Issue #70 of Dragon (February 1983) saw the appearance of "Falling Damage" by Frank Mentzer, the first of what would turn into several articles discussing this strangely contentious subject. I say strangely contentious because, until this article appeared, I don't think the "right" way to adjudicate falling damage was ever a topic of serious conversation, at least not among the gamers I knew. The LBBs provide rules for falling damage hidden away in the section on aerial combat in Volume 3, where it's stated simply that
for every 1" of height a rider must throw one six-sided die for damage occurring from the crash, i.e. a crash from 12" means twelve dice must be rolled and their total scored as points of damageThat passage is the basis for what was the standard interpretation of falling damage in every form of D&D -- 1d6 damage per 10' fallen. That is, until this article, where Mentzer claims that the rules in AD&D were hastily written by Gary Gygax and were, as such, unclear as to his actual intent. Instead of 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, the claim is advanced that Gary actually meant 1d6 damage per 10', with the dice being cumulative in effect. That is,
1d6 for the first 10' feet, 2d6 for the second 10' (total 3d6 for a 20' fall), 3d6 for the third 10', and so on, cumulative. The falling body reaches that 20d6 maximum shortly before passing the 60' mark.According to Mentzer, this new system -- which in fact Gygax had "always used" -- is "definitely more realistic." (emphasis mine) There's that dreaded word, the hallmark of the Silver Age. It's something that, at the time, meant a lot to me, but that, as the years have worn on, I find myself caring less and less about. In a game where people can throw balls of fire from their hands and adventurers become tougher to kill as the result of slaying monsters and looting treasure, fretting over whether a 60' fall or a 200' fall deals 20d6 damage seems bizarre. More to the point, after nearly a decade of "doing it wrong" (Mentzer's words), did the difference matter enough to make the change?
Regardless, the claim that Gygax had "always used a geometrically increasing system for damage in AD&D games" strikes me as somewhat suspect. I suppose it's possible that, sometime after the LBBs were published, Gary changed the way he dealt with falling damage in his home campaign. But, if so, I find it surprising that he never noticed that in every other D&D product published after 1974, the 1d6 per 10' rule is the norm. Indeed, I'd hazard a guess that, if one were to look through the various modules and articles Gygax penned between 1974 and 1983, we'd find instances where the 1d6 damage per 10' rule was in fact used. There's a fun project for an enterprising soul out there!
Issue #70… my third Dragon Magazine. I remember this article. I also remember, even at this young “fan boy” stage of my ttrpg “journey”, I realized a lot of what was being published was dumb (I would use the term - garbage - but I don’t want to be overly aggressive about it).
ReplyDeleteThis article was a waste of space, and yeah, the simulation of reality thing was a rocky road to travel. It ranked with me about as high as an article humanizing orcs by explaining their society, or another showing me the digestive track of a piercer. Ugh!
Of course, I was also playing Aftermath!, where a bullet weighed .001 enc and your front pocket could hold .1 enc. Firearm damage was calculated using a formula that plugged-in the kinetic foot pounds energy of a real world round, on impact.
Sooo…..
Of course, this really gets into the question of, what is a hit point? Gygax's interpretation, if I recall correctly, is that it is a combination of stamina, luck, wit, and resourcefulness. That works okay for an abstract combat system, but stretches credulity when Gorgo the 9th level Barbarian can survive a 40' fall (avg. 35 points of damage under the newer rules, 14 under the old ones), and keep fighting.
ReplyDeleteConsistency was never a hallmark of early D&D rules, or at least it was consistently inconsistent.
Not it! 😁
ReplyDeleteAlso, I totally agree. Even in 5e, I believe the rule is still d6 damage for every 10'.
And another thing, this more "realistic" rule of cumulative damage doesn't account for terminal velocity... 😉
I was never super upset about the falling damage rules, as the distribution of outcomes of falls in the real world is pretty crazy (you can trip over your own feet and end up dead; multiple people have fallen 10's of thousands of feet and lived). So, there can be super specific situations that should probably be unsurvivable by anyone - like a 100' fall through free air onto a flat stone surface - but also lots of mitigating circumstances in the real world.
ReplyDelete"Never build a treefort in a pine tree" was a falling lesson we learned young. If I remember correctly our falling damage(s) were a combination of how far you fell, what (surface type) you landed on, and a sort of "distinction" variable roll to see if you plonked on your head, or your axe cracked your teeth; a classic version of the nighttime romantic fumble in the car followed by wondering where your wallet ended up in the morning.
DeleteCommon sense gaming. Thankfully we never played an RPG with BMX bikes and rickety half-pipes.
Gygax is a very game-mechanics-first designer. He laid out a game that works, and complicating it more doesn't usually add to the fun. His stated interpretation changed regularly, either to quash the latest fad (critical hits) or to justify his attempts to sand down rough edges (falling here, but also increasing rounds to the scale of minutes in AD&D). In general, I feel he puts on whatever persona he needs to in an effort to get people to stop overthinking it and just play the game (while recognizing that his audience is exactly the sort that would not accept that message). If Gygax had said his interpretation of hp is "not dying yet, and that's all you need to know," I don't think it would have gone over well, even though it's probably all there is to it.
ReplyDeleteDan over at Delta's DnD Hotspot went into some depth on the series of articles this initial salvo set off.
ReplyDeletehttp://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2018/02/falling-revisted.html
The key take-aways were that the linear dice per 10 ft fallen is reasonable, that terminal velocity comes into play _well_ after 200 ft, so the 20 die cap is arbitrary, and that fall mortality is about 50% at 50 feet. But that last bit is lumping all falls together: a fall of 35 feet will kill half of everyone that lands on their head, but it takea twice the distance to reach that effect if you land on your feet or legs.
On a personal note, the worst thing about 1 die per 10 ft damage is that it forces you to insert a lot of exceptions for how falling 10 feet doesn't _really_usually kill 50% of all level 0 mooks, because you ignore 10 ft when you jump down deliberately, dive into water, can execute a controlled fall using various proficiencies, etc. In general, anything that deals even 1 point of damage will kill, say, 25% of all level 0 mooks. The nuissance damage that some writers enjoy, like "oh, that book fell off the shelf on your head: 1d4 damage" or "caught in a hail storm: 1 point of damage" just irks me.