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palindrome
2007-07-18, 04:51 PM
Suppose for a moment my psychic warrior is fighting his nemesis Aranark the paladin on top of a roof. Why not? Ghaeris and Aranark simply don't get along. Anyway, all irrelevant background data aside, suppose that for reason x, be it a racial, class, or a magical ability Aranark has damage reduction.
Ghaeris proceeds to bull rush Aranark off of the roof, at which point Aranark falls fifty feet to the sharp rocks below.
Does damage reduction apply to falling damage?

Personally, I think so. My friend disagrees. Any thoughts?

Kurald Galain
2007-07-18, 05:07 PM
Quoting the SRD,

Damage Reduction

A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks.

So I'd say no.

Shatteredtower
2007-07-18, 05:08 PM
By the rules, no.

I say to heck with the rules. Impact damage is impact damage, regardless of mundane source.

Inyssius Tor
2007-07-18, 05:10 PM
You know, we have a special thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45885) just for questions like this one... :smallsmile:

That said: it doesn't say it doesn't work, so it probably does.

Quietus
2007-07-18, 05:15 PM
By the rules, DR wouldn't affect the damage, I believe. However, common sense slaps the rules in the face in this case.

Corolinth
2007-07-18, 05:22 PM
Last week when I ran my tabletop campaign, I didn't apply damage reduction when a werewolf took a twenty foot drop after a thrown dwarf knocked him off of the wizard he was grappling.

I could have. None of the group would've raised an objection if I did. The ground is just a huge bludgeoning weapon. It's not made of silver (or at least, it wasn't made of silver where the beast landed). On the other hand, I think the earth is easily tough enough to have the ability to bypass damage reduction.

daggaz
2007-07-18, 05:26 PM
If the creature is magical and has natural DR (like a werewolf) I would rule that the DR applies, tho if the fall were high enough, the creature might still be stunned for a round or three.

If you are wearing some kind of magical armor that grants DR, I would rule that you still take falling damage, as the rest of your body probably hits the ground equally hard as well...

A magic ring on the other hand, it seems fluff wise a tad more magical, imparting its magic on your body rather than the armor being magical, so once again I would say the DR counts here.

Thats all houseruling tho.

horseboy
2007-07-18, 05:32 PM
I'm not sure I like the implications of falling bypassing DR. That would make Telekinesis a save or die spell.

Arbitrarity
2007-07-18, 06:10 PM
Only with master of the unseen hand, and even then it's a "save or DD"

Jack_Simth
2007-07-18, 06:17 PM
Only with master of the unseen hand, and even then it's a "save or DD"

You use the subject to make an attack roll at an invisible flying creature you "believe" to be in an empty square at the edge of your vertical range. This puts the subject (well, a lot of subjects, if they're light). You can target the square, and "hope there's something in it". Squares have very low AC. Hit it, and the subject creatures reach the target square by the end of the spell (do note: It's only 10 feet per caster level; and as falling damage is 1d6 per 10 feet (with some caveats) it turns Telekinesis into a "Will Negates" d6/level max 20d6 spell - that's countered as free action with a 1st level spell - that doesn't hurt anything that can fly - that potentially has a delay on the damage - that doesn't affect certain targets - that often only affects a single target - and so on). A "standard" violent thrust off of Colossal Sai's from a wagon will usually do better (no save, but you also have to hit the full AC of the target).

The Master of the Unseen Hand PrC just pretends to add that particular capability - it's already built into the game.

giblina
2007-07-19, 08:22 AM
I'd rule that falling damage is essentially a "force" effect (like magic missiles).

Creatures with DR susceptible to force attacks take full falling damage, creatures with DR applicable to force attacks get to resist some of it.

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-19, 10:21 AM
I'd rule that falling damage bypasses as whatever material it's made of. For example, if you landed on an exposed iron vein(say, someone or water carved away at the softer rock around it, leaving a stalagmite with a little iron in the tip and lots of it down the length), it counts as a "Cold Iron" weapon. Silver vein or sharp weapon would do the same for DR X/Silver. Adamantine would be bypassed by a similar method. DR X/- should not be bypassed by any falling(unless you're impaled on a magically created sword or something). DR X/Magic or X/Epic shouldn't be affected by impact(again, barring creation magic) DR X/Alignment shouldn't give 2 flicks about falling. Any others I missed? DR X/Damage-type is probably circumstantial(eg. DR X/Piercing will fail against impalement, DR X/Slashing doesn't cover broken glass or icicles, DR X/Bludgeoning fails against regular falls.)

Giblina: Nice Avatar, by the way.

giblina
2007-07-19, 10:24 AM
Giblina: Nice Avatar, by the way.

You just made my day :)

I just made it lastnight, it's the first one I ever made and it took me like 90 minutes cuz I'm such a crappy artist.

It's a goblin with a spiked chain (I know the spiked chain is defying gravity and looks like a spinal column, but that's the best I can do :smalltongue: )

Jimbob
2007-07-19, 10:33 AM
In my eyes, DR from falling would not apply simply because its a force. if some one fell 100ft taking 10d6 damage and has 20dr and lets say the total roll is less then 20, the character takes no damage what so ever, even though a normal person 100ft would die??? just in my eyes any way.

Dausuul
2007-07-19, 10:36 AM
A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective). The creature takes normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. A certain kind of weapon can sometimes damage the creature normally, as noted below.

This could be read either way. The question is, do we regard the limits of DR as being defined by the first sentence ("ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks") or the third ("takes normal damage from this, that, and the other thing")?

I would say that the third sentence takes precedence. The first sentence is extremely vague, suggesting that its main purpose is to provide an overview of what DR is about, while the third is quite specific and is clearly intended to lay out the limits of the ability.

giblina
2007-07-19, 10:38 AM
Separate from the talk about damage reduction, but...

Incorporeal creatures (like wraiths) should be immune to falling damage, but I'm pretty sure that all such creatures have flying speeds (so they never "fall" anyways).

Creatures with the earth glide ability should probably also not take falling damage if they land on earthen material (since they can move through earth like air).

Jayabalard
2007-07-19, 10:41 AM
This could be read either way. The question is, do we regard the limits of DR as being defined by the first sentence ("ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks") or the third ("takes normal damage from this, that, and the other thing")?

I would say that the third sentence takes precedence. The first sentence is extremely vague, suggesting that its main purpose is to provide an overview of what DR is about, while the third is quite specific and is clearly intended to lay out the limits of the ability.that seems the best interpretation to me.

really, it's kind of ludicrous idea that when you fall from a certain height to the ground you don't get DR, but if something picked up the world and threw it at you, you would get DR.

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2007-07-19, 11:01 AM
Creatures with the earth glide ability should probably also not take falling damage if they land on earthen material (since they can move through earth like air).

Water, not air.

If that was implemented it would still reduce damage, but not eliminate it entirely.

calebcom
2007-07-20, 12:07 AM
How many of you have ever fallen and busted an arm?

It's not force damage. It's impact. It's just like being slammed by a great big club.

It's not being stabbed or burnt. It's an impact.

If anything it'd be bludgeoning damage unless the ground is particularly spiky then it'd be piercing.

If you say the ground bypasses DR it wouldn't take much of a leap of logic to say that all bludgeoning damage bypasses DR


Smash something with a big enough club, the damage will be the same as a guy falling from a height to take equal amounts of damage.


My opinion. DR mitigates falling damage unless bludgeoning bypasses said DR


In my eyes, DR from falling would not apply simply because its a force. if some one fell 100ft taking 10d6 damage and has 20dr and lets say the total roll is less then 20, the character takes no damage what so ever, even though a normal person 100ft would die??? just in my eyes any way.

That would be the point of Damage Reduction.

Shrugging off Damage that would kill a normal person.

Hence a werewolf. who has DR 10/silver shrugs off 10 damage per hit from non silver items.

10 damage being enough to nearly kill a lvl 1 commoner.

Dausuul
2007-07-20, 02:17 AM
In my eyes, DR from falling would not apply simply because its a force. if some one fell 100ft taking 10d6 damage and has 20dr and lets say the total roll is less then 20, the character takes no damage what so ever, even though a normal person 100ft would die??? just in my eyes any way.

Yeah, that's about how it works. Kind of like if you swing a battleaxe and hit the guy in the face as hard as you can, a normal person would die but one with DR 20 wouldn't take a scratch. That's what DR means.

dr.cello
2007-07-20, 02:27 AM
The only situation I can think of in which falling should bypass DR is if you're using the 'armor as DR' variant or something similar. Wearing full plate is not going to keep you from splattering on the pavement when you land--it might actually make you splat worse.

Jimbob
2007-07-20, 05:44 AM
So your saying no matter how tough or week you are, if you have DR and fall from a great hight, it wont hurt you. I really cant see how that works. Your whole body hits the floor thats gonna break bones, your head hits the flow first thats your skull smashed, no DR will save you from that. You land on your feet, you break every bone in your legs, no DR will save you from that either. It might be wrong in the eyes of many, but this is a house rule I use and all my players agree with it. DR that you need some thing to over come it, is a natural resistance and regeneration. But DR is just a way of not taking a big-a-hit as you normaly would of.

Dhavaer
2007-07-20, 06:14 AM
I really cant see how that works.

Damage Reduction is like that. It can make getting hit in the face with an axe not hurt. There's no reason why DR wouldn't provide protection against falling as well as weapons.

dr.cello
2007-07-20, 06:45 AM
So your saying no matter how tough or week you are, if you have DR and fall from a great hight, it wont hurt you. I really cant see how that works.

First of all: your original example suggests someone with DR 20. That's obscenely high. And nobody is saying that DR saves you completely, it merely makes the damage less powerful.

If a third level fighter fell from one hundred feet (10d6 damage, as you suggested), and the damage roll was less than 20, he would probably survive. Unless you house rule 'falling damage kills you immediately,' then by the RAW, you can survive 100 feet of falling damage. By 8th level, a fighter can be reasonably expected to survive 100 feet of falling--and that's without any DR, mind you. (I'm assuming average hit point rolls and a +2 con modifier, giving him a total of 61 hit points at tenth level. 10d6 does a max of 60 damage.) At fourth level, a fighter can be expected to survive about half the time, from 100 feet of falling damage. (10d6 averages out to 30.)

Your example of DR 20 means that whatever this creature is, it is nearly impossible to damage by normal means. For comparison: with a DR 15 monster, I have not found one with a CR of less than 20. DR 10 is still pretty substantial. Creatures with DR 15 tend to be angelic or demonic (solars, balors, etc.); do you really think they ought to be greatly damaged by something as mundane as falling? The same as a normal person?

DR belongs almost exclusively to the realm of the supernatural and the magical. It's -not normal.- It belongs to fey and werewolves and outsiders.


Your whole body hits the floor thats gonna break bones, your head hits the flow first thats your skull smashed, no DR will save you from that. You land on your feet, you break every bone in your legs, no DR will save you from that either.

Let's take this and apply it to other forms of damage, shall we? "A massive morningstar, covered with spikes and swung with lethal force, hits you in the face. Your eyes are stabbed out and your skull is smashed, no DR will save you from that." Or, really, any type of weapon. Pierced by a crossbow bolt? Skewered on a rapier (on a critical hit)? Slashed open by a battle axe? Bruised with a hammer? All of these are acts that your Average Person could not survive directly. But they have DR. The fey have DR that can only be pierced by cold iron; this means that they are resistant to damage from anything which is not cold iron.

And you say 'no DR will save you from that' as if DR is something that exists in the real world. It doesn't. DR is a supernatural ability, representing a supernatural ability to resist damage. Falling damage is about the same as blunt trauma. The more you fall, the bigger the club, but it's about the same. You wouldn't rule that DR doesn't work against someone who has a club which does 10d6 damage; DR already takes into account massive damage, in fact. It's more or less designed for it, actually. Here's how: DR just subtracts a basic number from the damage done, and then the rest of the damage is, appropriately, taken as damage. DR 5 isn't going to be very helpful against 10d6 falling damage; DR 10 might make it a little more survivable, and DR 15 might save your life. But in all three cases you're still taking a substantial amount of damage.

And why does DR save you from getting your head hacked off with a whirling blade of death, but it doesn't save you from falling down? Not even if you only fell twenty feet? That's 2d6 damage. An angel or a fey or a werewolf can't fall twenty feet without taking damage? That doesn't sound very angelic to me. And surely you've watched movies or played games where the vampires or the werewolves have survived falls that should have splattered them all over the concrete? That's because they don't get hurt by things like that.

Another thing to consider is that the damage is not terribly realistic in D&D. Real people cannot survive multiple hits from swords, no matter how talented they are. It's designed to make a fun game with exciting combat, not a realistic game with combat where a single hit kills or maims you critically.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-07-20, 09:43 AM
Incorporeal creatures (like wraiths) should be immune to falling damage, but I'm pretty sure that all such creatures have flying speeds (so they never "fall" anyways).
Already in the rules:

INCORPOREALITY
Spectres, wraiths, and a few other creatures lack physical bodies. Such creatures are insubstantial and can’t be touched by nonmagical matter or energy. Likewise, they cannot manipulate objects or exert physical force on objects. However, incorporeal beings have a tangible presence that sometimes seems like a physical attack against a corporeal creature.
...
Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage.
(emphasis and abridgment mine)

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-20, 09:56 AM
Actually, care must be taken to differentiate between "Supernatural" DR and "Extraordinary" DR. The latter applies to X/-, X/Piercing or Slashing or Bludgeoning, and X/Adamantine. Pretty much all the rest fall into "Supernatural". With "Extraordinary" DR, it's generally more a case of "Damn, that's kind of hard to bruise/slash/puncture!". With Supernatural, it's closer to "really rapid self-healing"(sort of like Regeneration, but only once for each hit).

dr.cello
2007-07-20, 11:07 AM
Actually, care must be taken to differentiate between "Supernatural" DR and "Extraordinary" DR. The latter applies to X/-, X/Piercing or Slashing or Bludgeoning, and X/Adamantine. Pretty much all the rest fall into "Supernatural". With "Extraordinary" DR, it's generally more a case of "Damn, that's kind of hard to bruise/slash/puncture!". With Supernatural, it's closer to "really rapid self-healing"(sort of like Regeneration, but only once for each hit).

Fair enough. I sort of forgot about the more mundane varieties of DR, but I think the logic still applies--it's extraordinary. It's something which makes you, for some reason, a lot harder to hurt. A zombie, for instance, would probably not be as damaged by taking a fall as a person would be (I can't immediately think of any non-undead creatures who fall into the extraordinary DR category, though.)

Some supernatural DR, I think, really just means they're resistant to taking damage, in a supernatural sense of the word. It depends on the flavor you're going for, I imagine. Werewolves would almost certainly have the 'superfast healing' thing going for them, but angels and such I can see just shrugging off damage from mundane weapons. They're sort of super-real, so the material plane just doesn't affect them as much.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-07-20, 11:43 AM
(I can't immediately think of any non-undead creatures who fall into the extraordinary DR category, though.)
Try annis hags (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/monstersHtoI.html#hag) and most golems (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/monstersG.html#golem).

Keld Denar
2007-07-20, 11:53 AM
So, if you pushed a demon out of a church steeple, and it landed 40 ft below on the church yard black iron fence, would you say it takes full damage? Could be arguably good aligned (sacred ground) and cold iron. Plus, if the pusher had levels of dashing swordsman, the demon would take bonus cinematic damage, and have to make a fort save verses ending credits. That would be very cool indeed.

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-20, 10:01 PM
So, if you pushed a demon out of a church steeple, and it landed 40 ft below on the church yard black iron fence, would you say it takes full damage? Could be arguably good aligned (sacred ground) and cold iron. Plus, if the pusher had levels of dashing swordsman, the demon would take bonus cinematic damage, and have to make a fort save verses ending credits. That would be very cool indeed.

Uhh no. That's not cold iron. Unless you forged that fence from raw ore without ever melting/smelting it(melting from the core of the earth doesn't count).

Keld Denar
2007-07-21, 12:32 AM
Uhh no. That's not cold iron. Unless you forged that fence from raw ore without ever melting/smelting it(melting from the core of the earth doesn't count).

Well, damn, I had a nice long post typed up about how that's not what cold iron is, complete with links and all that, plus a whitty joke at the end, and when I hit send, I got a 404 not found error, and I lost it. sadface

Since I don't feel like retyping it, I encourage you to check out cold iron on wikipedia yourself. Under misconceptions, it disproves that cold iron is iron worked without heat. Plus, anyone who's taken a materials class (like me) could tell you that the resisdual stresses in the item or weapon would be so great, it would probably break after limited use.

grumble grumble stupid internet grumble grumble

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-21, 01:22 AM
I've read the Wiki article on Cold Iron before. Heck, I think I may even have posted it a time or two. My point being that a church fence is highly unlikely to be made from cold-iron(unless you're the sort that advocates massive tithing from the parish). The bit about the Earth melting it is just me pre-empting any smart-alecks going "You can't melt it with great heat? But what about the Earth's core?"

Alleine
2007-07-21, 01:51 AM
but if something picked up the world and threw it at you, you would get DR.

If someone threw the world at you, DR probably wouldn't matter a whole lot.


Now here's my take on this, when someone says DR doesn't make sense, they're right. You know why? Because they don't have DR and therefore cannot fully understand it without a nice imagination. I was thinking it didn't make sense until I thought about some legends, like how werewolves and the lke can only be killed with silver bullets. Its just that normal weapons are generally incapable of doing permanent damage.

In any case, DR would apply, but in some cases, it wouldn't matter. Such as getting a planet thrown at you.
DM: He throws a planet at you.
You: I have DR 5!
DM: Ok, you take 100,000,000 damage -5. You die.

Another instance where DR doesn't matter comes to mind... you face an enemy with any amount of DR. You score a crit with your vorpal blade and off goes the head. Thats the kind of stuff that's just too much for even supernatural or extraordinary DR to take care of.

dr.cello
2007-07-21, 02:46 AM
In the D&D universe, cold iron is a special kind of "iron mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties." (Thanks, Wikiblag!) In the real world, cold iron just means iron which is cold. It would be the most useless DR ever if it didn't count against anything made of iron. DR against everything that isn't a weapon--great.

Matthew
2007-07-23, 04:28 PM
I would let Damage Reduction count against Falling Damage, including DR from Body Armour.

mostlyharmful
2007-07-23, 04:36 PM
surely falling damage under most circumstances is just bludgeoning damage, it's not some magical untyped damage is it? If so then it by passes DR/Bludgeoning and not any other type

Khanderas
2007-07-24, 08:54 AM
For all purposes the character was hit by a blunt object (the ground/planet).
DR applies and I see no reason why it should not. If somone is tough enough to ignore the damage made by a dagger he is tough enough to ignore some of the falldamage.

Citizen Joe
2007-07-24, 09:01 AM
Falling damage DR does not apply, Hardness does apply.