Death and Dying trial rules... when do you die?

[Charwoman Gene]

Hey I concur as well.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pCZNfMA-Iga6_wqkBivixeQ

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It only applies to heroes, and it's a lot harsher than my personal "You die only when you want to"-rule, so it's fine by me. It's certainly nothing you could rely on. Even if you get a bonus to saving throws from somewhere, you still only recover on a natural 20, right?

I don't know, maybe someone familiar with the DDM can explain this. But I tend to the assumption that the bonus to Saves helps you in all cases. It is, for all intents and purposes, a system with multiple degrees of success. DC: 10 stay alive, DC 20 get better. Failure: get closer to death...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wow, a better than one-in-four chance of spontaneous recovery? Does that seem high to anyone?

Um, no, because for you to get to that chance, you have to be accepting a 72% chance of death. That's a pretty gigantic gamble, and in most parties, you're going to get healed or at least stablized long before that, so in practice a hell of a lot less than 1 in 4 people who go down will get up again without help.

It does mean that if your D&D party is "wiped" by something that does non-continuing damage, one of you is likely to get back up rather than dying (and perhaps save one or two of the others), though depending on the circumstances, they may of course immediately get knocked into negative HP again.

 

[TwinBahamut]

The interesting thing about the new dying mechanic is that it makes it incredibly obvious how the "slow petrification" mechanic mentioned regarding Beholders is going to work, or any other kind of "it slowly kills you outright" effect. Such effects can use the exact same condition worsening/no change/recovery rules, essentially inflicting the dying effect on the player without necessarily tying it to unconsciousness or negative hitpoints.

I like it a lot. No save or die, but still a risk of instant death.

 

[Peter LaCara]

The interesting thing about the new dying mechanic is that it makes it incredibly obvious how the "slow petrification" mechanic mentioned regarding Beholders is going to work, or any other kind of "it slowly kills you outright" effect. Such effects can use the exact same condition worsening/no change/recovery rules, essentially inflicting the dying effect on the player without necessarily tying it to unconsciousness or negative hitpoints.

I like it a lot. No save or die, but still a risk of instant death.

*Facepalm*

OF COURSE!

Man. The new save mechanic is turning into one of my favorite rules so far. How weird is that?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

"slow petrification"

Or Poison, or Napalm, or disintegration.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Aha!

 

[Aexalon]

Approximation

And here I was all ready to present an approximation method that might provide a middle road between "Unrealistic! Monsters die at 0hp!" and "DM Hell having to roll scores of recovery checks for unimportant monsters", when I noticed I made the same mistake Merric did (presuming that 10 fails). Adjusting for the error sadly resulted in the approximation now not being as accurate anymore (converging to 27.1% i.s.o. 24.87% survival rate, while the approximation aims for 25%), but I'll present it anyway, just in case anyone likes it regardless of the increased error margin:

When semi-important critter goes negative, roll 1d20.

• If the roll came up 1-5, that's how many rounds until the critter recovers.
• If the rall came up 6-20, divide the result by 2. That's how many rounds until the critter dies.

Make of it what you wish.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

The interesting thing about the new dying mechanic is that it makes it incredibly obvious how the "slow petrification" mechanic mentioned regarding Beholders is going to work, or any other kind of "it slowly kills you outright" effect. Such effects can use the exact same condition worsening/no change/recovery rules, essentially inflicting the dying effect on the player without necessarily tying it to unconsciousness or negative hitpoints.

Good catch!