Character Death Variant

dave2008 · Dec 20, 2018

hawkeyefan said:
Excellent point, thank you, Quickleaf. That's the kind of impact I was asking about, and I hadn't thought of this. It's still a rough sketch of an idea.

Definitely a factor to be considered.

I am not sure how your are tracking base hit points we do something similar (bloodied hit points) that we track separately. Thus spells that use HP works as normal. If you you don't track it separately you could just add the characters base to the spell HP range or generically add 10 (or whatever you deem appropriate) to the spells HP range.

TaranTheWanderer · Dec 20, 2018

dave2008 said:
We do something similar and it works well for us.

We got rid of death saves (though I do like the idea) and use death at 0. To compensate we added a little 4e and gave everything bloodied hit points (BHP). When your bloodied HP go to 0, you die. Typical damage comes off your HP first and when your HP = 0, you lose damage from your BHP. However, when you take BHP damage it is mitigated by your armor's DR (DR = AC-10). Also, the extra damage from a crit comes off your BHP (-DR of course).

This definitely makes the game more deadly and has gotten rid of the Murder Hobo effect for us.

EDIT: BHP = (size x Str mod) + Con mod, so for most PCs that is: (1 x Str Mod) + Con mod; not half HP like 4e.

Sorry. Crits burn through your bloodied Hit points first? Or you roll damage twice and the first set comes off your regular hit points and your second comes off your Bloodied?

Also, are you at some kind of penalty while bloodied?

How do you regain bloodied Hit points and when, if at all, do you become unconscious?

I kind of like these ideas people are presenting...

dave2008 · Dec 20, 2018

TaranTheWanderer said:
Sorry. Crits burn through your bloodied Hit points first? Or you roll damage twice and the first set comes off your regular hit points and your second comes off your Bloodied?

Roll damage twice. Regular damage off hit points (dice + bonus), extra damage (extra crit dice only) off Bloodied.

TaranTheWanderer said:
Also, are you at some kind of penalty while bloodied?

The original plan was to roll on the lingering injury table when you took bloodied damage. But that ended up being to debilitating and we dropped it. Right now we are playing without any penalty, but we have been thinking about creating or own table of effects to replace the DMG lingering injuries table.

TaranTheWanderer said:
How do you regain bloodied Hit points and when, if at all, do you become unconscious?

BHP can be regained through magic or a week of rest recovers 1 BHP. A successful medicine check + healers kit can be used 1/day to regain an addition 1 BHP. You can attempt the check once per day, but you can only gain a maximum of BHP = to your con mod per week.

We don't currently have a mechanism for unconsciousness. I've been thinking about making a "Bloodied Effects Table," and that would be one of the options. As I am typing this I think rather than rolling I might give the players the option to pick the effect from the table. They would have to be fairly balanced though.

TaranTheWanderer said:
I kind of like these ideas people are presenting...

Me too!

hawkeyefan · Dec 20, 2018

dave2008 said:
I am not sure how your are tracking base hit points we do something similar (bloodied hit points) that we track separately. Thus spells that use HP works as normal. If you you don't track it separately you could just add the characters base to the spell HP range or generically add 10 (or whatever you deem appropriate) to the spells HP range.

We haven't played with the option yet, so nothing's set in stone. I think the idea for tracking purposes is that Base HP, or Vitality Points (I think that stands out a little more) are only lost once all your other HP are lost.

I think a way around the HP based spell issue is to track them separately, and as I mentioned, to call them something else like Vitality Points. This way they don't factor into the spells.

The other way would be to simply add 10 to the HP affected by those spells, as you suggest. So Sleep would affect 5d8 +10 HP worth of creatures, and Power Word Kill would cause anyone with 110 HP or less to drop dead, and so on.

dave2008 · Dec 20, 2018

hawkeyefan said:
We haven't played with the option yet, so nothing's set in stone. I think the idea for tracking purposes is that Base HP, or Vitality Points (I think that stands out a little more) are only lost once all your other HP are lost.

I think a way around the HP based spell issue is to track them separately, and as I mentioned, to call them something else like Vitality Points. This way they don't factor into the spells.

Yep, that is what we do. It works for us.

Draegn · Dec 20, 2018

I run my game as follows: at zero hit points you have your constitution score as negative HP, you cannot fight or engage in strenuous actions. The only thing you can do is seek medical attention. The exception to this is if you have special training to resist the pain or are in an aggressive emotional state.

TaranTheWanderer · Dec 20, 2018

[MENTION=83242]dave2008[/MENTION] I'm just rereading how you calculate bloodied. It's less than I was imagining. An average PC has 2 to 6 Bloodied Hit Points? Wouldn't a crit just blow through that - even with the damage Reduction?

Large creatures have around 6-10?

Would it be simpler to just have a new stat called 'Mettle' or Vitality? Large creatures get a +2 race bonus? Or would that be too many?

Also, instead of a table, why not do as suggested here and just let the players decide to go unconscious once they are bloodied?

dave2008 · Dec 20, 2018

TaranTheWanderer said:
@dave2008 I'm just rereading how you calculate bloodied. It's less than I was imagining. An average PC has 2 to 6 Bloodied Hit Points? Wouldn't a crit just blow through that - even with the damage Reduction?

Large creatures have around 6-10?

Sorry, slight mistake on my part: it should be Str, not Str Mod, so: (1 x Str) + Con mod for PCS. So between 10-15 BHP on average (max 25). Also armor does more than you think. Plate armor (DR = 8) completely cancels the average critical damage from a greatsword (2d6 = 7 avg). Armor becomes a real life saver we find.

FYI, the size categories are: Tiny = 1/4, Small = 1/2, Medium = 1, Large = 2, Huge = 4, Gargantuan = 8

EDIT: so an ancient red dragon would have 250 BHP.

TaranTheWanderer said:
Would it be simpler to just have a new stat called 'Mettle' or Vitality? Large creatures get a +2 race bonus? Or would that be too many?

I am not sure what you are suggesting, can you clarify. Although, we are not going for simplicity, something that feels a bit more real and gritty to us. By having BHP we create a distinction between plot armor (HP) and actual meat damage (BHP).

TaranTheWanderer said:
Also, instead of a table, why not do as suggested here and just let the players decide to go unconscious once they are bloodied?

That is possible, but I would prefer to have more options. As I mentioned in the previous reply, I have thought of giving the players a choice of what effect to choose. One of those choices could be unconsciousness. Or they can keep on fighting with some other effect.

Character Death Variant

dave2008

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TaranTheWanderer

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dave2008

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hawkeyefan

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dave2008

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Draegn

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TaranTheWanderer

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dave2008

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