# Death & Dying - a better (and simple!) system.



## eamon (Jun 18, 2007)

*EDIT:* super short summary:
Upon dropping to negative hit points, a creature must roll a fortitude save with DC 1/2 of its negative hit points.  On success, it loses 2 hp, on failure it dies.  This roll is repeated a further four times in the following four rounds.  This avoids metagaming current hp since nobody (not even the DM) knows when you'll really die, and scales nicely with both level and character (high fort-save fighters can take more damage than low-fort save rogue's, say.)

The long story:

Motivation
In regular D&D, characters have a 10 hit-point "grace period", a gray area, if you will, in which they aren't quite dead yet. Unfortunately, this gray area shrinks to insignificance as the power level rises. Whereas a first level character has a very good change of falling unconscious and slowly dying, giving allies a valuable few rounds to pop a potion in his/her mouth, in higher levels the variability of a single hit is so great that, barring great coincidence, characters which were running around top speed one moment will have run off to the eternal hunting grounds the next.  Also, a player who's character just dropped to -1 looks very different from one who's character just dropped to -9... and party members that recognize they have a few "safe" rounds might choose to first dispatch that dangerous opponent before healing their party member, whereas if they know he's on the brink of death the willingness to take that extra risk is often greater.  The randomness on the one hand, and the invitation to metagaming on the other just aren't particularly fun, and they also makes a DM's life harder by forcing a choice between three equally unattractive options: bending the rules and leaving a character standing (which you can't do very often without destroying the game), harshly interpreting the rules (and disappointing a player that sometimes could not have seen it coming), or reducing the challenge (which is boring...)

What we need are rules that (normally) make dying a nice and slow process again. Furthermore, you want a process which remains risky no matter the power level - if there's even a small chance of a character dying, things stay tense (which they should - your character's dying after all)! Finally, we want a d20 mechanism, not any anachronistic odd d10 rule which for no apparant reason was used in core D&D 3.5 instead.

Rules Change
These rules supersede the normal PHB rules on dying. The basic mechanism is a fortitude save vs. death on which you must succeed. The DC of this fortitude save is 1/2 your negative hit-points, and you lose 2 further hit-points even on a successful saving throw. You must succeed on such a saving throw as soon as you drop, and repeat it each round on your initiative, and whenever you are damaged. You stabilize in the fifth round. For example, Tordeck is mortally wounded by an orc. He succeeds on his initial saving throw, but must make another in each of the following four rounds. In the beginning of the fifth round he becomes stable. Sometime later in battle, he is hit by a stray arrow and drops to -23, and must again make a fortitude save vs DC 11, and will need to again survive five rounds to become stable. At best, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of dying if unaided, even if you can only fail on a natural 1. Tordeck had better hope he gets help soon...

Heal checks
As a standard action provoking an attack of opportunity, a character with the Heal skill may attempt to help a dying character. If he succeeds on a Heal check (with the same DC as the fort save), the dying character does not need to make his own save. If he fails by 5 or more, the dying character receives two damage instead. A character damaged while performing such a heal check must succeed on a DC 15+damage dealt concentration check to avoid automatically failing on his Heal check and damaging the character instead.

Footnote
_This is my first EN-world post, so I thought I'd start off with a house rule I've used in a campaign for a while now - maybe it's interesting to others, or I've overlooked some consequence of the rules-change?  Since this is an experiment of course I needed to try a poll too :-D._


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## Aus_Snow (Jun 18, 2007)

Welcome to the machine. 

I happen to find your idea agreeable in principle, but have opted, and will opt, for a different implementation.

But yes, some kind of scaling is the 'right' approach, I think (so as to better fit in with the d20 system's fundamental design).* Like say, the bit about the Fort save whose DC is tied to negative HP: that, I can grok. In fact, it [more or less] looks pretty familiar. 


* And, on that note, I also like "fewer absolutes", as was eloquently ranted about by Sean K. Reynolds, and distorted/refined by many, myself included. Er, FWIW.


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## Obergnom (Jun 18, 2007)

Like it a lot and Iwill test it. I will only require 4 rolls in a row to become stable though.


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## Ilium (Jun 18, 2007)

This meshes nicely with another house rule I've seen and use in my game: Instant death effects take you to negative 1dx hit points (x being based on how nasty you want to be).  In my game it's negative 1d10, but I have my own house rules for how far negative you have to go before you die.  I may try your save mechanic instead, though.


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## eamon (Jun 18, 2007)

Previously I'ld tried different approaches which I thought were "more fair", and these involved various modifiers and not losing HP but scaling saves, and being dependent on the amount of damage received in "the last hit".  However, I've found that simple is definitely good, esp for a mechanic you rarely use.  If you object to people losing two HP per round (i.e. 10 in total), then I'ld probably just remove the loss entirely and say take a fort save equal to the negative hitpoints.  This, however, is definitely more lethal at low levels.  The 1/2 factor was chosen carefully to be somewhat survivable at all levels even when seriously hit.  A tenth level character might get hit for 35 damage from a fireball and drop to -34 (DC 17 in other words).  A character with at least a +7 fort can survive that 50% of the time (reasonable, but he'll almost never, <1%, survive five saves).  A serious tank might have a +12 modifier and has a better chance.  In any case I hope it's a very serious risk, but that you're only an "instant+certain" goner if you're really hit very strongly, and that you have a very good chance if it's "trivial damage"

If you're really considering using it in a game, a number of issues (nothing serious) to consider in advance:
 - if a person is dropped "right before" his turn this means two saves in short succession.  You might allow him changing his init to his attacker's so that the victim always has a full round in between those scary saves
 - this impacts Diehard and some other odd feats and class abilities; so should anybody want those (not common).
 - especially (part of DIEHARD) automatic stabilization must go (you could "never" die!)
 - some effects drop you instantly to a certain negative HP, and for extremely precise balance you could change those (probably not worth the bother though).
 - for the rest, the domino effects to other rules look pretty limited to me.


Nobody's actually wanted to use it, but my diehard variant:
DIEHARD [GENERAL]
You remain conscious after attacks that would fell others
Prerequisites: Endurance
Benefit: Whenever reduced to negative hit-points, you automatically become stable (thus you only need to roll the first fortitude saving throw). Furthermore, if you succeed on this saving throw, you may choose to act as if disabled and remain conscious. If you do, you may make one move action or one standard action per turn. At the end of any round in which you perform a standard action, you take 2 damage and must succeed on another fortitude saving throw.


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## eamon (Jun 18, 2007)

Obergnom said:
			
		

> Like it a lot and Iwill test it. I will only require 4 rolls in a row to become stable though.



I'm curious why that change? (not that I see any problem with it per se)


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## Obergnom (Jun 18, 2007)

oh, I do not really know. 5 seemed a bit harsh to me, I might even go down to 3. But it will not really matter, by that time, someone in the group will have taken care of the fallen character. (As long as the Dragon Shaman stays up, all that matters is the initial save)

I like it, that there could be a bigger chance of surviving party members in a scenario of a "tpk"... my group currently journeys through the underdark, and having, say, three of them awake, stripped of most their gear somewhere in the UD seems to make a better story then all of them dead


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## el-remmen (Jun 19, 2007)

I like it and seems slightly simpler than the system I currently use:



> *Death:* Upon reaching a negative hit point total equal to 10 + base Fortitude save + Constitution modifier, a character is at death's door. He must make a Fortitude save (DC 15, +1 per additional check) each round or die. If a character is brought below his death's door total by a blow or other wound, then he must immediately make another Fortitude save (as above), with an additional penalty equal to the difference between his current negative hit point total and his death's door total. The mortally wounded character must also make an additional save each round thereafter (as above). If the character suffers recurring damage each round, such as from a spell or critical effect, the amount is added to the DC each round (this penalty is non-cumulative). A character making saves against dying each round cannot stabilize on his own.
> 
> _Example:_ A 10th level fighter with a Con score of 16 would potentially die when reaching -20 hit points (10 + 7 (base Fortitude save) + 3 (Con modifier). If the fighter were brought to -25 hit points in one fell swoop, his saves each round would be suffer a +5 to the DC (25 - 20 = 5).
> 
> _Example 2: _The same 10th level fighter above is at -9 hit points (and is not stabilized) but is suffering a moderate critical effect, taking an additional 2d4 hit points of damage each round. Since he is bleeding from a critical effect, he cannot stabilize on his own. In the next round, he would take 2d4+1 hit points of damage. Let's say he takes 6 hps of damage, dropping to -15. The following round, if he took another 6 hps of damage, he has past his maximum negative hit point total. So he must make a Fort save against DC 16 (DC 15 +1 (for difference between maximum negative hit point total and the effective total (21))). Assuming he makes the save, the next round the critical effect does another 2d4 hps of damage (let's say 8 points), so he would have to make a FORT save against DC 25 (DC 15 + 1 (negative hit point difference) + 8 (damage from that round of critical effect) +1 (second save)). If he made that save, the next round he would take another 2d8 from the critical effect (let's say this time it was a low 2 hps), then he would have to make the save against DC 20 (DC 15 + 1 (negative hit point difference) + 2 (critical effect damage for the round) + 2 third save), and so on. . .


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## Psimancer (Jun 19, 2007)

_I’ve written something similar, just a little more granular (but have never got around to play-testing it)…_

* As soon as a character falls below 0 hp they move to the Bleeding state (see table below) and must make a Fort save (DC half negative hp); failure indicates the character deteriorates one degree, success indicates the character improves one degree.

* Every round, at the beginning of the round, the character takes the indicated damage and must make another Fort save (DC half negative hp); failure indicates the character deteriorates one degree, success indicates the character improves one degree.

* If a character takes further damage, their state either deteriorates one degree or returns to the Bleeding state (whichever is worse), and they must make a Fort save (DC half negative hp); failure indicates the character deteriorates one degree, success indicates the character improves one degree.


•	Disabled (stabilized – no further hp lose)
•	Unconscious (lose 1 hp)
•	Bleeding (lose 2 hps)
•	Dying (lose 3 hps)
•	Death


_[Note: If a character, due to further damage, moves from the Dying state to Death and then, due to a successful Fort save, back to Dying, treat them as Dying.]_


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## eamon (Jun 19, 2007)

It's funny that so many people feel the need to change the current rule.  For me the proverbial last straw was when a party I was DM-ing happily let a character that'd just dropped lie there while they dispatched some minor opponents, just because they'ld figured out that he couldn't be in any risk for at least another 5 rounds.  I don't like that kind of meta-gaming, but rather than blame the player's I try to look at why there is such a discrepancy in player/character knowledge and try to fix it.  

el-remmen's version looks _extremely_ much like an initial version of mine, neat .  Since I was also trying to get rid of metagaming motivation and wanted to keep it simple, I eventually used this, even though it's possible less fair.  At least now nobody including the DM knows when a character is really going to die...

An "amusing" anecdote was when a character dropped but looked at the fort DC and said "that's it?  we need to make this harder, this is too easy", and I assured him I'm run the math and that it was risky enough because of the natural one factor.  One round later... he rolled a natural one :-(.  Not fun to lose a character, but I'm sure that party is not going to leave their friends on the ground any longer than absolutely necessary now .


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## Angel Tarragon (Jun 19, 2007)

This is what I do.


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## Quartz (Jun 19, 2007)

eamon said:
			
		

> Upon dropping to negative hit points, creature must roll a fortitude save DC 1/2 negative hit points.




Just a suggestion: make it 1 round after, to allow colleagues time to heal him.


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## wolff96 (Jun 19, 2007)

One house rule I've used in the past is that the character needs to make a Fortitude save:  DC = (10 + HP below zero - Con modifier).

So if you're a 16 Con fighter at -10HP, you make the save at DC 17.

Regardless of the result of the save, your friends always have until the end of the initiative round to get some form of stabilization to you.  (This did lead to the odd case where the cleric wasn't allowed to take Improved Initiative, because everyone in the party wanted him to go LAST in every combat.  )


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## Pbartender (Jun 19, 2007)

eamon said:
			
		

> The basic mechanism is a fortitude save vs. death on which you must succeed. The DC of this fortitude save is 1/2 your negative hit-points, and you lose 2 further hit-points even on a successful saving throw. You must succeed on such a saving throw as soon as you drop, and repeat it each round on your initiative, and whenever you are damaged. You stabilize in the fifth round.




I've been using something similar, but slightly different...



> At 0 or fewer hit points, you are Disabled.  If you are at 0 or fewer hit points and not Stable, you are Dying.
> 
> Every round, you lose 1 hit point and then must make a Fort save DC is equal to your negative hit points.
> 
> ...




It extends the "dying, but not yet dead" range considerably, introduces a "conscious, but severaly wounded" range, makes it relatively easier to stablize on your own, and makes it easier to survive a mortal wound as a character gains levels.  Plus, it only requires one dice roll per round.


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## Ilium (Jun 19, 2007)

Ooh.  I like it.  It also introduces the "conscious until suddenly dead" which is so common in movies but almost never happens in games.  Good for death speeches!


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## borble (Jun 19, 2007)

i think it should start at 0 hp and auto death at -25, with rolls made in the middle.
then it sound vary good.
ben


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## Obergnom (Jun 19, 2007)

Just wanted to let you know:

In tonights session, we used the system. (With 4 in a row stable modification, as mentioned above)

What happend? The sorcerer was able to stabilize after being knocked down to -9 hit points by a couble of balistae bolts, making 4 saves in a row.

Our ranger managed not to die (stbilized himself), after being droped to -17 hit points by an advanced thoqqua. During the same fight, the sorcerer died, rolling a natural 1 for is second save, after being droped down to -11 hp.

All in my group agree that this system is brilliant. It adds so much tension and fun. Tension, because it is allways dangerous to be dropped. Fun, because dying without even rolling a single die to prevent that, is not that funny. (Happend in our game four sessions ago. The main tank got hit for a total of 100hp during a single round. Going from full health to death, without even having a chance to become stable)

Summary: It works  Without this system, the sorcerer and the ranger would have been dead because of racing through the -10 zone. In this case it was just the sorcerer, but that was def. okay. Even better is the sudden haste to get people healed. (But that will change once sthe player of the Dragon Shaman is back, I guess.)


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## BobbyMac (Jun 20, 2007)

I like this...

Just to be totally clear though, when a creature drops into negative hp are they still disabled/dying? or can they act normally?


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## Frogemoth (Jun 21, 2007)

The DM could also not tell the player his remaining hp, this would put even more suspense into the action


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## borble (Jun 21, 2007)

Frogemoth said:
			
		

> The DM could also not tell the player his remaining hp, this would put even more suspense into the action



hell no, my DM once said i could not see any of my rolls...... i died in a dragon acid pipe....... and the next time i die in a super high lvl doungone (o what ever).
dosent work.....
ben


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## eamon (Jun 23, 2007)

Frogemoth said:
			
		

> The DM could also not tell the player his remaining hp, this would put even more suspense into the action



Well, if at all possible I like to have the player's roll their own rolls.  This makes it utterly clear that they're responsible for their own fates, and it saves my time too (with six quite chatty players, my group can always use a little 'activity' therapy :-D).


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## eamon (Jun 23, 2007)

Quartz said:
			
		

> Just a suggestion: make it 1 round after, to allow colleagues time to heal him.



I don't do this, because if a first level character get's hit by a maximized fireball and falls to, say, -50hp, I want them to die - period!  Since magical healing (and other stabilizing forces) can otherwise always stabilize you in time, you could eventually drop to arbitrarily low hit point numbers without dying.  That's kind of crazy... and in any case, if your players are getting themselves hit so hard that even one round is a serious threat, then they probably deserve to die (the fort save DC's I'm suggesting at only 1/2 neg hit points are very low and only really risky over a number of turns).

I do like Pbartender's idea of retaining consciousness somehow, but I'm not really sure how to combine the two without majorly impacting game balance - don't forget that "conscious" but not yet dead spellcasters consistently getting one more spell off (especially if they know they're about to die and can thus be reckless) is quite a bit more risky to players.

As it is, enemy NPC's are more likely to survive after being dropped, but I don't really mind that, it makes em easier to question and thus it's just another way of adding suspenseful tidbits to tease the players ;-).


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## eamon (Jun 23, 2007)

Obergnom said:
			
		

> Just wanted to let you know:
> 
> In tonights session, we used the system. (With 4 in a row stable modification, as mentioned above)
> 
> ...




Cool!  I tried the slight modification in which the die rolls happen on (precisely: right before) the initiative of the damage dealing (so you don't have the situation that you might need to roll twice in a row just because your initiative happened to be after the enemy's that dropped you), and that seems OK too - in that session a druid player dropped, and indeed his init was just 1(!) behind his attackers, so he was quite relieved that he didn't need to roll again right away... of course, his relief turned sour when he realized that everybody in the party relied on him to do the healing and the only person with any potions left was he himself, and he was shapeshifted :-D.  Fortunately, they grabbed a potion from a slain enemy (all the while dodging empowered scorching rays from a flying bugbear sorcerer that was under the effects of improved invisibility...).  To clarify, shapeshift ends when you become unconscious, but we didn't know that at the time.

What are you going to do about the fast healing issue?  Is it just fine by you?  It's clearly the case that the first "instantaneous" fortitude save takes place no matter what, but you could further rule that the fortitude save takes place at the start of the players turn, before the fast healing "kicks in".  It's a little petty though, but not really unfair.  It's a trade-off between rules-cleanness and ease of abuseability.  What do you think?


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## eamon (Jul 14, 2007)

Obergnom said:
			
		

> Summary: It works  Without this system, the sorcerer and the ranger would have been dead because of racing through the -10 zone. In this case it was just the sorcerer, but that was def. okay. Even better is the sudden haste to get people healed. (But that will change once sthe player of the Dragon Shaman is back, I guess.)




Fast Healing, such as that granted by the Dragon Shaman works just like Natural Healing.  If you're disabled or dying, such as being at 0 or lower hitpoints, then Natural Healing and Fast Healing do not work.  That means that the Dragon Shaman's ability won't relieve pressure once people drop.  (Unfortunately the rule that Fast Healing doesn't apply while you're disabled and dying isn't entirely clear... and I don't want to get into a huge SRD discussion, but see http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=12871038&postcount=53 and consider that it's the more fun solution.)


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## TheCrazyMuffinMan (Jul 14, 2007)

I like this one. I'm pretty fond of going by -CON, myself. After reaching -CON, one must make a fortitude save each round (DC all of negative hit points, not half) or die. A passed save means the person is stable, but must make the save again after CON rounds. It helps ease the pain of getting randomly taken out, and allows for anyone who's willing and able to treat the poor guy to do so, but it still allows the reaper his due.


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## Quartz (Jul 14, 2007)

eamon said:
			
		

> I don't do this, because if a first level character get's hit by a maximized fireball and falls to, say, -50hp, I want them to die - period!




Sorry I missed this. I suggest that to balance, healing doesn't obviate the save. So if your first level guy gets hit to -50 HP and then a cleric casts Heal, then he'd be fine, but if the Cure Light Wounds were cast (say for 10 HP), he'd be stabilised, but still have to make the DC 20 save.


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## Asmo (Jul 16, 2007)

I voted "Naa... why bother?"

Our group has always liked the dying/death mechanic from the core books. When your time is up, you just have to go, simple as death -err,that.

These suggestions are to complicated ( think new gamers ) and just adds more to the book-keeping wich we don´t need. It´s simply not smooth enough ( if you want to change the rules)
My personal opinion is that it feels to videogamey -almost like a savegame under the fight, or that everbody just likes the Frenzied Berserker - nobody really wants to die after all.

Asmo


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## Asmo (Jul 16, 2007)

Somehow I missed that I was in the House Rules forum, I´m sorry for that.   

Asmo


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## green slime (Jul 16, 2007)

Fortitude saves, Consitution, and Great Fortitude just became a whole lot more important...


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## ruemere (Jul 16, 2007)

Another take on the *Hovering at Death's Door* rule...

Upon falling below 0 hitpoints (and each time additional hitpoints are lost), a character must make a *Hovering at Death's Door* Fortitude *(base DC 10)* check modified as follows:

+20 for being of Construct or Elemental type,
+10 for being of Undead or Plant type,
+4 for Toughness feat,
+4 for Die Hard feat,
+4 for each size category above medium size.

- [number of hitpoints below 0],
-4 for each size category below medium size,
-4 if hit by a Bane weapon targetting character type or if hit by a weapon bypassing character's damage reduction.


How to interpret results of *Hovering at Death's Door* check:

_Passed by 20 or more:_
Penalty to all actions equal number of hitpoints below zero. 
No other effects.

_Passed by 10 or more:_
Penalty to all actions equal number of hitpoints below zero. 
Movement rate halved.

_Passed by 5 or more:_
Penalty to all actions equal number of hitpoints below zero. 
Movement rate halved.
Strenuous action results in further blood loss (lose 1 hp).

_Passed:_
Unconscious (unless possessing a Die Hard feat) but stable.
Creatures of Construct/Undead/Elemental/Plant suffer severe impairments forcing them to retake this check each round they perform any type of activity.
Movement rate halved.
Strenuous action results in further blood loss (lose 1 hp).

_Failed:_
Unconscious (unless possessing a Die Hard feat) and unstable (lose 1hp each round).
Creatures of Construct/Undead/Elemental/Plant are destroyed unless possessing Second Life feat (see below).

_Failed by 5 or more:_
Unconscious (even if possessing a Die Hard feat) and unstable (lose 1hp each round).
Creatures of Construct/Undead/Elemental/Plant are destroyed unless possessing Second Life feat (see below).

_Failed by 10 or more:_
Unconscious (even if possessing a Die Hard feat) and unstable (lose 1hp each round). Cannot by stabilized by unskilled characters or without aid of magic.
Creatures of Construct/Undead/Elemental/Plant are destroyed unless possessing Second Life feat (see below).

_Failed by 20 or more:_
Instant death or destruction unless possessing Second Life feat.


New feat: *Second Wind* 

This feat is meant to allow tough characters to get up after being pummeled down. It should be reserved only for heroic characters, BBEGs and toughest of opponents.

Prerequisites: Toughness.

Special: When you make *Hovering at Death's Door* check, you gain +20 innate bonus. If successful, your current hitpoint total is brought up to 0.
You can use this feat again only after you are brought back to full health.


New feat: *Second Life*

This feat is intended primarily as a storytelling vehicle for bringing back seemingly dead villains. It may be also used for characters with appropriately crafted backgrounds.

Prerequisites: Die Hard or Second Wind.

Prerequisites special: Use of this feat requires reasonable in-game explanation (even it's only meant for the Game Master). In-game explanation should specify conditions to be met for regaining the ability to use the feat again.

Special: Employment of these grants ability to return to life (or regain ability to act for non-living reatures). This ability may be used either on a short notice (similar to emergency alternate power source for Terminator-like beings) or later, once the nemesis of feat user leaves the scene. In case of the former, use of the feat restores half of maximum hitpoint total and the user of the feat suffers from severe impairments (effective Challenge Rating should be reduced by half - sample impairments include: drastically reduced mobility, halved attack bonuses, loss of strongest supernatural ability, loss of half of spellcasting levels). For the latter, full recovery is possible, however, some specific and visible minor markings should remain.
The recovery time and type of recovery (partial or complete) should be specified upon acquirement of this feat.
This ability may be used more than once, however, it should not be usable without completing full recovery first.

Special cost: This ability causes the user of the ability to lose one hit-die or level per use. The cost can be bought back later with experience (or repairs), however they cannot be regained without significant effort on feat user side (instant recharge is not possible). Complete recovery required for next use assumes regaining of the lost hit die or level. 


Regards,
Ruemere

PS. Added base DC to check: *(base DC 10)*


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## eamon (Jul 16, 2007)

Asmo said:
			
		

> I voted "Naa... why bother?"
> 
> Our group has always liked the dying/death mechanic from the core books. When your time is up, you just have to go, simple as death -err,that.
> 
> ...




*Normal:* When you take damage and end up at negative hit points, you lose 1 hit point each round unless you succeed on a 10% roll, in which case you become stable.  Regardless, you die instantly at -10.  A 10% roll is a roll with a d10 which turns up on a 1.

*Proposed:* When you take damage and end up at negative hit points, you die if you fail  a fortitude save DC 1/2 negative hit points.  Regardless, you lose 2 hitpoints.  You must make four more successful saves, each one round later, after which you become stable.

I don't think the new rules are much more complex.  And they don't use a weird percentile mechanic either.  If you find this too lenient, you can replace the 1/2 neg hitpoints with simply the negative hit points.  The advantages concerning metagaming, tension, and drama remain.  The mechanic also scales much better to high levels that the old system which basically turned all combat into sudden death - and if that's what you enjoy, then this system isn't for you.  However, if you enjoy sudden death (and some do like the gritty sense of danger) you might as well get rid of negative hitpoints entirely, and simply die once you drop below 0.


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## ruemere (Jul 16, 2007)

Short commentary:

This particular rule makes deaths of important protagonists much less probable. Bigger creatures and beings of constructs/elemental type receive significant boost to their durability.

If you want to use this rule, please remember, that in my campaign characters are significantly stronger (meaning more points for statistics, using my version of point-buy), poorer (minor magic items are in shorter supply, costing 3 times as much, with items beyond 10.000 being virtually unavailable) and epic (the quests involve wellbeing of large community).

In short, sometimes a legion of skeletons may make a seasoned veterans pause.

regards,
Ruemere


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## eamon (Jul 16, 2007)

green slime said:
			
		

> Fortitude saves, Consitution, and Great Fortitude just became a whole lot more important...



But not out of flavor.  If you're worried about survivability, then you wanted a high Con anyways.  In practice, dropping is still very risky (in some ways more so, as even if you drop to -1, you have a 5% chance of dying immediately regardless of your save bonus), so most characters in my campain avoid it.  Those that do drop do still regularly die in my playtesting, precisely because people underestimate how nasty iterative saves really are.  You're still much much better off not dropping to negative hitpoints at all than having a few points higher save bonus, so scaling your fort save really doesn't improve your character that much just because of this house rule.  In any case, it means that hardy characters are more likely to stabilize than fragile ones, which provides a slight boost to fighter types - generally not a bad thing in my book.  Most of this boost only occurs if you're healed very quickly as this variant becomes deadly very rapidly once you need to make all five saves, so although it makes fighters somewhat stronger, it makes all dropped characters more dependant on quickly receiving aid.  Your chance of surviving scales strongly depending on how quickly you are helped.

In practice, in actual play, players seem to disregard the increased importance of fortitude saves because of this variant - other factors are still far more important to their character.  So I'm pretty sure that even after this change "Great Fortitude" is not a very powerful feat choice.  My group has built at least 8 characters (8 have seen real play, more are on the sidelines) which are now at 7th level using this system and not once has anybody chosen Great Fortitude or any other specifically fort-save enhancing ability.  They've not even purchased any a Con boosting magic item, despite the fact that others do have strength and charisma boosting items (the fighter and sorcerer, respectively).  This house rule hardly impacts game balance therefore, but if you're really worried you could replace the fort save with a level check - which I don't recommend because of flavor, but it's possible, and would still be much better that the RAW solution in terms of in-game fun because it still avoids metagaming and still increases tension and drama.


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## eamon (Jul 16, 2007)

ruemere said:
			
		

> Short commentary:
> 
> This particular rule makes deaths of important protagonists much less probable. Bigger creatures and beings of constructs/elemental type receive significant boost to their durability.
> 
> ...




Your rules look fine.  I'm supposing you intentionally boost large creatures thusly?  I wouldn't really want to do that, but if that's intentional, it's fine.  I could imagine it makes battles with huge creatures more prolonged .  Maybe you could further reduce the impact of low hitpoints (right now you include the full negative hit points as a modifier to the roll) depending on your size?  something like, if you're large then hp/2 if you're huge hp/3 etc...  That way  they don't just become stronger (that's your intent right?) but also take nice and dramatically long to die .

Although I think your rules look like they could work fine, I think they're too complex for most people, such as all those players that aren't interested in the rules for the rules sake - to them there's just a bunch of modifiers and it'll be hard to remember exactly when what applies.


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## ruemere (Jul 20, 2007)

eamon said:
			
		

> Your rules look fine.  I'm supposing you intentionally boost large creatures thusly?  I wouldn't really want to do that, but if that's intentional, it's fine.  I could imagine it makes battles with huge creatures more prolonged .  Maybe you could further reduce the impact of low hitpoints (right now you include the full negative hit points as a modifier to the roll) depending on your size?  something like, if you're large then hp/2 if you're huge hp/3 etc...  That way  they don't just become stronger (that's your intent right?) but also take nice and dramatically long to die .
> 
> Although I think your rules look like they could work fine, I think they're too complex for most people, such as all those players that aren't interested in the rules for the rules sake - to them there's just a bunch of modifiers and it'll be hard to remember exactly when what applies.



Ooops. Forgot to add that base difficulty level is 10.

Anyway, apart from making Toughness a desireable feat for tank-type characters this rule adds only a little work for GM. You still use D20 rules, still record negatives, just need to remember that you resolve character actions a little differently once they go into negatives.

With regard to changing game balance - game flow:
- heroic characters are much less likely to to die because of one lucky critical (for an average roll of 10 and Fortitude save of +4, you would have to go into -34 to die),
- in the best tradition of HK movies, tough guys can bleed yet continue fighting.

As for the big guys, constructs and undead:
The boost is intentional. Combats against such creatures become more resource consuming. It's fine by me, since I often add xp bonuses for clever tactics and overcoming major obstacles.

regards,
Ruemere


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## Bladesong (Jul 20, 2007)

All of these ideas seem good and I would like to use something like this, but why does there have to be so much math connected to all new ideas? I have adults in my group that have touble "doing the math" quickly. So how about this: who really cares if they are at -1 or -100; dying is dying right? Just off the top of my head, starting the round after they get hit, a DC 5 Fort Save to stay alive, DC 10 the next, then DC 15 and finally DC 20 then stabilize; or how about a flat DC 15 for 4 - 10 rounds. You could also make an equivalent Concentration check each round to "stay alert" enough for free actions/talking only (for those "death-bed" speeches someone mentioned).

Or maybe the other way, a DC 10 Fort save every round for 10 rounds to "stay alert" and if you succeed by 10 or 15 you stabilize on your own and if you fail by 5 or more you die immediately but if you have not stabiliized in 10 rounds or a number equal to your CON, you die. Anyway the "half of this then add this negative number every round and then subtract this and then add this up again" gets a bit cumbersome.


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## Obergnom (Jul 20, 2007)

The rule as written by eamon (first post) is really simple and light on math:

Roll Fort against half neg HP or die, if successfull, loose 2 hp. Repeat that 5 times, after which you remain stable.

Works great, but you could go for a deadlier but easier variant and role against full negative HPs. Make them only loose one HP if the save is successfull.


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## Bladesong (Jul 20, 2007)

Obergnom said:
			
		

> The rule as written by eamon (first post) is really simple and light on math:
> 
> Roll Fort against half neg HP or die, if successfull, loose 2 hp. Repeat that 5 times, after which you remain stable.
> 
> Works great, but you could go for a deadlier but easier variant and role against full negative HPs. Make them only loose one HP if the save is successfull.




It should be easy, and it is to you and I, but I am telling you that there ARE people who really get bogged down by this...you'll just have to trust me on this one.

I guess for those people who just feel the need to see numbers "counting down" I suppose you could start at DC 10 or 15 and just add one to it for 4 or 5 rounds.


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## eamon (Jul 21, 2007)

I chose to do 2 damage each round so that the DC would increase by one each round.  For extreme light-on-math-ness you could simply do as Obergnom suggests and not even divide by 2.  Further if you then simply don't do extra damage each round you get:

Each round at negative hitpoints, do fort save DC negative hitpoints.  If you survive 5 consecutive rounds without additional damage, you stabilize.

However, I like counting down numbers, hence the extra damage.  Increasing the DC each round without dealing damage leads to weird corner cases (what happens when someone gets extra damage - does the clock reset?)

In practice however, it's really simple, you just divide the (negative) hitpoints by two - that's your DC, and each round the DC goes up by one.  To play D&D you need to be used to constantly adding a bit of damage, and that part is in the normal rules too, so I'm guessing that's not the problem?  BTW, raising the DC by 5 each round is extremely lethal unless helped very quickly.  If you want the math to be easy, I'd use Obergnom's suggestion, just make the DC equal to the (negative) hitpoints.  Nice and simple.  You could even get rid of natural stabilization, and rule that you only ever stabilize with help (so you don't have to bother counting rounds).  Now that I think of it, that probably wouldn't disturb game balance much even though it sounds pretty nasty.


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## Obergnom (Jul 21, 2007)

Hmm,

I thought about it a bit more, here is what I would do:

Have all your players record their "Death Save". Make this save equal to Fort+5
This will allow them to successfully save in the later game, when they can easily be hit toward -20hp. 

Have them role against neg HP.

If successfull, role again next round. If not, you're dead.

Repeat for a number of rounds you (as a DM) are comfortable with. (This determines the Death Chance when a character would only fail when roling a 1. 5 saves =23%, 4 saves =19%, 3 saves = 14%, 2 saves = 10%, 1 save = 5%) I would suggest (to minimize book keeping, because the saves are still quite though and not to make them stabilize to fast) to use 3 saves in a row. The initial one and the 2 rounds after that.

If a characters is wounded while dying, reset the counter.

I think this rule is as light on math as possible, it is even lighter than the original one.


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## DiceGolem (Jul 29, 2007)

I really like your idea, eamon, but I think I'm going to mutilate it a little...   

A death check: Fortitude save vs. death, DC (half of your negative hit points). No success consequences.

As a quick example:
1) A character is dropped to negative hit points and is dying.
2) The character makes an immediate death check.
3) The character's initiative count changes to just after his/her attacker. 
4) Not including the first round spent dying, the character makes a death check on his turn.
5) If the character is still not dead after (a number, say 4) death checks, that character stabalizes naturally.

If another character uses the standard action of Heal to stabalize the dying character, the dying character must use the healer's total skill check instead of the normal Fortitude bonus in the next round. Success means stabalization, but a failure forces a normal death check without the aid of the healer's skill. For every 5 the Healing check fails, the dying character also takes 2 damage.

_Edit:_ As an assumption on my part, and not in my post previously, the damage dealt from the horrifically failed Heal check applies before the second death check. Meaning a bad Heal check increases the DC of the death check required for failing the Heal check.

I find it about as simple as death is going to get, and still be viable. I like the idea of the save not scaling up as you go _unless_ your healer royally screws up. The fact that it doesn't normally scale lends to the idea that "dying" doesn't mean "losing hit points," but instead means "viable chance of death."

Of course, you could have been killed by a Wounding attack; in which case you're bleeding _and_ dying!

I'd choose 4 saves in a row, personally. With the chance to die completely unaided and ignored, as Obergnom calculated, at a nice 19%, it means that players have to make some touch judgement calls as to whether to try and finish the enemy off or take pains to help falled allies. I like it.

Like suggested, Diehard would require some reworking:



> *Diehard*
> When reduced to negative hit points, only a roll of a natural 1 on your death check will result in your death. All other rolls are treated as if you succeeded on your death check. Also, you can choose to be disabled instead of dying, as per the standard Diehard feat, but the damage you take for strenuous action is 5 instead of 1.




The extra damage from a strenuous action may seem extreme, but remember that it doesn't really matter, because only a 1 will result in your character's death. It's really just an arbitrary number of how much damage you'll needed healed after the battle is over, meaning that an over-enthusiastic barbarian may have an angry PC cleric to deal with afterwards.

At first I was worried about a powerful spellcaster taking this Diehard and throwing cataclysmic AoE's everywhere, but if a spellcaster is gonna take two feats to do it they might as well enjoy it. With all the Complete books full of useful spellcasting enhancing feats, a Diehard mage would be a good option for, say, a Rage Mage.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything I missed?


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## Obergnom (Jul 29, 2007)

I think your system is good so far, but at least my players could not really be bothered with that die hard feat, because most of the time, the save stays at "don't roll a 1" level for most characters, except the very fragile ones. 
I think Die Hard should be a good feat for the though heroes at the frontline, who are much more likely to get the huge amounts of damage. I was thinking about something like Steadfast Determination from PHB2 (That Feat gives you your wis mod on will saves and you do not automaticaly fail fort saves on a natural one)
But that feat really raises the bar, as it has the same prereq as Die Hard (endurance) and I thought the ability not to fail a fort save on a natural one would be good enough for a feat. 

Maybe something like this:



> *Die Hard*
> You gain a +4 bonus to saving throws vs. Death, including those made to stabilize when dropped below 0 HP.
> You do not automatically fail saving throws agianst death on a roll of natural 1.




I would remove the bonus to saves if Steadfast Determination is not in your game.


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## eamon (Jul 29, 2007)

It seems many people (at least those considering changing the normal dying mechanic) still find this version too complex.

The even simpler version does away with the 1/2 neg hitpoints rule and the losing of hitpoints each round to become:

Whenever you drop to negative hitpoints, you start dying.  A dying character must immediately make a saving throw vs. the DC of his negative hitpoints, or die.  For the next three rounds on the initiative count on which he was dropped, the character must repeat the save.  If, after these four saving throws the character is still alive, he stabilizes.

I'd be careful with the diehard feat removing failure on natural 1, as it makes certain risks very easy to take - for instance, being in melee with an opponent that can't do more than your fort-save bonus in damage at once.  I guess it depends on the level your playing at, but my players are mostly in mortal danger when they've just had a bit of bad luck - say; a crit against them, or a spellcaster casting scorching ray and hitting with all rays.  Under these circumstances, damage easily exceeds the "natural 1" region (as it should), so it's not like only the most fragile of characters can be so deep in the negative that the save is failed on more than just a natural 1.  The diehard feat giving the option of remaining standing remains valuable.  If you want to be most close to the original diehard feat, which instantly stabilizes, you can simply let that be the additional benefit - instant stabilization, right after the first saving throw.  It is a little boring though, it's true.


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## Obergnom (Jul 29, 2007)

Yep, but as I said, there is allready a feat allowing you not to automaticaly fail a Fort when rolling a natural 1. Otherwise I would not do that either. (Or maybe with a, you do not automaticaly fail on a nat 1, but loose 10hp instead of 2hp)

In my campaign, just last session, the 8th Level Goliath Fighter Barbarian was hit down to -30 hp in a single blow (Great Horn Minotaur Critical Hit... 3d6+10 x4... devasting).


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## DiceGolem (Jul 30, 2007)

Staying true to the original Diehard feat is probably for the best, changing it to allow stabalization after the first saving throw. And as far as Steadfast Determination goes, now it has a true death-defying purpose! I mean, as long as you took Endurance anyway, you might as well be gearing towards both feats. Why change Diehard to do both? Heck, if you think the bonus is too much, make Diehard a prerequisite for Steadfast Determination!

I guess the 1/2 vs. full negative hit point DC argument is really up for each specific DM's death threshold. By taking half, there's a much larger amount of damage someone can unluckily take before really worrying about a good chance of death. Whereas, by taking full, even a blow to -10 becomes dire for a low level character, or even a low Fort character.


```
[b]   DC    | Fort +0 | Fort +6 | Fort +12[/b]
---------------------------------------------
  DC 1   |    5%   |   5%    |   5%
  DC 3   |   10%   |   5%    |   5%
  DC 5   |   20%   |   5%    |   5%
  DC 7   |   30%   |   5%    |   5%
  DC 9   |   40%   |  10%    |   5%
  DC 11  |   50%   |  20%    |   5%
  DC 13  |   60%   |  30%    |   5%
  DC 15  |   70%   |  40%    |  10%
  DC 17  |   80%   |  50%    |  20%
  DC 19  |   90%   |  60%    |  30%
  DC 20  |   95%   |  70%    |  40%
```

For new characters, and those with abysmally low Fortitude saves, the chance of death is almost certain at DC 15 and higher. Going with the Half rule, that's at -30 hit points. With the Full rule, that's only a -15. For much more normal characters, with around average Fortitude saves, the chance of death is only dire closer to DC's 19 and 20 (-40 HP / -20 HP). The chance of death is still a probability at DC's closer to 11 (-22 HP/ -11 HP).

Looking at it from the perspective of whittling down PC's into the negatives, the Full DC option appears better, with a small margin between possibly dying and nearly dying favoring the same small margin of damage. However, with the consideration in mind for some monster landing a massive critical, the Half DC does better, allowing for a much larger margin of numbers to accomidate for such a massive amount of damage unloaded at once.

I guess it really comes down to how often you honestly want your PC's do die. If you feel a huge amount of damage should completely obliterate a PC (or mob) then stick with the Full DC rule. But, if you feel that a PC shouldn't just fall down dead after some enemy caster gets lucky with an evocation spell, go with the Half.


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## Warbringer (Aug 6, 2007)

OK here's mine

When a character takes damage they move through four stages on their way to death. Assume the character has a 15 CON and 50 hps.

Light: at 30% hp total the character is lightly wounded (15-29 hps)
Severe: at 60%  (30-44 hps: -1 on all checks)
Critical*: at 90% (45-54 hps: -2 on all checks)
Dying**:100% + Con/3 (55-65 hps: -5 all checks, partial actions only*)
Dead: -(Con+1) Dead at 66 hps (-16hp)

*A character that is critical is now bleeding out (1hp). If the character takes no action they may attempt to stabilize (1-3 on d10). If the character takes any action (move, standard, full round) they take d3 hps and may not attempt to stabilize. A stabilized character that takes an action takes d3 hps and starts to bleed again (losing his stabilized condition)

** A character that is dying may only take partial actions as they bleed out. If they take no action they may attempt to stabilize (only 1 on a d10) -  representing that the worse the wound the harder it is to stabilize. If they take a partial atction they take d3 hps and may not attempt to stabilize.

This allows characters to continue battling through death, though bleeding starts at an earlier point, and death at a later point.

As a further option, I apply the following:

A character that is critically injured maintains his penalities (-2) until he has received at least a cure moderate spell or has rested for a number of hours for each point of damage taken beyond the serious threshold.... so at 50 hps he needs to rest for 15 hours.

A character that is 'Dying', they maintain the -5 penalty and partial action penalty until they have received at least a Cure Critical Wounds spell, or rested for one hour for each point of damage taken beyond critical threshold... so, if the hero described above had taken 57 points of damage, he would have to rest for 12 hours (57-15) to remove the penalities or receive cure critical healing... 

These overlap, so at 57 damage he needs to rest for 12 hours to remove the -5 penalty and partial move penality; until he receives  a total of 27 hours to remove the -2 that applies fro the critical wound.

This is a little gritty for some, but a day's full rest for when no healing is available is still very low. But, the rule is easily discarded.


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## Archade (Jan 30, 2008)

I'm trying for the same effect as you, but less extreme.

Instead of a stabilization roll, I have a DC20 Fortitude save, so a little harder for 1st level non-fighters to stabilize, but it gets easier as they go up in level.

If they make the save, no hp loss and stabilized.  If they fail, they lose 1 hp.  If they fail by 5 or more they lose 2 hp.

I am tempted to add in on a natural 1 they lose 5 hp.

Thoughts?


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## Kmart Kommando (Jan 31, 2008)

Here's what I use in my Iron Heroes game, it's based on something I found on this board, I think:

At 0 or fewer hit points, you are Disabled. If you are at 0 or fewer hit points and not Stable, you are Dying.
Every round, you lose 1d4 hit points and then must make a Fort save DC is equal to 10 + your negative hit points.
If the Fortitude save succeeds by 10 or more, you automatically become stable without assistance. A character who becomes stable is no longer dying.
If the Fortitude save succeeds by 9 or less, you are still dying. You continues to lose hit points, but survive for a short while longer.
If the Fortitude save fails by 9 or less, you fall unconscious and can take no actions. You continue to lose hit points, but survive for a short while longer.
If the Fortitude save fails by 10 or more, you die.
if you take more damage, such as getting hit again (not the 1d4 from failing to stabilize), immediately make a new save.
You make the first Fortitude save instantly when you go to or below 0 hit points
You can perform First Aid on yourself, but it counts as strenuous activity if you fail, causing 1d4 damage.

We've had a few characters staggering around at negative hit points, one that passed out, and a couple of attempts to patch someone up in combat while trying to avoid AoOs, but we've only had one death so far, and that was probably just bad luck (caught out in the open by a volley of 3 arrows, max damage on each, then a natural 1 on his DC 32 Fort save.)

We used to have it at 10 + half your negative hit points, but it was too easy to just keep fighting.


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## Herzog (Feb 5, 2008)

I'm going to try out the full neg hp DC in my campaign.

However, I don't like the auto-stabilize option, so I came up with:

1. At negative hp, you are dying. Make a Fortitude save equal to your neg hp.
2. If you fail, you die.
3. If you succeed by 5 or more, you are stable.
4. Normal methods of stabilizing (cure spells, Heal checks) work as normal.
5. If you succeed by less than 5, you lose 1 hp.
6. On your next turn, if you are not stable, you are still dying. (see 1.)

Herzog


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## Noumenon (Dec 30, 2009)

> . At best, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of dying if unaided, even if you can only fail on a natural 1.




So did you balance this system to give roughly equal chances of dying (hard to do in all cases), or is it generally less lenient?  I started up a spreadsheet to check but it seemed like a lot of work and it crashed.


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## eamon (Dec 31, 2009)

Noumenon said:


> So did you balance this system to give roughly equal chances of dying (hard to do in all cases), or is it generally less lenient?  I started up a spreadsheet to check but it seemed like a lot of work and it crashed.



How do you mean equal?  The more damage you have, the more likely you are to die quickly with this system (and of course, if your fort save is lower, you'll die faster too).

I'm going on vacation; I won't respond the next two weeks.  Have fun!


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## Noumenon (Jan 1, 2010)

> How do you mean equal?




Roughly equal chance of surviving as with the RAW death save system.  I realize there are many variables of party behavior and HP but I thought you might have aimed for it to be the same in the most common cases.


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## scars_of_carma (Jan 1, 2010)

I think these rules make sense and I agree pc's shouldn't be _exactly_ sure when their characters might die. I've never actually tried to think of a way to keep them guessing like this it's cool. 

I've already made many extensive changes to combat in my house rules so this version won't fit mine as nicely but I will try and think of a version of it that will. 

Cool idea


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## eamon (Jan 1, 2010)

Noumenon said:


> Roughly equal chance of surviving as with the RAW death save system.  I realize there are many variables of party behavior and HP but I thought you might have aimed for it to be the same in the most common cases.




In the base RAW system, a first level character has a very large HP buffer.  He will almost never die due to a single strike of a normal monster since the 10 hp "buffer" is larger that the average strike.

By contrast, by level 10 and higher, each strike deals so much damage that the chance of actually hitting a number between 0 and -10 are very very low.  The more HP you have, the less likely the entire rule system is likely to be invoked in the first place.  So, there's this anachronistic system in a d20 game which works with an entirely different mechanic that only ever kicks in under the rarest of circumstances as levels rise.  Particularly ridiculous is the situation at precisely 0 hitpoints - that's truly unlikely to ever matter.

The, if per RAW you know the amount of negative hitpoints you have, you can rest secure for generally several rounds - you have 0% chance of dying and eventually 100%.  Even if you don't know the amount of negative hitpoints (your allies, say), then the chance of someone dying is generally quite low (10%) and since 3e combats are _fast_, that means that it's often OK to ignore fallen allies quite safely.  Especially if you know the player well, and you instinctively recognize real danger from a close call.

So...  if I'd try to match the chance of dying in this system with the RAW system; well, then I'd import RAW's whole problem.  Rather, I tried to simplify RAW: no more anachronistic non-d20 stuff, and appropriate level scaling so that the probability of death makes sense across a wider level range (and higher hitpoint tanks with higher fort saves are safer than wimpy wizards).  Also, I wanted to ensure that _no-one_ is ever really safe; you always need to try to save characters that drop.

So, unaided, the chance of surviving is somewhere between 0% and 75%, depending on the amount of damage and your fort save.


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## Kerrick (Jan 1, 2010)

Holy thread necromancy, Batman! (Sorry, I had to say it. )

Okay, here's what I did: 

Everyone has a death threshold (DT). Your DT = 0 minus your Con score. For example, Herne has 16 Con; his DT is -16.

At 0 hp, you're disabled (still conscious, can take a single move/standard action). If you get healed above 0 hp, you can act normally, but you're staggered for 1 minute.

At -1 hp, you're unconscious and dying. each round, you make a DC 10 Constitution check; if the result is DC +0 to +4, there's no change. If you succeed by +5 or more, you become stable (0 hit points) but remain unconscious. If the check fails, you lose 1 hit point. Three failures, or a natural 1 on any roll, and the character dies. This roll should be made in secret by the DM so as to keep tension in the game. (Note: This system does not require consecutive saves or failures - as long as you're below 0 hp, you continue to roll until you stablize or accumulate 3 failures.)

If you're stable, you have a 10% chance per hour of regaining consciousness (1 hit point). As above, you're staggered for 1 minute but can act normally otherwise.

If you take damage while dying, it has no effect unless it is greater than your Con score, in which case you must make an immediate DC 15 Con check or die. Even if the check succeeds, you take another step toward death (this could easily result in death anyway for someone on his second step, as a third failed roll means instant death).

All healing applied to a dying person has only half the normal effect, except for the heal spell, which works normally and removes the staggered condition.

---

Thus, no one but the DM knows exactly how long the PC has to live (though a Heal check could determine how close he is to death's door). Survivability is based on your health instead of a random chance, and being dropped to bleeding actually has an effect on PCs.


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## Noumenon (Jan 1, 2010)

> Holy thread necromancy, Batman! (Sorry, I had to say it. )




It's in his sig, that made it seem current (compared to reaching a thread with Google, then you expect that it's old).  I knew I'd get an answer if I posted.  Besides, my question uncovered some very relevant information for someone deciding whether to use this rule or not:



> a first level character has a very large HP buffer. He will almost never die due to a single strike of a normal monster since the 10 hp "buffer" is larger that the average strike.
> 
> By contrast, by level 10 and higher, each strike deals so much damage that the chance of actually hitting a number between 0 and -10 are very very low. The more HP you have, the less likely the entire rule system is likely to be invoked in the first place.




Now I know what effect implementing the system will have.  I could tell I liked the mechanic better than death saves, but now I know whether it will make death more or less likely.  By replacing a system that is easy on low-level characters but doesn't help high-level, it should make low-level characters die more and high-level characters die less.  With a secondary effect of making everyone die less because they will be more careful about hitting negative HP.

Since I don't want life to get more deadly for low-level characters, maybe I could phase this system in by using it just when it's needed most -- when you going below -10 in one hit.  Then I could make the Fort save equal to negative HP, like some people wanted, because it would still be less deadly than the outright death from the RAW.

Conceptually, I am convinced that the old system is as weird as eamon says it is, I just don't want to replace it with a system that has major effects on whether my players die or not.


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## Mark Chance (Jan 4, 2010)

Here's what I use:

*Effects of Hit Point Damage*
You function as disabled between 0 and negative hit points equal to your Constitution bonus. You are unconscious and dying at one more negative hit points than your Constitution bonus down to a negative value equal to your Constitution score. One more point into the negatives and you are dead.

_Moshup has a 14 Constitution. He is disabled from 0 to -2 hit points, unconscious and dying from -3 to -14 hit points, and dead at -15 hit points or lower._

*Stable Characters and Recovery*
On their next turn after a character is reduced to unconscious and dying, he must make a stabilization check. A stabilization check is a Fortitude save (DC 10 + the character’s negative hit point total).

A successful check means the character stabilizes and is no longer dying. If he doesn’t stabilize, he loses 1 hit point and must attempt another stabilization check on his next turn. (A character who’s unconscious or dying can’t use any special action that changes the initiative count on which his action occurs.)


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## Ashtagon (Jan 4, 2010)

The approach I've been considering until recently has been to have a greatly expanded negative hp buffer, up to as much as 20% of max hp (or Con, whichever is greater). This didn't remove the hp timer meta-gaming, and even my idea of making the hp loss a random number couldn't remove that.

If you're going to make a Fort-based "death save", you shouldn't apply the Con modifier to the DC number, since the Con modifier is built into the Fort save bonus.

I think a save to avoid unconsciousness, made every round, is in order. NPCs will generally fail these automatically by GM fiat. Major villains who fail this save can make a "death exposition" and then drop.


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## ValhallaGH (Jan 4, 2010)

Mark Chance said:


> *Effects of Hit Point Damage*
> You function as disabled between 0 and negative hit points equal to your Constitution bonus. You are unconscious and dying at one more negative hit points than your Constitution bonus down to a negative value equal to your Constitution score. One more point into the negatives and you are dead.
> 
> _Moshup has a 14 Constitution. He is disabled from 0 to -2 hit points, unconscious and dying from -3 to -14 hit points, and dead at -15 hit points or lower._




So ... you chose to ignore the high-level characters going from "fine" to "dead" problem?  Because a hypothetical -26 hp buffer (while better than the RAW) is not really survivable when the Barbarian at 27 hp (of 406) takes 78 damage and instantly dies.


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## Kerrick (Jan 4, 2010)

Noumenon said:


> It's in his sig, that made it seem current (compared to reaching a thread with Google, then you expect that it's old).  I knew I'd get an answer if I posted.  Besides, my question uncovered some very relevant information for someone deciding whether to use this rule or not:



Ah.




> Now I know what effect implementing the system will have.  I could tell I liked the mechanic better than death saves, but now I know whether it will make death more or less likely.  By replacing a system that is easy on low-level characters but doesn't help high-level, it should make low-level characters die more and high-level characters die less.  With a secondary effect of making everyone die less because they will be more careful about hitting negative HP.



And that's always a good thing.



> Since I don't want life to get more deadly for low-level characters, maybe I could phase this system in by using it just when it's needed most -- when you going below -10 in one hit.  Then I could make the Fort save equal to negative HP, like some people wanted, because it would still be less deadly than the outright death from the RAW.



Random chance of survival sucks. I'm honestly unsure why they didn't go with some kind of save (Con or Fort) instead of a 10% chance. That's pretty much a death sentence for anyone cut off from his friends.



> Conceptually, I am convinced that the old system is as weird as eamon says it is, I just don't want to replace it with a system that has major effects on whether my players die or not.



Yeah, there is that.



ValhallaGH said:


> So ... you chose to ignore the high-level characters going from "fine" to "dead" problem?  Because a hypothetical -26 hp buffer (while better than the RAW) is not really survivable when the Barbarian at 27 hp (of 406) takes 78 damage and instantly dies.



You're going to have that problem with just about any system, unless you make the death threshold equal to max hit points (which would make most PCs practically unkillable except for SoD effects). 

You could rule that anyone dropped to below his death threshold with one hit gets a free Fort save on the next round; if the save fails, he dies, and if it succeeds, he remains unconscious but dying. As long as he keeps making successful saves, he remains hovering on death's door (call it "clinging to life") - since he's below his normal threshold, he can't stabilize on his own, but this gives the others a chance to save him. The first save he fails, though - boom, he's dead.


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## Mark Chance (Jan 4, 2010)

ValhallaGH said:


> So ... you chose to ignore the high-level characters going from "fine" to "dead" problem?  Because a hypothetical -26 hp buffer (while better than the RAW) is not really survivable when the Barbarian at 27 hp (of 406) takes 78 damage and instantly dies.




I'm not so much ignoring as I am discounting that it's a problem.


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## ValhallaGH (Jan 4, 2010)

Kerrick said:


> You could rule that anyone dropped to below his death threshold with one hit gets a free Fort save on the next round; if the save fails, he dies, and if it succeeds, he remains unconscious but dying. As long as he keeps making successful saves, he remains hovering on death's door (call it "clinging to life") - since he's below his normal threshold, he can't stabilize on his own, but this gives the others a chance to save him. The first save he fails, though - boom, he's dead.




Yeah, Iron Heroes did that (no saves before -10, DC = negative hp).  It worked pretty well, too.  I watched one PC (level 14) go from 57 to -79 in one hit, natural 20 his way to next round, and get stabilized by an ally.  Who was then cut down to -45, failed her save and died instantly.
The remaining PCs negotiated a hasty withdraw, to plan again with the information that one foe was a vampire and the other a demon knight riding a kashmir.



Mark Chance said:


> I'm not so much ignoring as I am discounting that it's a problem.




Different tastes for different tables.  
I think it's a pretty big problem, myself, since it comes into play at level 3 and is exacerbated with every level after that.  
But that may be influence by the fact that my games have always been with folks who hated playing a healer-cleric; the exceptions were a) bad at it and b) weren't prepared to resurrect me when their poor performance got me killed.


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## Sadrik (Jan 4, 2010)

Since we are throwing our house rules for this up... here are mine:

Take CON damage after 0 HP, at 0 CON you are dead. Many death effects deal CON damage instead. You can make a Fortitude save to remain conscious and disabled while having suffered CON damage. 

That is not the full described rules but it is a synopsis of them.


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## Kerrick (Jan 5, 2010)

ValhallaGH said:


> Yeah, Iron Heroes did that (no saves before -10, DC = negative hp).  It worked pretty well, too.



Sweet. I just came up with that as I was writing my reply this morning. GMTA. 



> I watched one PC (level 14) go from 57 to -79 in one hit, natural 20 his way to next round, and get stabilized by an ally.  Who was then cut down to -45, failed her save and died instantly.
> The remaining PCs negotiated a hasty withdraw, to plan again with the information that one foe was a vampire and the other a demon knight riding a kashmir.







Sadrik said:


> Since we are throwing our house rules for this up... here are mine:
> 
> Take CON damage after 0 HP, at 0 CON you are dead. Many death effects deal CON damage instead. You can make a Fortitude save to remain conscious and disabled while having suffered CON damage.
> 
> That is not the full described rules but it is a synopsis of them.



Not a bad idea, but there's a small problem: Fort saves are modified by Con.


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## ValhallaGH (Jan 5, 2010)

Kerrick said:


>



Yeah, it was a neat scene, and very cool, though tragic.  We learned a number of things from it, including the facts that a) high-level vampires are freaking scary when PCs have zero magic, b) big demons with magic axes who are granted concealment by their mounts are a pain in the neck (sometimes literally) to fight, c) CR 10 Demonic Brutes reskinned as hell hounds are impressive but non-threatening speed bumps when the party is at mid-teens.


Kerrick said:


> Not a bad idea, but there's a small problem: Fort saves are modified by Con.




Sounds like a feature to me.  The more messed up you are, the more likely you are to pass out from your wounds.


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## Sadrik (Jan 5, 2010)

Kerrick said:


> Not a bad idea, but there's a small problem: Fort saves are modified by Con.



Exactly. More CON damage worse fort save --> makes staying conscious harder. DC 20 looks pretty hard when your CON is 4 even if you are 10th level.


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## Ogrork the Mighty (Jan 11, 2010)

I like our house rule better...

When you "die" (e.g., reach -10 hp or fail a save or die effect), you are actually placed at "death's door." You cannot be revived during the current encounter.

If the party wins the encounter, or escapes the encounter with your body, you can be healed normally afterward (i.e., no _raise dead_ required).

If the party loses the encounter, well, then it doesn't matter because it's probably a TPK. If they don't get away with your body then you're dead and need the regular means of being returned to life.

We're playing the _Age of Worms_ adventure path and this house rule has saved the game from becoming a constant influx of new characters and/or a bunch of ticked off players.


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## eamon (Jan 11, 2010)

Kerrick said:


> Random chance of survival sucks. I'm honestly unsure why they didn't go with some kind of save (Con or Fort) instead of a 10% chance. That's pretty much a death sentence for anyone cut off from his friends.




Personally, if someone is bleedinging out and unconscious, I think it's ok that death is quite likely unless helped.


_On the topic of the PC-sudden-death-syndrome..._


> You're going to have that problem with just about any system, unless you make the death threshold equal to max hit points (which would make most PCs practically unkillable except for SoD effects).




The system as in the original post avoids both problems.  The chance of dying in any one of the total of 5 saves is generally low unless you're very far negative, but nevertheless the chance of succeeding on all 5 isn't that good.  In short; if you use the house rule as posted in the starting post, PC's will usually face trivial saving throws (fail only on 1) vs. easy threats - but even those saves are risky in fives, so they are strongly encouraged to help their allies _quickly._ 

You avoid sudden death syndrome by having a large hp buffer, but you avoid making PC's practically unkillable by both limiting the buffers size and by making even -1 hp a risky proposition.

In general, there have been a lot of alternative suggestions, some with good ideas.  However, some alternatives are too complex.  To each his own, but I think it's absolutely essential that a house rule be as simple as possible.  You can remember 5 death saves and a fort save DC, but it's entirely different matter if you mix Con-checks, Con modifiers, Con totals, staggered, etc. stuff.  Really, you're best off getting rid of staggered; it's totally pointless and doesn't add anything to the game as is since it's so extremely unlikely to matter.


Simplicity really matters, _especially_ for house rules.  I generally aim to make house rules in my games simpler and shorter that the PHB rules they replace.

So, to anyone still reading this thread, I strongly suggest taking a look at the original posted house rule, which can be summarized in one paragraph:
*A creature with negative hit points is dying.  The moment it drops to negative hit points and again each round later, the creature must make a Fortitude  save with a DC of 1/2 of its negative hit points.  On success, it loses 2 hp, but  on failure it dies.  The creature stabilizes automatically on the fifth save after it last received other damage; so a dropped creature must save immediately and then 4 more times if it isn't healed or hurt in the meantime.*​No staggering, no new types of roll, no requirement to combine multiple stats - just a fort save.  Stabilizing effects such as healing work normally.

If you want to change this, I recommend you make it _even simpler_, for instance by removing the 2 damage on a successful save and adding a 6th save instead, say.


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## Stillgrave (Jan 17, 2010)

Would this system also include the massive damage rule?  The DC idea is nicely done, it makes sense that it would be easier to stabilize from say.. a dagger strike then from being stepped on by a dragon.  At the same time though, the option of saving when you are say.. stepped on by a dragon, nags at my mind.


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## eamon (Jan 17, 2010)

Stillgrave said:


> Would this system also include the massive damage rule?  The DC idea is nicely done, it makes sense that it would be easier to stabilize from say.. a dagger strike then from being stepped on by a dragon.  At the same time though, the option of saving when you are say.. stepped on by a dragon, nags at my mind.




The massive damage rule is pretty orthogonal to this house rule.  You can have it if you want, but I've never been a fan.  I suppose an obvious idea would be to use some damage-dependent fort save on massive damage too; that's kind of in the same spirit I suppose - but I haven't worked out what scaling would be appropriate for that.  Personally, if damage can't bring you to negative hit points, I don't think a death save is warranted.  But of course, to each his own ;-).


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## Nebten (Jan 17, 2010)

Ogrork the Mighty said:


> I
> 
> We're playing the _Age of Worms_ adventure path and this house rule has saved the game from becoming a constant influx of new characters and/or a bunch of ticked off players.




I'm running WotBS and I was concerned about the same thing after the second death. So why I did was instead of level loss, the PC lost 1 random attribute. That way they weren't falling behind in levels as the game continued, I didn't have to do side quests to make sure they keep up and there is still a sense of danger during the battle.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Jan 28, 2010)

eamon said:


> Simplicity really matters, _especially_ for house rules.  I generally aim to make house rules in my games simpler and shorter that the PHB rules they replace.
> 
> So, to anyone still reading this thread, I strongly suggest taking a look at the original posted house rule, which can be summarized in one paragraph:
> *A creature with negative hit points is dying.  The moment it drops to negative hit points and again each round later, the creature must make a Fortitude  save with a DC of 1/2 of its negative hit points.  On success, it loses 2 hp, but  on failure it dies.  The creature stabilizes automatically on the fifth save after it last received other damage; so a dropped creature must save immediately and then 4 more times if it isn't healed or hurt in the meantime.*​No staggering, no new types of roll, no requirement to combine multiple stats - just a fort save.  Stabilizing effects such as healing work normally.
> ...



That's very simple.

I come to this thread after experimenting *with another variant on the Death & Dying Rules*.  Not your version.  Conclusion on it was that players rejected it as it made death an extremely unlikely event.

I'll give your version some more thought.  I like simplicity, for sure.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Jan 28, 2010)

The one thing that I just realized that I don't like about this system is that it's impossible for a character to die the moment he's hit.  In most situations, the character will live for a few rounds after dropping below zero hit points.

You wrote, "What we need are rules that (normally) make dying a nice and slow process again."  I'm not sure that that's exactly what I'm looking for.  Instead, I'm looking for a system that makes dying potentially either a quickly lethal process or a slow process.  I want the chance that a character will die immediately when dropped below zero hit points and I also want the chance that the character could take a while to die after dropping below zero.  And, I don't want to know with 100% certainty, before-hand, which will be the outcome.

You wrote that with this system, "At best, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of dying if unaided, even if you can only fail on a natural 1."  What changes would need to be made to make this a 50% chance of dying while maintaining the simplicity that you've achieved?


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## eamon (Jan 28, 2010)

Hrothgar Rannúlfr said:


> The one thing that I just realized that I don't like about this system is that it's impossible for a character to die the moment he's hit.  In most situations, the character will live for a few rounds after dropping below zero hit points.



It's possible - the moment a creature falls to negative hit points, it must save.  Regardless of fort modifier, rolling a 1 means instant death.  In practice, most characters are felled by strikes that don't bring them very far below 0; for them only a natural 1 matters.  That's intentional; a normal strike should only with unusual luck be able to instantly kill.

Also; don't underestimate the risk of rolling a natural one.  Since you must roll each round, even though each roll is fairly likely to succeed, it's only a matter of time until that 1 comes up.  It's 78% likely that _even on minor damage_ you'll bleed out on or before the fifth roll.  A character which drops frequently - even if he's healed right away - will eventually roll that 1; Mathematically, the chances are not insignificant, and anecdotally, I've seen it happen (this was, of course, right after the player smirked that he could only fail on a natural 1 anyhow...).  Be sure to point this out, incidentally, to players that feel it's quite a safe bet; many people don't realize that it's quite likely you'll eventually roll that 1.

If you find the rolls too easy, the basic system is easy to adapt; just raise the DC of the Fort save.  On the other hand,



> You wrote, "What we need are rules that (normally) make dying a nice and slow process again."  I'm not sure that that's exactly what I'm looking for.  Instead, I'm looking for a system that makes dying potentially either a quickly lethal process or a slow process.  I want the chance that a character will die immediately when dropped below zero hit points and I also want the chance that the character could take a while to die after dropping below zero.  And, I don't want to know with 100% certainty, before-hand, which will be the outcome.



  That's basically what it's designed to do as written.  If the creatures damaged by anything vaguely threatening (so that you need just a 2, say rather than a 1) then the chance of death jumps to 2/3 - and that's if you need just a 2 to save.

The idea is that the system makes it very likely that a significant hit will kill you.  Insignificant hits (when you only need anything but a 1 five times in a row) usually don't kill you, but even those aren't very safe bets.  On the other hand, it's not that likely that a creature will die instantly, and no one knows when it'll fail.



> You wrote that with this system, "At best, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of dying if unaided, even if you can only fail on a natural 1."  What changes would need to be made to make this a 50% chance of dying while maintaining the simplicity that you've achieved?



Well, any hits that bring your hit point total down to lower than twice your fort mod the system already makes survival exceedingly unlikely.  If you want to make natural stabilization even less likely, the easiest fix is just to remove it;  Don't make the death saves stop after the 5th save, but let them continue indefinitely (100% chance of death, eventually). 

Supposing you then find that too lethal, to then get a 50% of death, let a character stabilize on a natural 20; then you're basically letting the character flip a coin: will he roll a 1 or a 20 first?

Personally, if I thought the basic system were not lethal enough, I'd just remove natural stabilization entirely.  Stabilizing on a 20 has it's downsides; namely that a character might stabilize right away, and that's just boring (IMHO).  We've often (not always) played with the saves vs. dying rolled open on the table; it's a great tense moment and when it happens  it's a constant reminder to everyone that their friend is down - but if you do roll openly, and that friend rolls a 20, you know he's safe and can safely delay healing him for a round.  And avoiding _that _kind of behavior was the initial inspiration to make this system in the first place: I never, ever want a dying character to feel _safe_.

Recap, your options are realistically: keep it as is (minor wounds have only a 22% mortality rate), make stabilization take more than five rounds, remove stabilization entirely (100% mortality rate, but minor wounds can take long to kill), or finally, stabilize only on a natural 20.  I'd pick one of the first three options and tell your players you're still tweaking the number of rounds.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Jan 29, 2010)

Thank you for your patience in expaining this, Eamon.

I misread the part about a creature dying if they fail their fort save.  Please, accept my apologies for misunderstanding that.  Now, that that's taken care of, I think I like this system a whole lot more.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Jan 29, 2010)

Me, again, Eamon.  Since I like the Disabled condition, here's the variant that I have in mind to try...
When reduced to zero or fewer hit points, a creature must make a Fortitude save (DC 1/2 of negative hit points).  Failure means that the creature dies (and a natural result of 1 on the die always indicates failure in this situation).  Success means that the creature suffers 2 hit points damage, falls unconscious, and is dying.  Success by 10 or more means that the creature is disabled.  

A dying creature must make a Fortitude save (DC 1/2 of negative hit points) each round.  Failure means that the creature dies (and a natural result of 1 on the die always indicates failure in this situation).  Success means that the creature suffers 2 hit points damage.  Success by 10 or more means that the creature has stabilized.  If a dying creature succeeds on its Fortitude save for five consecutive rounds since it last suffered damage, the creature stabilizes.  

The Diehard feat does not cause a creature to automatically stabilize.  Instead, it grants a +4 bonus to all the Fortitude saves mentioned above (remaining disabled and resisting death).  Also, a creature with the Diehard feat that is stable may still choose to act as either disabled or unconscious.​Not as concise as your one paragraph summary, but it does allow greater opportunity to use the Disabled condition in play.  Also, the possibility of a dying creature stabilizing by succeeding by more than 10 has interesting potential interactions with the Diehard feat.  Think of all the movies where someone doesn't make sure the villain is dead and he gets up and continues the action!


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## eamon (Jan 29, 2010)

Hrothgar Rannúlfr said:


> Me, again, Eamon.  Since I like the Disabled condition, here's the variant that I have in mind to try...When reduced to zero or fewer hit points, a creature must make a Fortitude save (DC 1/2 of negative hit points).  Failure means that the creature dies (and a natural result of 1 on the die always indicates failure in this situation).  Success means that the creature suffers 2 hit points damage, falls unconscious, and is dying.  Success by 10 or more means that the creature is disabled.
> 
> A dying creature must make a Fortitude save (DC 1/2 of negative hit points) each round.  Failure means that the creature dies (and a natural result of 1 on the die always indicates failure in this situation).  Success means that the creature suffers 2 hit points damage.  Success by 10 or more means that the creature has stabilized.  If a dying creature succeeds on its Fortitude save for five consecutive rounds since it last suffered damage, the creature stabilizes.
> 
> The Diehard feat does not cause a creature to automatically stabilize.  Instead, it grants a +4 bonus to all the Fortitude saves mentioned above (remaining disabled and resisting death).  Also, a creature with the Diehard feat that is stable may still choose to act as either disabled or unconscious.​Not as concise as your one paragraph summary, but it does allow greater opportunity to use the Disabled condition in play.  Also, the possibility of a dying creature stabilizing by succeeding by more than 10 has interesting potential interactions with the Diehard feat.  Think of all the movies where someone doesn't make sure the villain is dead and he gets up and continues the action!





I like the mechanic - it's a great way to enable the disabled condition without adding extra checks or other unnecessary gameplay roadbumps.  Part of the reason I leave that kind of stuff out is that it makes the thread easier to read - this kind of detail is something every group needs to choose for themselves (kind of like massive damage saves...).

I particularly like the way you make stabilization random, _except _for the first saving throw - that's nice, because what you don't want is that people immediately save and then the rest of the party focuses on the bad guys cause "he's safe anyhow".  If someone immediately passes by 20 or more he's disabled instead...

What happens when a disabled creature takes an action?  I don't think it's reasonable to have him receive 1 damage and _therefore_ make another save and possibly instantly die.  He should just becoming dying, otherwise disabled characters are very rarely going to risk taking an action (there might be a save to stay disabled).

Anyhow, that kind of complexity is why I though I'd keep it out of the basic house-rule, even though it's quite possibly fun and reasonable.

Minor simplifying detail: I think it'll work fine as is, but you could choose to remove the clause "If a dying creature succeeds on its Fortitude save for five consecutive  rounds since it last suffered damage, the creature stabilizes."  I added that to the original to give people a _chance_ to survive on their own, but you already have that with the "succeed by 10 or more" bit.  Probably, succeeding by 10 or more is actually more likely than surviving for 5 rounds for most scenario's anyhow.  Only if you really can't save by 10 or more is this new method bad for survival; and frankly, if you can't save by 10 or more, your save chance in the old system was virtually nil anyhow (if your first save needed an 11 to succeed, overall survival chance was less than 1% anyhow). To cut a long story short, that clause really doesn't do much anymore, you don't need it.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Jan 30, 2010)

eamon said:


> I like the mechanic - it's a great way to enable the disabled condition without adding extra checks or other unnecessary gameplay roadbumps.  Part of the reason I leave that kind of stuff out is that it makes the thread easier to read - this kind of detail is something every group needs to choose for themselves (kind of like massive damage saves...).



Thanks, Eamon.  I agree about the level of detail, too.  I've been wrestling with various house rules concerning hit points and death and dying, etc... for a while, now.  Partly inspired by the Grim-n-Gritty style of play and Vitality/Wound points, etc...  I've experimented with different versions of the Massive Damage Save, too.  50 points being too arbitrary and other systems being too complicated.  So, I appreciate what you wrote about house rules needing to be stated as simply as possible.


eamon said:


> I particularly like the way you make stabilization random, _except _for the first saving throw - that's nice, because what you don't want is that people immediately save and then the rest of the party focuses on the bad guys cause "he's safe anyhow".



Glad you like that part.


eamon said:


> If someone immediately passes by 20 or more he's disabled instead...



That's an interesting idea.  Hadn't thought of that, actually.


eamon said:


> What happens when a disabled creature takes an action?  I don't think it's reasonable to have him receive 1 damage and _therefore_ make another save and possibly instantly die.  He should just becoming dying, otherwise disabled characters are very rarely going to risk taking an action (there might be a save to stay disabled).



I agree.  I'll have to clarify that part.


eamon said:


> Anyhow, that kind of complexity is why I though I'd keep it out of the basic house-rule, even though it's quite possibly fun and reasonable.



I can see why.  Thanks for sharing your houserule on this.


eamon said:


> Minor simplifying detail: I think it'll work fine as is, but you could choose to remove the clause "If a dying creature succeeds on its Fortitude save for five consecutive  rounds since it last suffered damage, the creature stabilizes."  I added that to the original to give people a _chance_ to survive on their own, but you already have that with the "succeed by 10 or more" bit.  Probably, succeeding by 10 or more is actually more likely than surviving for 5 rounds for most scenario's anyhow.  Only if you really can't save by 10 or more is this new method bad for survival; and frankly, if you can't save by 10 or more, your save chance in the old system was virtually nil anyhow (if your first save needed an 11 to succeed, overall survival chance was less than 1% anyhow). To cut a long story short, that clause really doesn't do much anymore, you don't need it.



Thanks for pointing that out.  The math part isn't my strongest point.  I didn't realize that the chance of succeeding on 5 consecutive Fort saves was that low.

What I do like about your houserule and my variant is that it's hard for players to metagame how long they have to help a fallen comrade.  *The version I considered using before*, allowed too much possibility of metagaming.


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## Nonei (Feb 27, 2010)

The houserule that currently use is that we follow RAW up to -9.  At -10, you are mortally wounded.  If you are bleeding, you continue to bleed until you make your 10% check.  You can be healed normally, but you are unconcious for 5 minutes regardless of improved health, and you lose 100xp/level.  If you pass -20 you're dead.

For drowning, the failed saves go: 0, -1, -11, -21, but the checks to drop from -11 to dead dead (-21) are qminute instead of qround (we changed this after a too-lethal hydra fight in 3 feet of water - plenty of people have been revived IRL after several minutes in the water)

This was done to make it less likely that an individual character would die, but still painful to go to -10.  However, I dislike that it doesn't scale - a 10th level character should be more likely to survive unconciousness than a 1st level character.

I like the ideas of fort saves presented here... I will have to do some thinking.  I like the mechanic of losing xp/being out of the fight for being almost dead as well so would probably substitute some sort of fort save for the 10% chance of stabilizing.


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## Hrothgar Rannúlfr (Feb 27, 2010)

Nonei said:


> However, I dislike that it doesn't scale - a 10th level character should be more likely to survive unconciousness than a 1st level character.




I agree, that's why I've abandoned any set number of negative hit points resulting in death.


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## Nonei (Feb 27, 2010)

Nonei said:


> The houserule that currently use is that we follow RAW up to -9.  At -10, you are mortally wounded.  If you are bleeding, you continue to bleed until you make your 10% check.  You can be healed normally, but you are unconcious for 5 minutes regardless of improved health, and you lose 100xp/level.  If you pass -20 you're dead.




So I have been thinking about this...  I think my suggested houserule would include "mortally wounded" (with the associated negatives as listed in my quoted post above) with death occurring at -20.

If a spell or ability says it puts something at -10 or kills it (i.e. save vs. death), then the character would be automatically at "mortally wounded" (-10) and must then make a second save to avoid dying.

When an attack or action physically takes a PC below 0, they must make an immediate fort save vs. DC of 5 + half the negative damage.  If they fail, they take full damage or go to -10, whichever is higher.  If they make it, they take only half of the portion of the damage that puts them in negative (round up) or are at -9, whichever is higher.  If they make it by 10 or more, they take half the negative damage or -5, whichever is higher.

Then the PC's initiative is moved to just prior to when they fell.  Each round they must make a fort save vs. their current negative hp following mostly Herzog's suggestions above with a couple differences (my changes are in italics).

1. Make a Fortitude  save equal to your  neg hp.
 2. If you fail _by 10 or more_, you _automatically move one step closer to death (i.e. if you were dying, you are now mortally wounded (-10); if you were mortally wounded, you are now dead (-20))_
 3. If you _succeed by 10 or more_, you are stable.
 4. Normal methods of stabilizing (cure spells, Heal checks) work as  normal.
 5. _Otherwise_, you lose 1 hp.
 6. On your next turn, if you are not stable, you are still dying. (see  1.)

1 is automatic failure, 20 is automatic success.

Does that seem reasonable?


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## eamon (Mar 10, 2010)

Nonei said:


> Does that seem reasonable?



It seems reasonable: but it's too complicated.  I'm confident you can keep the gist of the rule without all the details.  You have a Fort save to mitigate a potentially lethal amount of damage.  The results of the Fort save _don't matter in detail_.  You don't need to say something like "the higher of X Y Z or on success A B C", which is quite complicated.

Also, the usage of a fixed number of negative hit points (-10, -20) is tricky - it's not scaling and the actual numbers are fairly arbitrary.  It also part of the cause of your complex save mechanics: you allow damage to be accounted as normal using hit-points but also need to ensure that the creature stays at the right side of -10 depending on the save. That means the hitpoint scale has two different uses in the same system, and that's complicated.

So, while your current proposal is probably workable, it could be better.  In particular, I'm worried that at the game table it'll be less than ideal because dying just isn't that common; players will forget the mechanics or misapply them or have a rules discussion every time it comes up.

Naturally, I feel that the system I proposed originally works well, but assuming you're looking for something else...

Looks to me like the core of your idea is "alive->dying->mortally wounded->dead".   I'd keep hit points out of that transition; you start dying by dropping to 0 or below, but becoming mortally wounded/dead doesn't need a fixed HP number.

I hope that's a step in a simpler direction - good luck, anyhow!


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## Nonei (Mar 11, 2010)

You're right of course... I have a tendency to make things way too complicated.  I've been thinking more on it and the reason I like the idea of 'mortally wounded' (with xp loss and being out of the fight) is that it is a more long term deterrant to being so close to death, while still decreasing the actual death rate and without introducing some sort of 'death spiral'.  But I don't really like the metagaminess of xp loss.

I do like a lot of things with your system - the simplicity, the idea of using fort saves, and not knowing exactly when someone will die - but it's a little too lethal, at least for the current game I'm running.  

So now I'm thinking perhaps:
On the round after falling, start rolling fort saves with the DC of 1/2 of negative hp. Edit: I just ran the numbers - this makes the DCs way too easy. 1/2 neg hp+5 or 10 would be better.  I don't want to do full hp b/c damage scales much faster than saves.

At DC 1/2 hp+5, a mid-level character with +10 fort reduced to -16 hp would have a 5% chance of con damage and a 70% chance of stabilizing on the first roll.

At DC 1/2 hp+10, the same mid-level character would have a 40% chance of stabilizing (meeting DC 23), a 25% chance of con damage (rolls of 3-7), and a 10% chance of death (roll of 1-2) on the first roll.

Success by 5 or more, four successes in a row, magical healing, or a successful heal check vs. the current DC stablizes the character
Success by less than 5 = no ill effects this round but the character remains unstable and DC increases by 1
Failure by less than 5 = 1 point of con damage, save DC increases by 1 for next round
Failure by more than 5 = death

So the most con damage they'd take is 4, which would be rare but would be 2hp/lvl.  At levels that would make a big difference they should have some access to lesser restoration, and of course that is only 4 days of natural healing.  Not sure with the extra cushion of 'failure by less than 5' that I really need the '4 successes in a row' part.


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## ren1999 (May 4, 2012)

O.k. You've really thought out these death rules and that's good. Here are my ideas and let's compare notes. 

Death Rules
A character with a 12 Constitution gets hit and goes to -100 hit points but this is recorded as -12 hit points. 

Another character must range touch this dying character within 1 round in order to BANDAGE or heal the character 

to 0 hit points. This effectively stabilizes the character for the duration of the encounter.


During the aftermath, the character must roll a Fortitude Save versus DC15. If the character fails 2 out of 3 throws, the character dies.


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## anest1s (May 4, 2012)

Shouldn't there also be a "No, I don't like it" as a voting option ?


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## RUMBLETiGER (May 4, 2012)

This thread died.  Apparently it's not following traditional death rules.

Somebody dug it up.  The guy who came up with the idea posted in 2007.


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## eamon (May 4, 2012)

anest1s said:


> Shouldn't there also be a "No, I don't like it" as a voting option ?



That's the "Naaah... why bother?" option .  Of course, I hope you like it instead!



RUMBLETiGER said:


> This thread died.  Apparently it's not following traditional death rules.
> 
> Somebody dug it up.  The guy who came up with the idea posted in 2007.



Indeed.  I still think it's a better rule than the 3e/pathfinder rule, but it's certainly nothing new.  I'm happy to say that 4e adopted something similar - in 4e dying characters also need to make saving throws to survive, though the implementation differs.  I wonder what 5e will do?


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## anest1s (May 4, 2012)

I get why to bother, and its not a bad rule. But if the players feel safe having someone at -1 then its fair game for the DM to attack the bleeding character, isn't it?


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## eamon (May 5, 2012)

anest1s said:


> I get why to bother, and its not a bad rule. But if the players feel safe having someone at -1 then its fair game for the DM to attack the bleeding character, isn't it?



Sure .  It's not usually the most effective tactic for their opponents, though... A dying character isn't a danger after all.


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## anest1s (May 5, 2012)

eamon said:


> Sure .  It's not usually the most effective tactic for their opponents, though... A dying character isn't a danger after all.




Why all the NPCs have to be clueless? Someone who is down can be back in the fight next round, with a single spell...(and usually they do) why risk it and not use an attack to get rid of the guy who is down?


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## lolstrider7 (May 5, 2012)

I don't know how much of this has already been suggested, but here goes:
Allowing a Fort save to avoid death vs hp damage makes people with Steadfast Determination nigh-unkillable.  Also it makes people with ways to trivialize saving throws (read: casters > level 3) and people who substitute other checks (read:  any 5th level initiator from ToB or anyone with a few thousand gp to spend) downright impossible to kill via hp damage.  

Making this save a constitution check might alleviate some of the problems here.


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## eamon (May 5, 2012)

lolstrider7 said:


> I don't know how much of this has already been suggested, but here goes:
> Allowing a Fort save to avoid death vs hp damage makes people with Steadfast Determination nigh-unkillable.  Also it makes people with ways to trivialize saving throws (read: casters > level 3) and people who substitute other checks (read:  any 5th level initiator from ToB or anyone with a few thousand gp to spend) downright impossible to kill via hp damage.
> 
> Making this save a constitution check might alleviate some of the problems here.



Yeah; there are a few corner cases to be aware of.  Having a large save bonus is not enough to cause problems, but if you can avoid the natural 1 rule, you can take small wounds risk-free.  The DM will need to make a judgement call when there's a rule interaction; fortunately that's very rare.  I'd rule that steadfast determination does not apply, for instance.

I kind of like the fact that it's a fortitude save because those with high saves (e.g.fighters not wizards) will tend to have a larger margin of safety.  Constitution checks are less ideal because often e.g. wizards may have a higher constitution bonus than fighters; after all, for them constitution affects hit points much more significantly.  Then again, maybe there's a reasonable alternative...

*Alternative:* Constitution check modified by base attack bonus vs. negative hit point total; natural 1 always fails.

Would this avoid the issues you see?  Minor extra benefit: this doesn't require halving the number of hit points .


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## eamon (May 5, 2012)

anest1s said:


> Why all the NPCs have to be clueless? Someone who is down can be back in the fight next round, with a single spell...(and usually they do) why risk it and not use an attack to get rid of the guy who is down?




It depends on the situation.  In-combat healing usually just doesn't work all that well (in my experience); if there's a choice between taking down another character or hitting a character that's probably not going to contribute to the combat anymore anyhow, well, the guy bleeding on the ground can wait.

Even if the fallen character is to be healed; that means a caster is spending his round without attacking or casting an offensive spell; the healer usually needs to be adjacent and that may mean concentration checks; even if healed the fallen character is still on the ground: easy to hit, might provoke by standing up, likely less dangerous while prone too.

This doesn't really have anything to with this house rule, so it's a bit of a tangent, but I don't think that attacking a fallen PC is usually sensible in-game.  And of course, it's also rather nasty... I'd only do it very sparingly, for dramatic effect.  Maybe some crazy, vindictive cultist would disregard self-preservation like that, but not most monsters.


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## Zireael (May 5, 2012)

What if we shuffled healing to minor actions, as it is in 4e? Would it solve the problem a bit?


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## lolstrider7 (May 5, 2012)

eamon said:


> I kind of like the fact that it's a fortitude save because those with high saves (e.g.fighters not wizards) will tend to have a larger margin of safety.  Constitution checks are less ideal because often e.g. wizards may have a higher constitution bonus than fighters; after all, for them constitution affects hit points much more significantly.  Then again, maybe there's a reasonable alternative...
> 
> *Alternative:* Constitution check modified by base attack bonus vs. negative hit point total; natural 1 always fails.
> 
> Would this avoid the issues you see?  Minor extra benefit: this doesn't require halving the number of hit points .




1)  Fighters tend to have the lowest saves of any character, even fort saves.  Having a good base save =/= having a good save.  Clerics have spells like recitation, wizards have spells like heroism, rogues have UMD as a class skill.  But I understand the reasoning behind your argument, which holds true for wizards and rogues at level 3 and below.  Clerics still vastly outstrip fighters though (although they have good fort saves as well).  

2)  I like the alternative, as it alleviates ALL of the issues.


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## Lwaxy (May 6, 2012)

I occasionally use something similar so I'd like that.


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## eamon (May 7, 2012)

lolstrider7 said:


> 1)  Fighters tend to have the lowest saves of any character, even fort saves.  Having a good base save =/= having a good save.  Clerics have spells like recitation, wizards have spells like heroism, rogues have UMD as a class skill.  But I understand the reasoning behind your argument, which holds true for wizards and rogues at level 3 and below.  Clerics still vastly outstrip fighters though (although they have good fort saves as well).



Well, I've used this rule for years by now, and that essentially doesn't happen IME.


The casters usually don't bother casting these buffs.  They'll cast something else except if they _know_ a big battle is coming up, because they want to conserve spell slots and if you don't want to cast more than a few spells then things like hold person or fireball or whatnot make much more impact than a fairly limited 1 person buff.
Most buff spells like that tend to be better on the "fighter" like characters since they also boost offense; not to mention the fact that the fighter will be attacked more (hopefully), so _when_ the wizard casts something like heroism at all, it's usually on the "fighter".  What's the point of save and attack boosts if you don't attack and hope to avoid being targetted most of the time anyhow?  (I'm putting fighter in quotation marks here because I don't think we've _ever_ had a pure fighter character with 10+levels, but whatever).
PC's that drop are rare.  Player's don't know when it'll happen, so optimizing these saves isn't something they're trying to do with their limited magic budget.  It's a nice bonus, but it's not something really critical.  And of course, once a battle takes a turn for the worse, there are usually more important things than buffing fort saves to prolong life _after_ you drop - like not dropping in the first place.
Still, using a constitution check modified by BAB is a simple fix.  The only shame is that it's no longer modified by things like Great Fortitude or similar, but that's no biggie.


I'm really liking this alternative - thanks for the feedback!


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