Jumping from heights Options

[oinopion]

On recent session one of the players, namely phys-ad ninja (with Great Leap 2) tried to jump down from the ceiling, ca. 4m high. We tried to use Falling damage, but it felt somehow wrong. In the How should one handle such feat?

[IKerensky]

Jumping, scaling rules seems really really wrong. I suggest you dismiss them entirely and use your own judgement.

[CeeJay]

Free Fall is the adept power that helps with falling damage. Great Leap only lets you jump higher...

-CJ

[Karoline]

Free Fall is the adept power that helps with falling damage. Great Leap only lets you jump higher...

-CJ

But if you can jump higher, you should be able to land from a higher distance without hurting yourself as well. Otherwise you would eventually be able to jump high enough to cause yourself to take falling damage every time you jump.

I recall there being rules for allowing you to make a gymnastics test to land more softly, I don't see why you couldn't replace that with a jumping test, or even allow the use of both. If you're really good at jumping, and really good at breaking a fall, you're likely to be able to fall from a serious height without taking real damage.

[Yerameyahu]

Great Leap shouldn't help in the OP's situation. I might (generously) allow Great Leap to keep someone from straight-up jumping themselves to damage, but that'd be if the height came during a Leap action in the first place.

[Makki]

by RAW you add your Gymnastics skill to the resistance pool. but i agree, that's only half a solution to the problem...although stuff like synthacardium will add...

[Dreadlord]

by RAW you add your Gymnastics skill to the resistance pool. but i agree, that's only half a solution to the problem...although stuff like synthacardium will add...

I have just been researching this myself for my upcoming game tonight. SR4a page 134 has SOME info, but I had to read between the lines a bit. On the table, jumping down is obviously a Vertical Jump. To make a known distance Jumping Down, the Threshold is Meters * 2, in this case 8. However, there is a MAX DISTANCE that a person can jump of AGI / 3 rounded up, so we can assume a person with AGI 3 can jump down 1 meter safely. Therefore, he cannot safely jump 4m down, so it will be a Fall rather than a jump. Now, on SR4a page 164, we see on the table that 4m is 4P damage, resisted by BOD + 1/2 impact armor (round down) + Gymnastics.

This is pretty much RAW, but I have a problem with the table on p. 134 for MAX DISTANCE in the case of if you are jumping down. It seems like it should be double that distance if you are only jumping down, or something along those lines. It can work as is, I suppose, in the absence of anything else official, but it still feels a little wrong that Jumping Down is so narrow a range.

[Yerameyahu]

I dunno if it's too short. AGI 6 (pretty common) is 2m, and you can 'expect' to resist (BOD + 1/2 Impact + Gymnastics)/3 boxes of damage, so that's easily 4 boxes soaked (4, 8, 4). So you can safely do 6 feet, and expect to do 12 feet unscathed. With cyberleg jacks, it's a whole lot more; ditto for higher Bod/Skill/Armor values. If you aim for something soft-ish to break your fall, the GM can lower the DV.

[Shrike30]

A 4 meter fall is nothing to laugh at. My brother had his heel rebuilt with titanium screws and pins after a controlled jump down from his roof onto soft ground where he misjudged the distance (about 12 feet/3.5 meters). I work as an EMT... a patient who's suffered a 5+ meter fall is considered to have sufficient Mechanism Of Injury (being about 3x most people's height) to justify immediate transport to a Level I trauma center even without obvious external signs of significant injury, as the amount of force applied to your internal organs when you stop from that speed (that is, you hit the ground, your bones/skin stop, and then your organs stop when they hit the end of whatever attaches them to your skeleton) is enough to cause massive amounts of damage (like your aorta shearing away from the back of your thoracic cavity, tearing open in the process).

Just because you can jump really high doesn't mean you can land successfully, and I don't see a problem with being able to jump further than you can safely land. Cyber-jumpers use hydraulic jacks, which can soak impact. Physads can use feather fall to do the same thing.

[Summerstorm]

Also dependent on surface you jump onto.

Maybe:
Hard ground - as per rules.
Soft Ground - half
Water - quarter

Hm... but good question... we should survey the data and analyze the rules, i think.
I have seen a video of a man jumping down about 8 meters (onto soft sand) and break the fall without any damage. I myself have jumped down about three meters once onto pretty hard surface without any damage. How much should terminal velocity do? Weren't there reports of people falling from a PLANE and crash through some windows and a newsstand and survice with just broken legs. (Something in WWII?)

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Also dependent on surface you jump onto.

Maybe:
Hard ground - as per rules.
Soft Ground - half
Water - quarter

Hm... but good question... we should survey the data and analyze the rules, i think.
I have seen a video of a man jumping down about 8 meters (onto soft sand) and break the fall without any damage. I myself have jumped down about three meters once onto pretty hard surface without any damage. How much should terminal velocity do? Weren't there reports of people falling from a PLANE and crash through some windows and a newsstand and survice with just broken legs. (Something in WWII?)

And what about the magical properties of impact absortion a (straw?)brry bush provides? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif) I remember a parachuter from australia (or was it new zealand?) had his primary and secondary chutes failing and survived with just a broken leg.

[Karoline]

I used to regularly jump about 3m down (onto grass) when I was a kid, and I never managed to hurt myself. I've also seen people doing par...parqu... that running stuff who jump 4-5m down onto concrete and get nothing more than a slight bruise on their back. This is because they know how to jump and how to land. Being good at jumping is going to increase your leg muscles, and your bone's resistance to impact, and being good at landing means you'll distribute the force of the landing much better, so both will play a roll in your ability to land unharmed.

Also, water will only reduce your damage if it is from below a certain point, and even then only if the landing is done properly. Belly-flopping into water hurts about as much as belly-flopping onto the ground.

[Karoline]

And what about the magical properties of impact absortion a (straw?)brry bush provides? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif) I remember a parachuter from australia (or was it new zealand?) had his primary and secondary chutes failing and survived with just a broken leg.

There are actually a couple instances of people surviving falls from what should have been lethal heights with fairly minor injuries. Most often the person in question is unconscious when they land, allowing their bodies to become exceedingly relaxed and absorbing the impact much better than they would have conscious.

And they were just downright lucky.

[Stahlseele]

A Drop/Jump of 4m under SR4 is laughably easy . . Even the most mediocre man alive under the SR4 Rules can do it without taking any Damage at all . .
Hell, Trolls are much more than 2m tall, they can REACH higher than 5m with their bare hands!

edited because i mistyped the size of trolls.
they are between 2.5 and 3m tall under SR4, and a bit less under SR4.

[Karoline]

I'm fairly sure trolls are more on the lines of 3m tall than 4m tall. Still might be able to reach 5m with a bit of a hop.

[Stahlseele]

I'm fairly sure trolls are more on the lines of 3m tall than 4m tall. Still might be able to reach 5m with a bit of a hop.

corrected, thank you ^^

[Yerameyahu]

Trolls are not even close to 4m tall. EDIT: Hehe, way too late. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If you hang down from your hands, you're not falling that distance. Subtract your arm+body length from the fall distance.

I see a lot of arguments about how far skilled individuals can jump down. That's Gymnastics, and it's already in the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Karoline]

I see a lot of arguments about how far skilled individuals can jump down. That's Gymnastics, and it's already in the rules. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Ah, but we (or I at least) was pointing out that it was a combination of gymnastics and jumping. As I said, being skilled at jumping means you jump alot which means that your body adapts to handle the impact from a fall better. This would be in addition to the gymnastics knowledge/ability to land better.

[Stahlseele]

look no further than this usefull chart made by our dear knasser:
http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/content...ai_do_large.png
and of course, for reference here:
http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/content...n/metatypes.png

[Karoline]

look no further than this usefull chart made by our dear knasser:
http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/content...ai_do_large.png

Hehe, I love that.

I'm still amazed at how few unarmed gangers a troll can take out.

[Yerameyahu]

Karoline, that doesn't have anything to do with Shadowrun, though. We have stats for Strength and Body already. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) So, you get Body, and you get Gymnastics. There isn't even a Jumping skill: that *is* Gymnastics.

[Stahlseele]

Well, that's a moderately augmented and not very specialized or concentrated or trained troll . .
And there's still 6 of them at a time . . granted, the other guy can take out 6 at a time too . .

[Summerstorm]

The thing with falling/jumping down is, i think, that there is a very fine line bewteen: Ha, didn't hurt and SPLATTER.

You can make a four meter jump, but a five meter on will shatter your knees. It should be something like:

Gymnastics has a safe threshold
Over that you get stun damage (resistable)
Farther down it gets physical
Even farther down there is unreliable damage (something like the ground "Attacks" you with a crapload of dice.

Maybe like:
Gymnastics rating= safe
1.5 Gymnastics= double meters over rating = stun damage
2 Gymnastics= double meters over rating= physical
higher: meters above rating * 4 dice dice damage
Terminal velocity: 50 dice attack?

So someone with 4 gymnastics can jump:
4 meters without prog.
6 meters for 4DV stun.
8 meters for 8DV physical
And above that might get cratered.

Hm, maybe a bit lenient/harsh in extrem ratings... have to work on that. And it still needs to be easy.

EDIT: All of course still resisted per standard roll. Hm... have to ramp the damage up a bit, i think.

[Stahlseele]

That only counts for the Norm.
People with less than 3 in the Attributes.
With no discernable Skill at all.
Shadowrunners who have trained and augmented their bodies to close to the pinnacle of physical perfection can and should laugh at this.

[Yerameyahu]

I don't think it's very binary at all. The 5m jump does 2 DV more. That's a wound, but not a horrific one.