Community

Nov 8, 2012 -- 10:17PM, Arcane_Guyver wrote:

From what I've gathered, using the Rules Compendium:

1. You fall at a rate of 500 feet per round, taking 1d10 damage per 10 feet fallen (max 50d10).
2. If you fall an amount equal to or less than your Fly Speed, you land and take no damage.
3. After 100 feet (20 squares) of falling, if you have a Fly Speed you get one chance to make a DC 30 Athletics check (with a bonus equal to Fly Speed) to stop falling as an Immediate Reaction.
4. As a last resort, you can make a trained-only Acrobatics check to break your fall (reducing damage by half the check result; no damage means you don't land Prone).

Going through the Monster Vault, I had a hard time finding monsters that are likely to be encountered at 100+ ft. altitude but unlikely to make that Athletics check. Specifically from the original post:
* Wyverns have a +20 on the Athletics check.
* Griffons have +18. (Hippogriffs aren't so lucky - no high-flying for you!)
* All adult chromatic dragons have at least a +20 on the check, with the exception of black dragons (+17).

It is harsh if you do fail that 20 squares check though, and breaking your fall from a 50d10 damage (average about 250 damage) isn't really doing much for you. The fact that it is very hard to get back into the fight is rough too, maybe the worst part.

Honestly the 4e aerial combat rules aren't designed for dealing with dogfighting. They work pretty well when dealing with a PC or monster flying above a melee or monsters attacking from the sky, people flying off ledges or fighting from airships (or boarding them from flying mounts), but that's about it. The lack of any rules for maneuvering and the simplistic falling rule etc make things rather sketchy and unrealistic/not very cinematic.

I think it is a reasonably tradeoff though. You'd need something like "Fight in the Skies" or somesuch to have realistic flavorfull dogfighting and that would require many pages of complex rules to cover a situation that might come up once or twice in a campaign. If you wanted to have a campaign where this was a major theme, then I'd actually just go find an old copy of FitS and adapt it (we did this once in an AD&D campaign way back when, it was fun). Short of that arrange your aerial hijinks around terrain and whatnot, or use SCs for avoiding enemies etc. Fighting in free air is like any blank-map fight in 4e anyway, if it isn't really short and sweet it is going to get dull fast.

Nov 9, 2012 -- 8:57AM, WolfLordBran wrote:

Nov 9, 2012 -- 6:48AM, SwampDog wrote:

Nov 8, 2012 -- 3:02PM, aaronil wrote:

So yes, by RAW, prone is a game killer in high altitude fights. Got it? 

My point was only that having prone = kill is ridiculous and overpowered IMO.   Therefore, that won't happen at my table.

If you are struck from over five hundred feet and fall that distance in less than six seconds before you are able to unfurl your wings/cast a spell, it's not that hard to assume you might get splattered all over the countryside. Average damage from that 500ft fall is only 275. I mean, that's only enough to turn anything but a very much HP optimized character into a pancake and then some.

Oh, epic level PCs can certainly survive a 500 ft fall, though they won't LIKE it and if they're already beat up it could easily prove fatal. OTOH if you're 26th level and you don't have some way to arrest your fall or deal with the damage then you're kinda asking for it. Honestly any PC that is seriously anticipating aerial battles and is 16th + level should be quite capable of equipping themselves with a way to avoid death. For instance the Elixer of Levitation is 8th level and you could simply consume one before a fight at dangerous altitude. There are various other items that show up starting in low paragon which can arrest a fall if used properly. Feather Fall is always another option if you happen to be a Wizard.