Death and Dying: Annoying new subsystem reduces fun.

[Professor Phobos]

What if the NPCs have healing abilities? Are the NPCs all automatically able to be healed, get up and keep fighting? Or do they die instantly, never having a chance to do the healing? That's a pretty big change in the challenge that a group of NPCs will present.

If there are NPC healers about, just assume that dying bad guys will last six rounds before kicking the bucket, and never roll that natural 20.

 

[howandwhy99]

Not that it isn't obvious, but all this stuff can be easily house-ruled. To me, that is the #1 winning element of this game design.

negative 1/2 HP too much? Make it 1/3, 1/4, heck, zero.

And the healing not counting negative HP? Make a house rule... all of a sudden it does!

That crazy 1-9, 10-19, 20 auto-succeed rule not working for you? Poof! It's no longer a save, but a trade. Trade me one of your limbs and you get to be conscious again. Trade me a level and you can stabilize. (and of course you could just change the range and measures of success in the written rules)

Want to add back in Staggered? Apply a penalty to under 1/2 HPs to balance out that boost they add (bizarrely opening up some abilities, etc.)

Goodness we could even use charts.

I think Hong was right. We can always house rule death back in.

Personally I'd like to see Con score be a factor in a character's ability to recover (just as I've always used the -Con house rule to give tougher characters more negative hp). Throg the big tough barbarian should be able to bounce back from being knocked out quickly, while Thironna the wimpy bard gets a light tap and is out for a couple of hours.

Con x PC level as a bonus to healing spells? I'm thinking we are going to see 1, 2, 3, 4.. x Healer level for healing spells. Or they might go the other way and go 1, 2, 3, 4 x Healee level.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

I had a friend do the math. The probability of rolling 1-9 on the stablize roll 3 times in a row (resulting in death) is 9.11%.

Unless you're playing with my dice. . . in which case its about 90%.

 

[Celebrim]

Just because the article said it doesn't mean it isn't stupid.

What if the NPCs have healing abilities? Are the NPCs all automatically able to be healed, get up and keep fighting? Or do they die instantly, never having a chance to do the healing? That's a pretty big change in the challenge that a group of NPCs will present.

How about non-opponent NPCs? When the young noble scion the party is protecting gets whacked down to -9, does he die instantly? Does he last as long as it takes for the PCs to get to him?

How about for monsters with fast healing or regeneration surges? (Assuming that such mechanics exist in 4e--though if they don't someone will add them in by the time the second wave of expansions hits).

What it comes down to is this: You're going to have to go through the death and dying subroutine for every NPC/monster that you bother to resolve dead/dying status for in 3.x. (I don't know anyone--no matter how strictly they interpret the rules that keeps the party in initiative and rolls out every stabilization check for a monster who has no source of healing and no way to get back up in 3.x). And since the article seems to indicate that the status chart is more complex in 4th edition, it will be more complex and cumbersome.

And, to dignify the "going through the battlefield and stabbing downed enemies" line with a response, PCs will still be doing that. Absolutely and certainly. Why? Because NPCs might still survive using PC rules on the basis of "the DM deems it necessary." And the creatures that the DM is most likely to deem necessary are: A. the ones who are really annoying and dangerous to fight (again), B. the ones whose survival will have an impact on the plot, C. the ones who are the DM's pet NPCs--in short, all the monsters/NPCs any sane/rational players bothered to stab/coup de grace in 3.x.

That they've come up with a system where the mid-high level window is good enough that being left alive at 1hp is not a death sentence is a good thing. (In my Wednesday night home game, we've adopted a different solution to the same problem: death occurs at - (10+character level)). That the 3.x version of the system posted is unnecessarily cumbersome and inelegant is not a good omen.

This is a very good post, and I agree with all of it.

In all things there is a tendency for the pendalum to swing back and forth, because people are very good at seeing the current problem and very bad at foreseeing the next problem. People are really good at reacting, and very bad at being proactive. You see it in everything. Something is wrong, and 'darn it!' it just has to be fixed. Is the fix actually going to work and make things better? That's a less important question to most people. Mostly, 'darn it', they just want change.

So things change, and they swing way the other way. Then the people forget, and they swing the other way again.

For all this talk about how great and wonderful it is for NPC's to officially work by different rules than PC's, it always seems to have as an example how the NPC's are worse off than the PC's.

Well, I've been there. Done that. Wore the t-shirt out, and you know what - in the long run you are going to find out that sucks. Not only does it suck for you to be the only 'special' person out there, and for the monsters to be just, well, monsters, but pretty soon you are going to realize that it cuts both ways. If the NPC's aren't abiding by the PC rules, then inevitably you are going to find that the rules that they are abiding by cut in thier favor.

I can tell you how it works because this is where RPG's started out. NPC's important to the plot stop dying because they assume the status of 'special status NPC's' that can't be killed. Pretty soon every NPC is going to have special status, because generally you don't have an NPC unless he's important to the plot. You are going to start out with this notion, "NPC's don't have to be as tough and well rounded as PC's because we don't need that sort of detail.", and you are going to end up with, "NPC's have to be tougher and more well rounded than PC's, because otherwise everything is in the PC's favor." The less detail you put into the NPC, the more you'll find that the blanks in the NPC's sheet don't mean he can't do anything that isn't explicitly described, but rather end up meaning that he can do anything that isn't explicitly described because NPC's 'ought' to be able to do it.

And you'll jump that line without meaning to screw anyone over, because 'the story' needs it. In fact, you'll jump that line precisely because it is a better game.

Only it will ultimately suck, because pure DM fiat is no better than tedious minutea.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Celebrim-

You should try playing on a flat surface, like a table or a floor. That greased ramp, glazed downgrade or rain-soaked hill or whatever kind of slick slant you're playing on is clearly not helping your game.

Besides, it's a lot easier if the dice have some rigid surface to land on. I doubt you want to keep using that oiled incline- the dice probably get really messy.

 

[Wormwood]

> superbrief

Unless I'm misunderstanding some terms here, I play RPGs where NPCs operate under different systems than PCs do.

I haven't seen the problems described above.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim-

You should try playing on a flat surface, like a table or a floor. That greased ramp, glazed downgrade or rain-soaked hill or whatever kind of slick slant you're playing on is clearly not helping your game.

Besides, it's a lot easier if the dice have some rigid surface to land on. I doubt you want to keep using that oiled incline- the dice probably get really messy.

Har de har har.

Thing is, I don't invent these things. Slope is just a simple mathimatical equation. Turns up all over the place, as anyone with a bit of calculus knows. It isn't just surfaces that have slopes. Or rather, it isn't just physical things that are surfaces.

I know what you are saying - 'slippery slopes arguments' are falacies, like say 'ad hominem arguments'.

The trouble is, 'Bob is a jerk' or 'Bob is stupid' can be a statement of fact. Likewise, on occassion, so is, 'This slope is slippery.', because well, that's a property of slopes. It's easier to move in one direction on them than the other. And one property of humans in general is that they tend to go in which ever direction involves the least work.

 

[Greg K]

To me this adds in a lot of uneeded complexity. I had hoped they would do away with negative hp, so when a pc/npc (with heroic class levels) goes to 0 there is no need to start keeping track of another set of numbers (negative hp!)

Thoughts?

In my opinion negative hit points are a lousy and inelegant solution. WOTC already had a really had a decent set of rules in Unearthed Arcana's Death and Dying Rules to start from.

At 0 hit points make a Fortitude Save (DC=10+1/2 damage done by the attack or effect).

Successful Save: you are concious and disabled. You can take move actions with no penalty. Taking a standard action or other action deemed strenuous requires another Fortitude Save or you begin dying.

Failure: dying: You are unconcious and dying. Each round a dying character makes a fortitude save (DC 10+ 1 per additional round of dying) to stabilize.
- Failure means you are still dead.
- Save by less than 5: no improvement and make a new save next round
- Save by 5, but less than 10: character stabilizes*, but is still unconcious
- Save by 10 or more: character is concious but disabled.

Failure by 10 or more= dead (Note: a natural 1 means a character is dying not that the character is dead unless the save also failed by 10 or more).

* a stable character is unconcious and disabled and makes a save (DC 10+ each hour
Failure: the character takes a run for the worse and is dying
Save: no improvment
Save by 5 or more: Concious and has 1 hit point**

There are additiona rules for healing.

** The one problem that I have with the UA rules as written is that at 1hp the character has no penalties. However, by tailoring feats like toughness or die hard to give bonuses to the save, the use of action points to give save bonuses, second wind, and a damage track (assuming penalties are worse the farther you are down on the damage track), I think the above works is even stronger and more elegant.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Basilisk: you don´t have to stab all of your enemies. Just check and bury them. Since usually they are already dead, you don´t have to stab them to make sure. If they are not dead, burying alive should usually work. If you happen to find a survivor, send him home.

 

[Professor Phobos]

The trouble is, 'Bob is a jerk' or 'Bob is stupid' can be a statement of fact. Likewise, on occassion, so is, 'This slope is slippery.', because well, that's a property of slopes. It's easier to move in one direction on them than the other. And one property of humans in general is that they tend to go in which ever direction involves the least work.

A slippery slope argument isn't fallacious if you can demonstrate a direct inevitability between one step and the next- it's not fallacious to say that if I fall off a building, I'll keep falling.

In this case, I deny that there is inevitability. I have been doing what you described in your post for years and I've never gotten to the "end state" you declared inevitable. Because in this case there is the ability to interrupt. I was playing a game where the NPCs weren't treated like PCs once-a-week for nearly four years and never, ever had any of the problems you mentioned.

And you ignored the fact that not all NPCs have the same purpose. I don't have to treat different NPCs the same way just because they are NPCs.

It's a slippery slope to say that once John starts eating, he will never stop and he will eventually rupture his stomach and die. Because John can interrupt the process.

EDIT: And, seriously- "You don't introduce an NPC unless he's important to the plot." Really? Are you kidding?