D&D 5E Death Saves & Pop-Up Healing

[Buzzqw]

I'm an old school kind of master .. in my group these rules apply:

1) when you go to 0 points, you drop and you can't do anything (well, after 1 hour you must do a CON Saving Throw ad DC 15, fails and go to -1, pass and go to 1)
2) if you go to -1 then every round you lose another hit point (no saving)
3) you die when go negative at 10 + CON bonus * 2. So with Con bonus +2, you will die at -14

a medicine check on difficulty 15 takes you from 0 to 1 hit point
11 + (negative hit points) medicine check brings you to 0 hit points from negative hit point. So if you are at -6, you need a DC 17 medicine check
there are no saving throws each round.

A magical heal when you are at 0 hit points heals normally, if you are in negative ground magical heal brings you to just 1 hit point
A long rest recovers CON bonus + proficiency bonus (no hit dice recover!)

maybe a bit too harsh.. but so players play with more attention

(btw i have many more house rules.. it's just new DnD game, sorry book in italian for anyone interested!)

Andres

 

[Greg Benage]

Some people want the game to be about unbelievable fantasy superheroes who never get a scratch that matters, others want the game to have some verisimilitude.

I totally get that. And I'm certainly not arguing that death spirals are bad design. Actually, the bit of design I'm most proud of is the damage mechanic in Blue Planet, and it has a hard death spiral. For me, if I wanted verisimilitude out of D&D, I'd have to do more than add a soft death spiral to the hit points and AC system. The game as designed works pretty well as an attrition system, though, so I try to lean into that when I'm playing D&D.

 

[reelo]

I find the rules for Damage and Dying in "Crypts and Things" are perfect

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sorry if this has been mentioned (did not read entire thread) but Baldur's Gate 3 does two things:
1. A lot of enemies will intentionally attack unconscious PCs causing them to fail a death save for each hit.
2. In the absence of unconscious PCs they will go after low health PCs...especially those who have just been healed from unconsciousness.
3. On your next turn after regaining consciousness you are unable to take any actions, including Dodge or Disengage (and you just lost half your movement getting up from prone.) See #2 above.

The first two are just DM strategy, while the third is a house rule. But together they create a pretty powerful incentive to not let your health dip too low.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Some people want the game to be about unbelievable fantasy superheroes who never get a scratch that matters, others want the game to have some verisimilitude.

I agree that there is a range of preferences as you describe, but I would hesitate to describe the more challenging end of the spectrum as "verisimilitude." Verisimilitude would involve a LOT of crippled ex-adventurers, most of them with deep psychological scars. In even the grittiest, most dangerous RPG the PCs are still unbelievable fantasy superheroes.

P.S. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you could probably express that opinion without denigrating one playstyle and dignifying the other.

 

[cmad1977]

It’s not a perrennial problem though.

 

[overgeeked]

I agree that there is a range of preferences as you describe, but I would hesitate to describe the more challenging end of the spectrum as "verisimilitude." Verisimilitude would involve a LOT of crippled ex-adventurers, most of them with deep psychological scars. In even the grittiest, most dangerous RPG the PCs are still unbelievable fantasy superheroes.

I wouldn't consider Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the "grittiest, most dangerous RPG"...but it is filled with "crippled ex-adventurers, most of them with deep psychological scars", many more buried six feet under, and the PCs are decidedly not "unbelievable fantasy superheroes".

 

[Bill Zebub]

I wouldn't consider Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the "grittiest, most dangerous RPG"...but it is filled with "crippled ex-adventurers, most of them with deep psychological scars", many more buried six feet under, and the PCs are decidedly not "unbelievable fantasy superheroes".

I've never played so I don't know how it's structured. Does it have dragons (of the typical fantasy sort) and, if so, is it possible for a PC to survive the average damage from one dragon bite?

 

[tetrasodium]

Sorry if this has been mentioned (did not read entire thread) but Baldur's Gate 3 does two things:
1. A lot of enemies will intentionally attack unconscious PCs causing them to fail a death save for each hit.
2. In the absence of unconscious PCs they will go after low health PCs...especially those who have just been healed from unconsciousness.
3. On your next turn after regaining consciousness you are unable to take any actions, including Dodge or Disengage (and you just lost half your movement getting up from prone.) See #2 above.

The first two are just DM strategy, while the third is a house rule. But together they create a pretty powerful incentive to not let your health dip too low.

With 1&2 it's a lot different when a computer algorithm acts that way than when the very human GM does so. What you describe is a form of "combat as war" as opposed to "combat as sport", The GM needs to walk a line between convincingly playing the opponents so characters are challenged by opponents wo seem to be pulling out all the stops given what those opponents could reasonably know and simply executing the party with maximum efficiency. There is also the rather serious hurdle that A:most monsters don't have enough attacks to drop a PC & then attack twice more before someone can grant at least 1hp of healing & B: A video game can fine tune encounters against character power level to a much greater degree for any given location through the initial development & testing period.

 

[Bill Zebub]

With 1&2 it's a lot different when a computer algorithm acts that way than when the very human GM does so. What you describe is a form of "combat as war" as opposed to "combat as sport", The GM needs to walk a line between convincingly playing the opponents so characters are challenged by opponents wo seem to be pulling out all the stops given what those opponents could reasonably know and simply executing the party with maximum efficiency. There is also the rather serious hurdle that A:most monsters don't have enough attacks to drop a PC & then attack twice more before someone can grant at least 1hp of healing & B: A video game can fine tune encounters against character power level to a much greater degree for any given location through the initial development & testing period.

I wouldn't make every monster do it the same way every time, but would factor in the intelligence/viciousness of the monster.

(Also, if monsters got death saves I bet players would hit the ones who were down.)

As for the multi-attacks, it also depends on initiative order: if another bad guy gets its turn before the healer, well...