Falling

A fall is a collision with an immov-
able object: the ground. Find your
velocity when you hit using the Falling
Velocity Table.
Example: Bill is pushed out a fifth-
story window. He falls 17 yards. When
he hits the street, his velocity is 19
yards/second. Bill has 10 HP, but he
uses twice this because he hit a “hard”
surface. Damage is (2 ¥ 10 ¥ 19)/100 =
3.8d, which rounds up to 4d crushing.
Velocity
Fall
17
35-37 yards
18
38-39 yards
19
40-42 yards
20
43-45 yards
21
46-48 yards
22
49-51 yards
23
52-54 yards
24
55-57 yards
25
58-61 yards
26
62-64 yards
27
65-67 yards
Falls and Armor: All armor, flexible
or not (but not innate DR), counts as
“flexible” for the purpose of calculat-
ing blunt trauma from falling damage.
Thus, even if the victim has enough
armor DR to stop the falling damage,
he suffers 1 HP of injury per 5 points
of falling damage. See Flexible Armor
and Blunt Trauma (p. 379).
Controlled Falls: If you are free to
move, you can use Acrobatics skill to
land properly. On a success, reduce
falling distance by five yards when cal-
culating velocity. If falling into water,
you can do this or attempt a proper
dive (see above) – decide which first!
Terminal Velocity: “Terminal veloci-
ty” is the maximum speed a falling
object can achieve before air resist-
ance negates further acceleration
under gravity. Air resistance is rela-
tively negligible for distances shown
on the table, but increases drastically
for longer falls.
Terminal velocity varies greatly by
object. For human-shaped objects on
Earth, it is 60-100 yards/second. Use
the low end for a spread-eagled fall,
the high end for a swan dive. For
dense objects (e.g., rocks) or stream-
lined objects, it can be 200 yards/sec-
ond or more!