Hit Points and PC Death

[maddman75]

I'm getting the urge to run D&D again (shh, don't tell my players yet, or my All Flesh game is history!) When we first started, I ran a campaign with almost no house rules to get a good feel for the system. I wanted to know it before I started tinkering. And, well, I want to tinker with how hit points and death work.

I'm wanting a more story oriented game. To that end, unplanned PC death is a Bad Thing. Perhaps its one player who is no longer with us, that managed to die in every concievable way possible I believe. When running through RttToEE my group of seven clocked 27 PC deaths. Nearly half were from this one player. He sometimes wouldn't make it a whole session. When sharing 'listen to what this dumbass did in a game' I always win. After that, the idea of bringing in a new PC and forcing everyone to role-play meeting a new party member makes me shudder. It got to the point where there were comments like 'Well, Bob just died so we should be finding a prisoner willing to join our party sometime soon.' Or 'Greetings stranger! You look fit, come join our group, we trust you with our lives.'

Anyway, there's two problems that are kind of related. The rules as-is interfere with my goals, so I'm changing them. The first is healing. I hate the fact that the players feel the *need* to have a cleric. Any other class you can do without, but if there's no cleric the group is either screwed, or the DM needs to do a lot of metagaming. Either option is distasteful.

My initial thought is to change hit points so that they don't require lengthy convalescence or magical healing. Maybe saying that hit points are more like endurance than actual serious wounds, and allowing the PCs to recover some amount, say level + CON modifier per hour of rest. Not per hour of marching or exploring, but per hour of sitting and relaxing. Maybe make the Healing skill class skill for all and saying that you need a heal check to recover whatever you make on your roll in hit points after an hour's rest. IOW, if you roll a fifteen the character recovers 15 hit points. Clerics will still be handy, but not required.

The other problem is what happens when you run out of hit points. This is more of a problem at high level. At low level, I'm rarely hitting them for more than 10 hit points at a whack, so its really easy to hit that 0 to -9 window. As they progress, the creatures do more and more damage. When you are taking 30, 40 or 50 points a round, its hard to hit that safety zone.

So maybe I'll change definitions. When you go below -10, you aren't dead. You are critically injured. If you don't get your wounds patched up soon you likely will die, either from blood loss or infection. But if someone gets to you, you'll get better. You won't be the same, you'll either lose a level or have some disfigurement - loss of an eye, lowered speed, lowered ability score of some kind.

Excepting this is the Boromir Rule. The character can instead do a 'last stand'. They get back up and fight for all thier worth, having several rounds to defend their friends. Once the battle is over however, they collapse and truly die. The difference here is that characters only die when it is dramatically appropriate for them to do so.

I may also want to increase the 'critically injured' threshold. To account for the increasing average damage, maybe they get -10 - level before they are completely down.

That handles weapon damage, but what to do about spells? I've already banned disintigrate, but how to handle Finger of Death, Circle of Death, and other 'instakill' spells. They should seriously take out the opponent, but not cause the disruption of the storyline that PC death incurrs. Or at that level, the constant raise dead and resurrection that feels so artificial to me.

On that note, Raise Dead and Ressurection are gone. They are replaced by Raise Critically Hurt and Resurrect Critically hurt, allowing a fast recovery from greivous wounds. True Resurrection may still be able to return the dead, I don't know. I kind of like having it much harder to actually kill a PC, but death is irrevocable.

Any thoughts on these ideas? I prefer to keep it as simple as possible, so no massive charts or anything, keep to the basic d20 mechanic.

 

[Quickleaf]

-Have you checked out the Green Ronin Blue Rose demo? It has some sweet rules for determining damage using a condition monitor system. Check it out.

-Consider creating a feat (or converting Heal skill) to allow certain PCs with it to convert lethal damage into nonlethal damage. Since nonlethal heals faster, this would speed up recovery times.

-You mention wanting a "more story oriented game." If so, simply reduce the frequency and importance of combat. This will serve two purposes: (1) Get the players interested in the game world, politics, organizations, and npcs; and (2) Heighten the drama of those combats that do occur that much more. Who knows? The may indeed end up like Boromir! When a combat feels genuinely threatening that's when PCs start to think on their feet. I actually think that having a MORE dangerous combat system would serve your purposes better by making combat more rare.

-Consider adding Action Points (or whatever name you choose) to allow PCs to stabilize themselves, sustain massive wounds, and accomplish whatever else you think is reasonable.

-If you do use a Hit Point system, consider this calculation for the PC's critical threshhold: CON modifier + level + 10. You might also want to consider what happens to a PC while they are in this negative hit point range. Are they simply unconscious? Is their soul jumping out of their body ready to leave? Do they have visions of relatives? Visiting angels?

 

[Kilroy]

When I ran a game, I had a "lower lethality" rule that worked well for PCs and for monsters.

X is your total hp bonus (from Con and other non-HD sources).
Damage is healed as if subdual from full to X.
You are staggered from 0 to -X.
You are bleeding from -X to -X-10.

 

[diaglo]

way back when ...

0 = dead in RAW (rules as written)

however, this meant a very very very high lethality.

cuz at 1st lvl you rolled hps.. which meant 1 hit was enough to kill you. 1d6 for hit points and 1d6 for damage.. 50% of the time you died.

then with Supplement I Greyhawk(1975) they added the variable hps by class and variable damage by weapon... still 0 hp = dead... so fighting men could take about 2 hits the majority of the time before going belly up. and magic-users were pretty much autodead on a hit.

it was a different game. people understood they had to be cautious, talk their way out of a lot of rough situations, or just get darn lucky if it came to blows.

as the rules have changed.. and DMs have become more storyteller instead of referee ... the emphasis has shifted from lethal to nonlethal. players have become more attached to their PCs and their possessions. to the point they will walk out of sessions if they are killed or throw hissy fits on the internet if one of their objects is damaged or stolen...

there are some nontactical players in a tactical game. these are the guys most of the group moans about getting them killed in st00pid ways. yet... the group still seems to think it is the DMs job to tone things down... instead of coming up with sound strategy... or just talking to the other player. this is not a computer game. it is a social game. everyone has the right to speak.

and maybe st00pid player is having fun. or is bored cuz the others won't take risks... this needs to be discussed. not worked around. otherwise you are still not getting to the cause. you are just treating a symptom.

 

[Stormborn]

Running a swashbuckling game and I am using Skull and Bones idea of "lives"... when characters were created I rolled 1d4 for each of them. Thats the number of chances they have to avoid certain death. If something happens that would kill them I just tell them it was a near miss or that somethign fortuitous happened that saved them. Basically allowing them to stabalize and recover. Of course this is a low magic setting w/ no healing magic at all and so the PCs need a little break now and then. All but 1 PC has used at least 1 of these lives and they are currently in the 7-8 th level range.

 

[el-remmen]

I've done two things in my Aquerra house rules that have really worked for us (though there has still been some PC death due to bad luck and/or poor tactics or self-sacrifice).

Firstly, characters die at a negative hit point total equal to 10 + 1/2 their max. hit points (rounded down). So a fighter with 100 hit points would not die 'til he hit -60 hit points. However, if you take any damage while at negative hit points you have to make a FORT save (DC 10 + 1/2 damage done) or die. Coup De Grace works as normal. In addition, if you are stablized by non-magical means and you are moved - there is a chance that wounds re-opening and hit point loss begins again.

It might be worth mentioning that also among our house rules is that if you are brought back from negative hit points by magical means (i.e. without resting) you are Exhausted until you have had an hour's rest - at which timen you are considered Fatigued until you have had 7 more hours rest (or 8 hours if not contiguous).

Secondly, People heal at the rate of a number of hit points equal to their base attack bonus +1 for every eight hours of rest. Thus high level fighters with more hit points heal at a rate compared to max. somewhat proportionately to the party wizard. The normal modifiers for being tended to and full bed rest still apply.

 

[JimAde]

One good suggestion I've seen is that "save or die" spells instead bring the character to -1 and dying. In this case, with the modified rules you're considering, you could make it -10 and dying. Which basically means they'll have the lasting effects you mentioned (level loss). Mechanically it's the same as having the character die and get raised, but it flows better (and, strangely, saves the PCs money).

 

[Terath Ninir]

For SAVE OR DIE spells, I favour having them do a large amount of damage per level instead. Say, 2d6 dam/level. That makes a finger of death or disintegrate spell pretty deadly, but not assuredly so. (As a side note, I think all the spells -- especially enchantments -- that have no effect on a successful save should still have some effect. Say, an effect of a spell 2 or 3 levels lower. I don't even take most such spells any more because the likelihood of a wasted action is too high.)

One thing you could do is have hp from class levels *really* be Hong Dude Points. They are mystical energies -- or whatever naughty word explenation you want to use -- that help prevent the characters from dying. I tinker off and on with the idea of high-level characters being on a quest for divinity, with their increased hit points being a tangible sign that they really *are* better than the common man. Thus, those hit points could come back much more quickly than normal, since it's not physical damage being healed.

 

[Amaroq]

There's a number of things you can play with in the 'damage' region. One thing I'm considering for my campaign is 'effectiveness reduction' as characters fall below certain thresholds. I'm thinking the equivalent of about d6 ability loss to one of the physical attributes (Str, Dex, Con) as they fall below 75%, 50%, and 25% of their hit points. So, its possible that a character at 20% hit points might be 'injured' enough that he's having difficulty being 'combat effective'; your players will need to adapt their tactics to this, realizing that retreat isn't just an option but a necessity in some cases.

A different 'lever' you could play with is 'when does the 'disabled' state kick in?' - in the RAW, a character is disabled, able to limp to safety but little else, if at 0 hit points. But, as pointed out, thats a narrow window: you could certainly 'expand' it, with something like '0 to Level' is 'disabled', and 'Level+1 to Level*2' is 'bleeding', beyond 'Level * 2' is 'critically wounded', with lasting effects even if rescued.

I've also run a no-magical-healing campaign, and I asserted that it really did take a long time to heal after a fight: rather than fighting four to eight times a day, the group really did need to rest for several days between battles. In a story-based world, that worked perfectly well: the players, recognizing that even a victory could slow them down for days, went into a 'choose your battles wisely' mode, and were more likely to negotiate with NPC's; I added an 'herbalism' skill the successful application of which could double or triple the rate of recovery, but it was still slow. (I'd also made recovery 'based on level' rather than 1/day, so that high-level characters wouldn't take 100 days to recover from a fight; the 'based on BAB' suggestion below would be better.) This works very well in tandem with a 'sorcerors and wizards recover spells more slowly' rule.

Regarding monsters doing 50 points of damage in a round, a lever you can play with is 'not rolling all of their attacks simultaneously' - rather than a monster making four attacks for 3d6 each on the lead fighter, it could do its two attacks, see that he's dropped, and move on to try its last two attacks on other targets. That doesn't slow the game down too much, you'll find, once its a practiced thing. High-damage spells can still be a problem, though.

For insta-kill spells, you've had a number of good ideas already: you might replace them with 'disable', 'bleeding', and 'critically injure' effects, depending on your opinion of the spell; for capturing 'evil' death effects, I've always liked descriptive text: "Delmort is now writhing on the ground, screaming in pain as agony wracks his body. (Del, functionally, you're at -X hit points, and, just as though you are bleeding, each round of agony will cost you one more. Hope your friends can finish off the caster, thus breaking the spell, before you drop to -Z...)"

 

[trilobite]

Running a swashbuckling game and I am using Skull and Bones idea of "lives"... when characters were created I rolled 1d4 for each of them. Thats the number of chances they have to avoid certain death. If something happens that would kill them I just tell them it was a near miss or that somethign fortuitous happened that saved them. Basically allowing them to stabalize and recover. Of course this is a low magic setting w/ no healing magic at all and so the PCs need a little break now and then. All but 1 PC has used at least 1 of these lives and they are currently in the 7-8 th level range.

What a great idea! I am starting a Swords and Sorcery style game that has very limited healing magic (no clerics). Having those extra lives would really come in handy. Though I would make them "Roll the Bones" after each use of a life. So the fear of losing a eye or a limb would keep the fear of death in the players.