which they wouldn't necessarily be in "reality", namely the duration and distance of impact), the boulder would generate a peak impact force of 531 kN, while the mace would generate approximately 2 kN. So, the boulder would generate 265.5 times the force of the mace. Assuming that this translates roughly to damage, that would mean 265d6, or 796 points of damage on average (with a potential of 1590 points). In other words, pretty well instant death (to say the least) to essentially anything; as you would expect. The only mitigating factor here would be the ability of the target to see it coming and get out of the way. So, it would be up to the DM to determine whether the spellcaster could effectively pull this off covertly (perhaps while the target was distracted?). Anyway, if completed effectively, you'd have to give it to the party (and the spellcaster) for creative problem solving, and declare the target instantly liquified.
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This is literally the best summary, and am miffed I didn't think of it first.
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There's 2 factors - the force imparted by the accelerating object when it stops falling and then afterwards when it hits you the continual force of the object crushing you via gravity acting on its mass.
As mentioned a 6lb mace at high velocity can kill. We know that bullets are not massive but are very fast and kill people. So without breaking out the physics text books I'd look at crushing wall trap unless the ground was squidgy or something.
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Target has 1.9 secs to move, that's if he sees it when it's dropped- I'd put the DC a lil higher myself
Think u need to read that again.... it dosent crash to earth
I'm only being pedantic here (I totally agree that most 1000lb objects falling from 60ft will kill a person) but a hot air balloon weighs less than 1000lbs, and if one of those dropped onto you from 60ft, whilst it would certainly make the situation difficult, I doubt it would cause any physical harm!
a 1000lb marshmallow would also be less than fatal, though it may suffocate the target!
It's about density and hardness as much as anything - almost everything you've listed above is hard, harsh, and in all honesty much more likely to be used as a telekinesis weapon than, say, a giant marshmallow, or a block of compacted snow, or a 1000lb parachute, or a giant jelly, or all manner of things which wouldn't cause massive bludgeoning trauma on impact!
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Pendantic or not: I'm still asserting that 1,000 pounds is a 1,000 pounds, and a 60-foot drop is a 60-foot drop.
If crashlanding, a hot air balloon likely won't weigh 1,000 pounds at the instant of impact, as hot air remaining in the envelop will continue to provide it with buoyancy. This buoyancy and spread of weight (if people are being landed on by the envelope and not the basket) decreases the chances of fatality, but does not actually eliminate it. Hot air balloons have landed on an killed people before; and recently (statistics found here). The same can't be said for a giant marshmallow, which has no lighter-than-air buoyancy. It's softness in this scenario would cushion the blow, perhaps preventing fractured bones, but would not prevent someone underneath it from being crushed and vital organs being severely damaged. The suffocation part only comes in to play for the really unfortunate person to have survived the impact.
This is about force and inertia (physics) and the ability of human physiology to withstand those forces. Hardness has little to do with it. Density does, but increasing an object's speed can compensate for a lower density to make it just as lethal.
A visual example might be what 100 gallons of water (about 833 pounds) dropped approximately 30 feet doing THIS to a car.
Human bodies are, ultimately, a great deal more fragile that fantasy games give them credit for. It doesn't take much mass or speed to utterly destroy a skull. It only takes a little pressure moving a joint or bone in a direction it isn't adapted to move in or support weight from direction it normally doesn't. That why when the odd person survives something that is so usually fatal that it's a big deal and makes international news: because its a miracle. They defied overwhelming odds.
A player character is by default not the average person. They are that one-in-a-million person who survived the fall from the cliff. The person to walked out of the build after the bomb went off. The one who a piano landed on, and walked away. And they do this thing with incredible regularity, because they are exceptional mortals, and by no means the norm.
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I feel like this is a time to point out that we are all commoners. 4d10 damage is highly likely to kill an average human many times over. We don’t think of our PCs as the superhumans they are, but even a level 1 adventurer is extremely exceptional compared to the bulk of humanity/elfdom/dwarfdom/etc
So I work in an industry in which safety is really, really important. And because of the vertical nature of the plant, dropped objects are a huge focus - to the point that there is a great deal of research on the subject. Source: https://www.dropsonline.org/
Did you know that a blunt object weighing about 0.7 kg, falling 15 metres will almost certainly kill you even if you are wearing a hard hat? Sharp objects are even worse.
A 450 kg (1,000 lbs) object falling 60 feet will turn you into red paste. Doesn't really matter what the object is made of, unless it is shaped to have specific aerodynamics to cause it to fall very slowly. Even then, you'd still be crushed (assuming the full weight of the object is applied to you on landing).
In terms of the ingame ruling - for a standard medium humanoid I'd say make a DC10 DEX save to avoid instant death.
5e doesn't really like instant death, and in a game where characters can be bleeding out, stabilized in 6 seconds, conscious in 1-4 hours and in full fighting shape the next day after 6 hours of sleep (and that's not even factoring in magic), full on realism is not really the point.
Damage scaling is not really linear in the game anyway. per the DMG, being crushed by a moon (aka, the Chewbacca Killer) is only 24x as damaging as being hit by a bookcase, and the bookcase could very well be fatal to the "commoners" of the world (since the bookcase can do a possible 10 damage against the commoner's max of 8 (avg 4), while a PC can possibly withstand the moon crushing by 3rd/4th tier (24d10 avg 132 damage). The adjudication for the 1000 pound object is comparable to a collapsing ceiling in a tunnel for 4d10 (avg 22 damage) which is more than enough to kill most "normal" humans (even the CR 1/8 and 1/4 ones) several times over.
Honestly, if you realistically applied what would kill a normal human in the game, most PCs wouldn't make it through their first wolf encounter, and that's an attitude towards play that might have existed in early versions, but not in 5e.
Because when you play D&D, you’re not normally playing to be “just another average guy”. You are a hero. An exceptional individual. The laws of physics take a back seat to the laws of tropes and rule of cool where you are concerned.
the commoner NPCs, however... not so much. Because most of them are the average joes. The ones who die because a brick fell off a 10-foot roof at exactly the wrong moment or because they slipped and hit their head on the bathroom sink.
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RAW, falling damage is unrelated to size, so it's 6d6. That's nonsense, but D&D has always including an element of luck and evasion in damage, and isn't meant as a reality simulator. If you cast Transmute Rock on a dungeon ceiling and drop 40' of mud on creatures in the area (depending on the mud, something like two tons per square foot), they take 4d8 damage on a failed save. If you use Earthquake it's 5d6 damage.
Yeah, if you are playing a game of D&D which is much more high-fantasy and heroic than I tend to do then absolutely. RAW 5e is written in the way you describe, it's just that I don't really enjoy that (especially the mechanics around resurrection - but that's a different discussion). I prefer a more dark fantasy/gritty setting, and will tend to choose internal consistency over rule of cool if they are in conflict. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
Regarding the first wolf encounter - I possibly also think about hitpoints differently than other people do, I'm not really sure, but my interpretation is that you aren't necessarily literally being wounded every time you lose hitpoints, it's more of an abstract. So to me it's not that 1st level characters are superhumans that can survive being bitten by wolves repeatedly - it's that the 1st level characters are using their wits/reflexes/strength to avoid a bite at the last second, wearing down their endurance. Also, wolves are quite capable of killing a 1st level character, if things go badly!
I think you're confusing Hit Points for Armor Class. Armor Class accounts not only for the durability and protection of armor, but takes other defensive measures into account to represent a character's grand sum total ability to avoid getting hit. In older additions, a combination of Intelligence and Dexterity gave you a "Reflex" score, which was used to calculate your AC. In 5e, it's simplified to Dex only, unless you're in heavy armor, or have a class feature that says otherwise; which to be honest, makes more sense.
Wits don't stop knives from piercing you. Your instinctive, involuntary response to move away from perceived danger (your reflexes) can at least try to get you out of the way.
A character tha avoids a wolf's bite, avoids the wolf's bite. Hence, no reduction in hit points. A character that fails to avoid the wolf's bite is bitten by a wolf, and is injured to a degree as a result, represented by a loss of hit points. The severity of the injury inflicted is represented by the wolf's damage roll, which is deducted from the character's representation of wellbeing: their hit points.
However, one thing many people confuse for each other is "health" and "pain". You can feel pain without endangering your health, and vise versa: you can feel no pain and yet be teetering on the verge of death. Though pain is a common indicator that health is in jeopardy, they are not actually one and the same.
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I'm possibly not explaining myself very well - not surprising as this is all extremely abstract. It also doesn't really matter - I DM 5e using the same rules as everyone else does regarding rolling to hit and dealing damage.
However, here goes:
In my head, beating a character/creature's AC represents not simply hitting the thing, but threatening to hit the thing in a place that is not protected by armour (or protected by something else). Once you've beaten the AC, you are then subtracting "damage" from the creatures health pool. In my head, a sword cut to the neck will kill you whether you are a commoner or a level 10 adventurer, and so I make sense of that by abstracting damage to not be literal physical damage to a body, but a general wearing down of the ability to survive. Like I said, it doesn't really matter as we both will end up running a combat the same way - this just is how my brain interprets and assimilates the mechanics of D&D.
No one talks about the key issue. Unless the target is tied down, the point is quite possibly moot. The target can either avoid this falling object, or the caster now has to make an attack roll at some massive DC level to precisely calculate the time it takes for the object to fall to the ground, coupled with the ground speed velocity of the target. And for those non-math people, velocity is made up of speed AND direction.
Unless the caster has done this a ton of times before, the correct answer is "The 1000 block comes crashing down beside the target." Sorry, rule of cool does not allow auto-kills.
Other lvl 5 spells:
cone of cold: 8d8
flamestrike: 8d6
blight (upcast): 9d8
fireball (upcast): 10d6
Taking into account that you can keep using it for 10 min, i would go with Bigbys Hand of 4d8 per 30 ft (distance you can lift it per round).
Have you heard of flechettes? They used them since world war one and I tell you barely anyone heard them coming
There are plenty of ways to kill someone with falling stuff without them noticing
[roll]7d6[/roll]
Every post these dice roll increasing my chances of winning the yahtzee thread (I wish (wait not the twist the wish threa-!))
Drummer Generated Title
After having been invited to include both here, I now combine the "PM me CHEESE 🧀 and tomato into PM me "PIZZA🍕"
Effectively the caster is setting a trap for the victim. Trap mechanics could work just fine. You might also consider an improvisation on the Falling onto a Creature rule in TCoE.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
On a quick google I found that, "On average, a cubic foot of rock weighs 165.2 pounds"
That leaves 1000 pounds, for a telekinesis spell, being the weight of just over 6 cubic feet of rock.
500 pounds, for the maximum content of a bag of holding, is the equivalent weight of just over 3 cubic feet of rock.
There's a lot you could potentially do if you or your imp familiar can fly.
Okay, I just did a little "research" on this topic. Of course, none of this is exact by any means. However, we need some basis for comparison, right? So, I compared a 4 lb mace swung at 40 mph (58.7 ft/s) to a 1000 lb boulder dropped from 60 ft (which would hit a ground-level target at 62.14 ft/s). Assuming a couple of things are equal (which they wouldn't necessarily be in "reality", namely the duration and distance of impact), the boulder would generate a peak impact force of 531 kN, while the mace would generate approximately 2 kN. So, the boulder would generate 265.5 times the force of the mace. Assuming that this translates roughly to damage, that would mean 265d6, or 796 points of damage on average (with a potential of 1590 points). In other words, pretty well instant death (to say the least) to essentially anything; as you would expect. The only mitigating factor here would be the ability of the target to see it coming and get out of the way. So, it would be up to the DM to determine whether the spellcaster could effectively pull this off covertly (perhaps while the target was distracted?). Anyway, if completed effectively, you'd have to give it to the party (and the spellcaster) for creative problem solving, and declare the target instantly liquified.