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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6234710" data-attributes="member: 7006">My current campaign that I'm running uses more dangerous death rules along what you put forth, connected alongside sanity body corruption rules (its a Far Realm campaign.)Each PC has four wound levels-- Healthy (full HP), Bruised (3/4th HP), Bloodied (1/2 HP), and Injured (1/4th HP).  When a PC drops to 0 or fewer hit points, their wound level drops by one.  That becomes the maximum amount of HP they can heal themselves to follow the fight by spending healing surges.  So for example, if a PC with 80 HP drops below 0 during a fight, their wound level drops to Bruised, and they can only regain hit points back up to 60 HP.For every failed Death saving throw, their wound level drops as well... so the first failed save would drop that PC from Bruised to Bloodied (meaning they max he could heal himself after the fight is half his total hit point, IE 40), the second failed save drops him to Injured, and the third failed Death save means the PC is dead (both because of the standard 4E "three strikes and you're out" rule, as well as your wound level dropping from 1/4 HP to dead.)Wound levels are different than HP, in that you don't regain a wound level following a short rest.  You can regain one wound level after a long rest, but only one.  If you are down two or three wound levels, the second one usually requires several days of bedrest before coming back, the third level (if you were Injured) usually takes one to two weeks.  (For my particular campaign, I also have Corruption rules, wherein each time you recover a wound level, you have to roll to see if you suffer any body corruption-- which over time might result in weird Cthulu-like appendages appearing, sucking wounds developing teeth, all kinds of body horror.)What this has resulted in is our entire party taking a more equitable view of pain distribution.  Front-line people pulling back out of melee when they really get hurt prior to falling unconscious (so to avoid dropping wound levels), and our ranged and squishy players sometimes moving up to "take the hit" for a couple rounds to help distribute the damage.  In my campaign prior to this... my melee combatants were yo-yoing up and down in consciousness so many times while our spellcasters basically hid in the backline never engaging, that it was really annoying and I wanted to force everyone to sometimes have to step up or step back.  Adding the possibility of body corruption every time you fell unconscious certainly aided in that as well.</blockquote>

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