D&D General D&D without Death. Is it possible? (+)

[GMMichael]

Characters at or below 0 h.p. but still conscious are at disadvantage to everything and advantage cannot be gained.

XP for this, because "knocked out" is, probably as often as not, best represented by one of the death saves - not a stable state on the road to recovery.

More importantly, how will PCs earn any XP without killin'? ;P

 

[DND_Reborn]

UPDATE:

Ok, although the responses have been fine, I think I should clarify a bit further since the title is a bit too strict. I am not planning to run a game without death/dying, more I don't want combat to mean everything dies at 0 hp and I don't want it to be the goal of combat. Defeating your opponent is the goal, not killing them.

@vincegetorix has the right idea for the most part, and others are certainly there or on the right track as well.

Here is my thoughts for the system at present:

1.Your HP at level one is your Death Threshold. For creatures, it will be their HD size at maximum plus CON mod (or best ability modifier, haven't decided). If damage takes you to 0 hp and the remaining damage exceeds your Death Threshold, you are killed instantly. [I don't expect this to happen often, but with some attacks / spells if your hp is on the low side, it could happen.]

2. If you are reduced to 0 hp from a critical hit, you are unconscious and dying. You lose 1 hp per round until you die (passing your Death Threshold) or someone stabilizes you. [Note: critical hits in our game are when you roll maximum damage, not on a natural 20.]

3. If you are reduce to 0 hp from non-critical damage, you make a DC 15 CON save to remain conscious. If you remain conscious, you can move or take an action, no bonus actions or reactions though. You cannot attack or cast a spell. Once your hit points are restored to greater than your Death Threshold (or maybe half maximum hp?), you can act normally. [You're out of the fight at this point, until you get healed by a significant amount.]

Those are my initial thoughts. There will be no raise dead or revivify due to the nature of the campaign/setting. Creatures that are killed (other than old age) rise as undead, including PCs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

UPDATE:

Ok, although the responses have been fine, I think I should clarify a bit further since the title is a bit too strict. I am not planning to run a game without death/dying, more I don't want combat to mean everything dies at 0 hp and I don't want it to be the goal of combat. Defeating your opponent is the goal, not killing them.

@vincegetorix has the right idea for the most part, and others are certainly there or on the right track as well.

Here is my thoughts for the system at present:

1.Your HP at level one is your Death Threshold. For creatures, it will be their HD size at maximum plus CON mod (or best ability modifier, haven't decided). If damage takes you to 0 hp and the remaining damage exceeds your Death Threshold, you are killed instantly. [I don't expect this to happen often, but with some attacks / spells if your hp is on the low side, it could happen.]

2. If you are reduced to 0 hp from a critical hit, you are unconscious and dying. You lose 1 hp per round until you die (passing your Death Threshold) or someone stabilizes you. [Note: critical hits in our game are when you roll maximum damage, not on a natural 20.]

3. If you are reduce to 0 hp from non-critical damage, you make a DC 15 CON save to remain conscious. If you remain conscious, you can move or take an action, no bonus actions or reactions though. You cannot attack or cast a spell. Once your hit points are restored to greater than your Death Threshold (or maybe half maximum hp?), you can act normally. [You're out of the fight at this point, until you get healed by a significant amount.]

Those are my initial thoughts. There will be no raise dead or revivify due to the nature of the campaign/setting. Creatures that are killed (other than old age) rise as undead, including PCs.

I honestly think your rules here are opening things up for more deaths. Certainly, Rule 1 here introduces insta-kills which otherwise do not exist in 5e. And I expect that this will potentially happen quite a bit once you’re a few levels into the game. If my 4th level fighter has 5 HP left and then takes a hit for like 20 HP or so, he’s dead. That doesn’t seem unlikely to happen. In the rules as written, he’d be at 0 HP and making death saves….far less lethal take.

The second rule seems to only drag out the dying process by replacing Death Saves with a constant -1/round until the threshold is reached. So 6 to 15 rounds I suppose. I don’t think this one is all that problematic, I just don’t think it will accomplish a reduction in lethality.

The third rule leaves some questions open. What if I make my DC 15 Con save and remain conscious but at 0 HP. And then as I make my way toward the cleric, I get hit by an enemy…what happens? I assume that if I take HP significant enough to exceed my threshold, then the PC dies outright. But maybe that’s not what you intend? Also, requiring healing to exceed the threshold seems to make it very hard for low level characters (impossible for 1st level PCs, I think) to get back into the fight.

Honestly, I think these rules will make the game more lethal. Perhaps significantly so, unless I’ve misunderstood.

5E Is pretty forgiving on the lethality. I think if you wanted to reduce that even further, then simply remove the need for Death Saves entirely, or else increase the failures needed for a PC to die. Don’t introduce insta-kills at all. At 0 HP, a character is down and out of the fight, and very unlikely to be targeted by enemy attacks. You can apply the same thing to NPCs. They’re out of the fight at 0 HP. But unless the players specifically state they want to finish them off, you can assume they get up and slink away after the fight, or they can be imprisoned or what have you.

 

[HammerMan]

Angry DM did something like this.

I kinda have an idea that I'm not sure if I will ever run where everyone is a fake lich but 3rd level. However I also have run huge over powered games with lots of res but never a true deathless game yet...

there are ALOT of not death fails though.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I honestly think your rules here are opening things up for more deaths. Certainly, Rule 1 here introduces insta-kills which otherwise do not exist in 5e. And I expect that this will potentially happen quite a bit once you’re a few levels into the game. If my 4th level fighter has 5 HP left and then takes a hit for like 20 HP or so, he’s dead. That doesn’t seem unlikely to happen. In the rules as written, he’d be at 0 HP and making death saves….far less lethal take.

I see your point, but the focus is to realize when your hp are running low, you should not be fighting like there is no tomorrow--unless you don't want a tomorrow?

If your fighter is down to 5 hp, he should be dodging, using Second Wind, yelling for help or falling back, etc. There isn't much that does 20 hp or more in tiers 1 and 2, unless it is also a critical hit.

Death saves are annoying IME. First, it is always settled in 5 rounds or less. We had successes and failures cancel, so there was no definite time limit. Then we decided more old school with a negative limit (the death threshold).

We'll see how it plays out, you could be right?

The second rule seems to only drag out the dying process by replacing Death Saves with a constant -1/round until the threshold is reached. So 6 to 15 rounds I suppose. I don’t think this one is all that problematic, I just don’t think it will accomplish a reduction in lethality.

It depends a lot on how much overflow damage there is. The biggest factor is to not let your hp get low in the first place.

The third rule leaves some questions open. What if I make my DC 15 Con save and remain conscious but at 0 HP. And then as I make my way toward the cleric, I get hit by an enemy…what happens? I assume that if I take HP significant enough to exceed my threshold, then the PC dies outright. But maybe that’s not what you intend? Also, requiring healing to exceed the threshold seems to make it very hard for low level characters (impossible for 1st level PCs, I think) to get back into the fight.

Yes, if you got hit by enough to exceed your damage threshold, you'd be killed instantly. Otherwise, you would need to make another save to remain conscious. If it was a critical hit, you'd be down and dying, provided the damage didn't exceed your DT.

Whether it is DT or half maximum hp I have to discuss with our group. Maybe the lower of the two?

 

[éxypnos]

So, like always, I am curious: does anyone play D&D so that even the creatures your PCs encounter aren't actually killed, or at the very least only rarely when it is important to the story?

Nope. I play a more sandbox like game with a bit of an unknown (to the players) story in in progress. I WILL avert a TPK or individual PC death if it as a result of my (DM) screw up. Deftly and so the players don't realize it of course.

 

[Laurefindel]

UPDATE:

Ok, although the responses have been fine, I think I should clarify a bit further since the title is a bit too strict. I am not planning to run a game without death/dying, more I don't want combat to mean everything dies at 0 hp and I don't want it to be the goal of combat. Defeating your opponent is the goal, not killing them.

@vincegetorix has the right idea for the most part, and others are certainly there or on the right track as well.

Here is my thoughts for the system at present:

1.Your HP at level one is your Death Threshold. For creatures, it will be their HD size at maximum plus CON mod (or best ability modifier, haven't decided). If damage takes you to 0 hp and the remaining damage exceeds your Death Threshold, you are killed instantly. [I don't expect this to happen often, but with some attacks / spells if your hp is on the low side, it could happen.]

2. If you are reduced to 0 hp from a critical hit, you are unconscious and dying. You lose 1 hp per round until you die (passing your Death Threshold) or someone stabilizes you. [Note: critical hits in our game are when you roll maximum damage, not on a natural 20.]

3. If you are reduce to 0 hp from non-critical damage, you make a DC 15 CON save to remain conscious. If you remain conscious, you can move or take an action, no bonus actions or reactions though. You cannot attack or cast a spell. Once your hit points are restored to greater than your Death Threshold (or maybe half maximum hp?), you can act normally. [You're out of the fight at this point, until you get healed by a significant amount.]

Those are my initial thoughts. There will be no raise dead or revivify due to the nature of the campaign/setting. Creatures that are killed (other than old age) rise as undead

Ah, I didn’t get your intentions right at first then. Like @hawkeyefan said, I think your house rule increase lethality by quite a bit, which may incite PC to be a lot more careful and therefore result in less deaths…

this reminds me of 3rd edition where you’re better of at -1 than at 1 hp, because you’re still up (I.e. still a threat) and the next hit has a high probability of being an insta-kill. My experience is that these rules do not incite prudence because flight is an invitation to be hit again (unless the PC are in superior numbers). More often than not, your best chance of survival is trying to deal as much damage/status effect as possible, so players went double or nothing in 95% of cases.

rules that allow PC to fight/act at 0hp also result in more frequent PC deaths, again because double or nothing usually provides the best return (or at least appear to). The main attraction of these rules is to keep players involved in the game longer and increase player’s responsibilities and self-accountability.

don’t get me wrong, I love games where «death is very likely; be forewarned and play accordingly!». But from your OP I thought you meant the opposite.

 

[Voadam]

I think D&D would work fine if you turned normal death into knocked out/incapacitated for the scene.

This would make it more like an 80s cartoon (Thundar the Barbarian and He-Man come to mind) or a not super gritty super heroes action (animated Batman, most Captain America fights in the movies).

There would still be the normal levels of D&D tons of fighting, but just not the normal level of lethality. This would make heroes less killers by definition, and allow more confidence that characters would continue on for story purposes instead of risking death in every combat.

This would also take out casual resurrection to deal with random PC death which is a thing in a lot of D&D.

It would set a tone of fun action combat as opposed to the big tension threat of losing it all in dangerous situations.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I see your point, but the focus is to realize when your hp are running low, you should not be fighting like there is no tomorrow--unless you don't want a tomorrow?

If your fighter is down to 5 hp, he should be dodging, using Second Wind, yelling for help or falling back, etc. There isn't much that does 20 hp or more in tiers 1 and 2, unless it is also a critical hit.

Death saves are annoying IME. First, it is always settled in 5 rounds or less. We had successes and failures cancel, so there was no definite time limit. Then we decided more old school with a negative limit (the death threshold).

We'll see how it plays out, you could be right?


It depends a lot on how much overflow damage there is. The biggest factor is to not let your hp get low in the first place.


Yes, if you got hit by enough to exceed your damage threshold, you'd be killed instantly. Otherwise, you would need to make another save to remain conscious. If it was a critical hit, you'd be down and dying, provided the damage didn't exceed your DT.

Whether it is DT or half maximum hp I have to discuss with our group. Maybe the lower of the two?

Okay, if your goal is to discourage combat by making it more dangerous, then these changes make more sense. The goal seemed to just be to lessen the amount of death that occurred, so like @Laurefindel I was a bit confused.

However, I’d say there are likely some other changes that would need to be implemented to allow characters more freedom to retreat without inviting the one attack that would put them down.

I also think there are plenty of creatures with attacks that could very easily exceed the threshold you’re citing here. Just taking a glance at CR 0 to 5 creatures and there are plenty of examples.

But I suppose you could make adjustments as needed. If your goal is to make combat less appealing compared to stealth, diplomacy, or similar options, then these rules may help. But they’re definitely more lethal.

 

[éxypnos]

Okay, if your goal is to discourage combat by making it more dangerous, then these changes make more sense.

I have no such goal. It is the way D&D was conceived by its creators as evidenced by the Example of play in the DMG.