Thanks! I owe you several "upvotes" across a few threads, however the feature doesn't show up for me (even in landscape). I'll definitely go back and add them when it finally does! ^_^
For those without a PHB at the moment The compendium has the info also. I generally house rule 500 ft of falling per round, so if its not an exceptional case, you are probably going to be on the ground in a turn.
For those without a PHB at the moment The compendium has the info also. I generally house rule 500 ft of falling per round, so if its not an exceptional case, you are probably going to be on the ground in a turn.
If you’d like high-altitude falls to be properly time-consuming, use the following optional rule.
When you fall from a great height, you instantly descend up to 500 feet. If you’re still falling on your next turn, you descend up to 500 feet at the end of that turn. This process continues until the fall ends, either because you hit the ground or the fall is otherwise halted.
so the 500 calculation seems accurate.
I don't have a specific page number because D&D Beyond doesn't organize that way.
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Learning is power, power corrupts, study hard be Evil.
Thats pretty much how I narrate things that seem implausible. A character with the hp to survive a fall at 20D6 has a mixture of amazing luck, survival experience and know-how to survive a situation like that. Of course there are other situations that would be taken into account, but this is generally how I would narrate it.
"The Dwarf attempting to flap his arms in air like a bird begins to fall. The ground being exactly 500 ft from him as he descends rapidly. (Rolls Dice...54 damage. The Dwarfs hp is 72) As he is falling and thinking about his guaranteed death below, he notices something. There is a small patch of soft dirt that should help reduce the pain. He angles his body and shifts slightly to the side allowing him to land directly on that small patch of soft dirt. Although he is in pain, he stands up bruised but not broken."
Its all about how the narrative concurs with the rules. The rules are good guidelines that help us narrate how the players are able to achieve the impossible. Sure people can homebrew that falling 500 ft in a round is instant death. But as a player I would be disappointed in my DM if they killed my player off in a way that was against the rules in the book, just because they couldn't narrate how that person survived. There are a decent amount of stories out there already of people who were sky diving and survive falls from much greater distances than that when safety gear failed them.
If you want a weird example of how real world falling https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2012/03/23/falling-falling-cats-and-radiolab-season-8-episode-3/ cats are actually more likely to survive a falls as high as 32 stories, than from a window of 3 to 4 stories high. (Much shorter falls are fine too). Basically if they have more time to spend in free fall they can get their bodies into an ideal position to hit the ground.
So clearly the secret to falling high distances in DnD is to polymorph into a cat on the way down. Couldn't possibly go wrong.
500 per round is a good easy rule of thumb. But actually it should be more for the second and subsequent rounds. Terminal velocity for humans is about 200 kph (https://www.fai.org/page/isc-speed-skydiving), which is about 180 feet per second, or a little over 1000 feet per round. You’d reach this around the second round. So for greater realism without too much complication, you could go with 500 feet in the first round, and 1000 feet in the second and subsequent rounds. Adjust down a bit for halflings, up a bit for ogres.
Of course, it’s rare you need to worry about this. There aren’t many adventuring environments where you won’t have gone splat after round 1.
Here is a question, when does the falling happen? Here is the scenario:
Players are fighting at the top of the cliff, and one gets shoved off the ledge. Do they fall during the turn that the creature shoved them, or on their turn?
Here is why it matters: if they have misty step then as a bonus action they can teleport back onto the ledge during the first second of their turn, but if they fell on the monster's turn, they would be out of range from the cliff ledge.
Feather fall is a reaction, but misty step is a bonus action. Xanathar's Guide says you instantly fall 500 feet, which makes me feel like you fall during the monster's turn. As an equivalent, if the party is on a bridge and the bridge falls, they all fall at the same time, they wouldn't be floating in midair until their turn.
Xanathar's really changed the dynamics of falling. You do indeed fall immediately. No time for an action or a bonus action. You don't even have enough time to make a reaction other than feather fall since it specifically provides for falling as the trigger.
Here is a question, when does the falling happen? Here is the scenario:
Players are fighting at the top of the cliff, and one gets shoved off the ledge. Do they fall during the turn that the creature shoved them, or on their turn?
Here is why it matters: if they have misty step then as a bonus action they can teleport back onto the ledge during the first second of their turn, but if they fell on the monster's turn, they would be out of range from the cliff ledge.
Feather fall is a reaction, but misty step is a bonus action. Xanathar's Guide says you instantly fall 500 feet, which makes me feel like you fall during the monster's turn. As an equivalent, if the party is on a bridge and the bridge falls, they all fall at the same time, they wouldn't be floating in midair until their turn.
Halp
Personally, if it is a player or an important bad guy, I would make them fall on their turn. However, it it is just a random goblin or something, they fall when it happens. Whatever works better for the narrative of your story is the right answer, IMHO.
Yeah, I should have qualified my post by saying that's not how I play it. Cinematic rules apply. When someone at my table falls, there is time for shenanigans on the way down.
Thank you both for the super fast replies! For more context, the PC is actually an NPC druid I added to the party to help the party (Fighter, Wizard, and Warlock) with Into the Abyss (we are jumping in at level 7, and I tied this to the ending of Dragon of Icespire Peak). The Druid has a passive perception of 22, and with Goodberry, Create Water, and Lesser Restoration, she basically broke the AP. She needs to go. So at the end of the last combat on a precipice by a crevasse that descends for miles, while the Wizard and Fighter pushed forward, an earth elemental appeared and shoved her off the edge :D I went over he spell list to make sure I didn't miss something and saw Misty Step >_<
Yeah, I don't like the Xanathar's rule exactly. 576 feet is how far you fall, in Earth gravity, with no air resistance, in 6 seconds. Since there are a full 6 seconds, I think if you fall on another character's turn, you get a turn before you hit, if you have the full 500 feet to fall. And so does everyone else. So if another player has an ability to help you, they have time to do it. If you decide to jump on your turn, you don't get another turn to stop your fall, unless you have more than 500 feet to fall.
If it's less than 500 feet, like 100 feet, then I think it happens more or less instantly, and you only get your reaction. In between 100 and 500, there's kind of some discretion.
I have had a lot of classes in physics and am a huge fan of physics. When I find a rule the goes against the laws of physics I go against the rule. Granted, magic trumps physics.
I had a character that did 1st level bard to get Feather fall. Then I went rogue. I practiced using feather fall and jumping into water until I could time it right.
When the situations presented it I would jump off things to attack and feather fall at the last second.
Finally failed my role and went splat. But it was a good time. Picture an assassin jumping off a cliff with 2 daggers.
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Can someone be so kind as to point me to the book and page where the section on "falling" is?
Specifically, I am looking for "falling speed" (How far does a creature fall in one round and is that affected by anything other than Feather Fall?)
Book and page numbers for reference please. Thanks!
PHB 183 is the rules on falling - it only specifies the damage taken from falling.
With regards falling speed, we could calculate that reasonably easily with some maths ....
edit:
Here's the link to the sage advice on this:
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/02/13/how-many-feet-does-a-creature-fall-in-a-single-round/
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Assuming a free fall with 0 as initial velocity, in one round you should fall by something like 579 feet.
Dont remeber the page, but the falling rules in the PHB gives only the damage...1d6 for 10 feet, to a maximum of 20d6.
For those without a PHB at the moment The compendium has the info also. I generally house rule 500 ft of falling per round, so if its not an exceptional case, you are probably going to be on the ground in a turn.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/adventuring/the-environment
I do not cap damage at 20d6. A character should not survive a 500ft fall.
nor should a character, regardless of level, survive being thrown into a vat of acid...yet they do.
a) imo, terminal velocities would exist even in fantasy land, b) https://www.statista.com/chart/19708/known-occasions-where-people-survived-falls/ - you're a world-class hero ..you know all the tricks to survive and implement them all as you plummet to the ground.
i think 20d6 is too low of a cap (a level 6-7 character could survive), but think a cap makes sense (maybe like a tier 3 character).
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
A rather comprehensive list of free WotC D&D resources
Deck of Decks
Falling rates are explored in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, under Chapter 2 Dungeon Master's Tools, Falling
so the 500 calculation seems accurate.
I don't have a specific page number because D&D Beyond doesn't organize that way.
Learning is power, power corrupts, study hard be Evil.
Thats pretty much how I narrate things that seem implausible. A character with the hp to survive a fall at 20D6 has a mixture of amazing luck, survival experience and know-how to survive a situation like that. Of course there are other situations that would be taken into account, but this is generally how I would narrate it.
"The Dwarf attempting to flap his arms in air like a bird begins to fall. The ground being exactly 500 ft from him as he descends rapidly. (Rolls Dice...54 damage. The Dwarfs hp is 72) As he is falling and thinking about his guaranteed death below, he notices something. There is a small patch of soft dirt that should help reduce the pain. He angles his body and shifts slightly to the side allowing him to land directly on that small patch of soft dirt. Although he is in pain, he stands up bruised but not broken."
Its all about how the narrative concurs with the rules. The rules are good guidelines that help us narrate how the players are able to achieve the impossible. Sure people can homebrew that falling 500 ft in a round is instant death. But as a player I would be disappointed in my DM if they killed my player off in a way that was against the rules in the book, just because they couldn't narrate how that person survived. There are a decent amount of stories out there already of people who were sky diving and survive falls from much greater distances than that when safety gear failed them.
If you want a weird example of how real world falling https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2012/03/23/falling-falling-cats-and-radiolab-season-8-episode-3/ cats are actually more likely to survive a falls as high as 32 stories, than from a window of 3 to 4 stories high. (Much shorter falls are fine too). Basically if they have more time to spend in free fall they can get their bodies into an ideal position to hit the ground.
So clearly the secret to falling high distances in DnD is to polymorph into a cat on the way down. Couldn't possibly go wrong.
A round is 6 seconds. acceleration is 32 feet per second per second.
etc etc. or 597 feet. Almost the length of 2 football fields.
The first second would be 16 feet the second second would be 64 feet etc.
500 per round is a good easy rule of thumb. But actually it should be more for the second and subsequent rounds. Terminal velocity for humans is about 200 kph (https://www.fai.org/page/isc-speed-skydiving), which is about 180 feet per second, or a little over 1000 feet per round. You’d reach this around the second round. So for greater realism without too much complication, you could go with 500 feet in the first round, and 1000 feet in the second and subsequent rounds. Adjust down a bit for halflings, up a bit for ogres.
Of course, it’s rare you need to worry about this. There aren’t many adventuring environments where you won’t have gone splat after round 1.
Here is a question, when does the falling happen? Here is the scenario:
Players are fighting at the top of the cliff, and one gets shoved off the ledge. Do they fall during the turn that the creature shoved them, or on their turn?
Here is why it matters: if they have misty step then as a bonus action they can teleport back onto the ledge during the first second of their turn, but if they fell on the monster's turn, they would be out of range from the cliff ledge.
Feather fall is a reaction, but misty step is a bonus action. Xanathar's Guide says you instantly fall 500 feet, which makes me feel like you fall during the monster's turn. As an equivalent, if the party is on a bridge and the bridge falls, they all fall at the same time, they wouldn't be floating in midair until their turn.
Halp
Xanathar's really changed the dynamics of falling. You do indeed fall immediately. No time for an action or a bonus action. You don't even have enough time to make a reaction other than feather fall since it specifically provides for falling as the trigger.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Personally, if it is a player or an important bad guy, I would make them fall on their turn. However, it it is just a random goblin or something, they fall when it happens. Whatever works better for the narrative of your story is the right answer, IMHO.
Yeah, I should have qualified my post by saying that's not how I play it. Cinematic rules apply. When someone at my table falls, there is time for shenanigans on the way down.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Thank you both for the super fast replies! For more context, the PC is actually an NPC druid I added to the party to help the party (Fighter, Wizard, and Warlock) with Into the Abyss (we are jumping in at level 7, and I tied this to the ending of Dragon of Icespire Peak). The Druid has a passive perception of 22, and with Goodberry, Create Water, and Lesser Restoration, she basically broke the AP. She needs to go. So at the end of the last combat on a precipice by a crevasse that descends for miles, while the Wizard and Fighter pushed forward, an earth elemental appeared and shoved her off the edge :D I went over he spell list to make sure I didn't miss something and saw Misty Step >_<
Yeah, I don't like the Xanathar's rule exactly. 576 feet is how far you fall, in Earth gravity, with no air resistance, in 6 seconds. Since there are a full 6 seconds, I think if you fall on another character's turn, you get a turn before you hit, if you have the full 500 feet to fall. And so does everyone else. So if another player has an ability to help you, they have time to do it. If you decide to jump on your turn, you don't get another turn to stop your fall, unless you have more than 500 feet to fall.
If it's less than 500 feet, like 100 feet, then I think it happens more or less instantly, and you only get your reaction. In between 100 and 500, there's kind of some discretion.
I have had a lot of classes in physics and am a huge fan of physics. When I find a rule the goes against the laws of physics I go against the rule. Granted, magic trumps physics.
I had a character that did 1st level bard to get Feather fall. Then I went rogue. I practiced using feather fall and jumping into water until I could time it right.
When the situations presented it I would jump off things to attack and feather fall at the last second.
Finally failed my role and went splat. But it was a good time. Picture an assassin jumping off a cliff with 2 daggers.