Dear WotC: Please Kill Massive Damage

[Baby Samurai]

I'm almost positive they will ditch that crap, cut & paste rule form 2nd edition.

At high levels it becomes "he who rolls a 1, dies" – lame.

 

[Gort]

I believe the massive damage rule is meant to discourage high level characters (with 100's of hitpoints) from doing absolutely insane versimilitude breaking things because they know that the damage they take by doing so will never be enough to kill them.

The trouble with this idea is that high level (epic, really) characters SHOULD be doing absolutely insane stuff, like fighting a tarrasque hand-to-hand. They have ridiculous levels of hitpoints and powers to let them do that, and isn't that the point of high/epic adventures anyway, to fight ridiculously over-the-top enemies with your ridiculously over-the-top heroes? It seems foolish to have that cut short because you have to save every hit and occasionally they come up 1.

Shouldn't doing 50+ damage be its own reward, really?

 

[Remathilis]

I believe the massive damage rule is meant to discourage high level characters (with 100's of hitpoints) from doing absolutely insane verisimilitude breaking things because they know that the damage they take by doing so will never be enough to kill them.

For example, a high level character can easily choose to jump down a 100' or even 1000' fall on to a hard stone surface because the damage is no real threat.

So you can get rid of the rule, but you have to be ready to deal with the consequences of doing so.

back in older D&D, when your hp capped out at most around 100 (+/- 50) than 50 point massive damage was credible. However, that arbitrary number in 3.5 is not. A high level fighter can have 200 hp. 50 is 1/4 of that. A 1st level PC with 12 hp takes 3 damage (1/4 of his hp) and he's fine, but a guy with 200 hp takes 1/4 of his hp and is in danger of dying?

Something akin to Saga's threshold/Condition track would work much better for me. This "every 50 hp is a save or die" is old, clunky needs revision if not outright removal...

 

[Geron Raveneye]

This made me think back to when I switched from Mentzer D&D to AD&D 2E. I managed to misread the rule for Massive Damage, and interpreted it as "50% of a character's hit points", which usually made for very panicky low-level characters, and very relaxed high-level characters.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'd like to see it gone too. If they really think that save-or-die are not fun and should go, it should be true for "martial" save-or-die too, not just spells.

 

[Stormtalon]

I want to see it gone, too -- but more so I can be recursive and perhaps ironic and state that, "Massive damage failed its Fort save to survive Massive Damage."

 

[Swedish Chef]

In our games, we house ruled the massive damage as follows:

If any one hit (spell, weapon, etc) does 50% or more damage than your total full hit points, you have to roll a DC save, where the DC is your Con score.

So, Del the fighter has 90 hit points when fully rested/healed. In the next combat, he takes a critical sword strike that causes 47 points of damage, thereby suffering massive damage. He rolls a d20, adds his Fort bonuses, and that total must be higher than his Con Score (say, 17), or he drops to -1 hit points and is now dying.

This way, the threshold is fluid, but the DC doesn't really change much. The players all like the rule, and it works well for us. YMMV.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Massive damage should stay, as should 'save or die'. Maybe not exactly the same mechanic, or at all levels of play. But there needs to be something to keep high-level characters on their toes, not so much from the high EL encounters, but so that the stuff that is slightly below them isn't always an utter cakewalk. If Achilles can get dropped with a lucky shot, anyone can.

I find the concept that high level characters should be near-immortal tarrasque slayers tiresome.

 

[DandD]

In our games, we house ruled the massive damage as follows:

If any one hit (spell, weapon, etc) does 50% or more damage than your total full hit points, you have to roll a DC save, where the DC is your Con score.

So, Del the fighter has 90 hit points when fully rested/healed. In the next combat, he takes a critical sword strike that causes 47 points of damage, thereby suffering massive damage. He rolls a d20, adds his Fort bonuses, and that total must be higher than his Con Score (say, 17), or he drops to -1 hit points and is now dying.

This way, the threshold is fluid, but the DC doesn't really change much. The players all like the rule, and it works well for us. YMMV.

Wait a minute. That doesn't make sense at all. Why do people, who are more robust and vital (exemplified by the higher constitution score), have a harder time to resist massive damage effects?

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Wait a minute. That doesn't make sense at all. Why do people, who are more robust and vital (exemplified by the higher constitution score), have a harder time to resist massive damage effects?

Sounds like it's an attempt to have everybody *roughly* equal in terms of chance to be MDed, since the DC is different for every character, but *theoretically* about the same difficulty for any given player, given the rough relationship that Fort saves have to hit points. Also, higher HP characters are less likely to get MDed under this system, especially if they have a gigantic Con score or levels on them.

Or possibly it's an unconscious desire on the part of the DM to have dwarves die at a higher rate than other characters, thus adding to their "declining race" theme.

The bug (or possible feature) is that it forces a lot of MD saves in early levels, as people don't have much in the way of HP. A 13-hp fighter-1 would need to roll when he got hit for 7 points, and would have a 50% chance of making the roll (Fort+5, 2 from class, 3 from Con 16). A 7-hp wizard-1 would need to roll when hit for 4 points, and he'd make the roll only 40% of the time.

A low-level HP boost, like from SWSE or Hackmaster, would likely be necessary for this rule to not turn 1st level into a survival horror simulation.

Brad