Player Death

The way the game is writen, a person, be it a PC or an NPC dies when it passes -10 hitpoints.

However, even in real life, people are brought back by paramedics and doctors all the time. Usualy within the first couple of minutes after death.

In the Rolemaster game, they give a statistic for "Soul Departure" for all races. This is the time after physical death that it takes for the persons soul to leave the body. For humans, this is usualy around 2 minutes IMS.

In theory, if you heal the person up to a livable HP total and "Restart the Heart" in that space of time, the person does not actualy die. Therefore not requireing a raise dead or resurection.

What do others think of introducing this same concept into the D&D D20 system?

for DND it might be kind of cheap, because the only way I could think of doing this would be with a cleric, and unless you're in an extremely long battle, two minutes is enough time to say, "oh, here's some healing for you"

In d20 modern it'd be pretty neat because generally a party doesn't have a paramedic and emergency room trailing behind them. Plus modern things such as defibulators and things. Although, questions such as what type of death would warrant a defibulator working, because generally if someone gets clawed/chopped/shot up a defibulator won't work.

Corlon said:

for DND it might be kind of cheap, because the only way I could think of doing this would be with a cleric, and unless you're in an extremely long battle, two minutes is enough time to say, "oh, here's some healing for you"

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True, but that is how it worked in rolemaster. It never really worked out to be a problem as the PCs were always going through healing potions and spells like it was going out of style. Much like they do in My D20 games.

In fact, in the last session, they used up the last of their supply of Healing just getting everyone standing again, except for the cleric who had taken a single 70 point blow reducing him to -38 HP. Now if they had been able to use healing potions on him, and a few of them at that, and then a heal check to perform CPR, then maybe they wouldn't be in the middle of nowhere, with no healing and a party of 8th level characters with single digit HP.

Just remember that, in real life, you can't bring someone back if their head is torn off or they're cut in two.

I might go for a 'within a round' kind of thing- I know Piratecat has (or had?) that as a house rule in his game- but I think you're begging for abuse with a two-minute limit.

But I also prefer a high-fatality game...

In a game a play in, if a character drops to -10 or below all the other characters have a chance to do something within one round. So if a player drops to -17 hp on initiative count 17, all players have the chance to do whatever they can to bring him up to at least -9 before initiative count 17 comes around again.

When I read the thread's title, "Player Death" I thought, gee, that's got to be a very morbid thread right there. Boy, am I glad I came in here to see it's talking about character deaths and not player deaths...



We now return you to your thread.

As for the topic: there are several ways to address this without going outside the game mechanics...

There's a druid's spell, last breath (if the character died within the last round, you can bring the back -- or some such thing; don't recall the book... may be in masters of the wild and not core though. Some others adopt feats or house rules that let a person live long... they don't die until -10-Con or something like that... so you're on the ground bleeding to death much longer (thus keeping open that window where something can be done))

The whole hit point mechanic has always been a gross simplification of real life health for the very reason of simplification. So that may well be the reason why it doesn't specifically address this sort of thing inherently. The only thing it does do is have ways (feats, spells, etc.) to keep that "unconcious" period of time lasting longer (i.e. stablize checks, ability to heal during that time and not be dead, etc.).

fba827 said:

they don't die until -10-Con or something like that... so you're on the ground bleeding to death much longer (thus keeping open that window where something can be done))

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I do this in my games. It came in handy yesterday when our Druid's Dire Wolf got squished by a Juggernaught (MMII) for 10d10+20. He was nocked down to -15 and managed to stabilize the next round. Everyone cheared.

Until the Juggernagut rolled backwords to get at that nasty 16th level Paladin who just wouldn't die. Wolf wound up at -103. . .


It's because of deaths like this that my PC's have had fun with Reincarnate. Let's see, a Dryad, a Pixie, a Human, and two Centaurs. Reincarnate has never gone wrong for our party.

Edit: Oh, yeah! And a monkey (DM's choice). He was a Monk character and I couldn't resist. Of course, you should see him kill things now. . .