Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3880945" data-attributes="member: 32164">Agreed. There's actually a couple ways I've thought of to do this.One really nasty option is this: "If you're ambushed, damage for the surprise round goes directly to CON."Similarly, when your hit points go to 0, you start taking CON damage. And of course, if your CON hits 0, you die. Yes, that means it really sucks if you get ambushed. And it makes ambushes almost uniformly lethal. Another option is to rule that if you are ambushed and can't defend yourself, that all the damage you take in the surprise round counts for purposes of exceeding your Massive Damage Threshold (which should probably be lowered from 50 points...). So if you're ambushed for, say, 25 points of damage in one round, it counts as massive damage and forces a fort save (or something). Alternatively, or additionally, you can use a more realistic massive damage threshold. Saga's notion of "exceed fort defense" and drop the target 1 "step" works pretty well. In combination with the system above, it would potentially allow for a group of commoners to ambush an unaware high level warrior and kill him.Finally, you could allow an ambush to bypass the character's positive hit point total and inflict negative hit points. When those equal your CON, you die. It's kinda like the above rule about CON damage but with just slightly different flavor.It's worth noting that on the same page of the 1e DMG I quoted earlier, EGG talked about what happens (scarring, permanent injuries, and the like) to a character who drops much below 0 hit points.Hit points are an abstraction. They've always been an abstraction. However, despite their quirks, they're a good abstraction for use in the game. You just have to figure out what houserules you need in your game to enforce the level of "realism" or "grittiness" you want.Some people want none of that, and that's fine, but I'd personally like to see some guidelines from the WotC designers for those of us who want a bit more. I personally think this could be handled nicely with something akin to the Saga Edition condition track. The degree of "lethality" could then be adjusted with a few minor tweaks.For instance, the default Saga rule is: "If you exceed your opponents Fort defense, he drops one level on the condition track. If he drops 5 steps, he's unconscious and dying."That's easily adjustable for special circumstances. To whit, you could append this rule:"For every 5 (or 10) points by which the damage exceeds your Fort, you move one extra step down the condition track."or this one:"When your target is unaware and not expecting combat, you may move them one step down the condition track with a successful attack that does damage, even if you don't exceed their Fort Defense."or this:"When you strike a character who is unaware and not expecting combat, the blow deals triple damage."To follow up with the Red Wedding example, if 5 commoners ambush a heroic character in one round, they might be able to do him in. Or they wound him terribly. If that's not enough, you could combine the rules. Or make the ambush cause quadruple damage. Or move someone two steps. Of course, you might put in a few feats that are devoted to moving someone down the condition track.It should probably still take 2 or 3 people to ambush and kill that 15th level fighter. IIRC, GreatJon Umber managed to overturn a table and fight for a while. And they all probably started down a couple steps when the ambush occurred - they were drinking heavily, remember?And I don't know if it should be possible for level 1 commoners in any case. A few low-level rogues, on the other hand...</blockquote>

Verification