I hate death saves. Propose your solution.

[Sebastrd]

At my table, we use RAW death saves with the following adjustment:

A 20 on a death save lets you spend HD to heal up and revive. A 1 on death save is dead.

Death saves are always tense.

 

[schnee]

I picked up a good idea from another site:

Don't make death saving throws during the combat.

Have the character mark how many turns they are unconscious before they are attended to. THEN, when someone attends to them, roll all of the saves.

It eliminates the meta gaming of 'they're at 2 made saves and no failures, they're alright'. It makes things a lot scarier and amps up the fear.

Try that for a bit.

 

[Dispater]

Double post

 

[Dispater]

Once at 0 hp, character rolls a CON save. On a fail, dead. On a success, they take one point of CON damage, one level of exhaustion and are dying (crawling on floor in agony, disadvantage on all rolls). Every round thereafter they must make a CON save or die. First aid returns character to 1 hp but they retain the CON damage and exhaustion. Prevents characters from popping up completely fine after healing. Getting to 0 hp has a consequence! Not as brutal but feels a bit more real than those arbitrary 3 death saves and instant KO at 0 hp

 

[5ekyu]

A lot of folks seem to want to hide death saves to keep the characters from using that info.

My approach is to instead describe it narratively...

A made save is "beginning to stir" or "not a lot of blood" or color coming back" or "eyes blinking trying to focud" as long as routine vision etc is in effect.

A failed save is "horrible choking sounds" or " blood flowing heavy now" or convulsing" or "eyes rolling back" etc

I generally prefer in a sub-system or game with very precise dividing lines and most severe stakes to lean towards empowering informed choices for the players and characters.

There's not to me any added drama in "mystery death risk" than in "near death now" and so giving up the latter to gain the former is for me a bad trade. Especially since the mystery dead might occur anyway as AoE etc fly around if you leave them laying.

 

[Les Moore]

There's no easy way for a player to lose a character in which he's heavily vested. It's harder for inexperienced players, which, unfortunately,
happens most. I have to agree with the OP, somewhat, as in "Death Saves" not only prolong the agony, but also tend to save weak PCs. The House Rules of each game should properly stipulate the active procedure for dying.

 

[GMMichael]

Don't make death saving throws during the combat.

Have the character mark how many turns they are unconscious before they are attended to. THEN, when someone attends to them, roll all of the saves.

Marking the turns so that the player knows how many saves to make? This is design elegance, but I'd add one more touch: damage caused during this twilight zone must be used as a penalty to each death save.

So I hate death saves and want death to occur at 0 hp. Propose your solutions. Critique mine. Have fun.

I can't really critique yours unless I know why you hate death saves. Do you hate death spirals? Hate your PCs? Hate rules? Tell me about your parents. /therapy

I use a system that tries to keep all parties happy: Mostly Dead. At 0 HP, a character is disabled and can no longer take significant actions. The character can't be healed until the GM and player establish what exactly happened (heart wound, hurt feelings, frozen solid) and what should come of it.

 

[psychophipps]

Character at 0 HP is unconscious and dying. The party now has three minutes to complete a successful *skilled* healing check or use magic to stabilize the dying character at 0 HP or above. Every time the character takes damage after falling at 0 HP you take one minute away from this rescue timeframe.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Here's how I would do it:

DM (Me): "Ok guys, this campaign is going to be a lot more gritty and deadly. That's why I had you each roll up two characters. In this game, there is no 'Death Save'. You hit 0hp and you are unconscious; you hit -1 or lower, you're dead. Alright, lets get playing!"

But I don't think I'd ever need to do that. My games are plenty deadly.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[FrogReaver]

There's no easy way for a player to lose a character in which he's heavily vested. It's harder for inexperienced players, which, unfortunately,
happens most. I have to agree with the OP, somewhat, as in "Death Saves" not only prolong the agony, but also tend to save weak PCs. The House Rules of each game should properly stipulate the active procedure for dying.

Perhaps instead of looking for ways to "save" a character after they have reached 0 hp, maybe we should instead look for mechanics that can help a character be prevented from getting to 0 hp.

I kind of like adding in a new universal action or reaction available to everyone that allows allies to recklessly position themselves between an attack and a chosen player provided they are adjacent to them. Possibly an action to move with them and take any attacks they would have and a reaction to take a single attack in their place?