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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6618426" data-attributes="member: 12377">I love the death saving throw system, but in practice it means that downed players live for at least 3 rounds, likely more, which is usually enough time for the fight to resolve one way or another. In other words, making death saving throws is largely pointless -- either the party wins and there are last-minute stabilization checks, or it's a TPK/capture and everybody is equally dead/captured.Having monsters attack unconscious people is a good solution. I think house rules might be a good solution too. A simple one is: you only need succeed/fail at 2 death saves to stabilize/die, instead of 3. That makes things MUCH more touch-and-go for dropped players. They know they won't die next round but the one after that is iffy. A similar change is, you must make the first death save immediately instead of waiting a round. Both of those ideas speed up the death/stabilization process without really making it more dangerous. If you want it to be scarier, just increase the death save DC to 15. This makes dying after 3-4 rounds much more likely than stabilizing on your own. Or, instead of suffering 2 failed saves on a result of 1, it's on any result of 5 or less, making it much harder to predict the rate at which you might bleed out. I guess if I were going to introduce a house rule like this I would give the party a single scroll of raise dead as compensation (your first one is free...).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="77IM, post: 6618426, member: 12377"] I love the death saving throw system, but in practice it means that downed players live for at least 3 rounds, likely more, which is usually enough time for the fight to resolve one way or another. In other words, making death saving throws is largely pointless -- either the party wins and there are last-minute stabilization checks, or it's a TPK/capture and everybody is equally dead/captured. Having monsters attack unconscious people is a good solution. I think house rules might be a good solution too. A simple one is: you only need succeed/fail at 2 death saves to stabilize/die, instead of 3. That makes things MUCH more touch-and-go for dropped players. They know they won't die next round but the one after that is iffy. A similar change is, you must make the first death save immediately instead of waiting a round. Both of those ideas speed up the death/stabilization process without really making it more dangerous. If you want it to be scarier, just increase the death save DC to 15. This makes dying after 3-4 rounds much more likely than stabilizing on your own. Or, instead of suffering 2 failed saves on a result of 1, it's on any result of 5 or less, making it much harder to predict the rate at which you might bleed out. I guess if I were going to introduce a house rule like this I would give the party a single scroll of [i]raise dead[/i] as compensation (your first one is free...). [/QUOTE]

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