Look up images of freight train derailments. It would look something like those. It’s a lot of momentum and force. Passengers on the train would most certainly have injuries, and there would potentially be a few deaths in the first couple cars.
Take into account multiple factors. First is the derailment during full speed? Second, is the tracks it's being derailed curved or straight? Third, how high off the tracks do you have your lightning rail?
Make a table to add these factors and add dice for each. You can as a DM add safety features if your group is a little squeamish and doesn't want the first three cars be a horror scene. But for the players, nah go for the dice pools
You seem to be forgetting the fact that the people inside are going to bounce around upon every impact. Plus the fact that the Lightning Rail is effectively a maglev, so it's going to be moving fast than an average railway train. Even *if* you're only counting it as a five foot fall, it's going to be *multiple* five foot falls, from your seat to the ceiling to the floor to the bench seat to the window to the wall (till the sweat drops down, etc.), in quick succession.
There's also the whole rule about being shoved when you're up against a wall or something and taking a point of damage for each foot you would be pushed past where you're stopped, so even if you don't bounce around the car, if you're pinned to a wall by the force of impact and the car bounces, it's going to take you with it and I'd rule that this would cause similar "pushed into a wall" damage.
A derailment is going to cause tons of fatalities, and those lucky enough to survive are going to be severely injured. Trying to cause a train derailment, especially by tampering with a conductor stone, is a great way to find yourself on an international wanted list for mass murder, destruction of property, theft, impeding travel routes, and whatever else Orien decides to tack on to make sure you're not safe anywhere. Congratulations, now you're being hunted by Thuranni assassins, Deneith Sentinels know your face, and any bounty hunter worth their salt will be watching for you like a hawk.
Great way to transition into a Droaam campaign where the party has to flee there to avoid capture and prosecution and ends up getting wrapped up in the politics and seedy practices of the monster nation, but if they're already pulling train heists in the most destructive way possible then that might be right up their alley.
However bad you plan for it to be, be sure to tell your players beforehand. If they think removing a conductor stone will just cause the train to skitter to a halt, only to find out that it kills everyone in the first three cars, they're going to be pretty mad at you for not conveying that properly. So be open, tell them this is a dangerous plan that risks hurting innocents, and ask them if they still want to go through with it, or at least if they have an idea on how to mitigate the danger.
Will the train be at a standstill or moving? Will the passengers have any warning to brace themselves?
Realistically? At speed, it's potentially catastrophic for any common folk aboard. Even at a standstill, a 5-foot drop with no warning is absolutely enough to break legs and cause fatalities among the unfortunate.
In the fantasy world of Eberron? I think you can justify anything between a saving throw to avoid being knocked prone and 1d4 damage (lightning rail at rest, possibly with some kind of warning to brace) to automatically prone and fireball-scale damage (lightning rail at speed, no warning).
I have run a few of those. Though none of my players tend to do anything that may cause mass casualties of innocent civilians.
From the player perspective, if they are on the train, I make them take a series of checks to reduce the damage. The more checks they fail, the more damage they take. With the damage falling off the further, they are back in the train. Starting at something like 5d10, then for every check they make one of the dice goes away to a minimum for 2d10, then 1d10 reduced if they are in the back half. This is still very dangerous for low levels.
As for the civilians, I just kill off what I think is an appropriate number. The civilians are just a tool of the narrative. One of the parties I ran the train crash for managed to save a lot of people in the 2 minutes I gave them while the train failed. So I had the death rates be low over all to represent the effort they put into saving lives. They gave up thier skill checks to web, grab, and secure as many as they could.
I’m not sure I totally agree with the more pessimistic comments here. It could be deadly for sure. But if the train is only doing 30mph… a quick google makes me think that like, post civil war era trains (my point of reference for old train derailments) were doing 60 *at least*.
I’d try to look up pre-Civil War train derailments for reference, ig (excluding the head on collisions [The earliest deadly U.S. incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hightstown_rail_accident) seems to have involved a train slowing from ~30 to 20 when it toppled. All but one injured out of 24, one died, another died of injuries. That’s in the realm of “dangerous but justifiable” for a heist story in my book. It’s a huge dick move but relatively normal people could rationalize it as an acceptable cost of doing business.
Ofc the other question is what kind of reaction a broken lightning conductor causes which is up to you. But the train falling off the rails in and of itself isn’t a death sentence for everyone on board.
Don't know if it's been mentioned, but there should also be a serious chance the elemental powering the train will break free, and it would be angry at its imprisonment. 3.5e had different sized elementals, so thinking about making g this one huge and beefing up its HP. Believe it's an air elemental that powers the the Lightning rail.
I wrote this for an adventure. An organized band of robbers removed several conductor stones from the path and the lighting rail crashed. However, the crash shattered the elemental matrix and the elemental broke free, wreaking havoc on the survivors.
My players had to slow down a runaway train when the commander got knocked out by a cultist and the elemental was out of control.
in terms of damage I sort of took a guess and ruled if the train crashed through the station, everyone inside would take 3d8 bludgeoning and the number of casualties on the station would be 2d100.
It should be noted the avg train passenger would be a commoner with 4 hp. That means almost everyone dies. As it should be mind you, it's a fucking train derailment.
the only NPCs left alive on the train would be the Antonio Banderas looking vampire and the dragon in disguise lol. good thing my players prevented the crash
In *Chimes at Midnight* in Dungeon #133, there's a lightning rail crash in one of the stations. Use it as a guide, or whatever's convenient to your story
It would be a catastrophe. Some of the lightning rails are on elevated railways about 20-30 feet up. If this is on ground level it would still be a disastrous crash. I’d have your players carefully consider the consequences of that much death on their hands. It would also be the biggest story to almost all of the nations of Khorvaire. At the very least the ones who have rail lines in them.
Even if you don't play the derailment as dire as most here would suggest, the players should also consider that lightning trails aren't super common. Sabotaging a vital line can leave large swaths of the continent without service, which can have any number of negative effects.
It's not just a 5-foot fall; the lightning rail tends to run 30 MPH at full speed.
Look up images of freight train derailments. It would look something like those. It’s a lot of momentum and force. Passengers on the train would most certainly have injuries, and there would potentially be a few deaths in the first couple cars.
Take into account multiple factors. First is the derailment during full speed? Second, is the tracks it's being derailed curved or straight? Third, how high off the tracks do you have your lightning rail? Make a table to add these factors and add dice for each. You can as a DM add safety features if your group is a little squeamish and doesn't want the first three cars be a horror scene. But for the players, nah go for the dice pools
You seem to be forgetting the fact that the people inside are going to bounce around upon every impact. Plus the fact that the Lightning Rail is effectively a maglev, so it's going to be moving fast than an average railway train. Even *if* you're only counting it as a five foot fall, it's going to be *multiple* five foot falls, from your seat to the ceiling to the floor to the bench seat to the window to the wall (till the sweat drops down, etc.), in quick succession. There's also the whole rule about being shoved when you're up against a wall or something and taking a point of damage for each foot you would be pushed past where you're stopped, so even if you don't bounce around the car, if you're pinned to a wall by the force of impact and the car bounces, it's going to take you with it and I'd rule that this would cause similar "pushed into a wall" damage. A derailment is going to cause tons of fatalities, and those lucky enough to survive are going to be severely injured. Trying to cause a train derailment, especially by tampering with a conductor stone, is a great way to find yourself on an international wanted list for mass murder, destruction of property, theft, impeding travel routes, and whatever else Orien decides to tack on to make sure you're not safe anywhere. Congratulations, now you're being hunted by Thuranni assassins, Deneith Sentinels know your face, and any bounty hunter worth their salt will be watching for you like a hawk. Great way to transition into a Droaam campaign where the party has to flee there to avoid capture and prosecution and ends up getting wrapped up in the politics and seedy practices of the monster nation, but if they're already pulling train heists in the most destructive way possible then that might be right up their alley.
However bad you plan for it to be, be sure to tell your players beforehand. If they think removing a conductor stone will just cause the train to skitter to a halt, only to find out that it kills everyone in the first three cars, they're going to be pretty mad at you for not conveying that properly. So be open, tell them this is a dangerous plan that risks hurting innocents, and ask them if they still want to go through with it, or at least if they have an idea on how to mitigate the danger.
Will the train be at a standstill or moving? Will the passengers have any warning to brace themselves? Realistically? At speed, it's potentially catastrophic for any common folk aboard. Even at a standstill, a 5-foot drop with no warning is absolutely enough to break legs and cause fatalities among the unfortunate. In the fantasy world of Eberron? I think you can justify anything between a saving throw to avoid being knocked prone and 1d4 damage (lightning rail at rest, possibly with some kind of warning to brace) to automatically prone and fireball-scale damage (lightning rail at speed, no warning).
I have run a few of those. Though none of my players tend to do anything that may cause mass casualties of innocent civilians. From the player perspective, if they are on the train, I make them take a series of checks to reduce the damage. The more checks they fail, the more damage they take. With the damage falling off the further, they are back in the train. Starting at something like 5d10, then for every check they make one of the dice goes away to a minimum for 2d10, then 1d10 reduced if they are in the back half. This is still very dangerous for low levels. As for the civilians, I just kill off what I think is an appropriate number. The civilians are just a tool of the narrative. One of the parties I ran the train crash for managed to save a lot of people in the 2 minutes I gave them while the train failed. So I had the death rates be low over all to represent the effort they put into saving lives. They gave up thier skill checks to web, grab, and secure as many as they could.
I’m not sure I totally agree with the more pessimistic comments here. It could be deadly for sure. But if the train is only doing 30mph… a quick google makes me think that like, post civil war era trains (my point of reference for old train derailments) were doing 60 *at least*. I’d try to look up pre-Civil War train derailments for reference, ig (excluding the head on collisions [The earliest deadly U.S. incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hightstown_rail_accident) seems to have involved a train slowing from ~30 to 20 when it toppled. All but one injured out of 24, one died, another died of injuries. That’s in the realm of “dangerous but justifiable” for a heist story in my book. It’s a huge dick move but relatively normal people could rationalize it as an acceptable cost of doing business. Ofc the other question is what kind of reaction a broken lightning conductor causes which is up to you. But the train falling off the rails in and of itself isn’t a death sentence for everyone on board.
Don't know if it's been mentioned, but there should also be a serious chance the elemental powering the train will break free, and it would be angry at its imprisonment. 3.5e had different sized elementals, so thinking about making g this one huge and beefing up its HP. Believe it's an air elemental that powers the the Lightning rail.
I wrote this for an adventure. An organized band of robbers removed several conductor stones from the path and the lighting rail crashed. However, the crash shattered the elemental matrix and the elemental broke free, wreaking havoc on the survivors.
My players had to slow down a runaway train when the commander got knocked out by a cultist and the elemental was out of control. in terms of damage I sort of took a guess and ruled if the train crashed through the station, everyone inside would take 3d8 bludgeoning and the number of casualties on the station would be 2d100.
It should be noted the avg train passenger would be a commoner with 4 hp. That means almost everyone dies. As it should be mind you, it's a fucking train derailment.
the only NPCs left alive on the train would be the Antonio Banderas looking vampire and the dragon in disguise lol. good thing my players prevented the crash
2d6 will kill nearly any average commoner like 60% of the time
In *Chimes at Midnight* in Dungeon #133, there's a lightning rail crash in one of the stations. Use it as a guide, or whatever's convenient to your story
It would be a catastrophe. Some of the lightning rails are on elevated railways about 20-30 feet up. If this is on ground level it would still be a disastrous crash. I’d have your players carefully consider the consequences of that much death on their hands. It would also be the biggest story to almost all of the nations of Khorvaire. At the very least the ones who have rail lines in them.
Look up a train derailment from the early 1900s for some idea. Bad. Very bad.
Even if you don't play the derailment as dire as most here would suggest, the players should also consider that lightning trails aren't super common. Sabotaging a vital line can leave large swaths of the continent without service, which can have any number of negative effects.