D&D 5E KO and Death Saves

[scholz]

IF an NPC tries to knock out a PC (or vice versa) and reduces her to 0 hps she is unconscious and stable. Would you allow her to make Stabilization rolls anyway in hopes she can roll a 20 and gain an HP and wake up?

 

[Skyscraper]

Good question. For NPCs, probably not, because there are no death saves. Depending on the gaming situation, I'd probably have the NPC wake up a few rounds later. For PCs, I'd probably allow it.

 

[3SpdDragster]

Good question.

I'd allow it, makes sense that someone would eventually wake up.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Speaking personally... if I ever had an NPC actually go through the effort of knocking out a PC, it's probably because of some story reason. Which means, no, I wouldn't let the PC try and wake up on their own... because the PC will wake up in the prison cell, or tied up in the hold of the boat, or wherever it was the NPC was trying to get the PC to by knocking him out in the first place. They're being knocked out so that they can wake up some place specific. A randomly-determined premature waking up serves no purpose.

 

[3SpdDragster]

Speaking personally... if I ever had an NPC actually go through the effort of knocking out a PC, it's probably because of some story reason. Which means, no, I wouldn't let the PC try and wake up on their own... because the PC will wake up in the prison cell, or tied up in the hold of the boat, or wherever it was the NPC was trying to get the PC to by knocking him out in the first place. They're being knocked out so that they can wake up some place specific. A randomly-determined premature waking up serves no purpose.

Maybe the npc's were not that accurate with their calibration of the "tap" to the head. Literature/movies are full of hero's waking up at a time inconvenient to the bad guy. The randomness give you a chance to avoid being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

I guess, I like the idea not a war stopper though.

 

[Lancelot]

No, not in my group.

On the rare occasion that the players in my group have decided to take someone prisoner, I'm not going to demotivate them by allowing a chance that the KO'ed prisoner wakes up and makes life difficult for them. My players are plenty murderous enough already. If an NPC is KO'ed, it stays down for 1d4+1 hours.

Conversely, if (as DM) I choose to have an NPC knock out a PC, it's clearly for story reasons. In this case, I don't want to leave the story in the hands of the d20. The PC is out cold. They're not at risk of dying (and they know that, which is a good thing), but nor can they hope to pop back up and influence the fight unless they get magical healing.

Bear in mind that, in my group, a knock-out attempt might occur once every 4-6 sessions (i.e. every 20-or-so combat encounters). My group's motto is: kill them all, and let the gods sort them out. In the last month alone, they've killed multiple innocents: chucked a fireball into a room where cultists were about to sacrifice a prisoner (killing the bound prisoner), shot an unconscious slave in the back ("Body face-down at the bottom of a pit? I'll put a bolt into his back, just in case he's a zombie or something"), killed the entire population of a town after accidentally detonating an orb of destruction, and murdered a friendly NPC because they detected magic items in his house. If anything, I need to be figuring out more ways to incentivize them to not kill everything in their path.

So, yeah. No way am I ever going to give them another reason to simply kill the NPCs.

 

[Sunseeker]

Sure, I'd just run it like death saves. 3 successes before 3 failures. If you fail your "consciousness" throws then you're simply knocked out for at least 1 hour (a short rest, at which point you would regain 1 hp). If you succeed 3 times or get a nat 20, you regain consciousness at 1 hp.

NPCs don't get saves (unless they're special), so if a player chooses to "KO" a target instead of kill it outright the target remains unconscious for a maximum of one hour, at which point they recover naturally, they can be woke up earlier via healing.

 

[Shiroiken]

IF an NPC tries to knock out a PC (or vice versa) and reduces her to 0 hps she is unconscious and stable. Would you allow her to make Stabilization rolls anyway in hopes she can roll a 20 and gain an HP and wake up?

No, because you open a can of worms with the Death Saving Throw in general. By the same logic, you should allow someone who has already made their 3 Saves (thus Stable) to continue making checks to see if they wake up. This makes the rest of the rules on being Stable irrelevant, since you should be able to wake up and be ready (with 1 HP) in about 2 minutes or so.

If this fits your style of play, then by all means do so. My tastes differ (I would rather the 20 be an automatic stabilization or count as 2 saves).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'd handle it like shidaku. Otherwise being knocked unconscious may be more punitive than being struck down.
3 successful saves:
Knocked out for an hour, regain 1 hp afterwards.
3 unsuccessful saves:
Knocked out for 8 hours
Natural 20: 1hp immediately.

So it mirrors exactly being lethally knocked out except when failing 3 saves.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I don't allow it, because the rules are pretty clear on it here, imo. No death saves when you are stable. Instead you wake up after 1d4 hours or when you are healed.