More wiggle room in dying rules?

[takyris]

I'm considering a House Rule to make games a little less deadly but a little more interesting for my players. I'd like to hear thoughts:

1) Everything up to -10 is treated normally, and the flavor-text for these injuries is "He'll be fine." If this were an episode of Buffy, this would be Xander getting thrown against a wall and knocked out or Willow taking a glancing blow from a demon's club.

2) From -10 to -19 is treated as "In Serious Trouble." If this were an episode of Buffy, this would be Buffy saying, "Hang on, Will, we'll get you to a hospital," and then turning to Xander and shouting, "Get an ambulence!" and doing the big-teary-eyes thing while the camera faded to black. Anyone at (2) is unconscious, even if they have the Remain Conscious feat. They're probably going to be in a coma.

3) From -20 on is dead.

4) From -30 on is dead and mutilated to the point where the body is in a bunch of gristly bits. (Tough to identify, impossible to raise by conventional means.)

The big change is, of course, in (2). I'm thinking that people who get taken to (2) and then live to recover, should have a chance of something bad happening to them. I'm thinking of some kind of percentile table roll or something, with results that included:

Nothing
Concussion (-4 to effective Dex, Int, or Wis) for the next 1d6 weeks
Random limb broken, in cast for next 5+1d6 weeks
Temporarily blinded or deafened for 1d6 weeks
Back injury -- Paraplegic paralysis for 3d6 weeks
Neck injury -- In bed, not moving, for next 3d6 weeks
Coma -- lasts d4 weeks. On 3, roll again and add. On 4, roll again TWICE and add. Can conceivably last a HUGE length of time.
Permanent loss of one limb
Permanent blindness or deafness
Long-term paralysis, para- or quadraplegic

That's a rough, off-top-of-head list.

I don't relish the thought of every PC running around with eyepatches and wooden legs, and I wouldn't introduce this into a completely heroic setting. The -20 threshold lets people survive longer than they otherwise would, but with the realism factor of having a cast for the next little while, game-time.

I would have anything permanent be extremely unlikely, and I would allow characters to use Action Points to modify the roll away from something they really don't want (like a Fast Hero with a broken leg or a Strong Hero being completely paralyzed).

Thoughts? As I said, not for every campaign. A more likely rule for every campaign I run would be to keep the -20 threshold and just say, "If you're taken to between -10 and -20, your character automatically comes out with something more serious -- pick something that affects you for the next 1d6 weeks, either a broken bone or a bad back or something like that."

Still cheaper than dying...

Thanks for any thoughts or ideas.

 

[jonrog1]

Two suggestions, more for simplification than improvement -- I do have to ask though, what the HELL are you doing to your poor PC's to drive them to -20 on a regular basis?

First, just lower the spontaneous stabilization FORT SAVE DC. Unless their opponents are in the habit of walkin gup and unlading a clip of 45 mils into their chest when they're down, this should help.

Two, how about Monte's Arcana Unearthed rule, which I'm paraphrasing -- fuinctional down to negative CON mofifier, then dying but not dead to their negative CON below that

A character with a 16 Con would be capable of half-actions to -3, and be dying but not dead to -19. That enough shimmy room?

If you insist on the injury idea, your table seems spiffy to me.

 

[takyris]

Hey, Jonrog,

Thanks for the thoughts.

I was actually thinking of this system for a long-term campaign. For shorter games, I like the simplicity of -10 equaling death, but in long-term campaigns, I want to keep my PCs alive, so I want to make absolutely sure that when a beam goes through their windshield and takes two of them to -14, they're not INSTANTLY in "reroll new characters"-land.

I wanted to stick with -10/-20 rather than -Con/-Con*2 because it's a bit easier mathwise, and a hero with a high Con already gets a bonus in d20 Modern because the stabilization check is a Fort save, now.

I do want to keep the DC20, though. If they have enough time, they'll stabilize, but I don't want it to be a sure thing right off the bat. Make 'em sweat a little, and all that.

 

[aurance]

Isn't "in serious trouble" already represented in the rules as -1 to -10? So in effect this is pretty much the same system as currently in place, except everyone just gets +10 hit points?

Wouldn't it be easier to say then, that all 1st lvl characters start with 10 more hit points?

-A

 

[takyris]

Aurance,

In theory, yes.

In practice, characters will keep attacking and fighting until they're in the negatives. That's just the way the game goes.

As I said, I like Buffy. Actually, I generally like a lot of action sci-fi shows. And one thing that those shows have in common is the "Shoot, get him an icepack. He's gonna have a headache" mentality that comes along with being knocked out. If someone can be taken to negative hit points, and then treated with first-aid equipment and be back at their maximum hit points a few days later, that doesn't scream "Near Death Injury" to me. That says "He'll be fine"-type injury.

For example, Xander getting slammed against the wall by some big honking demon. The SG-1 team taking go'auld staff weapon blasts as glancing flesh wounds on the shoulder and going down from shock and pain. John Chrichton getting whacked by yet another giant muppet alien. They always wake up with headaches or sore shoulders, and they groan and curse, and really, they're always fine later. I like the -1 system for that.

What I don't like is so little room between "he'll have a headache later" and death. I understand why they did it -- it keeps the game going quickly -- but I don't love it. Giving people more hit points won't fix that, because then everyone will just be fine longer -- and when they do hit the negatives, even if I gave them 30 more hit points, they'd still be in the same boat -- which is to say, 9 hit points difference between "he'll have a headache later" and death. Adding another 10 hit points -- and having those next 10 add the potential for long-term injuries of varying degrees of ickiness -- keeps the characters alive without making unconsciousness a harmless, toothless affair.

I can also imagine the other reason that the designers did things the way that they did. In games with magical healing, there's no need to get really in-depth about broken bones or concussions, because that damage is gonna get healed quickly anyway. I have no problem with that -- putting it in the core rules would be an unnecessary complication. The game for which I'm thinking of adding additional stabilization points would be primarily non-magical, with no spellcasting PCs and no coming back from the dead (ie, if you die, either roll up a new character or declare that your PC had a long-lost twin). And because my games are pretty plot-driven, and the plots are character-driven, I'd rather not go through a bunch of character changes if I can avoid it. I usually model off of TV series, and given how much fan angst there was over the loss of Daniel Jackson, Tara, and Zhaan, I'd rather keep my players' characters around unless a) They do something REALLY stupid, b) The player leaves, or c) The player and I talk about it first for a long time and come up with a good, neat way for that character to exit. I try not to artificially keep my PCs alive, but giving them more hit points, with interesting and potentially unpleasant effects, adds another layer that might be fun in a non-magical campaign.

 

[aurance]

What I don't like is so little room between "he'll have a headache later" and death. I understand why they did it -- it keeps the game going quickly -- but I don't love it.

Forgive me if I misunderstand this... But in your system, there's exactly the same amount of room between "headache" and death as in core d20 Modern. Your system has -10 to -19, wheras Core has -1 to -9. So what's the change? Also, there's no game effect for PCs between positive hp and 0 to -9 hp? Isn't that the same as just adding 10 hp?

If your PCs just keep fighting until they hit their negatives, they're being extremely and unrealistically fool-hardy. (This would qualify for me as "a) They do something REALLY stupid".) I mean, if they see that their hp are in the single digits most sensible PCs would take stock of their situation and run. They should *know* that unconsciousness and/or trauma is right around the corner and not keep fighting.

If your goal is to make lower level PCs tougher, just give them 10 extra hp. If you want to keep the flavor of near-death trauma, institute your system of possible permanent injury upon hitting -1 to -9 hp (which is quite nice, btw). But it makes little sense for X hp to -10 hp to represent one state, instead of just X+10 hp to 0.

-A

 

[Spatula]

Forgive me if I misunderstand this... But in your system, there's exactly the same amount of room between "headache" and death as in core d20 Modern. Your system has -10 to -19, wheras Core has -1 to -9. So what's the change? Also, there's no game effect for PCs between positive hp and 0 to -9 hp? Isn't that the same as just adding 10 hp?

Err... no. It says right in the first post, "Everything up to -10 is treated normally." The change is, you're not dead when you hit -10.

 

[takyris]

Oh, right, yeah. Must've been unclear in my original post.

In my version:

At Positive hit points, you're fine.

At 0 hit points, you're staggered (like in book)

At -1 to -9 hit points, you're down & dying (as per the d20 Modern core rulebook). You're unconscious, unless you're a Tough Hero with the Remain Conscious feat, and you're losing a hit point each round, and making the Fortitude saves, and so on. It's exactly like being down & dying in normal rules. Exactly.

At -10 to -19 hit points, the same mechanic applies. The only difference is that there's a chance you'll have permanent damage.

So yeah, if you thought that I was going to have people be conscious at -6 hit points or something, yeah, that'd be weird. But that's not what I was thinking.

 

[aurance]

Ohhhh.

I interpreted "Everything up to -10 is treated normally" combined with the flavor text to mean that up to -10 = fully functional.

Makes much more sense now. Sorry, my bad!

-A

 

[adkraman]

House dying rules

The rule variant we played with, and I think it worked well, is allowing players to spend an action point to get 1d6 hit points back if they droped bellow -10. They would have to say how many they were spending before they rolled and could not rise above -1. This gave a player cost to the extra room. It also makes sense under the concept of hero points in that hero's have a higher threshold then ordinaries to taking large amounts of damage.