Severe Falls in 5e
Introduction
"You have sneaked into the bed chambers of the elderly and cruel Lord Grymfacade. You slowly and silently draw your exquisite dagger from it's handcrafted suede leather sheath. You very carefully apply your 5,000 g Deadly Death Poison of Deadly Death to it's magnificent silver blade. Your breathing and his. You lean over him. You carefully lower your poison blade and line it up. With one fine thrust, you take his last breath. The king wakens violently, gurgling and clutching at his red and seeping throat. His eyes bulge with hard realization and pain. You see one of his hands reach under his pillow. He pulls out a shiny fist sized object and rings - a bell! It's loud and stern! The guards must be coming! What do you do?"
"I jump out the window. No, I swan dive out the window like a mofo boss!"
"Your character, Ass Assin the Assassin, knows that the fall is 80 feet and there is great risk to life and limb."
"Pfft. 8d6 fall damage? I jump."
"Ass jumps out the window like a mofo boss. You land and take (dice rolling sounds) 44 damage. You also break your legs and your speed is reduced to 0. You collapse like a loose tripod at the end of a terrible wedding. The guards on the ground level hear the sound of a whoosh followed by a meat smashing splat on wet cobblestone. They take a moment to ponder what they just heard before they casually search for the source of the sound and find your crippled ass, Ass."
Hi, falling in 5e, eh? There are no fucking rules for falling besides hit point damage and landing prone. OK, cool. I mean, that's fine. But, what if you don't think it's fine? IRL, if you fall 10 feet you can break something. People have died from falling over! I don't think a murder hobo should be able to walk away from any fall, and if you're reading this than neither do you.
5e is about simplicity. Everything is streamlined in this edition. Some things are gutted in this edition. In keeping with this principle of design in 5e, we're going to homebrew penalties for falling and they're going to be severe. We're just going to re-purpose what's already available in the PHB. It'll be slick, too. I promise.
What is Falling?
If you fall 10 feet, you apply falling rules as normal: 1d6 bludgeoning damage and land prone. Why not? Just for clarity sake, falling is falling. Jumping is falling. Being dropped is falling. Non-magically accelerating towards the ground is falling. No, it doesn't matter if you do it on purpose or if you're a badass. Shut up. Stop arguing. At a 10 foot height, I'll let you roll an acrobatics check to avoid taking damage and get to your feet only if you have proficiency in acrobatics.
The Homebrew Rule: Severe Falls
A severe fall is a fall from such a great height that it can cause injury to humanoid creatures because they're made out of meat and bone. If you fall 20 feet or more, you will be making a save against taking a fall injury. We're making the height of a severe fall pretty low because a 20 foot drop can really do a number on a person. It's up to you (the DM) to decide which ability score to assign to this save. Ability scores are all pretty bullshit, so any one can do in theory. Do you pick dexterity to see how you react to the landing? Do you pick constitution to see how well you absorb the impact? Do you pick charisma because the gods like a pretty thing?
I'm going to rule constitution for three reasons and I recommend you get on board. The first reason is simplicity. The second reason is to prevent arguing. There are no skill checks associated with constitution and so we don't have to question or debate what skills may apply. It's not how agile or how coordinated or otherwise how skilled you are. It's your ass versus a planet. You are squishy, the ground is hard. You're absorbing g-force. The third reason I pick constitution is because I want to give this ability score more value.
The Mechanics
A severe fall is a fall from 20 feet. Make a con save. The DC for a severe fall is 10 + 1 for every 10 feet. Examples: a 20 foot fall has a DC of 12, a 30 foot fall has a DC of 13, and an 80 foot fall has a DC of 18. We're going to ignore that gravity accelerates you so you fall faster and faster the longer you fall until you hit terminal velocity - in other words scaling damage until a cap. We're not going to worry about other laws of physics either. Who wants realism in their make believe role playing game? That's stupid.
This DC is purely for simplicity sake and I think it may suit the game well, but tweek it as you like. You shouldn't, because, come to think of it, the heights your PCs will most likely ever fall will not exceed 100 feet and you really only want to make falling feel riskier but you don't want the consequences to be guaranteed. If you succeed a CON save for a severe fall, you take normal falling damage. If you fail your save, you take a fall injury too. You cannot roll an acrobatics check or a Dex save against a severe fall. See, simple, just like the rest of 5e. So far, this rule is very intuitive and easy to remember.
Don't worry about generalized rules for additional crap like landing on difficult train, sharp pointy objects on your person or in the drop zone, or what defines a soft landing. It's more questions and potential arguing. Don't worry about passive con checks either, unless you want. Just tell your players don't jump shit or fall off crap. It's wicked dangerous!
Penalties
Now let's discuss penalties. Look at the exhaustion table on page 291 of the PHB. Those are the most severe penalties used for general game mechanics in 5e, and we're going to re-purpose this table as a falling injuries table.
If a creature fails their severe fall save, roll a d6 and re-roll any 6s. Refer table. Done and done.
Why are we re-rolling 6s? A 6 on this table is death. That's too severe. Besides, the kind of penalties I have in mind are more like incurring a handicap. Just let the fall damage worry about doing the death. If your stupid PCs or if any mind-controlled or maddened creatures take another severe fall and fail another save, roll on the exhaustion table, re-roll any 6s and re-roll for repeated results.
Recovery
You know what? Part of the game is the abstract nature of wounds, injuries and recovery, and I don't want to fuck with that. You got stabbed? Shit, 7 damage. Fireball? Whoa, 22 damage. A 20th level Acolyte Rogue landing a crit while making a sneak attack to the base of the spine wielding a Holy Avenger and rolling the max possible damage? Ouch! 212 damage! What you need is a solid 8 hours, that's what! Oh, you fell 30 feet, injured one leg, and halved your speed? Gee, how shall we treat this?
I'm going to rule that you recover from a fall injury by successfully completing an 8 hours rest if you have food and drink and no levels of exhaustion. Wonk wonk. I know, right? Yowza. You recover from 1 fall injury per 8 hour rest. You can also cast Greater Restoration to remove 1 fall injury.
Summary, Variations, Outro
If you take a severe fall, 20 ft or more, you take normal fall damage and make a constitution save or take 1 fall injury determined by rolling a d6 on the exhaustion table (PHB 291), re-rolling any 6s or repeated effects. The DC is 10 +1 for every 10 feet fallen. You recover from 1 fall injury per 8 hour rest if you have food and drink and no levels of exhaustion or by casting greater restoration. Booyakasha.
Obviously, you can do whatever you want as the DM. Improvise. Just let the players know you're assigning additional consequences for falling from too high. Make sure you tell them how high is too high. Maybe it's 30 feet or maybe it's the height of the creature times four plus ten and then rounded up to the nearest ten. Maybe you make a table for severe fall height based on size class.
Instead of an fall injury, how about a fall condition? "You fall 40 feet and you're stunned for 1 round." "You fall 120 feet. The shock of the landing to your sympathetic nervous system leaves you blinded and deafened. You also suffer the affects of madness and for the next 5 minutes you're deathly afraid that if you're moved at all you will fall again."
Conditions that make obvious sense are prone, incapacitated, stunned, and unconsciousness. If you want real simple, how about: If fall damage bloodies you, you take a condition. You could also say the shock of the landing makes you feel woozy, then tell the player that their character effectively has the poisoned condition for 1 round or 10 minutes. Whatever feels right. Yes, that's right, falling is poisonous now. Welcome to table top role playing. Have a good night.
Addendum: After writing this article and thinking it over, I can understand if the creators of 5e considered falling penalties besides fall damage and land prone and went "Holy shit there's too many possibilities and I'm sick of arguing with my co-creators and I don't have any preferences one way or another. Fuck it, we got a book to publish. 1d6 fall damage for every 10 feet, max 20d6, and you land prone if you take fall damage." Also, I really, really like my creative and elegantly simple solution: if fall damage bloodies you, you are poisoned (disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks) for 1 round. But seriously, if my players make a jump or take a fall from a legitimately deadly height, I'm going to make them make some kind of ability check against having their legs broken and they can only move while prone (half speed). Why doesn't the PHB at least standardize when to roll ability checks or saves against falling?
Another variation to falling rules is to change the fall damage. 1d6 every 10 ft? Come one. How about 1d12 every 10 feet? That's still not that much. How about 3d6 for every 10 feet? Now we're talking. That's going to leave a mark; an average 10 damage for every 10 feet you fall kind of mark. How about 1d6 for every ten feet times the number of feet divided by ten? In other words, xd6*x. Now, you're fucking with some shit, boy howdy. Scaling damage! 1d6 x 10 ft /10 is 1d6, but 3d6 x30ft / 10 is 3d6x3, 4d6 x 40ft /10 is 4d6x4. A 50 foot drop in 5e might average 17 damage, but under this variant rule it's 87. DO. NOT. JUMP. OFF. SHIT.
Variation for landing on difficult terrain: 1d6+1 for every ten feet. Variation for a soft landing might halve the damage, minimum 1 damage. Roll to see if you land on your own weapon. If you land on your own weapon, in addition to the fall damage, you take damage equal to the average of the weapon's damage die. The type of damage depends on the weapon.
Oh yeah, I may or may not have broke the promise I made at the start of this article, but I gave you cool shit so we're even.
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