D&D 5E Alternative Dying System

[dmnqwk]

Perhaps you should remove the ability to "stabilize" someone.

If a player is reduced to 0 hp the following occurs:

A) A successful Medicine check (DC10) provides a successful saving throw, instead of automatically stabilizing someone.
B) Curative magic cannot assist in the stabilization of a player.
C) A player reduced to 0hp is incapable of regaining consciousness for 1d4 hours (remove the Natural 20 = 1 hp rule from death saving throws)

What this means is if a player is reduced to 0, then fails her first 2 death saving throws... she is still left with a 50/50 shot of death unless multiple players attempt to save her life. It would require 3 players succeeding at Medicine checks in a single round to guarantee her safety. It would also penalize people who think "oh we're got 3 rounds before we have to bother helping." It also means once a player goes down, they're down for the rest of the fight (and possibly the following actions).

It might stop people thinking it's okay to let someone go down before they get a healing spell or potion.

 

[HarrisonF]

A fun house rule we have been playing with is that you don't make death saving throws until someone else checks on you or tries to stabilize or heals you. You keep track of how many checks you have to make and then do them all at once to find out your state after they do that. A 20 counts as 2 successes (instead of healing you to 1 automatically).

This creates a fog of war type effect that can lead to it being very scary when someone is down and removes the weird metagaming of how many death saves are failed. People try really quickly to go to people that are down, rather than waiting based on how many death saves have been failed.

 

[Shiroiken]

A fun house rule we have been playing with is that you don't make death saving throws until someone else checks on you or tries to stabilize or heals you. You keep track of how many checks you have to make and then do them all at once to find out your state after they do that. A 20 counts as 2 successes (instead of healing you to 1 automatically).

This creates a fog of war type effect that can lead to it being very scary when someone is down and removes the weird metagaming of how many death saves are failed. People try really quickly to go to people that are down, rather than waiting based on how many death saves have been failed.

I like it, but I've not found the player's metagaming the death saves IME. Since a "1" counts as 2 failed saves, a character who has a single failed save (or is in danger of taking AoE damage) is always considered a priority, since they could die on their next death save. Of course, my group also wants the character back up and fighting too.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I like the 5+ death save or you;re dead idea. It's certainly pretty brutal, and in my view much preferred to the 3 strikes version, which frankly I've never had anyone die from, ever.

My own table uses an "injury save" when reduced to zero (same a death save). If you roll a 1 on the injury save: dead. If roll 9-10, roll on the injury table. If roll 11+, nothing unusual, start rolling death saves. This had been enough to encourage players to avoid dropping to zero whenever they can.

 

[Huntsman57]

I like the 5+ death save or you;re dead idea. It's certainly pretty brutal, and in my view much preferred to the 3 strikes version, which frankly I've never had anyone die from, ever.

My own table uses an "injury save" when reduced to zero (same a death save). If you roll a 1 on the injury save: dead. If roll 9-10, roll on the injury table. If roll 11+, nothing unusual, start rolling death saves. This had been enough to encourage players to avoid dropping to zero whenever they can.

A slightly more forgiving system might be that upon hitting 0 hit points the death save succeeds on 3-20, but gets progressively worse with each passing round by 1 point. So on the following round it would be 4-20, then 5-20, then 6-20 etc.

 

[Psikerlord#]

A slightly more forgiving system might be that upon hitting 0 hit points the death save succeeds on 3-20, but gets progressively worse with each passing round by 1 point. So on the following round it would be 4-20, then 5-20, then 6-20 etc.

Yes! Actually that is an excellent idea - yoink!!

 

[Celtavian]

Just make sure players will prefer the rule. It's no fun to lose a character you spent time building and developing. I prefer a less lethal version of D&D. I had real unhappy players in older editions that earned high level characters up only to have them die to an unlucky save or a harsh critical hit. It is easy to come back, but a character rarely feels the same after they've been dead and resurrected a few times.