the Jester
Legend
So a weird situation came up in my 5e game a few nights ago.
The pcs had an archetypical gelatinous cube encounter brought on by messing with shriekers, and the dwarf wizard pc got engulfed and knocked to 0 immediately at the start of the ooze's turn. So I cackled with glee, rubbed my hands together and called for a death save on his turn.
Said dwarf has an 18 Con, plus he had bardic inspiration in reserve, so he was going to make all his death saves. So the sequence went like this:
That's where things get weird.
So he's suddenly okay again, and needs to fail three more death saves before that poor hungry gelatinous cube can feast on his jelled corpse.
It's okay by me- if he didn't have buddies trying to save him, he'd fail 3 death saves before succeeding on 3 eventually- but still, it's weird.
The pcs had an archetypical gelatinous cube encounter brought on by messing with shriekers, and the dwarf wizard pc got engulfed and knocked to 0 immediately at the start of the ooze's turn. So I cackled with glee, rubbed my hands together and called for a death save on his turn.
Said dwarf has an 18 Con, plus he had bardic inspiration in reserve, so he was going to make all his death saves. So the sequence went like this:
- Dwarf is engulfed during the surprise round;
- Dwarf falls to 0 on the cube's turn;
- Dwarf's turn- succeeds on one death save.
- Cube's turn- automatically fails a death save.
- Repeat successful and automatic failure on death saves on the next turn for the cube and the dwarf.
- Dwarf's turn- succeeds on third death save and becomes stable.
That's where things get weird.
5e Players Handbook said:The number of both [successful and failed death saves] is reset to zero when you regain any hit points or become stable.
So he's suddenly okay again, and needs to fail three more death saves before that poor hungry gelatinous cube can feast on his jelled corpse.
It's okay by me- if he didn't have buddies trying to save him, he'd fail 3 death saves before succeeding on 3 eventually- but still, it's weird.