Falling Damage

[ways and means]

I was wondering how people would stat fallling damage onto other people, if a character aimed to drop kick someone from the top of a three story building and gained an exceptional enough roll to hit (so the kicker would be hitting the target at the velocity of the fall) would the falling damage (5 stress per floor) be transfered to the person that was hit as well, so in this example would both characters be hit for 15 stress or would only the falling person be hit by the falling damage and would the attack be resolved as normal?    

[Tedronai]

There are potentially very dangerous precedents to be set, here.  Rule with care.

[zenten]

Actually transferring that force is harder than kicking someone from the same height, probably a lot harder.  So for "realism" purposes you don't need to have the numbers be the same.  I'd go with it just resulting in a tagable aspect for the attacker.

[UmbraLux]

I was wondering how people would stat fallling damage onto other people, if a character aimed to drop kick someone from the top of a three story building...

In most games I run both would take the same damage.  But I tend towards the gritty side.  A group trying to emulate anime may have a different answer.

[zenten]

In most games I run both would take the same damage.  But I tend towards the gritty side.  A group trying to emulate anime may have a different answer.

Would you also make the roll to hit the person from three stories up really hard to make?  Because aiming that wouldn't be easy, especially not against a moving target.

[Haru]

How about this:

The attacker has the opportunity to make an athletic roll to transfer some of his own damage to his target, basically using the target to block their fall damage (at least partially). I don't think both should get an equal amount of damage, the total additional damage should be the usual fall damage of 5 stress per floor. The attacker can then make an athletics roll that might be opposed by a defence roll if the target can react in time. For every excess shift, the attacker can transfer half of the damage done by 1 floor to the target, rounded down, if need be. This would make it a pretty powerful attack, but still dangerous to yourself, because the most you can hope for is reducing your fall damage by half.

Example:
Joe the Vampire is jumping down a 3 story house to attack Jack, he rolls superb (+5). Jack sees the shadow appearing in the last second and tries to get out of the way, but he only rolls Good (+3). That makes 2 shifts on the attack plus (2 * 5/2) shifts from the fall, so Joe hits Jack with a total of 12 shifts. Joe himself gets the rest of the fall damage which is 10 shifts.

[ways and means]

When I said drop kick I kind of meant jumped on, this was my poor wording what I had in mind was a person jumping on a Monster from a great height and possibly landing feet first throught the monsters (aka a human shaped bullet). So what I was really asking is what is the effect of being jumped on from a really high height. I am at the moment mostly on the side of both characters gain an equal amount of damage becuase I can't see landing on a monster meters from the ground doing much to break a fall (unless it was really squishy) and because both the faller and the fallee are being hit by more force than a normal punch could possibly equal.   

[UmbraLux]

Would you also make the roll to hit the person from three stories up really hard to make?  Because aiming that wouldn't be easy, especially not against a moving target.

Probably not going to hit at all unless the target is unaware.  Again, that may differ based on the game's style.

[Katarn]

I'd use taggable aspects- it's simpler and more flexible for "tougher" characters.

If you decide to deal in stress, you need to have a non-linear system (the amount of damage increases at a rate faster than the height since acceleration is constant and velocity is linear).  In other words, a little stress for 1 story, more for 2 stories, a lot at 3+.  (again, aspects seem better since it's much more flexible).

[sinker]

Of note this would be a great situation to implement a house rule that I think Devonapple came up with. Basically the idea of taking consequences to improve your roll (or in this case I would improve the weapon rating as it's not really taking damage to make the attack more accurate).

[Belial666]

Do note that falling damage is unrealistically large in the game. Weapon 4-5 is like being hit by a speeding car or a powerful grenade. Someone falling from the first floor of a building (6 yards) is going to hit at ~36 kph (20 mph). Someone falling from the 5th floor of a building (22 yards) is going to hit at ~72 kph (40 mph). Someone falling from the tallest building in the world (600+ yards) is going to hit at 360 kph (200 mph) at most.

No way is a 1-floor drop equivalent to being hit by a speeding car or a grenade.
No way is a 5-floor drop equivalent to being hit by a speeding car five times or eating 5 grenades in the face.
No way is a 100-floor drop instantly fatal to a humanoid that's as tough as a tank (mythic toughness) two dozen times over (500 stress). It might not even be fatal once.

[Silverblaze]

Do note that falling damage is unrealistically large in the game. Weapon 4-5 is like being hit by a speeding car or a powerful grenade. Someone falling from the first floor of a building (6 yards) is going to hit at ~36 kph (20 mph). Someone falling from the 5th floor of a building (22 yards) is going to hit at ~72 kph (40 mph). Someone falling from the tallest building in the world (600+ yards) is going to hit at 360 kph (200 mph) at most.

No way is a 1-floor drop equivalent to being hit by a speeding car or a grenade.
No way is a 5-floor drop equivalent to being hit by a speeding car five times or eating 5 grenades in the face.
No way is a 100-floor drop instantly fatal to a humanoid that's as tough as a tank (mythic toughness) two dozen times over (500 stress). It might not even be fatal once.

100% agreed.

Most games falling damage is miniscule at best.

White Wolf: damage tops at 10 damage dice
D&D : 10 D6 is the most.
Blood of Heroes: ...hard to explain, but reguklar humans can live through falling 3-4 stories...they are hurt bad but live.

I'd say a stress per story topping out at 20 stress (thats a soft cap, do as you will)...roll athletics or endurance for defense whichever is greater.

[Becq]

Having read through the section on falling damage (YS319), the action you are describing (using altitude as an enhancement for attacking) is not explicitely spelled out, but probably should be handled in exactly the same way as it suggests handling knock-up attacks.  That is, the altitude is already factored into the attack.

Realistic?  Not really.  But then again, there are also not really any rules for coup-de-gras attacks either, unless you really stretch things.  I think the single biggest reason to avoid adding falling damage to "death from above" attacks is to avoid even the slightest risk of introducing instant-death pigeon attacks into the game.  That is, a a flying creature flies up to 300 feet altitude or so, then

(click to show/hide)

craps

with surpassing accuracy on a character.  The resulting attack would effectively be weapon:30 if the falling rules were used.  A flock of pigeons could produce an area-effect version of this attack!  And wizards could create this sort of attack with nothing more that a simple animal control spell... 

By the way, I would fully endorse the attacker in the original post getting benefit from a couple of tags, including from scene aspects ("Multi-story building") and maneuvers ("DEATH FROM ABOVE!!1!")

[devonapple]

The general recommendation from the RAW is not to factor falling damage into any attack whatsoever. Only if someone is - without anyone else's assistance - falling on their own, or because of a failure. Which seems backwards from a simulationist point of view, but is alright from FATE's more narrative point of view.

[Becq]

Right.  Though as I suggested, you *could* make the attack nastier by tagging relevant aspects, which is totally within the spirit of the rules.