Catching a free falling creature

[Jerrykhor]

In my recent session, our gnome cleric was caught by a Peryton and it flew up in the air as high as it can. When he finally broke free (using Thunderwave lol), he fell 140 ft to the ground. Our paladin was ready to catch him, but our DM asked him to roll a straight DEX check. He failed, and the cleric went splat. Luckily the damage wasn't enough to kill him, and a Lay on Hands brought him back up.

Some of us thought it should have been an Athletics check, as it sounds more logical. A straight up ability check of any score is bad on its own, but worse is one targeting a weak score (he had only 10 Dex).

How would you rule this? Is it harder to position yourself, or harder to break the creatures fall? I can see where the DM is coming from, as I would have little doubt about the latter, being 18 STR catching a creature whose size is small.

[Knaight]

The straight dex check seems pretty reasonable - it's not quite Athletics, and the attribute check is essentially the default roll. With that said, the strength portion actually seems more difficult - a 50 lb or so weight (small plus some equipment) dropped 140 feet has a whole lot of energy, and it takes a lot of strength to counteract that*. Even then, it's still a pretty sudden deceleration, so I would only reduce the falling damage given a successful check and not remove it. I'd probably assign a DC 10 dex check to catch them at all, then an open ended strength check that reduces an amount of fall damage equal to the check. An 140 foot fall averages 49 damage, so it's not all going away. This is technically a house rule**, but the situation is enough of an edge case to warrant one.

*Some quick napkin math using quick conversion: 25 kg, 45 meter drop. Assuming air resistance is minimal, E=mgh gives about 11000 J. E=F*d, assuming a 2.5 meter distance for deceleration (catching them at about the upper end of a medium character's reach and slowing them the rest of the way to the ground, which is an ideal situation) takes 4400 N of force, on average. That's about a thousand pounds of force, much of which is being applied at weird angles, to get what is technically still a catch and not just a partially broken fall. It's a ridiculous feat of strength, and while these are D&D characters and thus I'm pretty fine with ridiculous feats of strength I certainly wouldn't assume that it was easy.

**Or house ruling.

[sir_argo]

I think DEX is right. Although I'm not sure how much it would really help. I might knock off 2d6, but if a guy jumps out of a 140ft window, I think he'll be doing about 65mph when he hits the ground. If I stand underneath him and try to catch him, he still hits something (me) at 65mph aaaaaand I also get hit by a heavy object moving 65mph. About all that happens in this situation is we both get squished. But I do think it would take a bit of the edge off, so like I said, I'd take off 2d6 if successful.

[rbstr]

From a realism standpoint nobody is "catching" a person falling from 140 feet.
Even if the "catcher" stopped them from hitting the ground it's still 135 feet worth of acceleration to contend with. Even if he only weighs 50lbs the guy below is looking at a lot of hurt too. (This kind of thing actually happens sometimes, actually. Like a jumper landing on someone. It's not pretty.)

From a rolling standpoint I pretty much agree with Knaight, but i'd do it a bit differently: It'd be an easy dex check to position yourself, in that case both characters will take the fall damage. Then reduce that damage to each person by like half an Athletics check.

This is really just a dumb thing to do that only works in movies/cartoons.

[imanidiot]

In my recent session, our gnome cleric was caught by a Peryton and it flew up in the air as high as it can. When he finally broke free (using Thunderwave lol), he fell 140 ft to the ground. Our paladin was ready to catch him, but our DM asked him to roll a straight DEX check. He failed, and the cleric went splat. Luckily the damage wasn't enough to kill him, and a Lay on Hands brought him back up.

Some of us thought it should have been an Athletics check, as it sounds more logical. A straight up ability check of any score is bad on its own, but worse is one targeting a weak score (he had only 10 Dex).

How would you rule this? Is it harder to position yourself, or harder to break the creatures fall? I can see where the DM is coming from, as I would have little doubt about the latter, being 18 STR catching a creature whose size is small.

It should have been an Athletics check (no acrobatics). Catching a large weight that is falling is a function of strength, not dexterity. It should have been strength/athletics with an astronomical DC. You can't catch someone falling 140 ft and hope to do anything except injure yourself.

[Jerrykhor]

I forgot to mention both are wearing full plate armour, so had he succeeded in catching the cleric, it would result in a clank so loud it would deafen a god :smallbiggrin:

[Kane0]

Realistically, you aint catching that.
Thematically, i'd agree with strength (see: hercules)
Mechanically, either works

[mephnick]

I probably would have made it a Strength check to play to the characters.. uh.. strengths. Very high DC. But no Athletics, everyone's obsessed with adding proficiencies to things that don't call of it.

[Lombra]

Realism aside because physics and dies never go along well, I would have ruled an athletics check, which if passed halved the falling damage for the gnome. On a failed check both characters fall prone and no damage mitogation happens. I would make the paladin take some damage too but I think that it would be pretty boring.

[MrMcBobb]

I'd have made it an Athletics check for the catcher to see if he can mitigate a bit of damage and a DEX saving throw for the faller to see if he crushes his friend/helps mitigate damage. Neither one would be able to remove too much damage from the fall alone but if they both pass then it reduces the damage by quite a lot. If they both fail super hard then they can both take the falling damage (the catcher being crushed under his heavily armoured meteor gnome)

Plenty degrees of success depending on who rolls what and a little bit of risk for the catcher too, because there should be some risk involved in these decisions.

[Tanarii]

As a DM I probably would have ruled it:
Automatic failure to catch the gnome safely. But if the Paladin really wanted to, I'd have allowed him a DC 15 Dex check (ie fairly hard) to see if both PCs split the full damage instead of just the Gnome taking it. Failure means they both take the full damage the Gnome would have.

In other words, if a player wants their PC to do something impossibly stupid, my instinct is to tell them they can't do the impossible part, then hand them a bone if they really want to do the stupid part, but with consequences for failure.

[mAc Chaos]

The real question here is would you just apply falling damage or fiat that they die from the fall.

[Waterdeep Merch]

To make gamist and realistic theory work together without overcomplicating everything, I'd probably make it an Athletics (Dexterity) check to catch the cleric, then make both of them split the damage 50/50 (rounded up).

When you fall from a great height like that, one of the few things that can help you survive the fall is having something break it a bit. In this case, it's the paladin. That force doesn't just dissipate, though- it goes to the thing that broke the fall. In this case, it would be the paladin. Rather than math out the exact percentage of impact, I'd simply split the difference.

And being the sort of monster DM that I am, I'd rule a natural 1 as "You caught him. Your arms snap".

[Puh Laden]

And being the sort of monster DM that I am, I'd rule a natural 1 as "You caught him. Your arms snap".

Even as someone who's normally against fumble rules, I'd say that's a fair ruling.

[GlenSmash!]

Too stop someone falling from that height without either of you being damaged, you'd want to get a hold of them while still in the air, and decrease speed gradually. If the catcher had flight I'd say it's entirely possible, and I'd call for an Acrobatics check to do it.

On the ground, you could get between the Falling character and the ground to cushion the blow with your body. I'd let a player do that for free if they had the movement to do it. I'd have it reduce the damage to the falling character by half and allow a save to see how much the cushion character takes. on a failed save, the cushion takes the other half of the fall damage. On a success this would be reduced by another half to a quarter of the fall damage. I'd probably make the save a raw Strength, but could be persuaded to have athletics apply.

[Samayu]

Strength test, because the catcher needs to be strong enough to block the impact. Dex would be needed to make sure you're under him, but I don't think that's hard enough to warrant a check.

DC equal to four times the number of damage dice in the fall?

For damage reduction, how about splitting the damage? Half damage to the faller, and the catcher takes the same number of dice.

I don't know. Just tossing out ideas.

[Jerrykhor]

The real question here is would you just apply falling damage or fiat that they die from the fall.

My DM went with vanilla rules, so 14d6 damage to the cleric. He survived.

[Jophiel]

I'd go with an Athletics check assuming that the catcher was going to try to absorb some of the impact and maybe do some sort of catch and roll thing or other momentum changing/breaking maneuver. Not that it's realistic no matter what but, for heroic game purposes, I'd consider it an athletic move.

For catching anything small and light, I'd go Dex or Acrobatics.

[excommunicated]

I'd say Dext (acrobatics) check with advantage to catch the falling person (provided they were not falling too far away) because it is cinematic. The rules are a verisimilitude of reality after all. I'd also say, creature doing the catch must succeed in a strength (Athletics) check to reduce falling damage by half, fail means damage is split evenly between the two, because this is chance for funny. "You were trying to catch them, but you just let them fall on you."

[alchahest]

Depends entirely on if you're looking to punish the player for failing a grapple roll against a peryton.

If you're playing for fun and killing characters off isn't the height of enjoyment for you, AND you want to give your fantasy heroes a dramatic moment, have both players roll a dex save, then the catcher make an athletics save

if the athletics save was made, you can split the damage equally between both parties. each party can reduce their own damage by half if they've made the dex save.

and try to roll better the next time a monster that can fly grapples you.

[KorvinStarmast]

Feather fall.
Where was the wizard or bard when all of this was going on?

[Cybren]

As a DM I probably would have ruled it:
Automatic failure to catch the gnome safely. But if the Paladin really wanted to, I'd have allowed him a DC 15 Dex check (ie fairly hard) to see if both PCs split the full damage instead of just the Gnome taking it. Failure means they both take the full damage the Gnome would have.

In other words, if a player wants their PC to do something impossibly stupid, my instinct is to tell them they can't do the impossible part, then hand them a bone if they really want to do the stupid part, but with consequences for failure.

This was my first instinct too. You basically both take damage as you're agreeing to get hit, but with resistance if you succeed.

[Tanarii]

I'd say Dext (acrobatics) check with advantage to catch the falling person (provided they were not falling too far away) because it is cinematic. The rules are a verisimilitude of reality after all.
Did you mean not a verisimilitude of reality? Which still doesn't make any sense grammatically. But regardless, "cinematic" usually means the bare minimum of "verisimilitude", or appearance of reality, you can get away with. Or just throwing the appearance of reality out the window completely.

[Joe the Rat]

I probably would have made it a Strength check to play to the characters.. uh.. strengths. Very high DC. But no Athletics, everyone's obsessed with adding proficiencies to things that don't call of it.

I can see an argument for technique coming into play here, but either is a valid stance.

Just standing there to catch him: success means shared damage.
Grabbing your cloak to make a "net" (the awning effect): Strength to hold on, damage reduced; the Help action would work here.

Monks: Step of the wind up a tree, kick off, grab him, and slow-fall part of the damage. Or if he fits in one hand, use "deflect missiles" to toss him up 60'. Then it's only 6d6 damage.

[Erys]

I would have allowed the PC to make either a Str, Dex, or Athletics check (which ever was highest) with every 5 points reducing the fall by ten feet. Falling PC takes augmented fall damage and catching PC takes half said damage as well.

[Vulsutyr]

I agree that a check should only reduce the damage, not eliminate it. Str or dex could work, or maybe both.