eamon
Explorer
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.
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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