Fall Damage Falls Short! Fixing Fall Damage in D&D 5e

Fall Damage in Dungeons and Dragons has always felt underwhelming and doesnt leave as much of an IMPACT as it should. This small D&D homebrew house rule can help bring back respect towards those high heights! ⏬ More Content ⏬

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=== 🔗 DC Links ===

=== 📍 Credits ===
🖱️ Video Editor: Zack Newman

0:00 Intro
0:26 Respecting Fall Damage
1:14 DC Homebrew Method
2:15 Scaling Method
4:14 Making Fall Damage for Dangerous

#DnD #DungeonsandDragons #D&D

[TheDungeonCoach]

What are your thoughts on Fall Damage in D&D? Do you have any homebrews?

[davidrose]

My understanding is that at Gary Gygax table fall damage is 1d6 added exponentially per 10 feet. Example: 30ft fall = 1d6 + 2d6 + 3d6

That’s how I run it. Falling is scary.

[twilightgardenspresentatio]

I use 1d6 + 1d6 for every ten foot after the first.
10’ 1d6
20’ 3d6
30’ 6d6
40’ 10d6
50’ 15d6

45hp/five story fall makes sense to me
Add a check for injuries incurred. You can twist an ankle while walking, it don’t take a ten foot fall.

[Serutans]

I have tried fixing fall damage in almost exactly this way and the only conclusion I came to is that fall damage is rarely such a big deal to PCs anyway, but if increased leads to extremely effective ways (Polymorph + anything that gives flying, for example) PCs can easily deal with any powerful creatures that don't have Legendary Resistances. The only thing it seemed to change in the end for my game was make some fights really anti-climactic.

[benjaminholcomb]

Man, @thedungeoncoach taking some heat on this one.
Found a massive can o' worms LOL

[indominusolympus]

Falling is weird in the way that you could die dropping 10 ft, and have cases where people survive 30, 000 ft. It becomes more nebulous when you take into account adventurers aren't normal humans. Martial classes at higher levels are absolutely superhuman, being able to survive hits from Giants and Dragons.

Something that comes to mind is have the player make a saving throw. They can choose Constitution to shrug it off or Dexterity to tuck and roll. On a success, you don't take any damage. DC would start at 10 and damage starts at 1d10 bludgeoning. The DC scales up by 2 and damage by 1d10 for every additional 10 ft.

10 ft - DC 10, 1d10 bludgeoning
20 ft - DC 12, 2d10 bludgeoning

[Saikool]

ngl, I don't really like the sentiment behind this video. D&D is a heroic fantasy. Everyone seems to understand that when it comes to casters, but for some reason martials simply are not allowed to be as cool. Why shouldn't a level 20 fighter be able to shrug a 1000 ft drop? The same level wizard can levle an entire city with a meteor swarm. Level 20 martials should be herculean heroes so let them be hardy. Its one of the few things that their fantasy accurately potrays in this game. Even at lower levels. So what your barbarian is taking half damage from a fall? The warlock can literally fly. If fall damage is such a big deal in your campaign, the spell casters will pack feather fall. Don't let your martials be religated to no more than schmucks that can attack twice in a turn. Allow them to be epic.

[fluffyfussy]

"You are not gods and stuff" - Keyleth: Hold my Staff!

[benjaminholcomb]

I use a 1d6 for medium creatures, then go up (or down) dice sizes depending on size.
I think this works well for my table.
I could see combining this with some exponential growth to really give gravity some teeth.

[sarahlanger]

First: There are acutal human beings that survived falling from a plane. And PCs are superhuman, at least from a certain level. Second: After about 3 seconds of falling (about 60 m, so ... 180 feet?), assuming you arrange yourself for maximum area, a human does not acutally fall faster. There is a maximum velocity that you can go when falling. So there absolutely should be a cap. Because of physics.

[guardian_of_the_rune]

If you really hate people surviving falls then making it every 10 feet you fall you lose 10% of your max hp and fall prone. A 100 foot fall kills any creature regardless of resistances. And now every strategy becomes how do I get this guy in the air.

[GrandOldDwarf]

Also, if you wanted to scale the damage with level, try the proficiency dice variant rule from the DMG. Scales a d4 through a d12 as the characters get more powerful. This could represent the idea of keeping fall damage consistent by culling out the HP gained by skill.

[mrcarbis]

I agree with you on the Barbarian rage. As I see it when you rage you hulk out and your muscles are super tense. This is the worst thing to do when falling. The reason why drunk ppl can just stumble up without a scratch is that they are relaxed and limb when falling. (And that only works to a certain extent like a tumble down the stairs not a freefall from an airship.) So in a weird way it would make sense that Barbarians are actually vulnerable to fall damage if raging.

[toddgrx]

RAW for Barbarian rage “It ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then”— if the fall lasts greater than 6 seconds (a turn), the rage ends (they haven’t attacked a hostile creature and they haven’t yet taken damage from the fall) and they become susceptible to full fall damage— but I suppose they could also re-rage if they have more rages and the fall will be longer than another 6 seconds :P

[yingosensei]

Wizards are allowed to ignore fall damage (feather fall) because they are magic. Barbarians are not allowed to ignore fall damage because they are not magic.

[isthisajojoreference]

So do you just rule that barbarians can't rage at all outside of combat? It seems like kinda a weird nerf to me, I don't see why a barbarian couldn't reduce fall damage but can reduce the magical bludgeoning damage of a Meteor Swarm. I know you said you don't see it as bludgeoning damage but I don't see why it should be it's own thing when we can see other instances of gravity based damage from spells being fall damage as well.

Feather Fall is a first level spell so I don't really see a reason to nerf the few classes that have their own ways of dealing with fall damage.

I do agree with making fall damage a d10 though, but for me it's because fall damage scales in increments of 10 feet so a d10 makes it feel like each foot you fall is represented.

[CrownRock]

Glad my DM didn't see this a year ago. My go to barbarian move was to grapple and jump off of high stuff. I once jumped out of a window, falling fifty feet while carrying a cultist, and managed to land on another cultist.

[guardian_of_the_rune]

A Barbarian can rage and survive being cut by a giants great axe but surviving a fall is too much?

[Lynxtek]

I also have always disliked the fact that creatures resistant to bludgeoning damage resist fall damage. Are you telling me a barbarian can survive falling 100ft or more because they're angy?

[CooperAATE]

Am I first?!

BUT to the point, fall damage has always felt underwhelming to me. Bumping it up to d8 or d10 and removing the cap... I can dig it.