Death and Dying

[Connorsrpg]

I am still unsure.

"No change in condition". What is this? Is this just like a failure, except it doesn't count as 1 of three attempts? ie - next round you are still KO and still have to make a roll?

OR if you pass a check then you do not need to make any more?

 

[Scipio202]

You have to keep rolling until you (a) are healed, (b) roll a 20, or (c) fail three times (not necessarily in a row) and die.

If you fail, that means you are getting worse. If you don't fail, but don't roll a 20, then you have another round for someone to try to help you, but you haven't gotten any better or worse on your own.

So for example:
Round 1 - roll a 7, first failure
Round 2 - roll a 16, still one failure (but need to keep rolling)
Round 3 - roll a 2, second failure
Round 4 - roll a 13, still two failures
Round 5 - roll a 19, still two failures
Round 6 - roll a 20, stabilize (so no more rolling)

If you'd been healed at any point then you'd be better. If you rolled a third failure in the 4th, 5th or 6th round then you would have died.

 

[drjones]

I ran a playtest last night and said that the '3 strikes' were per encounter rather than per-unconsciousness as the pally had a tendency to yo-yo up and down. But I pulled that out of my butt, is there a real rule for this?

 

[Connorsrpg]

Thanks Scipio.

That cleared it up just fine

 

[Aloïsius]

You have to keep rolling until you (a) are healed, (b) roll a 20, or (c) fail three times (not necessarily in a row) and die.

If you fail, that means you are getting worse. If you don't fail, but don't roll a 20, then you have another round for someone to try to help you, but you haven't gotten any better or worse on your own.

So for example:
Round 1 - roll a 7, first failure
Round 2 - roll a 16, still one failure (but need to keep rolling)
Round 3 - roll a 2, second failure
Round 4 - roll a 13, still two failures
Round 5 - roll a 19, still two failures
Round 6 - roll a 20, stabilize (so no more rolling)

If you'd been healed at any point then you'd be better. If you rolled a third failure in the 4th, 5th or 6th round then you would have died.

The more I read about it, the more I dislike it. I did not liked 3e rules about death and dying and healing, but those ones are worse : sure, they are simpler, but they broke my suspension of disbelief with the strength of a 1000 pounds gorilla.
I want a healing/dying subsystem that allows "story friendly" agony. I want a subsystem that allow a PC or NPC to pronounce last words ("be cursed, you fools" "the assassin is argh...""say Petunia I lover her"...). I want a subsystem that makes healing/stabilizing a character another challenge than just "will I waste a round of attacks to heal Joe ?".
And I want a subsystem that makes just a little more sense. Dying from a wound should be a matter of minutes if not hours. It should not happen during fight, except for the most brutal wounds. and if you are dying in round 1,you should not be fully operational without magical healing 6 hours latter.

I know it's hard to make rules that are both game-friendly and story-friendly, but that's what I'm waiting for. I hope some third party will propose something more compatible with my liking...

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I don't think it anti game or story friendly.

Game-wise, it is the idea that your body is faltering and trying to recover from the blows dealt against you. If you recover, hey it wasn't that bad, if you die it was.

Like, your stabbed, your on the ground gasping for breath, your growing hazy... You shake off the haze, manage to shove a piece of gauze into the wound.

Or, your stabbed, your on the ground gasping for breath, your growing hazy... You begin to cough up blood, you realize it ruptured your lung, you lay their dying and then finally dead.

Storytelling wise, the final words can be done when it reaches 3, is when you say those final words. Prior to that your struggling to stay alive, or you rolled 2 die-rolls, you say what you feel you need to say, and someone heals you! Now you must deal with what you said, or didn't say.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ari,

Maybe you can clarify something. From the DDXP reports it sounds like the death and dying rules have changed from roll a 20 and spend a healing surge for 1/4 hit points to roll a 20 and auto-stabilize but remain unconscious. Can you shed any light? Of course I understand with the NDA you may not be at liberty.

Even if it is not in the rules, i would do it following way:
when you roll a 20, your character stabilizes. If he has not used second wind, he can do so now.

 

[Belphanior]

I want a subsystem that makes healing/stabilizing a character another challenge than just "will I waste a round of attacks to heal Joe ?".

The paladin and cleric (and presumably the warlord too) can heal people as a minor action. No need to stop attacking.

 

[DeusExMachina]

The more I read about it, the more I dislike it. I did not liked 3e rules about death and dying and healing, but those ones are worse : sure, they are simpler, but they broke my suspension of disbelief with the strength of a 1000 pounds gorilla.
I want a healing/dying subsystem that allows "story friendly" agony. I want a subsystem that allow a PC or NPC to pronounce last words ("be cursed, you fools" "the assassin is argh...""say Petunia I lover her"...). I want a subsystem that makes healing/stabilizing a character another challenge than just "will I waste a round of attacks to heal Joe ?".
And I want a subsystem that makes just a little more sense. Dying from a wound should be a matter of minutes if not hours. It should not happen during fight, except for the most brutal wounds. and if you are dying in round 1,you should not be fully operational without magical healing 6 hours latter.

I know it's hard to make rules that are both game-friendly and story-friendly, but that's what I'm waiting for. I hope some third party will propose something more compatible with my liking...

You can do that kind of stuff if you really want to. Just do it aftr the cobat with every character that is supposed to have died in the combat. Assume that "death in combat" means mortally wounded with no chance for recovery, but he still has a few breaths to speak to his comrades who are surrounding him after the combat is over...
Works both game and story wise...

 

[dm4hire]

I agree Deus. Death is never straight forward and people die every day from wounds they should not have died from. Those that get autopsied are usually found to have died from complications related to their wounds, i.e. had heart problems and the lack of blood allowed it to fail finally since it couldn't maintain the pressure it need for the flaw to not be a problem. I ruled that if you fail your roll you bleed from whatever wound sent you under, 10-19 is a stabilize, and 20 is the second wind. However I think I am going to change that after thinking about it and reading this thread as there really isn't a fear to death with the stabilize aspect. I mainly did that to not scare off everyone testing it.

I'm think a good approach and a little more frightening, if not very realistic check, would be like this:

1-9 Fail - You bleed taking damage equal to the base die of the damage that sent your character under zero. Third fail character dies.
10-19 Low blood loss meaning the character only loses one hit point.
20 Your Character Stabilizes and may use a second wind if one is available.

Using the previous example modified to reflect the paladin getting hit by an attack doing 2d6+3 for 7 damage putting him at -3 out of his -13. Base die is a d6.

Round 1 - roll a 7, first failure (roll d6 = -4 + -3 = -7)
Round 2 - roll a 16 still one failure but bleeds (-1 + -7 = -8)
Round 3 - roll a 2, second failure Player sweats (roll d6 = -2 + -8 = -10)
Round 4 - roll a 13, still two failures but bleeds (-1 + -10 = -11)
Round 5 - roll a 19, still two failures but bleeds (-1 + -11 = -12)
Round 6 - roll a 20, stabilize no second wind left (no more damage rolling)

This actually gets quite deadly for 1st level characters but balances out the higher you go if you look at just the first 10 levels for a fighter getting 7 hps a level.

Lvl HP Blood/Death -
1 27 13
2 34 17
3 41 20
4 48 24
5 55 27
6 62 31
7 69 34
8 76 38
9 83 41
10 90 45

So to be fair to 1st level characters I might just make it a d4 and keep it that way until 5th then switch to base die damage as shown. Maybe at Paragon, but definitely at Epic, I will have it be the character continues taking damage last dealt as by then hit points will be far up there. That will depend upon how the damage ratio works out at Epic tier not to mention mobs that most likely do continuing damage. A level 30 fighter will have at least 236 hit points with a blood/death of 118.

I will play with it awhile and see how it goes, worse case I just throw it out.