AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
For the record, I think the "healing surcharge" sort of rule so that the PCs heal from near to zero rather than always from zero is probably the most elegant and low-impact alteration suggested so far.
Depends on the adventure. If just a wandering monster or small goblin patrol I play them to kill the living before eating the juicy meat sack. However if the party has been hunting gabby's tribe or the villain is sending instructions to gabby's patrol then it would be Kill the down pcs then help your buddy.See, you're definitely playing this goblin as more of a person and less of a monster, but I'm guessing that's how you play most goblins in your world. The difference between any two goblins in your world is probably smaller than the difference between goblins in your world and goblins in my world.
Again, in my actual play experience, adding the "count down to -10" replacement rule completely solves the issues the OP is having (and me too) in a simple and straight-forward manner
Okay but I don't. So no, I haven't.Have you considered the (perhaps simpler) solution where unconscious characters merely suffer a -10 penalty to healing received?
I'm having some trouble with visualizing how your way works within the world. It seems like HP should either keep counting down until you die at -HP, or stop being counted at zero.
Well, it works badly in newer ones: D&D is not a game designed to have the event "drop to zero" be uncommon.Or else, the easiest way of solving the problem presented in this thread is to treat PCs as monsters are often treated, and have them die at zero. It worked well in older editions.
Since you didn't speak in your moderator color, allow me to interpret that as a regular post and clarify that I was calling out Saeviomagys eloquent defense of why whackamole isn't a problem and how it can easily be stopped, by contrasting all that energy with simply changing the rule, thus obviating the need to speak of the problem and how to fix it altogether.Please note that disagreeing with you on a particular point does not constitute, "defending the RAW," in a general sense. You are (perhaps unwittingly) attributing to the other person a position they haven't actually taken, and are then suggesting that position that they didn't actually take is not well considered. This is a classic, "strawman argument".
Sorry, I might be a tad inebriated but that's too many negatives for me to follow. Could I ask you to restate the question?I'm not following you on this, perhaps I missed something earlier - I haven't read all the posts. Do the heroes at your table not rise from healing only to be whacked like moles back into the negatives (unconscious)? Or do the characters not fall into unconsciousness when in the negatives?
That triggered another random idea: what if you could only restore hps to a character who was already stable? If you try, you instead just stabilize him. So to heal a downed ally with magic 'efficiently,' it'd be Spare the Dying followed by Healing Word or Cure Wounds the next round? Even with heal-from-0, that'd get inefficient in terms of action economy, as the ally sits out at least one turn, and the caster uses at least one action + a bonus action. Of course, without spare the dying (healing word x2, frex) it's slot-inefficient, instead.For the record, I think the "healing surcharge" sort of rule so that the PCs heal from near to zero rather than always from zero is probably the most elegant and low-impact alteration suggested so far.
Allow me to address this, since the Capn seems to be temporarily incapacitated.I'm not following you on this, perhaps I missed something earlier - I haven't read all the posts. Do the heroes at your table not rise from healing only to be whacked like moles back into the negatives (unconscious)? Or do the characters not fall into unconsciousness when in the negatives?
Ah. Thanks Saelorn.Allow me to address this, since the Capn seems to be temporarily incapacitated.
Under this system, a hero who is only barely dropped into the negatives (-1 or -2) can rise like a mole and immediately be whacked down again. Since the system keeps track down to -10, though, a heavy hit against a hero that is barely positive will send that character down to -10; once a hero is at -10, they cannot trivially rise again, because restoring more than 10hp to a fallen character is not a trivial act. If the healer throws out a Healing Word at rank 1 or 2, then the character is likely to go from -10 up to -3 or -1, so they will remain unconscious and thus lose a turn. Actually getting the hero back into the fight would require a fairly high-level spell slot for Healing Word, or require the healer's action to cast a real Cure Wounds spell.