Yes and no. A degree of believably and consistency is needed for suspension of disbelief.This didn't sit right with me, and I had to stew on it. It took me a little bit to deconstruct the arguments and identify where I believe they are wrong.
For instance, falling rules in PF state that you take 1D6 damage per 10' you fall downward, then you compare that to the falling object rules which instead base damage on size, well of you are going to do that, why doesn't the larger object also take that same amount of damage from the fall as opposed to the lesser 1D6 per 10'? Otherwise, why take the size into account at all?
Then there is the fact that falling damage doesn't take into account distance 'thrown', I can have a character flung 50' forward, but only cover 5' in a downward direction in that same distance, and they take no damage at all according to RAW.
None of these things lend to suspension of disbelief which is why we play role playing games to begin with, as we play them to relate to a specific role in someway or to escape completely in an immersive way, if we cant do that, then we are playing a game of glorified math.
Another thing I would like to note is that simplicity does not always denote 'fun', complexity, when injected correctly and to the right degree provide for the dynamics of story and for dynamic mechanics within a system. Oversimplified and uniform systems fail (see D&D 4th ed) because they lack dynamics, where as Simplified and dynamic combination and choice complexity (like savage worlds) leads for successful and fun games. Pathfinder suffers from overt complexity, which could be streamlined very well, and they may ultimately need to do a PF 2.0 at some point to do this, but they still maintain the degree of fun needed to keep people interested.
What this is not. This is not me picking on Thane Allgood. For the record, he has provided articulate and well thought out feedback. I cannot say that I often agree with what he has to say, but I'd loathe alienating someone who is generating useful feedback.
Discourse
So without further ado, here's the failures I identified.
A degree of believably and consistency is needed for suspension of disbelief.
This is a good point, but a nonissue for most systems. I think this falls squarely on the game master to narrate his game in a believable way that lines up with the results of the system. An individual may need a game system that emulates reality closely for their suspension of disbelief, but this is a subjective point. I specifically avoid subjective arguments because there is no logical way to approach it, and categorically I can't offer a meaningful argument against or for it.
Another thing I would like to note is that simplicity does not always denote 'fun', complexity, when injected correctly and to the right degree provide for the dynamics of story and for dynamic mechanics within a system.
Again I agree that simplicity doesn't donate fun. I specifically made a point to say that systems should be as simple as possible. What I failed to mention was that game systems must meet the needs of the players/game master. I implied it but never said it. If you need rules that are complex or even prefer them, then the system must match your needs. I do think that there is no reason for making a system more complex than it must be.
This dude is a rock star
And now for physics, imparting damage
It turns out that I'm a math/science nerd. It also turns out that some of the people that helped craft d&d were too. This is evident in a bunch of places. You can specifically see it in the spell polar ray. You see a polar ray is an element of calculus, used in integration if I remember correctly. I digress...
Damage is roughly equivalent to force. All things being equal, a knife stroke deals more damage if it has more force behind it. This is a very useful thing to understand because physics has a pretty good handle on force. As you probably know force equals mass times acceleration.
I could go in more depth here, but suffice to say that the force an object can impart on another object is equal to the mass times the deceleration of the first object. The higher the velocity, the more potential for deceleration, the more potential for force transfer, or as we stated, damage. Isn't physics fun?
It also turns out that terminal velocity is about 53 meters per second. Given that acceleration is 9.8m/s^2 it takes less than 6 seconds for an object to reach terminal velocity. In less than a round the object will go as fast as it can go. It will have achieved the highest potential for damage due to acceleration and thus, the only thing that matters is the mass or size of the object. There are other factors, and yes distance falling would ultimately decide actual velocity and force transferred, but it's a close approximation. I think for most people it's close enough that they don't care, but I can't account for people like Thane Allgood who think it isn't close enough.
This lady better have boots of the cat
Physics redux, receiving damage
For the most part, damage received from a free fall is calculated for a small or medium character, because chiefly it is these characters that will be of note in the game. Objectively you could identify different damage categories for different sized creatures that would more closely mimic real life. To your credit, the size system is concerning, to say the least. Gargantuan creatures can only take a 5-foot step, falling damage, abysmal movement speed, a lot of the rules don't translate well for size. I think that introducing damage categories based on size for free fall needlessly complicates a part of the game that isn't often explored. That's my subjective opinion, so if you want to rock your rules, more power to you.
The one part that sticks out like a sore thumb, however, is taking horizontal movement into account when calculating damage. The reason it doesn't make sense is because of the force thing. Often times being moved horizontally causes no, or negligible damage to a person. They are able to break, and disperse the force into friction (heat energy). While they take more than none, realistically falling 10 feet is not equivalent to being thrown 10 feet because the deceleration of being thrown is much more gradual, meaning that the damage is smaller.
Conclusion
I like some of your concepts, but I can't say I agree with the end result. It does point out some flaws in the pathfinder/d&d system with falling, but ultimately the purposed changes fail to "enhance" my games. Thanks for the feedback.
Keep those games rolling
The game mechanic
Now with extra Twitter
To each his own ;)
ReplyDeleteIn the full houserule I actually do account for being thrown horizontally as opposed to falling vertically, I deal with that by dropping the damage for the size category by 1 dice step (minimum of 1pt). I also even account for mass, some denser objects count as a size category (or more depending on the unusual density of the object/creature) higher.
DeleteIts not 100% accurate still, nor is it necessarily meant to be so much as intuitive/easy to track with a slightly higher degree of realism.