Are they dead or not?

[Philip]

I find this inpartiality is very helpful to my game. The players know that I'll revisit mistakes against them, but also revisit mistakes for them. And I can trust my players to point out my mistakes without bias as well.

Very true. Only revisiting mistakes is not always that simple. Often players make decisions based on such consequences and those decisions may have been different if they had the right information. I don't think that as a DM you can say, oh, I forgot, last battle the Remorhaz actually did 32 instead of 20 points of damage, and since you're at 1 hp now.... The player would justly say: 'but if I knew I had taken 12 more damage, I would have asked for another cure spell'. And then the cleric would have chimed in 'but if I had cast another cure spell, I would have insisited on resting and regaining my spells before we continued' and so on....

So usually I have a 1 round time limit to reverse mistakes, if your next action is up, you don't suffer the consequences of the mistake, be they good or bad. I usually only make an expection if a mistake of mine caused a PC to be killed where he would have been alive if I had ruled correctly.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Sounds like an honest mistake. I would probably stick the character with CON 1 and let him live.

Yeah, me too. Just let 'em off with a rules clarification and carry on - but point out they're at -5 hp/level (min 1hp/level) and -5 con modifier.

 

[blargney the second]

I really like the idea of turning him into a wraith!
-blarg

 

[LadyDM]

The player in question has played for a while, but I do think it was an honest mistake. I REALLY like the idea of her becoming undead and will work on the story lines to include her being undead. GREAT IDEA!!!!

I too am very curious why it is that you feel it is up to you to keep track of this. Do you not let the players know about the stat damage?

I did let the players know they had an ability drain when they were hit, (they had to roll to see how bad the drain was) the player said the drain took her to CON 0, but like I said, I didn't catch the significance until later.

IMHO, the DM is responsible to know the possible repercussions the PC's may have when facing adventures. How else are the adventures being strung together?

"all of a sudden... out from the bushes a dragon appears." to me is not very creative and not as much fun for the players. I try very hard to have a story line that makes sense and flows.

I have only been DM'ing for a little over a year in 3.0 & 3.5 and realize that I still have a lot to learn but thankfully my players are patient enough and forgive my mistakes. So tell me, (this may need to be a separate thread, but...) am I trying to do too much??

 

[irdeggman]

It depends. If the player "knew" that having a 0 Con means the character is dead and did nothing with that information - then he/she is deserving to be "spanked" with an immediate death for trying to pull something over on everyone.

If the player did not know -then don't reverse any previous decisions (it generally causes more problems than it solves). Say he has an effective 1 Con and go on with the game, but make sure everyone knows what happened and that from now on when a character's Con goes to 0 he is dead - period.

 

[ARandomGod]

I dunno; the rat-bastard in me want to say, "He's not dead--he's UNDEAD!" When the wraiths killed him with the Con drain, he became a ghost as well. He just doesn't realize it yet.

Explain away the Xorn fight with the fact that he's able to physically manifest--and he was doing so during subconciously during the fight, not realizing that he's dead.

Have him be incorporeal when the party tries to stabalize/heal him. Maybe give him a chance to return to the location where he was killed, find his physical body (any way you can explain how his physical body might have been left behind unnoticed?), and return to life.

Spider

This is EXACTLY what I was going to say!
Well, except for the return to life bit...

I imagine they might not have noticed the dead body, they weren't looking too closely, everyone was walking, after all.

 

[billd91]

If the player did not know -then don't reverse any previous decisions (it generally causes more problems than it solves). Say he has an effective 1 Con and go on with the game, but make sure everyone knows what happened and that from now on when a character's Con goes to 0 he is dead - period.

I prefer not to readjudicate mistakes either unless they were game breakers (caused an TPK when they shouldn't have, etc). I just tell my players that this was a mistake, we're going on from here, and I'll adjudicate it correctly in the future.

 

[harmyn]

This topic is quiet but I am throwing in my 2 coppers worth anyways on it now that I stumbled across it. Most likely I would introduce some sort of penalty and let the character live, mistakes happen, and be told your arbitrarily dead the next week is always just harsh. no one likes it, whether its right or not.

Another option is to have the character walking around AND as a wraith. Reports could circulate in that area, or if the group is mobile, always somewhere near them that a wraith is on the prowl. Have the PC match its description. And he is walking around "living" because something else is inside him. Could be a spirit of some form, a demon or devil, an angel that saw a vessel to store itself within for safety an elemental spirit of some form, anything your heart desires and your plotlines allow for. Catch is that whatever is inside him "fueling" his lifeforce will want to leave at some point or at the very least corrupt him if it's evil, and his wraith self would see its walking shell as a horror that it must torment or destroy -it is warped after all. Thus begins the character's attempt to reunite his undead self and walking meat-shell so that he can truly live again.

Just a random thought.