Veins of the Earth falling damage comparison

The falling damage system in Veins of the Earth does exactly what Patrick says it does on the tin.

Compared to the default system in the LotFP rulebook, it gives a chance for low-hp characters to maaaybe survive, and a chance for high-level characters to maaaybe die.

(Neither system is more or less “realistic” than the other, they map pretty well in that regard to each other, which is good.)

I thought it might be an interesting curiosity for people to see at what particular amount of current hp the chances of dying is about the same in the two systems across various falling distances. At 10′, both systems just have 1d6 damage so that’s the same.

At 20′ feet, they’re around the same chance of dying for people who are at 7hp.

30′ - 11hp
40′ - 14hp
50′ - 18hp
60′ - 22hp
70′ - 24hp
80′ - 23hp
90′ - 25hp

If you have less hp than the listed amount, the core book system is more brutal and if you have more hp than the listed amount, the Veins system is more brutal. (If you wonder why 80′ goes down again from 70′, it’s because the jump from 1d20 to 1d50 is bigger and brutal than the equivalent jump from 7d6 to 8d6. Or at least I think that’s why. I’m not super great at math.)

Hope this was interesting for those on the fence between the two systems. I still haven’t made up my mind which of the two I’m going to use. I like the results of Patrick’s system more – that it gives a higher chance of survival for low-level characters – so that’s one factor in its’ favor. Two factors in favor of the default system is 1. that I just like using the default if I can, and 2. that it’s terrifying to add up a handful of dice.

And, playing devil’s advocate, making having a bunch of hp protective against falls is part of the purpose of hp as a general abstract number to denote “survival chance”, so that’s a third factor.

Last edited by 2097 (2018-04-20 09:39:16)