The Gaming Den

I'm running a campaign in which the players are on a plane with subjective gravity. One of the players got the idea to play the fantasy version of an ODST marine from halo, the ones that drop from orbit in drop pods. So I wrote this feat. Any glaring errors?

Drop From Orbit [Skill]
You leave a crater -before- the battle. This is a skill feat and scales with your ranks in Jump.
Prerequisite: Must have fought on a plane with subjective gravity before OR fallen more than 300 feet and lived.
0: You may negate any falling damage taken from colliding with solid ground by inflicting the same amount of damage you would have taken onto the ground. Consult the relevent section of the DMG for rules on destroying walls and floors.
4: You automatically suceed wisdom checks to alter the direction of subjective gravity.
9: When you fall and do enough damage to the ground to leave a hole, all everything within 10 feet of the hole take 1d6 fire damage per 50 feet you fell, with a reflex save for half damage. This damage is capped at a maximum of 20d6.
14: When falling on a plane with subjective gravity, you may move in non-straight lines and even hover. Treat this as a flight speed of 300' with perfect manuverability that can the turned on and off at will as a free action.
19: You can piledrive people from orbit. This allows you to negate falling damage taken from colliding with solid ground by inflicting the same amount of damage you would have taken onto a grappled creature. If the creature has less hit points than the falling damage inflicted, you must negate the remainder using the ground or take it yourself.

Don't the 0 + 9 level abilities combined equal arbitrarily high damage? I mean... you could just fall from orbit, as you say, and do as much damage as you want, and take none yourself because you instead "redirect it into the ground". Right?

I don't actually like the idea of being able to redirect all falling damage "into the ground", either.

Well it shouldn't be arbitrarily high damage, because people don't fall at faster than terminal velocity. I think falling damage is supposed to top out at 20d6, maybe 30d6. So the rank 9 ability has to be rewritten to have a cap of some kind. Also, even on a plane with subjective gravity, this trick takes a lot of time to set up if you want to fall on someone's head.

You need actual mechanical support for this feat. You should specify hardness and hit points for typical surfaces one might land on, including but not limited to dirt ground, rocky ground, thatched roofs, stone ceilings, wooden roofs, etc, and that's the amount of damage you need to do to blow a 5' x 5' (by 5', if applicable) hole in the material. That way, you actually know under what circumstances the rank 9 ability triggers.

You could scale damage ablation to skill ranks.

The rank 9 abilitiy is now capped.

The stats for various walls are listed in the epic rules here

It lacks thatch and dirt, which I would put at 0 hardness and 30hp and 3 and 60hp respectively. Here is a table with how much damage you need to destroy a 10x10' wall/ceiling of something:

Substance	Hardness	HP per 10x10 section	Average Distance to Make Crater
Wood	5	60	190 feet
Masonry	8	90	280 feet
Reinforced Masonry	8	180	540 feet
Hewn Stone	8	540	1566 feet
Solid Stone	8	900	2600 feet
Iron	10	90	286 feet
Mithral	15	90	300 feet
Adamantine	20	120	400 feet
Force	n/a	n/a	Cannot make crater
Ice	0	30	85 feet
Thatch	0	10	29 feet
Soil	5	30	100 feet

You reach terminal velocity after falling for about 400 meters, so unless the aerodynamics of this plane are substantially different from Earth, you can't make a crater in hewn stone or solid stone. FYI.

Gelare wrote:You reach terminal velocity after falling for about 400 meters, so unless the aerodynamics of this plane are substantially different from Earth, you can't make a crater in hewn stone or solid stone. FYI.

The adventure in question is taking place on the Negative Energy Plane, which has little-to-no air and no terminal velocity. I think that qualifies.

Seems fine. So I take it the PCs have fashioned themselves space suits with endless decanters of air and such?

Grek wrote:You can piledrive people from orbit.

This sounds completely awesome. If my tablet was working I'd totally draw that.

Koumei wrote:

Grek wrote:You can piledrive people from orbit.

This sounds completely awesome. If my tablet was working I'd totally draw that.

FINAHL.

ATOMEEK.

BASTAAAAAAAH.

Gelare wrote:Seems fine. So I take it the PCs have fashioned themselves space suits with endless decanters of air and such?

Not yet. It is on their to-do list, though.