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

[Nonei]

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?

 

[eamon]

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!

 

[Nonei]

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.

 

[ren1999]

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.

 

[anest1s]

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

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

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.

 

[eamon]

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!

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?

 

[anest1s]

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?

 

[eamon]

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.

 

[anest1s]

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?