Fixing negative HP at high levels: feedback?

[jmucchiello]

We also use negative CON score for final death but have found at high level you still have that alive alive alive alive alive dead effect instead of the lower level alive alive dying dying dying dying dead feel. So we add a rule saying that any damage that reduces you to neg hit points cannot reduce you below -9. Bleeding occurs normally thereafter. This prevents the fight with the big STR monster hits for 19 damage dropping you to -1 and then does another 16 to your partner. You most likely wake up a few rounds later after the battle. If, OTOH, you took the 16 damage first, dropping 2 hp and the monster follows up on you, still standing, and you take 19 dropping you to -17 and probably dead quickly if not already.

I've just never liked that point where if you take just a few extra points of damage you fall over and survive the fight, but without taking those 2 points of damage you suddenly find yourself a smear on the dungeon floor.

And no, I don't know how this would work if the character has Die Hard.

Standard monsters do not benefit from this ruling but BBEGs do.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Hmm. I hadn't actually thought about this, but these house rules do make sense. I'm not quite sure if any of them have quite the feel I'm looking for, but I don't see a bad one in the bunch.

Thanks for the inspiration for my next house rule, guys and gals!

 

[CrusadeDave]

Another idea

I tend to use -10 as the baseline for death. Alternately, a character can take his Con modifier (Usually +2 as we use point buy.. ) times his character level to replace this if it is higher. NPC's get the same treatment.

I'm aware this allows fighters and barbarians to have potentially 100+ negative hitpoints at level 20, but it works in my campaign, as my villains often go for coup de gras' and other lethal maneuvers. And my less martial PC's often go around slitting throats during the end of combat, to clean up the mess, and NPC's have it too. The Young Adult Black Dragon had -80ish points for the party to clean up, and I often have invisible minion Clerics running around with wands of Healing, trying to bring back foes before they pass into the neverworld.

Of course in my campaign, a 1 is never an automatic failure on Saving throws. I don't like that 3.5 revision. Maybe I'm a softie.