Butch and Sunblade
Falling damage has traditionally been funky in D&D. The higher level you are, the higher you can plummet from and survive. Somehow, in every edition of the game, ones skill with magic or a blade translates into the ability to survive a multi-story drop onto a hard surface.
In 5th Edition, a 3rd level fighter with 12 Constitution has around 28 hit points and dies if they take 40 points of damage from a single hit. But throw resistance to bludgeoning damage on them and they can skydive from orbit and likely survive. At 5th level they might even be able to walk away. At 10th level they don’t even need resistance to just walk off a fall at terminal velocity.
That’s just an example from the latest edition, but it’s just as screwy in earlier editions. Falling damage has always been deadly at low levels and then paradoxically minor with a few levels.
Those strange rules helped a PC in the group I play with escape from prison. Fought his way to a window, fell out and down three stories to the ground and disappeared into the crowd.
The best illustration we found was http://img.ifcdn.com/images/e5f0ca940ba354919e3e6deeb1110c90ca98c926fcc747d427a988f1060fda73_1.gif
In some editions at least this is something of a myth unless the DM is very lax with HP.
In BX, for example, HP plateaus at level 9 and the average level 9 fighter will have 40 HP. (where an average 100 foot fall will do 35. so it’s not something he can do safely.)
Some older editions (or maybe it’s just oD&D) tells the DM to increase the size of the damage die if you’re falling onto a harder surface. Personally, I’d have no problem ruling jagged rocks make the die size two larger: d10s. At 100 feet that works out to an extra 20 damage.
And 2e has an optional massive damage rule. In a situation like this fall you’d have to save or die, even if you have HP left.
Part of the role of the ref is to make rulings. Personally I’d:
-roll to see if the character landed on normal earth or on rocks (there is quite a few in the illustration)
-roll d10s instead of 6s if it was the rocks
-have the PC do some kind of save to see if his bones were shattered and if so he’d be immobile until divine healing
-in either case tell the PC he was stunned for several rounds
-do a wandering monster check while he’s stunned and separated from the party because he’d be an easy target for predators.
-possibly damage some gear. glass potions and lanterns at the very least would be automatically smashed and wasted.
Without a CON bonus, to safely tank that much damage a fighter would have to be around level 25…and at that point literal divinity is just a stone’s throw away anyway.
Well, yeah, if you want to be all reasonable and logical about this. But that makes for a boring comics.
Interestingly, IIRC, falling damage received a rule patch in the 1e book Unearthed Arcana, likely for this reason. But the change didn’t stick.