D&D 5E New Death and Dying Rules

[Warbringer]

If you can fight on after hitting zero, then you're still a threat and enemies will continue to prioritise you. If you go this way, you might as well just give everyone a few extra HP and say that they die at zero.

To provide a trade-off that creates dramatic tension ... The player has a choice to lie there and hope his friends can save him, or fight on with a greater chance of dying quickly.

But, i do like negative hit points going bye bye

 

[Aluvial]

I think the mechanics for this in the new packet are just fine for a default system. Relatively easy to use and easy to remember; perfect for the basic game.

As always, those who have the desire and ability to modify the rules to better suit their own games, will do so. I will likely modify them also, but I do think this RAW is perfect for a default game.

I agree, the first house rule I design deals with the death and dying system. I've never used the default, and have always changed the rule to suit my campaign and our group's style of play.

 

[MarkB]

To provide a trade-off that creates dramatic tension ... The player has a choice to lie there and hope his friends can save him, or fight on with a greater chance of dying quickly.

4e did provide a few such options for those who wanted them, in the form of class features, racial features, and I think possibly feats. Hopefully 5e can similarly provide such options, but I like the current version as the default.

But, i do like negative hit points going bye bye

Agreed. 4e's compromise on that count never did feel quite right.

 

[amarin221]

I like the new system, though I'm afraid I probably won't be saying that when I'm failing all my death saving throws. I agree with what various others have said in the discussion here though, that level should be added in as a balancing factor when it comes to how many saving throws you can fail. I think one of the major problems with the negative hit-points/10 round count system was that it gave too much leeway for low-level characters and (comparatively) too little for higher level characters. If I invest enough time into a character to see him/her to level 15,16,17 etc, I would think there to be more of a chance that the character would have the will to survive.

 

[Rhenny]

I don't like the new rules. My group and I feel that negative hit points and losing 1d6 more each failed death save is the most dramatic option we've seen so far.

 

[howandwhy99]

Sounds interesting. Definitely an improvement in ease of bookkeeping

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm ok with this version, but frankly I think these rules are unimportant.

All versions so far are still too complex for the Basic game, and for a narrative gamestyle also.

I might want to have a tactical game with more combat complexity, so not exactly "narrative". But still, what happens when you drop unconscious, doesn't interest me much. I just think it's hardly worth the effort. If I'm playing in a high-lethality old school game, I probably just want the PC dead and quite quickly. If I'm playing a heroic game where the PC dies only when their "users" want to, then I'm just turning the "dead" condition into something else.

Practically, the only reason to have these detailed rules, is just to have something for the unconscious PC's player to do on its turn. But these continuous changes to the rules IMHO don't really improve anything, probably they're just the designers' reaction to one or the other of the close playtesting groups which happened to be more vocal at this turn about a corner case to "fix". Wasted design time, if you ask me...

 

[jeffh]

Wow... I would never have guessed that so many people had issues with negative hit points. I've literally never heard it suggested that they were a problem before, yet it seems to be the near-unanimous opinion in this thread that they're horrible and getting rid of them is a positive or even necessary change. Personally, I have never seen anything that would make me think the concept (as opposed to some of the forms its implementation has taken) is inherently problematic. Dare I ask what people find so terrible about them?

(As for what I think of the new rules, I'd have to consider the question some more, but my first impression is that it's change for the sake of change as I'm more or less with Neechen on this topic. I don't see much of a sense of progress in the various iterations of DDN to date - it's changed but it's not clear that it's improved, and it's certainly not getting any closer to the highly modular, something-for-everyone system that was advertised. To me this seems like just another example of such lack of clear direction, but that's only a tentative conclusion.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

...and it's certainly not getting any closer to the highly modular, something-for-everyone system that was advertised. To me this seems like just another example of such lack of clear direction, but that's only a tentative conclusion.)

Or... you know... they're throwing out all these different versions for us to test so that they can include all of them as modular options.

Or something crazy like that.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I run a game without negative HP per se. I use a wounds system (using the Paizo crit deck; draw a card to negate a hit on your character), coupled with a system shock roll to avoid actually dying if a hit takes PCs below 0 hp. Actually not too far off from what's in this playtest packet.

I don't actually have a problem with negative hp, but I can't say that I've seen an implementation that rocks my world either.