I've been trying to come up with a reasonable estimation for how much damage one would take for jumping off a moving object. For example, if you find yourself in a cart careening down the side of a grassy hill at 60 mph (528 ft/round in game terms), what kind of damage would you expect to take if you were to jump out and hit the ground before the cart goes over the cliff at the bottom... what kind of check would be involved? Similar situation if you are on a galloping horse (250 ft/round) horse and get knocked off sideways (getting hit by a forceful hand for example)...
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
This stuff isn't in RAW, so I'm making extapolations from other rules to arrive at what might be a fair DM Judgment Call:
According to the mounted combat rules, if you fall out of your saddle during combat you take 1d6 damage. This assumes your mount is moving at its normal movement rate (either a single move, or a double-move which is really just two single moves back to back).
I think it's fair to say that if you're galloping (x4 move) then you are moving twice as fast as a double-move, so you should likely take twice the damage from a fall: 2d6.
Under the Falling rules, it says that if you jump, the first d6 is non-lethal damage. There is no check for jumping in this case (anyone can jump off of a cliff, for example). The damage reduction comes from a controlled jump (landing feet first) or an uncontrolled fall, and it only changes the first 1d6 of lethal damage into non-lethal (not much of a difference). This should likely apply here too, so if you jump from the saddle of a galloping horse you would take 1d6 non-lethal damage and 1d6 lethal damage and end up prone (per the Falling rules). If you're knocked out of the saddle, then it's 2d6 lethal damage and you end up prone.
And that gives us a baseline for other forms of jumping/falling off of or out of moving vehicles and creatures otherwise at ground level, such as your example of the wagon. Since that wagon is moving 2x as fast as the galloping horse, and falling from that horse is 2d6, then the wagon looks like 4d6 of damage (the first d6 could still be non-lethal if you jump off of the wagon rather than fall off of it).
Hmm, I had always assumed that the 1d6 damage falling from a horse was due to the height of the fall. I like your idea, I guess the damage just seems awful low! I sorta figured the equivalent of jumping out of a car at highway speed would hurt more than 14 points on average... then again one would think that getting skewered by a longsword would do more than 4.5 damage, so maybe I'm forgetting that my perception of how much things hurt are those of a 1st level character at best!
PS. my original idea was to apply a Wall of Thorns-like mechanic rather than a falling damage mechanic as it seems to me that most of the damage in that situation would come from bumping into rocks as you roll on the ground or friction burn on a stone face etc rather than blunt impact damage. So at first glance I think something like 15-flatfooted AC that the wall of thorns does per 100ft/round speed. So in the first example above, an unarmored character would take 15*5 or 75 points of damage for jumping from the cart (a fighter in +1 full plate would take 5*5 or 25). Those seemed like reasonable numbers to me at the time, but perhaps they're a bit on the high side...
On a side note, we run into a major problem when you're in a turn-based world. If you were sitting on the back of a creature moving 60 mph (think air elemental w/run feat at a full run), you would just jump off the back of the creature for 1d6 damage (for height) and be done with it since when it's your turn the creature isn't moving (because it's not it's turn). So the entire turn based system is broken when you're dealing with an object because it doesn't get a turn!
I would go so far as to let the person jumping off the wagon to make an acrobatics check to reduce the damage taken. I think DM_Blake's numbers are probably the way to go. 75 points from jumping out of a cart is an AWFUL lot of damage. People have been thrown/fallen/jumped out of cars moving at 60 mph and survived, I don't see why it would mean instant death for all but the higher level characters.
60 mph = 528 ft/round = 88 ft/s
It takes 2.75 seconds of falling time to reach that velocity.
If you start from a stand still, you will fall 121 feet in 2.75 seconds.
Thus, hitting a vertical wall while moving horizontally at 60 MPH would be roughly the same as hitting the ground after falling 121 feet. That gives us a base damage of 12d6.
Because your velocity is parallel to the object you are hitting, the damage would be less, and further you can roll with it to avoid some of the damage. I would say 6d6 with a reflex save for half.
On a side note, we run into a major problem when you're in a turn-based world. If you were sitting on the back of a creature moving 60 mph (think air elemental w/run feat at a full run), you would just jump off the back of the creature for 1d6 damage (for height) and be done with it since when it's your turn the creature isn't moving (because it's not it's turn). So the entire turn based system is broken when you're dealing with an object because it doesn't get a turn!
Well, don't forget the combat round is 6 seconds. That isn't 6 seconds for me, then 6 more seconds for you, then 6 more seconds for the ogre, for a total of 18 seconds. We all share the same 6 seconds.
So even though we use a turn-based system to handle the chaos of everyone shouting their actions at once, we're really all going at the same time.
Sure, we abstract this to the point where it's ridiculous and patently flase, like when I use my full turn to run up into the dragon's face, and then it uses its full turn to claw/claw/bite/buffet/slap me after I get there, it's really hard to say that all happened in the same 6 seconds.
Nevertheless, somewhere in all this abstractness, the idea that we're all supposed to be using the same 6 seconds to take our individual turns simultaneously remains true.
Which means your air elemental doesn't move/stop, then move/stop next round, and move/stop the round after. It just keeps moving (if keeping moving is what it's doing with its actions). And if you jump off the back of that moving air elemental, or a galloping horse, or a runaway wagon, those things don't stop at the ends of their turn allowing you to jump off of a stationary object just because their turn ended and yours began.
Abstract system or not, such a ruling would break any passing resemblance this game has to verisimilitude, and I'm fairly sure is not even close to what the RAW says or what the RAI intends.
On a side note, we run into a major problem when you're in a turn-based world. If you were sitting on the back of a creature moving 60 mph (think air elemental w/run feat at a full run), you would just jump off the back of the creature for 1d6 damage (for height) and be done with it since when it's your turn the creature isn't moving (because it's not it's turn). So the entire turn based system is broken when you're dealing with an object because it doesn't get a turn!Well, don't forget the combat round is 6 seconds. That isn't 6 seconds for me, then 6 more seconds for you, then 6 more seconds for the ogre, for a total of 18 seconds. We all share the same 6 seconds.
So even though we use a turn-based system to handle the chaos of everyone shouting their actions at once, we're really all going at the same time.
Sure, we abstract this to the point where it's ridiculous and patently flase, like when I use my full turn to run up into the dragon's face, and then it uses its full turn to claw/claw/bite/buffet/slap me after I get there, it's really hard to say that all happened in the same 6 seconds.
Nevertheless, somewhere in all this abstractness, the idea that we're all supposed to be using the same 6 seconds to take our individual turns simultaneously remains true.
Which means your air elemental doesn't move/stop, then move/stop next round, and move/stop the round after. It just keeps moving (if keeping moving is what it's doing with its actions). And if you jump off the back of that moving air elemental, or a galloping horse, or a runaway wagon, those things don't stop at the ends of their turn allowing you to jump off of a stationary object just because their turn ended and yours began.
Abstract system or not, such a ruling would break any passing resemblance this game has to verisimilitude, and I'm fairly sure is not even close to what the RAW says or what the RAI intends.
The 3.5 version of the Dragonlance campaign has advanced rules for flying creatures. It was an attempt to do a better job of expressing what you are saying. Just because a flying creature has finished their movement for the round does not mean that they have stopped moving.