I made a character with a what some might call an odd way of dealing damage. He is a Rune Knight, Protector Aasimar. He has his standard method of dealing damage with a polearm (and Polearm Master), but considering what both the race and class can do, I was wondering if I could use Giant's Might, grow to large size, bring out my wings, fly up, and then land on anything smaller than me. My immediate thought was that ought to do quite a bit of bludgeoning damage to drop my enlarged rear on something.
Do y'all have any thoughts on that? How you would rule it as a DM or how it would work RAW?
This is one of those things where I know that logically it would probably do a ton of damage, but to keep from breaking the game entirely I would probably rule it as dealing more reasonable damage.
I'd probably base damage taken on the Fall Damage table... so every 10 feet you fall deals 1d6 to your opponent, but you take the same damage as well. I think I would have you make a Dexterity check, and whatever you roll becomes the DC for a DEX save from any creatures below you, and they take half damage on a successful save. It'll be less reliable than just fighting stuff with your weapon, but it could be a clutch move for dealing a ton of a damage to small group of enemies.
Yeah, I'd also rule that has regular fall damage split between both creatures, with the target getting a Dex save to halve that. And you'd probably need to make either an attack roll or a skill check to actually hit the guy. Not as effective as just using the attack action, since it'd technically be improvised.
Falling onto a Creature (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/tcoe/dungeon-masters-tools#FallingontoaCreature) If a creature falls into the space of a second creature and neither of them is Tiny, the second creature must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or be impacted by the falling creature, and any damage resulting from the fall is divided evenly between them. The impacted creature is also knocked prone, unless it is two or more sizes larger than the falling creature.
Yeah, I was already using a house rule similar to the one in TCoE (which my players hated because they wanted to air assassinate like in assassin's creed).
But yeah, unless you want dragons to be able to one shot you with a belly flop, I'd discourage size damage multipliers.
Id use Tasha's rules for falling onto another creature. If the creature fails its save I'd add a bonus to the target's half of the damage taken to reflect the size difference (similar to how the Enlarge/Reduce spell modifies damage made with weapon attacks). Maybe an additional 1d4 or 1d6 damage to the target per size difference (so, for example, an extra 2d4 or 2d6 if a Large creature falls onto a Small creature or a Huge creature falls onto a Medium creature). That being said, if I chose to apply this house rule I would probably apply the inverse as well (i.e, a small creature falling onto a large creature would get a -2d4 or -2d6 modifier to the damage dealt to its target)
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Bear in mind i belive the protector aasimar's wings are only once per day, so idk if this would always be a viable attack strategy. It could be a fun signature attack for boss fights, however if the boss is large or bigger then you might not see the damage you want out of it.
Yeah, I was already using a house rule similar to the one in TCoE (which my players hated because they wanted to air assassinate like in assassin's creed).
But yeah, unless you want dragons to be able to one shot you with a belly flop, I'd discourage size damage multipliers.
I'm playing as a Tortle Barbarian in my current campaign, and in a recent fight he did a Flying Elbow Drop off the top of a building onto a werewolf... my DM decided to calculate damage based on weight using a homebrew chart she found online (which I think was mostly meant for calculating falling rocks and hazards), and my Tortle weighed about 500 pounds plus his big 100+ pound backpack and the werewolf exploded. It was hilarious in the moment but we realized pretty quickly it was absolutely busted so if it comes up again we'll have to figure something else out.
You're missing something. Pole Arm Master doesn't get people to bunch up. It just lets you take a swing as someone if they try to leave or try to get close. Everyone else is free to do as they like. You need Sentinel to keep someone from moving, and it's still really only one of them. If you don't keep attacking one, they move as they like. You get one action to attack, you can use the bottom of your pole arm go hit with a second attack as a bonus, and you get one reaction to try and keep one of your targets in place.
They are only going to bunch up for your "enlarged rear" attack if the DM want them to. Most things would probably would have the sense to scatter the moment they saw you pop wings and start going up. Even birds are smart enough for that.
I understand this. By mentioning polearm master, I was not trying to imply that I was using this to bunch enemies up. I was trying to say that this character is not trying to fall on creatures as a main source of damage. I was asking because, as I was making the character, I realized that I had an easy way to make myself large and an easy way to fly. If creatures happened to be bunched up (i.e. zombies moving in a shambling horde, goblin archers in a group, etc.), I was curious if it could be useful to get big, fly over, and fall on them. That's all. I figured if I used Radiant Soul as my action, I was perfectly within the rules of the game to fly above a group and then stop flying.
Ok, sure. I don't know why you mentioned Pole Arm Master though. It's got nothing at all to do with what you want. You want to get big and drop, that's fine. People have already pointed out that you'd take half the damage you did, and that other things could do the same thing to you as well.
Out of curiosity, how many people are in your party, and how many zombies or goblin archers are attacking? You get Giant's Might at level 3. The standard group is as much as 5 and as little as 3. With a party of 3 you'd need 5 goblins to make a medium encounter, 7 would make it hard. The same party would need to the same number of zombies, and the goblins would actually be a little tougher, since they can shoot at you while you're in the air. They aren't going to bunch up. I've always seen a "horde" as at least 12 myself.
My go-to for scaling fall damage by size is to increment the dice, which is inline with Beast Hit Dice by size.
Tiny ---> d4
Small/Medium ---> d6
Large ---> d8
Etc...
Calculate damage according to who is falling. Size differential doesn't matter for damage, since "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Larger creatures often have better constitution/HP, which will naturally bump up their odds of survival.
While I get what you're saying Memnosyne, you are only talking about Beasts, but the first thing that ran though my mind was that Barbarians had to huge.
There's no class anymore that has a d4 for hit points.
Sorcerers and Wizards would be small
Artificers, Bards, Clerics, Druids, Monks, Rogues and Warlocks are medium
Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers are large
Barbarians are huge
It also suggest that an Ancient Dragon would do a 20 when it fell on you. Pretty much like DxJxC said. Hat's off to the both of you. :-)
The jump from Huge (d12) to Gargantuan (d20) w.r.t. Hit Dice is pretty extreme, and not great for consistency. 2d8 would be a better fit, which would yield an average of 180 damage (40d8), if an Ancient Red Dragon fell from 200+ feet.
That's almost exactly twice the damage of its Fire Breath, which feels right for a maneuver that would result in shared massive damage. Not enough to take out a Level 20 Barbarian at Full Health, and Rage makes it perfectly manageable. Anyone else needs to watch out though...
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I have a question for y'all.
I made a character with a what some might call an odd way of dealing damage. He is a Rune Knight, Protector Aasimar. He has his standard method of dealing damage with a polearm (and Polearm Master), but considering what both the race and class can do, I was wondering if I could use Giant's Might, grow to large size, bring out my wings, fly up, and then land on anything smaller than me. My immediate thought was that ought to do quite a bit of bludgeoning damage to drop my enlarged rear on something.
Do y'all have any thoughts on that?
How you would rule it as a DM or how it would work RAW?
~Levi
This is one of those things where I know that logically it would probably do a ton of damage, but to keep from breaking the game entirely I would probably rule it as dealing more reasonable damage.
I'd probably base damage taken on the Fall Damage table... so every 10 feet you fall deals 1d6 to your opponent, but you take the same damage as well. I think I would have you make a Dexterity check, and whatever you roll becomes the DC for a DEX save from any creatures below you, and they take half damage on a successful save. It'll be less reliable than just fighting stuff with your weapon, but it could be a clutch move for dealing a ton of a damage to small group of enemies.
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Yeah, I'd also rule that has regular fall damage split between both creatures, with the target getting a Dex save to halve that. And you'd probably need to make either an attack roll or a skill check to actually hit the guy. Not as effective as just using the attack action, since it'd technically be improvised.
Tasha's has the rule for this:
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Yeah, I was already using a house rule similar to the one in TCoE (which my players hated because they wanted to air assassinate like in assassin's creed).
But yeah, unless you want dragons to be able to one shot you with a belly flop, I'd discourage size damage multipliers.
The Squash attack of a Hill Giant (variant) might work for you.
Id use Tasha's rules for falling onto another creature. If the creature fails its save I'd add a bonus to the target's half of the damage taken to reflect the size difference (similar to how the Enlarge/Reduce spell modifies damage made with weapon attacks). Maybe an additional 1d4 or 1d6 damage to the target per size difference (so, for example, an extra 2d4 or 2d6 if a Large creature falls onto a Small creature or a Huge creature falls onto a Medium creature). That being said, if I chose to apply this house rule I would probably apply the inverse as well (i.e, a small creature falling onto a large creature would get a -2d4 or -2d6 modifier to the damage dealt to its target)
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Bear in mind i belive the protector aasimar's wings are only once per day, so idk if this would always be a viable attack strategy. It could be a fun signature attack for boss fights, however if the boss is large or bigger then you might not see the damage you want out of it.
I'm playing as a Tortle Barbarian in my current campaign, and in a recent fight he did a Flying Elbow Drop off the top of a building onto a werewolf... my DM decided to calculate damage based on weight using a homebrew chart she found online (which I think was mostly meant for calculating falling rocks and hazards), and my Tortle weighed about 500 pounds plus his big 100+ pound backpack and the werewolf exploded. It was hilarious in the moment but we realized pretty quickly it was absolutely busted so if it comes up again we'll have to figure something else out.
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And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Right. He is a polearm master as well. This would be an attack I'd be looking to do if there was a group of medium/small enemies clustered together.
~Levi
You're missing something. Pole Arm Master doesn't get people to bunch up. It just lets you take a swing as someone if they try to leave or try to get close. Everyone else is free to do as they like. You need Sentinel to keep someone from moving, and it's still really only one of them. If you don't keep attacking one, they move as they like. You get one action to attack, you can use the bottom of your pole arm go hit with a second attack as a bonus, and you get one reaction to try and keep one of your targets in place.
They are only going to bunch up for your "enlarged rear" attack if the DM want them to. Most things would probably would have the sense to scatter the moment they saw you pop wings and start going up. Even birds are smart enough for that.
<Insert clever signature here>
I understand this. By mentioning polearm master, I was not trying to imply that I was using this to bunch enemies up. I was trying to say that this character is not trying to fall on creatures as a main source of damage. I was asking because, as I was making the character, I realized that I had an easy way to make myself large and an easy way to fly. If creatures happened to be bunched up (i.e. zombies moving in a shambling horde, goblin archers in a group, etc.), I was curious if it could be useful to get big, fly over, and fall on them. That's all. I figured if I used Radiant Soul as my action, I was perfectly within the rules of the game to fly above a group and then stop flying.
~Levi
Ok, sure. I don't know why you mentioned Pole Arm Master though. It's got nothing at all to do with what you want. You want to get big and drop, that's fine. People have already pointed out that you'd take half the damage you did, and that other things could do the same thing to you as well.
Out of curiosity, how many people are in your party, and how many zombies or goblin archers are attacking? You get Giant's Might at level 3. The standard group is as much as 5 and as little as 3. With a party of 3 you'd need 5 goblins to make a medium encounter, 7 would make it hard. The same party would need to the same number of zombies, and the goblins would actually be a little tougher, since they can shoot at you while you're in the air. They aren't going to bunch up. I've always seen a "horde" as at least 12 myself.
<Insert clever signature here>
My go-to for scaling fall damage by size is to increment the dice, which is inline with Beast Hit Dice by size.
Tiny ---> d4
Small/Medium ---> d6
Large ---> d8
Etc...
Calculate damage according to who is falling. Size differential doesn't matter for damage, since "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Larger creatures often have better constitution/HP, which will naturally bump up their odds of survival.
While I get what you're saying Memnosyne, you are only talking about Beasts, but the first thing that ran though my mind was that Barbarians had to huge.
It also suggest that an Ancient Dragon would do a 20 when it fell on you. Pretty much like DxJxC said. Hat's off to the both of you. :-)
<Insert clever signature here>
The jump from Huge (d12) to Gargantuan (d20) w.r.t. Hit Dice is pretty extreme, and not great for consistency. 2d8 would be a better fit, which would yield an average of 180 damage (40d8), if an Ancient Red Dragon fell from 200+ feet.
That's almost exactly twice the damage of its Fire Breath, which feels right for a maneuver that would result in shared massive damage. Not enough to take out a Level 20 Barbarian at Full Health, and Rage makes it perfectly manageable. Anyone else needs to watch out though...