Death From Massive Damage?

[Clefton Twain]

A friend and I have never played with the "Death From Massive Damage" rule. Why not? We always thought it was a variant rule because the only place we could find rules for it was in the DMG and that addressed a variant rule for larger-size creatures (there might be somewhere else besides the SRD it is stated but we never really looked for it).

My thoughts are mixed on the rule. I like it in theory but the DC is really arbitrary. Then there's the whole issue of a high-powered spell laying waste to people because of massive damage. And, at epic levels, players would be making checks after every attack. They'd roll a 1 at some point and die.

There are also the variant rules for "Clobbering" which I kind of like but seem to get lopsided once a character gets low in hit points. It seems more realistic but penalizes the party a lot, especially mages (or, again, even victims of high-powered spells).

Does anyone have any thoughts on these two rules?

Thanks!

--CT

 

[melkoriii]

I believe MD is in the PHB under damage and healing or something. Dont have the books here at work.

I really hadnt thought about the spell damage on thing.
So your right in that at higher lvls you are making saves all the time but DC 15 is really easy.


One thing you can do for a house rule is instead of Death make it that if you fail you are knocked down and prone from the massive hit.

I think that would be a really good alt to it.

 

[Dimwhit]

I think it needs to be scaled. 50 points is totally different for a 10th level fighter with 90 points versus a 10th level Wizard with 55. Plus you're right about the epic level characters making the saves all the time. I think it should be based on percentage. Whenever you take 50% or more of your TOTAL hp (or 75% or whatever) you make the save (by total I mean fully-healed, not what you currently have). There should be a minimum, though, of 30 or 40 or 50 points or something similar. Let's face is, a first level character would also be making the save all the time.

The DC should also adjust based on what percentage of your total hp you took. A 100 hp fighter who takes 50pts of damage should have an easier save than 100 hp fighter who takes 90 hp of damage.

 

[dcollins]

Death from massive damage is definitely a core rule, on PHB p. 129, 3rd paragraph.

It's one of the rules I really dislike. It's been retained since AD&D 2nd Ed. added it as one of its kludgy rules modifications that was poorly thought out and doesn't fit well with the rest of the system.

Partly this rule was a response to cries of "realism" concerning high-level characters falling from arbitrary heights with no chance of being killed (etc.). One of my very few house rules is to scrap this rule and replace falling (et. al.) with a geometric scaling of damage -- www.superdan.net/housrule.html

 

[Kae'Yoss]

House Rules and Rule alternatives for Massive Damage

d20 Modern has another System: The threshold is you CON score, you still make the Fort DC 15, and if you fail, you are reduced to -1 HP. So it happens more often than in D&D, but is less fatal. There's also a feat that can increase the threshold by 3.

About houserules about Massive Damage:
When you hit epic levels, many rules that were fine before become really out of control. Massive Damage is among them (although it can be problematic on high levels already). There are several ways to disarm that bomb:

You can add the character's level (or twice the level) to the roll, which will be a great help on epic levels. (That's what we do).

You can also change the saving throws (and attack rolls, at that) so that they aren't using the autofailure or autosuccess rules on 1/20. You then either treat a 1 as -10 and 20 as 30 (so with Fort +25 you make that save all the time) or make it more open-ended in which you reroll a 1/20, but subtract/add 20 to the new result (if that's a nat 1/20 again, you continue and add up all the modifiers)
Example: Your save with +13 is 3 on a natural 1 and 43 on a natural 20 with the first option, at the second one you'd roll again with -7/+33 on a natural 1/20.

 

[Ranger REG]

d20 Modern have a reality level based on Massive Damage Threshold. You want heroic/epic, set it at 50 points, d20 Modern is set at PC's Con score, while the grittier version is set at CoC 10 points.

It assures that regardless of how great your PC seems to be, there is no way in hell one could survive the impact of a singular attack that does so much damage. I mean there's a point where your body simply cannot take that much hit. The trauma would be too great.

But I'm open to any kind of health system, including the VP/WP.

 

[Barcode]

I just exercised that rule for the first time, and one of the PC's cohorts died as a result. I have never liked "save or die" kinds of situations, and would actually prefer to replace the "or die" with a drop to -1 hit points in most cases.

I was thinking about using the d20 Modern massive damage system in my campaign, but making the threshold twice the character's CON. Taking the Improved Massive Damage Threshold feat would increase the threshold by the character's CON. Do you think that makes the feel more epic, or less? More checks, but less dire consequences of failure?

 

[Ranger REG]

That depends. If a (human) PC wishes to stack all his ability score increase, he could have a Con score of 25, making it in your rules, a MDT of 50. We go back to being epic once again.

If you wish to reward high-level PC -- who probably have a very high Fort save bonus, unless he rolls badly, i.e., a natural 1 -- with MDT Con x2, by all means go ahead. I just hope you may have to reconsider the weapon damage on heavy and tactical weapons.

 

[Li Shenron]

A friend and I have never played with the "Death From Massive Damage" rule. Why not? We always thought it was a variant rule because the only place we could find rules for it was in the DMG and that addressed a variant rule for larger-size creatures (there might be somewhere else besides the SRD it is stated but we never really looked for it).

My thoughts are mixed on the rule. I like it in theory but the DC is really arbitrary. Then there's the whole issue of a high-powered spell laying waste to people because of massive damage. And, at epic levels, players would be making checks after every attack. They'd roll a 1 at some point and die.

It's a core rule, with an interesting scaling variant in the DMG. I never liked it very much, although the variant makes it definitely better.

Yes, the DC is quite arbitrary, but after all I think it's much better that it's a constant: epic level creatures can just ignore the risk totally (no, there is no automatic failure for saving throws, at least not until 3.5e).

 

[narg]

i always thought the rules was silly and treated as it was in 2e just an optional rule. it adds no flavor at all, if there's going to be something like it it should be % based in relation to total normal hps.