So in a recent dungeons and dragons session, a player was plummeting through the sky for 2 hours(Side note, he happened to have a death ward placed on him which allowed him to survive the fall, the player just wants to know how much damage it would be). How much damage would they take after landing. Like i tried thinking about it, but then the idea of terminal velocity and conversion had me really confused. If anyone could give me an answer, I'd really appreciate it.

Rules as written (RAW) would be 20d6 for max falling damage

I use a house rule for falling because 20d6 is a piddly amount of damage and everyone having an excellent chance of surviving falls from 200-ft. is just stupid. Instead, I make it 1 hit point of damage for every foot fallen. You can attempt a Dexterity Acrobatics ability check using the distance fallen as the DC to not take any damage and to not land prone which, I feel, makes it realistic. It means that most average people will, on average, be able to jump down 10-ft. most of the time without injury, but only people who are very lucky will take no damage from a 20-ft. fall, and it requires skill and training in order to consistently avoid injury from falls at all, but even they have a limit (I believe it's about 33-ft. or so is the upper limit if you max everything in Acrobatics).

So they fell for 390km [244miles] (give or take)... That's quite the distance (on Earth it would be a good 290km [180miles] in outer space, since the Kármán line is around 100km [62miles])

I'd say that any living thing falling from that distance is bound to become a paste, Death Ward or not. If one still wants to grant the spell effect, the pain of the impact will probably still make the creature completely insane and afterwards require extensive magical/medical care to put back together the disaster they would have become.

But yeah, believe it or not, RAW they would have taken 20d6 damage... Quite underwhelming if you ask me.

Quote from LeK >>

I'd say that any living thing falling from that distance is bound to become a paste, Death Ward or not. If one still wants to grant the spell effect, the pain of the impact will probably still make the creature completely insane and afterwards require extensive magical/medical care to put back together the disaster they would have become.

I think I'd still allow the spell to work as is since it's a spell, after all, and if it works in Tomb of Annihilation, 390km is nothing :D

Actually the rulebook is spot on, as a medium sized creature will reach terminal velocity after just 12 seconds of falling - the additional 2 hours would make absolutely no difference to the impact.

That's why skydivers can & do sometimes survive parachute failures in real-life - so when talking about heroic D&D types who can withstand absurd amounts of bludgeoning damage at high level, they likely would either walk away from such a fall or just need 1 HP of healing to get them back on their feet.

Google search says humans reach terminal velocity after falling 1500 feet or so. Fall damage should cap at 150d6, ~525 average damage.

So if you have a death ward, and say your neck was twisted and all your bones break, then they won't reform? It seems like you'll just die anyway.

 20d6 doesn't seem seem a lot, but the commoner just has 4HP or 1d8HP, so if your at the point where you can survive 70 points of damage you're absurdly powerful compared to the average person.

Just a physics add on, once you fall about 450 ft you hit max velocity so you really don't take MORE damage from falling 450 ft or 45,000 feet. You would hit with the dame force.

Quote from Grebeir >>

Just a physics add on, once you fall about 450 ft you hit max velocity so you really don't take MORE damage from falling 450 ft or 45,000 feet. You would hit with the dame force.

 Thats 450 meters or around 1500 feet. I already mentioned that a few posts ago.