I hate death saves. Propose your solution.

[Waterbizkit]

I like the idea of expending HD as a resource outside of using them during rests and I've also never been a fan of tracking negative hit points. So that said, something like this may be a tad over simplistic, but still provide some tension during combat:

When a character is reduced to zero hit points, excess damage won't matter because we're not tracking negatives remember, they die instantly unless they spend a single HD. If they do they regain hit points as normal when doing so. Now the hit points gained from a single roll isn't likely to amount to much, but that's the point. Round by round the character will likely continue burning through a clearly finite resource, which allows them time to decide whether to stay and risk death or flee.

Likewise this will mean more thought has to be put into whether or not HD are spent on healing during a rest, since the more used during a rest leaves fewer available in combat.

Now, this isn't a rule I use nor is it anything I tested or spent more than a few minutes considering really. Just throwing an idea out there to see if it interests others or maybe leads to something more refined than I've got the time for at the moment.

 

[Ristamar]

That sounds reasonable.
By the same token a 4e-style second wind: spend your action 1/encounter to roll HD and heal yourself, maybe with an additional requirement that you be wounded past a certain point?

That could be an option, but I still think there is a need for stronger healing, not just different sources. Otherwise I believe the players will still often choose to lean on stronger offensive options.

As a simplified alternative to my supplemented healing with hit dice suggestion, instead of looking at spell level or the type of healing potion, limit the hit point recovery from the hit dice to a maximum of half the hit points recovered from any healing source. So if a Cure Wounds spell recovers 30 hit points, additional hit dice can be spent to recover up to 15 more hit points, regardless of spell level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That could be an option, but I still think there is a need for stronger healing, not just different sources. Otherwise I believe the players will still often choose to lean on stronger offensive options.

Of course, a strong point.

You could simple give all healing sources more oomph, across the board.

 

[Inchoroi]

For my group, I do things a little differently:

1. HP doesn't recover on a long rest. You have to spend hit dice to regain HP, or use spells/potions/magic items. After the long rest, you get back half your remaining hit dice.
2. Failed death saves don't reset until you take a long rest.

I then play my monsters and NPCs appropriately. If you were just downed by cultist of Orcus, and he has one more attack remaining....well....he's going to hit your unconscious body again. Same for near-mindless monsters. Why would a wolf, having just downed a character, attack others? That's not how animals hunt; they strike and attack, then hang on and keep gnawing until its dead and they've eaten their fill.

I let my players know all this well before the game began, so they could plan appropriately; I also make them aware that finding someone to raise a party member is something that can definitely be done, even if you lack the funds to do it. Just means an NPC has a quest for you, or you owe a specific NPC a favor.

Its only come up once, where the paladin was downed by the head priest of Orcus, who then spent a merry attack pounding on the unconscious form of the paladin, while taunting the rest of the party with their inability to save their friend. They have been considerably more careful with combat since then.

I find it encourages heroic behavior without too much punishing the players for it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Dead at zero means you need to drastically increase the efficacy of in-combat healing and increase other healing resources.

It doesn't necessarily mean that, as long as you alter the encounter rate to compensate.

If I cared enough about this game to bother modifying the death rules, I would do one of these two things:

1) Death at zero. Average damage all around. Nix critical hits.

2) Death at negative maxHP. Negative damage doesn't go away until healed (it doesn't automatically reset to zero). While at negative, you lose 1d6hp per round until healed. Natural healing rate set to 10% of maxHP per night.

 

[MNblockhead]

When a character is reduced to 0 hit points, the player must hold his or her breath until someone stabilizes them with a medkit or applies magical healing.

If the player can no longer hold his or her breath and gasps for air, or passes out, before the character is stabilized or healed, then the character dies.

The player may waive, pound the table, and otherwise try to get other players' attention while holding his or her breath.

Another player may spend an inspiration point to hold his or her breath in lieu of the original player, thereby increasing the time that the character has to be stabilized or healed. A third player may take over from the second player by spending an inspiration and so on. If you give out inspiration liberally, however, you may want to limit the number of players who can take over the breath-holding.

I started out writing this as a joke, but it actually seems like it would be fun.

 

[Psikerlord#]

My alternative is:

(1) single death save only, made AFTER the combat is over. With adv i someone patches you up or uses healing magic on you. If you fail you die, if success you are unconscious not dead. Restored to 1 hp in 1d3 minutes.

(2) Once reach zero hp, all healing (inc magic) takes 1d3 minutes to work.

Eliminates whack-a-mole, and eliminates the need to attack downed PCs to make the game dangerous (reaching zero hp is inherently dangerous).

 

[Les Moore]

From what I've been able to gather, you want "0 hit points is dead, no saves."

Why not give something to get something? Make house rule #14(whatever) to ADD 10 HP to your PC's HP total. At your CON bonus, you pass out.
You then have the total of your CON bonus's points, in turns, to roll to stabilize. IF you stabilize, you're alive, but in retreat, for the mission, your
offensive capabilities are over.

Soo, a Level 1 fighter has 14HP, now elevated to 24. His CON bonus is 3. When he loses 21 HP, he drops, unconscious, and unstable, slowly dying.
On the next 3 consecutive turns, he has to roll a DC (your decision) to stabilize. If he fails 3 times, he's gone.

OR you could simply flat rate the extra 10HP, at 0 the PC is dead. No saving rolls at all.

 

[Ratskinner]

So I hate death saves and want death to occur at 0 hp. Propose your solutions. Critique mine. Have fun.

My current favorite is level 1 hp = 2*MaxClassHP + Con Mod. Every level after that works as normal. No death saves. Die at 0 hp.

Okay, so having read the rest of the thread Ï'll tell you what I do, and how to modify it (If that isn't obvious to you) to make it more or less "deadly"

When you hit 0 HP, you are incapacitated. Toss 4 coins and count the heads (or roll for evens on four dice). Each head or even roll counts as a "good for you" answer that you may assign to one of the questions below:
1) Are you dying? (Roll a d6, you have that many rounds to live.)
2) Are you conscious?
3) Did you lose anything important? (Weapon, Eye, Arm, Supplies?)
4) Who narrates what & how, You or the DM?

Its really fun to watch the players squirm with bad rolls.

To crank up the tension, you could:
a) have them roll them in order, rather than assign them.
b) change question 1 to a d4 or just "dead"

Anyway, I hope that helps.

EDIT: as a bonus, this really lets me crank up the difficulty without too much fear.

 

[not-so-newguy]

When a character is reduced to 0 hit points, the player must hold his or her breath until someone stabilizes them with a medkit or applies magical healing.

If the player can no longer hold his or her breath and gasps for air, or passes out, before the character is stabilized or healed, then the character dies.

The player may waive, pound the table, and otherwise try to get other players' attention while holding his or her breath.

Another player may spend an inspiration point to hold his or her breath in lieu of the original player, thereby increasing the time that the character has to be stabilized or healed. A third player may take over from the second player by spending an inspiration and so on. If you give out inspiration liberally, however, you may want to limit the number of players who can take over the breath-holding.

I started out writing this as a joke, but it actually seems like it would be fun.

Most of the people that I play with also smoke. So this would ...not end well at my table, methinks.