Size modifiers to things need to go away.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 2:19 pm

let me just clarify something ....
I'm saying that larger creatures should get a penalty to jump and climb.
It's called the cube-square law.

fun fact: unless you're going by D&D rules, elephants can't jump (i.e., all 4 legs off the ground simultaneously), despite having a top speed of 25 mph (that = 220 feet in one round)

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:04 pm

wotmaniac wrote:fun fact: unless you're going by D&D rules, elephants can't jump (i.e., all 4 legs off the ground simultaneously), despite having a top speed of 25 mph (that = 220 feet in one round)

But that's not based on size ... it's based on their leg design. Now you get into anatomical exceptions in general rule systems. Consider the following: Kangaroos are about 6 feet tall; they can jump 2 times their height.

If my internet google fu was better I could come up with stats on how high a moose can jump. I do know it's way higher than an elephant.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:30 pm

Ah. I wouldn't mind a size penalty to jumping for oversized creatures, though if doing so I might like some sort of hard mechanical stride component where one could note a giant 20' tall could just easily take a 10' walking strides and 25' running strides.

Perhaps this is too much granularity though. I've just been annoyed that larger creatures cannot jump what that should be able to simply step over.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:53 am

Fun fact of the world. Animals of all sizes can jump three foot in the air from a normal gait, if they have the legs for it. Fleas can, crickets can, mice can, cats can, we can (if we're fit), horses can. Even an elephant could jump like that, only the forces involved would break and dislocate it's legs.

Cube-square limits the big guy's forces by ~1/length, leg length multiplies that force duration for ~1/1 speed, and thus total height above base. Jumpers are lithe and cut, not big. Dex mod to d20's jump is close enough, with the bonus from HD accounting for all that base height and stride length.

Biped giants can no more run than dragons can fly, that shit's all magic.

Kangaroos cheat, they have springs for legs, so it's like what we do on a trampoline, higher with each bound. Record clearance at full speed, 22'.

Falling's down a well's fun too. Mice bounce and run off, rats are stunned, dogs break, men die, and horses explode in a font of shattered bone and gore. A big dragon falling from the sky should paint acres with lethal shrapnel.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:21 am

tussock wrote: Falling's down a well's fun too. Mice bounce and run off, rats are stunned, dogs break, men die, and horses explode in a font of shattered bone and gore. A big dragon falling from the sky should paint acres with lethal shrapnel.

yet another function of cube-square

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:57 pm

In the real world, you can fall off of a 6' ladder and DIE.

In the real world, you can fall out of an airplane (no parachute) and LIVE.

Neither option is possible in the basic D&D HP system.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:47 pm

Actually, the second is possible if you have at least 21 HP, and is 100% certain if you have 121 or more (ignoring massive damage rules).

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:10 am

... and the first is possible as long as you have less than 6 HP

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:58 pm

wotmaniac wrote:... and the first is possible as long as you have less than 6 HP

No. You can fall from a height of 9'11" and you'll never take any damage. Once you hit 10 feet, then you can die. Well, actually, you'd just get "disabled" and be "dying", but I think it'd take a height of at least 20 feet to flat out kill someone in one fall...

...unless there's a rule that NPCs don't survive to -10. Am I missing something?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 1:30 pm

I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 1:39 pm

RobbyPants wrote:No. You can fall from a height of 9'11" and you'll never take any damage.

good call.
my bad.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:00 pm

sabs wrote:I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.

That's the second time I've heard that, so I could be totally wrong. Can anyone point me to an actual rule on that? I guess it's possible that it's a typical enough houserule that many people assume it's RAW.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:01 pm

to be fair, your chances of falling out of an airplane and living are INCREDIBLY SMALL. Noone is sure how/why it happens. Perhaps there needs to be a rule in D&D that if you fall and take in 1 shot enough damage to kill you, then you get to make 3 percentile rolls, if all 3 come up at 00, you live.

violence in the media · Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:09 pm

sabs wrote:I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.

Then why do the Construct and Undead types have a special rule under the immunity to massive damage clause that state they're immediately destroyed at 0 hp? Why do boars have the Ferocity special ability?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:12 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
wotmaniac wrote:... and the first is possible as long as you have less than 6 HP
No. You can fall from a height of 9'11" and you'll never take any damage.

...unless you fall off a horse, in which case you'll take 1d6 damage.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:21 pm

hogarth wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:
wotmaniac wrote:... and the first is possible as long as you have less than 6 HP
No. You can fall from a height of 9'11" and you'll never take any damage.
...unless you fall off a horse, in which case you'll take 1d6 damage.

Unless you're Superman, and your GM is a dick, and he makes you roll on his special Critical Hit/Greivous Injury chart and makes you paralized.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:22 pm

violence in the media wrote:
sabs wrote:I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.
Then why do the Construct and Undead types have a special rule under the immunity to massive damage clause that state they're immediately destroyed at 0 hp? Why do boars have the Ferocity special ability?

Is that 3/3.5 or 2? I could be misremembering. It's been a while since I played D&D.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:24 pm

sabs wrote:
violence in the media wrote:
sabs wrote:I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.
Then why do the Construct and Undead types have a special rule under the immunity to massive damage clause that state they're immediately destroyed at 0 hp? Why do boars have the Ferocity special ability?
Is that 3/3.5 or 2? I could be misremembering. It's been a while since I played D&D.

The Construct and Undead immunity to Massive Damage applies in 3.5, that is for sure. I am not sure if the same applies in 3.0 and in 2e, because I have never really looked at 3.0 material and have little to no knowledge of 2e (all I have seen is a Monster Manual in the local library, and that didn't help much because of how the entries were built and also because I have always been too tired/lazy to read them in detail.)

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:31 pm

violence in the media wrote:
sabs wrote:I thought only PC's went to -10, and everyone else died at 0.
Then why do the Construct and Undead types have a special rule under the immunity to massive damage clause that state they're immediately destroyed at 0 hp? Why do boars have the Ferocity special ability?

That's right. That pretty strongly implies that the -10 rule is the default for everyone. I kind of figured that NPCs dying at 0 was probably just a really common houserule, but I wasn't sure.

hogarth wrote:
RobbyPants wrote:
wotmaniac wrote:... and the first is possible as long as you have less than 6 HP
No. You can fall from a height of 9'11" and you'll never take any damage.
...unless you fall off a horse, in which case you'll take 1d6 damage.

True, true. Maybe ladders count as mounts...

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:03 pm

sabs wrote:to be fair, your chances of falling out of an airplane and living are INCREDIBLY SMALL. Noone is sure how/why it happens.

Well, actually they do. Falling doesn't really kill you (although you could die from wind burns I suppose) it's the sudden stop that does. So all that distance is nothing; what you land on is everything. How to Fall Out of a Plane and Live, and Other Survival Tips

Falling Out of a Plane
In 1942 a Soviet pilot named I. M. Chisov plunged 22,000 feet without a parachute after bailing out of his Ilyushin 4 bomber. German pilots had attacked Chisov’s plane, and he didn’t open his chute because he was afraid it would allow his attackers to find him. He landed on a snow-covered slope and rolled downhill, badly hurt and unconscious—but alive.

According to aerodynamics experts, a skydiver without a chute reaches a terminal velocity of about 120 miles per hour after dropping roughly 500 feet. That actually isn’t any faster than the speed you’d reach if you fell from a moderately tall building. “But it’s not falling that kills you; it’s the landing,” Richard says: The abrupt pressure of an impact is likely to break open blood vessels such as your aorta, damage internal organs, and shatter your bones.

The worst thing to hit is a hard surface that brings you to a halt almost instantly. If you land on snow (like Chisov) or hit something that gives way, such as a skylight (as happened to U.S. Air Force Sergeant Alan Magee, who survived a 20,000-foot drop into a French train station in 1943), you will suffer less damage. In such a situation, it is the ability of the bones of your skull and spine to withstand the impact that can potentially preserve your life, according to a report conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration.