Is there a threshold before you take damage from falling? or do I take 1d10+1 damage for tripping down a meter drop?

No, if a character falls (fall, not dive prone or judo-roll under a table or similar) it takes fall damage for the distance.

Same as in real life. You can dive to the ground safely baseball players do it every day, but if you fell backwards and couldn't stop you'd probably crack your skull or break a rib or shoulder blade. In this case you're barely falling more than a meter (3 feet).

I work with soldiers that have broken bones from a GLF (ground-level fall) all the time. Extra weight from body armor just makes the fall worse on them.

HappyDaze said:

My issue is less that it's falling damage, and more that they can take fire from explosive weapons effortlessly with fully sealed armor that has to be powered and padded in some manner. The padding in the armor has to protect them from falls in some way, especially seeing as assault marines land hard purposely into the ground to knock enemies off balance. Their body armor is a full shell, not ballistic protection mesh.

On the issue of assault marines, their jump packs prevent them from taking falling damage. An assault marine would have to have his jump pack disabled/destroyed in order to actually take falling damage.

Demonskunk said:

People can jump down from very high levels and not break bones or get hurt. I used to jump off my parents roof, I had to be very careful and land a certain way, but I never got hurt doing it (it still wasn't a smart thing to do, so don't try it folks). Then you can look at people who do parkour. They jump down from pretty high places all the time and usually get away fine. Its because they plan the fall, they jump off in such a way they are in position to land the correct way that prevents them from being hurt. Same thing with assault marines.

Padding or not wouldn't help either, if a marine landed on his arm and it went one way and his body went another, it would hurt quite a bit. In this case padding matters jack. Even if they did have padding it would be less than an inch thick, and primarily for comfort reasons. They aren't wrapped in bubble wrap.

Look at midevil knights, they wore cotton undershirt under a chainmail set with their plate on top. You can't possibly think that cotton shirt would protect them from getting a boo boo if they fell over do you?

followup question does Falling Damage in Deathwatch cap out? or is it by how far u fell?

I know that a flying PC or Creature from high level cap out at 25m for the damage what about falling off something?

With a successful skill check (Acrobatics? Jump? I forget) you can jump down a number of meters equal to your Agility Bonus without taking injury, and only take damage from the excess, I think as a GM I'd be willing to allow that to apply to straight falling as well (as in, I would allow an Agility check to fall in a controlled manner).

Also, just in case anybody misreads the rules the same way I did, don't forget that it's 1D10 + (1 per meter fallen) and not (1D10 + 1) per meter fallen. In a recent game we spent ages trying to work out why a three meter fall did more damage than a Heavy Bolter.

Angel of Death said:

No cap, 1D10 +1 for every meter you fall. If you fall 25m you take 1d10+25.

There would be a point at which the minimum damage you'd take from a fall is more than your characters wounds+20 which means negative 10 crit anyway you look at it. Figure out this height and that can be your cap, if you like.

herichimo said:

DH Had a cap, I think it was around 25. Falling in DW has no specific cap. If you want a terminal velocity cap it's going to be at least 1d10+100 (if not 500).

If you don't like the lethality of the falling damage, I'd suggest simply giving them some static damage and a neat description, and if they fall from too high for your taste, make them burn fate. If you go this route however, I'd strongly encourage you (well, whatever route you take, really) to let the PCs know what the potential complications are to falling before they they climb the sheer cliff face or jump on the stabilizer of that Tau assault craft.

The thing about fall damage is that it is for uncontrolled falls. So for example, jumping (I hope that you are in control of your jumps) from a height of 20m would have no effect on you, but getting thrown (a situation I highly doubt you would be in control of) from a height of 20m would result in 1d10+20 impact damage.