If you accelerate something into a freefall orbit, then it stands to reason that the projectile would deal falling damage (equal and opposite force, you know) which maxes out at 20 d6.
In 5e yes. I think the theory is once you hit terminal velocity, you aren’t going to get any more damage from a longer fall.
Fun fact, I actually did have a villain do exactly that in a campaign once. The party achieved a secondary win condition during combat and so the BBEG jumped off the top of the space elevator to escape.
Wouldn’t jumping off the top of a space elevator just put you in orbit? Or, if by top you mean the point where the space elevator anchors to its counterweight, in orbit around the sun.
OK, you’ve got space elevators wrong, and that’s OK.
The counter-weight doesn’t orbit the sun. It orbits earth. If it orbited the sun it’d rip the thing apart. It sits somewhere above a geostationary orbit, as a geostationary orbit is where the orbit point is always over the same point on the ground, which would be where your elevator is tethered.
The station part is somewhere below this. The higher it is the heavier or further out your counter-weight needs to be —and since it’s already impossible around earth no matter what, this needs to be as low as possible.
Because of this setup, your velocity (while below the geostationary line) is always less than the orbital velocity at that altitude. For example, the ISS orbits the earth 15.5 times a day. Our point on the space elevator cable stays at the exact same position over the ground, so it orbits 0 times. At the same altitude as the ISS you need to be moving the same speed as the ISS or you’ll fall down. It only doesn’t while attached to the cable because it’s being pulled by the counter-weight.
Basically, stuff dropped off a space elevator falls, unless it’s at geostationary altitude. It needs to be given some extra horizontal speed to stay in orbit.
ODST-Dropping your barbarian is objectively the best way to have him enter combat, and it inflicts psychological damage to anyone close enough to witness it.
I dont remember exactly what we did, but i remember we had a situation where one of my fellow players was a centaur. The dm ruled that if you were to use a battering ram while riding said centaur, both your strengths get added together for the check. The person riding the centaur has something that enabled them to more effectively use tools they were holding, i think it was if they used a handheld tool they got advantage with it. And then we had one more player who was a turtle person. As long as they were in their shell they got a ton of defense buffs. So, we had player 2 hold player 3 while they both climbed onto player 1. We then proceeded to use player 3 as a battering ram against a magical door that we couldnt figure out how to open. After rolls went through, we ended uo blowing the door down so violently that is killed most of the spawn in the next room
Heating on reentry is actually due to compressing the air in front of you, not friction. Falling from orbitall height will absolutely cause you to heat up the air in front of you, even as the air paassing you by is doing you no harm.
Though, if you smash into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, it’s probably going to do you some harm as it tries to force you back down to TV.
If you’re jumping from a space station then you’d be traveling at orbital velocity when hitting the atmosphere which is plenty fast enough to generate heat.
… the death star orbits. The timer for the rebels to blow it up in a New Hope was how long its orbit would take to clear the moon in its path to the rebel base. The battle of endor was fought over the new death star in orbit over the moon.
Yes, the death star is capable of warp, but that just puts it into orbit over different things.
Yes it orbits in the movies, that doesn’t conflict with anything I said. I’m describing a scenario where it doesn’t (which doesn’t happen in the movies).
A space station with the ability to achieve orbital speeds on it’s own power means it can also negate orbital speeds, before you jump off. And presumably regain them afterwards, if it doesn’t want to also plummet down to the planet.
Your example was for a space station that doesn’t orbit and you used the death star for that, which does orbit. Does that make sense to you? Cause it’s baffling me
I recently had this explained to me, terminal velocity is falling versus the force of the air pushing back on you, right? In vacuum you just keep accelerating, in atmosphere the air pushes back against you falling, limiting your speed
That force follows the rule that force (of air pushing back) is equal to acceleration (9.8m/s/s) times mass
So different weights fall at different speeds.
Half of the replies to me when I said what you said were
So, yes and no. Acceleration due to gravity impacts all objects equally. With no air resistance, on earth, everything speeds up at 9.8m/s/s. But, that “no air resistance” is a big asterisk. This is why, say, parachutes work. It’s also how we get terminal velocity. Often misinterpreted as “how fast you’d have to go to die from a fall” it’s actually “how fast you need to go before the drag from your air resistance is a force greater than or equal to gravity”
So, multiple options here. Skydivers regularly hit terminal velocity, as fast as they’ll go in atmosphere, before pulling their chutes. At these speeds, heat from friction isn’t enough to worry about. Once again though, if you’re coming down from space, that “in atmosphere” asterisk goes away. If you’re dropping from a satellite, you’re going at speeds necessary to orbit, and you don’t have anything slowing you down until you hit the atmosphere. Suddenly your terminal velocity is way lower than infinity, and the friction you’re feeling from the atmosphere is INTENSE, rapidly turning that speed into heat
Applying real world logic to game rules never works out.
Also, you forget to take into account the weapon’s mass, form, structural integrity, the commoner’s reaction time, probability to fumble, the force of the wind, and probably a few dozen other factors that have an effect in the real world.
If you can manage to get someone into freefall I’d allow it. But no, equal opposite forces doesn’t mean you roll dice the same lol. Your sword does not take damage when you attack with it.
Ok, but hear me out:
If you accelerate something into a freefall orbit, then it stands to reason that the projectile would deal falling damage (equal and opposite force, you know) which maxes out at 20 d6.
If a character has 121hp or more they’re able to jump from a space station onto earth with like a super hero landing??
In 5e yes. I think the theory is once you hit terminal velocity, you aren’t going to get any more damage from a longer fall.
Fun fact, I actually did have a villain do exactly that in a campaign once. The party achieved a secondary win condition during combat and so the BBEG jumped off the top of the space elevator to escape.
Wouldn’t jumping off the top of a space elevator just put you in orbit? Or, if by top you mean the point where the space elevator anchors to its counterweight, in orbit around the sun.
OK, you’ve got space elevators wrong, and that’s OK.
The counter-weight doesn’t orbit the sun. It orbits earth. If it orbited the sun it’d rip the thing apart. It sits somewhere above a geostationary orbit, as a geostationary orbit is where the orbit point is always over the same point on the ground, which would be where your elevator is tethered.
The station part is somewhere below this. The higher it is the heavier or further out your counter-weight needs to be —and since it’s already impossible around earth no matter what, this needs to be as low as possible.
Because of this setup, your velocity (while below the geostationary line) is always less than the orbital velocity at that altitude. For example, the ISS orbits the earth 15.5 times a day. Our point on the space elevator cable stays at the exact same position over the ground, so it orbits 0 times. At the same altitude as the ISS you need to be moving the same speed as the ISS or you’ll fall down. It only doesn’t while attached to the cable because it’s being pulled by the counter-weight.
Basically, stuff dropped off a space elevator falls, unless it’s at geostationary altitude. It needs to be given some extra horizontal speed to stay in orbit.
Yes.
ODST-Dropping your barbarian is objectively the best way to have him enter combat, and it inflicts psychological damage to anyone close enough to witness it.
I dont remember exactly what we did, but i remember we had a situation where one of my fellow players was a centaur. The dm ruled that if you were to use a battering ram while riding said centaur, both your strengths get added together for the check. The person riding the centaur has something that enabled them to more effectively use tools they were holding, i think it was if they used a handheld tool they got advantage with it. And then we had one more player who was a turtle person. As long as they were in their shell they got a ton of defense buffs. So, we had player 2 hold player 3 while they both climbed onto player 1. We then proceeded to use player 3 as a battering ram against a magical door that we couldnt figure out how to open. After rolls went through, we ended uo blowing the door down so violently that is killed most of the spawn in the next room
Alternatively, invest 18 levels into monk and get no damage in 99,51% of cases
https://anydice.com/program/40317
theyd also need something to protect them from the friction and resulting heat of air brushing by at terminal velocity tho, i assume?
oh no wait, im making it too realistic
Piss hard so the reaction mass slows you down along with the cloud of expanding piss vapor.
They call me the yellow comet
Terminal velocity for a human is not fast enough to cause air to heat up. You’d probably get frostburn instead.
Heating on reentry is actually due to compressing the air in front of you, not friction. Falling from orbitall height will absolutely cause you to heat up the air in front of you, even as the air paassing you by is doing you no harm.
Though, if you smash into the atmosphere at orbital speeds, it’s probably going to do you some harm as it tries to force you back down to TV.
If you’re jumping from a space station then you’d be traveling at orbital velocity when hitting the atmosphere which is plenty fast enough to generate heat.
Unless the space station is not orbiting. Maybe it’s a mobile one like the Desthstar.
… the death star orbits. The timer for the rebels to blow it up in a New Hope was how long its orbit would take to clear the moon in its path to the rebel base. The battle of endor was fought over the new death star in orbit over the moon.
Yes, the death star is capable of warp, but that just puts it into orbit over different things.
It can orbit. It doesn’t have to. It’s capable of moving between systems, it’s not confined to a single gravity well.
Yes it orbits in the movies, that doesn’t conflict with anything I said. I’m describing a scenario where it doesn’t (which doesn’t happen in the movies).
A space station with the ability to achieve orbital speeds on it’s own power means it can also negate orbital speeds, before you jump off. And presumably regain them afterwards, if it doesn’t want to also plummet down to the planet.
Your example was for a space station that doesn’t orbit and you used the death star for that, which does orbit. Does that make sense to you? Cause it’s baffling me
Hold up. Didn’t some guy drop balls off a roof to show that things fall at the same speed?
I recently had this explained to me, terminal velocity is falling versus the force of the air pushing back on you, right? In vacuum you just keep accelerating, in atmosphere the air pushes back against you falling, limiting your speed
That force follows the rule that force (of air pushing back) is equal to acceleration (9.8m/s/s) times mass
So different weights fall at different speeds.
Half of the replies to me when I said what you said were
Or similar
So, yes and no. Acceleration due to gravity impacts all objects equally. With no air resistance, on earth, everything speeds up at 9.8m/s/s. But, that “no air resistance” is a big asterisk. This is why, say, parachutes work. It’s also how we get terminal velocity. Often misinterpreted as “how fast you’d have to go to die from a fall” it’s actually “how fast you need to go before the drag from your air resistance is a force greater than or equal to gravity”
Right. That all makes sense. So the air resistance is what is also causing it to heat up. I still don’t see why a person wouldn’t do that.
So, multiple options here. Skydivers regularly hit terminal velocity, as fast as they’ll go in atmosphere, before pulling their chutes. At these speeds, heat from friction isn’t enough to worry about. Once again though, if you’re coming down from space, that “in atmosphere” asterisk goes away. If you’re dropping from a satellite, you’re going at speeds necessary to orbit, and you don’t have anything slowing you down until you hit the atmosphere. Suddenly your terminal velocity is way lower than infinity, and the friction you’re feeling from the atmosphere is INTENSE, rapidly turning that speed into heat
Alight cool. All basically what I figured. Thanks!
Shape affects aerodynamics.
Well sure but I don’t think a human is shaped in a way that would really affect this.
Never seen a sky diver? Head down vs belly flop changes their speed
Still won’t stop you from eventually reaching the same speed tho.
No. They’d need a pretty impressive jump height to slow down enough to leave orbit.
Applying real world logic to game rules never works out.
Also, you forget to take into account the weapon’s mass, form, structural integrity, the commoner’s reaction time, probability to fumble, the force of the wind, and probably a few dozen other factors that have an effect in the real world.
Just don’t. It’s a game.
I was just making a joke. Lighten up.
If you can manage to get someone into freefall I’d allow it. But no, equal opposite forces doesn’t mean you roll dice the same lol. Your sword does not take damage when you attack with it.