Making combat less deadly.

[Saeviomagy]

My suggestion?

Whenever a PC passes a threshold on his hitpoints, he gets a drawback. I'd suggest putting in drawbacks at 75%, 50% and 25% of hitpoints.

I'd suggest a hefty penalty on all attack, damage and skill rolls. Say -4.

The big thing about this is that players are likely to go "hey - we're not actually doing much. Let's bug out" rather than fighting on until they drop.

I'd also probably reduce the amount of damage that a single hit from a monster or weapon does. I'd probably go with doubling all hitpoints, so that abilities like fast healing and regeneration don't get totally out of whack.

The big effect of this won't be that combats get easier (after all, the monsters have doubled hitpoints too), but it will allow slower reactions. Ie - currently a lot of monsters can make mincemeat of a character in a single round, leaving the character with little to no options. If that single round is instead increase to TWO rounds, the PC has more chance of escape.

That does need to be applied to 'save or drop dead' effects as well. I'd still recommend a single save, but simple have such effects take twice as long to take effect (ie - a save-or-die spell takes two rounds to cast and can be interrupted at any time. This would apply to monster SU or SLA effects as well).

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

My opinion? Just get rid of "Die at -10". Instead, let the players know that you will be penalizing them each time they drop. Did the character drop from the giant getting a crit? Then they're knocked out, and their armor absorbed the blow, being destroyed in the process.

"But wait! If there's no consequences to death, then nobody will fear it!" Rubbish. If the players know they'll get captured by the orcs, lose all their items, and have to fight their way out using discarded chicken bones, then (IMX) they'll fight harder to stay alive.

Heck, in my group, death is just a nuisance. Character dies? Just make a new one. Character gets shafted by the bad guys? Now it's time to fight.

Thats actually a great idea. Since HPs are abstract in the first place, not a representation of the raw damage your body can take, anything up to being disabled could be considered near misses and minor injuries. Any blow that would put a PC down to 0 or less could be considered the first truely devestating blow against them. *Que dramatic slow motion effect now*

Any such blow would be first applied to the PC's shield if they have one, then their armor. The remainder, if any, goes to them as normal. This could also be a great mechanic for those who would like to see armor get damaged in combat, but don't want to use a damage tracking system for it.