So in Goblin Squad D&D yesterday, our Barbarian had just⌠the stupidest, DUMBEST, most terrifying, absolutely godlike thing happen to him.
This is a story of numbers, but itâs still beautiful.
We were fighting a dragon.
The dragon is hopping around while the Barbarian is just racing around trying to catch up to her
Dragon finally decides, no, really, fuck specifically THAT ranger and goes hog fucking wild on me (I LIVED!) but holds still long enough for the Barbarian to finally rage and LEAP ONTO HER BACK and go STAB
Dragon sees this and goes, âOh. Sick.âÂ
and just goes VERT
Pro: I am not tanking anymore
Con: She instantly moves FOUR HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIRâŚ. with our raging Barbarian holding on for dear gottdamn life
One round later, sheâs another 160 feet up, still getting stabbed by a Barbarian who has somehow held on, now getting attacked by ballistae and weâre all starting to get CONCERNED
Because if they take that dragon down, that is 560 feet our Barbarian is also falling out of the sky, and he is not attuned to the ONLY THING WE HAVE that can save his fucking life from that height
Iâm sitting there doing math, trying to determine if 560Ⲡis enough to kill him outright, silently being very grateful we still have exactly ONE diamond to rez his ass
and the dragon just goes VERT again, ANOTHER four hundred feet in the air
The Barbarian, now finally free from any potential collateral, cackles, as he is at long last, unshackled by the restraints of his conscience.
He has a tattoo, you see, which allows him to cast Fireball once per day
centered on himself
with a save which he autofails
But he is a tiefling.
And this fucker still has 160 hit points by the time itâs done exploding. But the explosion sends him backward as he fails the Athletics check to continue holding on and he begins to fall.
He falls for 3 fucking rounds and we can only watch our friend fall to his certain death.
The DM⌠has to roll ninety six d6s
let that number sink in for you
NINETY. SIX. D6s. They normally roll with real dice, you can hear the clickety clack through the discord, but they had to get out a fucking app for this because they do not OWN ninety. fucking. six. d6s.
It comes out to 402 fucking bludgeoning damage he takes on impact as he leaves a Barbarian shaped crater in the center of the forum, 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, a cloud of dust and broken brick shooting out as he lands.
And do you know what happens next?
Do you know what the fuck we see as the dust settles?
We hear a cough, and a see a thumbs up come out of the crater. 1 hit point left.
402 damage. Raging as he landed, halved to 201. He had 160HP left, it only brought him down to -41, not enough to kill him outright (you have to get equal to negative your max HP), AND HEâS LEVEL 12, which means he has access to Relentless Rage: the first time youâd drop below 0 HP, if it doesnât outright kill you, you have to roll a Con save of 10 or higher to instead drop to 1 HP. He rolled an 11.
He fell almost a THOUSAND feet from the air off the back of a fucking dragon, took NINETY SIX D6 FALL DAMAGE, AND LIVED.
His arena name lived up to the hubris of this fucking swan dive. All hail ALTANIN, THE UN-FUCKING-BREAKABLE
Hello I am the DM for the above shenanigans. Yes it was as ridiculous and glorious as it seems. To clarify a few things for anyone reading though:
I wasnât annoyed by a player circumventing a rather extreme effort to kill them, why the hell would I be annoyed at that? I love it when someone manages to get out of the ridiculous circumstances Iâve concocted through some equally ridiculous/miraculous application of their characterâs abilities. You read the thing, right? Itâs fucking glorious.
We have a homebrew sprint action for those times when you just gotta go fast. You can move 5 times your speed on your turn BUT it has to be in a straight line, and you canât take any other actions, bonus actions or reactions until your next turn because youâre too focused on going fast. Thatâs how the dragon was able to move 1000ft so quickly.
Yes, I know fall damage is 1d6 per 10ft fallen with a cap of 20d6, potentially to account for terminal velocity. A little research though shows it takes a distance closer to 2000ft for a human to reach terminal velocity so 200d6 is a better cap. Plus if youâre going to put yourself in a situation ridiculous enough to cause you to fall a from that high up Iâm not going to let you get away with just an average of 70 damage. You earned each one of those 200d6 and by god youâre going to get them.
Yes, I know a barbarianâs rage ends if they donât attack or take damage by the end of their turn but we were technically out of combat at that point so it isnât much of a stretch to allow the barbarian to rage just before he hit the ground for that sweet, sweet damage resistance. (Iâd have allowed it in combat as well because youâre falling while your turn is happening, not suddenly teleporting 500ft down the moment your turn ends, so you can still decide to rage just before you hit the ground.)
And with that cleared up Iâll add one which was missed: About halfway down the barbarian, coming out of his rage, suddenly has the presence of mind to grab his bag of holding to try and use its pocket dimension to shift himself to another plane and avoid the falling damage.Â
It was a pretty good idea.Â
Unfortunately, it turns out having the wind rushing by you while youâre in freefall makes it kinda hard to hold onto things and he rolled a 5 on his ability check to shove himself into the bag and itâs snatched from his grip by the wind and goes sailing away across the city.
The rest of the party on the ground see one tiny speck falling towards them become two as the bag of holding drifts away from him and they all resign themselves to scraping the red paste which used to be the barbarian off the cobblestones.
And then relentless rage happened, as described above.
