D&D 2E 2e, the most lethal edition?

GreyLord · Jul 21, 2019

PS: I should add...the DMG for 1e was FULL OF OPTIONS.

The actual death rule is listed on page 105 of the PHB...which states

If any creature reaches 0 or negative hitpoints, it is dead. Certain magical means will prevent actual death, particularly a ring of regeneration (cf. MONSTER MANUAL, TROLL).

Garthanos · Jul 21, 2019

GreyLord said:
SOOO...if you actually interpreted the rule as you say you did...did you ALSO not allow monsters to actually be dead until -10 HP.

Looks for place in the books saying monster and player facing rules are identical... then turns to 3rd edition ahah.

GreyLord · Jul 21, 2019

Garthanos said:
Looks for place in the books saying monster and player facing rules are identical... then turns to 3rd edition ahah.

That's true. IF we go by that...the DMG would be for monsters?

The PHB defines what happened to the players already at 0 HP.

Garthanos · Jul 21, 2019

GreyLord said:
That's true. IF we go by that...the DMG would be for monsters?

LOL you took facing more literally than I meant it... but I suppose I could have said impacting its utterly appropriate for monsters to have one set of rules and the monsters another. your hyperbole about how having zero to -3 be unconscious with the rest dying is still hyperbolic and misplaced unless you think you are playing 3e where they lock step npcs and pcs like the game was RuneQuest 3 instead of D&D. 4e went back to players having different rules vs their adversaries.

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2019

GreyLord said:
Going to -10 was ONLY for those that the 0 Hit Point rule applied to. IT was NOT for anyone else.

Yep. The rule was only for "any creature." That includes PCs dude. I guess it wouldn't apply to rocks.

The Zero Hit Point rule applied to those...(as you can plainly read above) when any creature is brought to 0 Hit points.

It CLARIFIES THAT AN OPTION could be that this could be as low as -3 Hitpoints if from the same blow.

If you don't use that option, any creature that falls below 0 hitpoints from a blow is dead.

Um, no. First, it's not an option. It's in the combat section, not some mythical "optional rule" section. Specifically, it's in the section talking about hit points and damage. It explains what happens when you drop to 0 hit points. What happens? You fall unconscious. Then it explains what happens when you go past 0. What happens? You lose 1 hit point per round until -10. The ONE AND ONLY OPTION it speaks about is that the DM can extend unconsciousness to up to -3 hit points if one blow takes you to that range.

That is why this is the ZERO HIT POINT rule.

NOT THE -10 HITPOINT RULE...NOT THE NEGATIVE HIT POINT RULE...but the ZERO HIT POINT RULE.

Don't have a stroke man. We get that there are two rules that both apply to all creatures, including PCs during combat. The non-optional rule that happens when you drop to zero(and possibly down to -3) and the non-optional rule that says you don't die until -10 hit points.

Basically, it's an optional rule that was pretty clear and clarified...but it was an optional RULE in the DMG 1e (whether you like it or not...the official rulings most times came from the PHB anyways...that said, it WAS sometimes used in the official events AS I HAVE described...not really as you think it worked).

Show me where it says that it was optional. My 1e DMG doesn't say optional anywhere other than what quoted from it.

SOOO...if you actually interpreted the rule as you say you did...did you ALSO not allow monsters to actually be dead until -10 HP.

Yes, that is correct. Players saved and interrogated many creatures that way.

That said, MOST people didn't even pay heed to the rule. They had characters and monsters die at 0 HP...and the DM would allow characters to be unconscious as they wanted or needed.

I played 1e for years with many DMs and never once had a DM have a PC die at 0. Monsters? Sure, but that was mainly just short hand for letting them just die at -10 since nobody was saving the monsters anyway.

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2019

GreyLord said:
PS: I should add...the DMG for 1e was FULL OF OPTIONS.

The actual death rule is listed on page 105 of the PHB...which states

You still haven't proven that a rule not listed as optional was specifically an optional rule. All the two different non-optional rules from the PHB and DMG prove is that between the year the PHB was release and the DMG came out, Gygax had second thoughts about dying at 0 and changed the rule.

Tony Vargas · Jul 21, 2019

Maxperson said:
First, it's not an option. It's in the combat section, not some mythical "optional rule" section.

The whole DMG is essentially optional rules. (really, the whole game is, but don't admit it to the players)

Specifically, it's in the section talking about hit points and damage. It explains what happens when you drop to 0 hit points. What happens? You fall unconscious.

nb: that's to /exactly/ 0 hit point. If you drop to -1 or fewer you die.

Then it explains what happens when you go past 0. What happens? You lose 1 hit point per round until -10.

That's what happens while you're unconscious, after having been reduced to exactly 0. You lose 1 hp per round, going from 0, to -1, etc, down through -9, then die when you reach -10.

If you don't take any more damage from an outside source. It's not super-clear what happens if you get hit again when at negatives from bleeding. However, judging from the optional rule, below, if you get hit, again, after reaching exactly 0, well, even if it's only 1 hp, you die.

"...you die" six letters, two little words, yet they constitute so much of old-school D&D...

...sorry, waxing nostalgic there for a moment.

The ONE AND ONLY OPTION it speaks about is that the DM can extend unconsciousness to up to -3 hit points if one blow takes you to that range.

What that actually means is that, under said option, if you are taken from a positive number to 0, -1,-2, or -3 by a single attack, you are unconscious, instead of just when being reduced to /exactly/ 0. You'll start 'bleeding' from there.

But, again, it seems if you are hit again, or, say, reduced to 0, then hit for even one more point, well, <broken record> "you die."

They're really neither of them very generous options compared to 2e Death's Door.

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
The whole DMG is essentially optional rules. (really, the whole game is, but don't admit it to the players) nb: that's to /exactly/ 0 hit point. If you drop to -1 or fewer you die.

Sure, but the DMG rule no more or less optional than the PHB rule.

That's what happens while you're unconscious, after having been reduced to exactly 0. You lose 1 hp per round, going from 0, to -1, etc, down through -9, then die when you reach -10.

If you don't take any more damage from an outside source. It's not super-clear what happens if you get hit again when at negatives from bleeding. However, judging from the optional rule, below, if you get hit, again, after reaching exactly 0, well, even if it's only 1 hp, you die.

"...you die" six letters, two little words, yet they constitute so much of old-school D&D...

...sorry, waxing nostalgic there for a moment.

What that actually means is that, under said option, if you are taken from a positive number to 0, -1,-2, or -3 by a single attack, you are unconscious, instead of just when being reduced to /exactly/ 0. You'll start 'bleeding' from there.

But, again, it seems if you are hit again, or, say, reduced to 0, then hit for even one more point, well, <broken record> "you die."

The DMG does not state you die if you are at 0 and then are hit for 1 more point of damage. The only rule in the DMG about it is that you die at -10.

Tony Vargas · Jul 21, 2019

Maxperson said:
The DMG does not state you die if you are at 0 and then are hit for 1 more point of damage. The only rule in the DMG about it is that you die at -10.

It's not the most clearly-stated rule ever (even by 1e standards), but, yeah, that's the only way to parse the rule that allows the optional -3 'single blow' phrasing to make any sense.

TBH, it /doesn't/ make a lot of sense, no matter how you try to parse it. Every group I ever saw use the -10 rule, allowed that you dropped unconscious if reduced to anything from 0 to -9, then bled at 1/round, until dying at -10 (some even left you alive at -10, I guess because they liked round numbers). If you got hit in the meantime, as long as it didn't knock you below -10 it just accelerated the bleed-out.
Not to make the game less deadly, not to be 'realistic,' just because it was remotely intuitive and you could remember it.

But, strictly by the book (which, even though it's hard to even tell what that is, and no one may have ever actually played that way, is what Sacrosanct wants to rank past editions by lethality, on). If you got hit while down & bleeding out, you die.

Hussar · Jul 21, 2019

Taking another stab at this with another data point.

If you go through the 3e monsters, by and large, they deal 10 X CR per round as maximum damage (not counting crits). Very, very few PC's would have 10 HP / level. Therefore, most 3e creatures could drop (if not outright kill) nearly all 3e PC's in a single round where CR=PC level.

I'm thinking that the reason that folks don't think 3e is that lethal is because of the ... erm... degree of "DM influencing" die rolls behind the screen that was going on. I know that as soon as I switched to rolling 100% in the open, I was killing a PC just about once every 3 sessions.

Again, when an orc can deal 45 points of damage, I'm frankly baffled how folks think that this isn't the most lethal edition.