D&D 5E "If They Have a Name They Get Death Saves. . ."

[Neonchameleon]

So in our last session, one of the players asked me, "How come some of our enemies just die when we knock them to 0 hps and others get death saves?"

They had just finished fighting waves of nameless cultists but were now in the middle of fighting the cult lieutenants. One of the lieutenants dropped, but then I rolled a 20 for one of his death saves, and he popped up behind the PCs and tried to get away. They got him down again before he succeeded, though - but it momentarily distracted them from the fight in front of them.

I replied, "Basically, if they are important enough to come with their own names I give them death saves."

We used to play a variant of this in Feng Shui where we took care to avoid actually naming the extras because that would upgrade them. Or on one occasion started naming our allies in the crowd.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

"Do you have any idea how many anonymous henchmen I killed over the years? Look at you, you haven't even got a name tag. You have no chance."

This can only be said with an East Ender/cockney accent, however.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't even waste time rolling death saves for important NPCs.

If an enemy drops to 0 in battle, it's out of combat unless he gets magically healed, and that usually happens quite quickly, it's not like a healer is normally going to wait a couple of rounds just because their pal has time to make death saves, the sooner they are back the better.

On the other hand, if the PCs decide to attack it to make sure it's dead, there are no death saves to roll. At most, you might have to count how many attacks it takes to deplete the death saves (which is really boring, so I might just decide it takes 1-2 rounds). But I don't like telling my players if they are using this tactic against an important NPC or if they are wasting their time on an un-important one, so I would do the same for all.

If I were undecided about the possibility of an important NPC to be thought dead and then come back later, I would consider rolling some dice after the battle, which could be done using death saves retroactively (again, very boring anyway...). But most likely I am not going to be undecided: if an important NPC has to come back, it will.

 

[guachi]

If the PCs take a monster hostage he automatically gets a name, a character sheet, and a long sad backstory designed to make the PCs not kill him. Right? It can't be just me.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have kind of a funky house rule around this. When you reduce a creature to 0 HP with a melee attack and you’re trying to kill them, they die. When you do so and you’re trying to leave them alive, they fall unconscious and start making death saves. It’s up to you to stabilize them if you want to insure they don’t die - being knocked unconscious is dangerous!

 

[Don Durito]

If the players ask if anyone from the fight is still alive I roll some kind of die to see how many are still bleeding out rather than dead.

 

[Lanefan]

I certainly hope your player was just curious about the answer, and not actually angry about it. Because the response would have to be to tell them "Look, if you WANT me to roll death saves for every creature you fight, I CAN... but that means you all are going to probably have to use many of your turns just attacking unconscious foes to kill them quickly. If you'd LIKE to add that to your responsibility while playing, doing nothing on some rounds but stabbing prone bodies just to give them two failed death saves... that's fine, I certainly can add it in... but I thought I was doing you a favor by skipping over that tedious part of the game for you."

As a player I'd expect nothing less, and I would be annoyed if it turned out NPCs worked differently than PCs in this regard.

Either give the NPCs death saves, or do away with the mechanic for PCs. (or better yet, come up with a different mechanic that preserves a "dying-but-not-dead" condition yet doesn't need die rolls every round for anyone in that state)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Eh... I personally don't care at all if the stuff the DM runs is run different than how the PCs are run. That's already the case anyway in that PCs level up and NPCs and monsters don't. So the 3E method of having them all get built and work the same was something I was glad they moved away from in 5E.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't grant death saves to NPCs and monsters, because my players enjoy dramatic death blows. You can't really give a guy a save after describing how his head went flying across the room.

However, if I did grant death saves to NPCs, I would roll them for anyone whose survival I needed to keep track of. I don't need to keep track of Mook #5's survival--unless the PCs examine Mook #5 to see if they're still breathing. At that point I'd roll the appropriate death saves retroactively.

(If one of them came up a natural 20, the players would discover that Mook #5 was actually conscious but had been keeping their head down, if such behavior was plausible for this type of mook. Otherwise I would treat that nat 20 as a regular success.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yeah... for me, once an NPC gets knocked to 0 HP, they cease being board game pieces and turn into narrative devices. Which means that later on if the PCs want to question one of them after the fact, one will still be alive (even if no one had said to me during the board game "I want to not kill this one, I want to leave them unconscious but breathing.) Likewise, if I want to narrate a glorious death for one of them I'll do so, regardless of the board game action that resulted in the creature 0 HP (although I usually am pretty good at using the board game results as the impetus for the type of narrative description.) And if a certain villain is going to get death saves rather than just automatically be dead, I will alert the players of that fact (since it is not a typical result at 0 HP and it's only fair that they notice that it's happening.)