D&D 5E My biggest gripe with 5e design

[jayoungr]

So I'm confused. When you drop to 0 hp, do you have a 40% or a 10% chance of dying, assuming you're just making straight rolls with no further effects?

Also, would shifting the number needed for success from 10 to 11 make the odds 50-50?

 

[Ashrym]

So I'm confused. When you drop to 0 hp, do you have a 40% or a 10% chance of dying, assuming you're just making straight rolls with no further effects?

Also, would shifting the number needed for success from 10 to 11 make the odds 50-50?

Those percentages look like they are consecutive fails instead of total fails to get ~11%. I didn't check the math but I'm more inclined to go with ~40% chance of failing 3 checks not in a row.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why do all that if you don't give the final result of death saves? I don't know if your set-up will work or not, but for anyone who wants to know the percentages they are (close to what @Ruin Explorer said):

DEATH: 11.683375%
LIVE: 88.316625%

So, @jayoungr , unfortunately is is not even close to 50-50.

This seems wrong at fitst glance, so I did math.

Crit Failure (CF): 5%
Failure (F): 45%
Success (S): 50%
Crit Success (CS): 5%

Consider only cases where you die:
Rnd 1 - no path to death -- 0%

Rnd 2:
CF×F -- this can happen 2 ways, as CF - F and F - CF. Chance od death: 4.5%

Rnd 3:
CF×F×S -- 4 cases
3F-- 1 case
Chance: 13.6%

Rnd 4:
CF×F×2F - 4 cases
S×3F- 3 cases
Death: 15.9%

Rnd 5:
2S×3F - 6 cases
Death: 13.7%

Round by round the chance if death is higher than what you figured. Cumulative chance is 43.1%, not close to 10%.

Edit: it's slightly lower because I didn't account for a round 1 crit success. Ballpark is 95% of the cumulative or 41%

 

[jayoungr]

Those percentages look like they are consecutive fails instead of total fails to get ~11%.

That makes much more sense.

 

[NotAYakk]

So I'm confused. When you drop to 0 hp, do you have a 40% or a 10% chance of dying, assuming you're just making straight rolls with no further effects?

You have a 40% chance of dying, a 18% chance of getting up within a few rounds, and a 42% chance of stabilizing and waking up a long time later (without intervention).

Also, would shifting the number needed for success from 10 to 11 make the odds 50-50?

No, there are 3 possibilities, it cannot be 50-50.

Even if you group "wake yourself up" with "stabilize", it won't be 50-50 because the situation remains slightly asymmetrical (1s don't instant die, while 20s instant recover). But it would be close.

 

[Lanefan]

This seems wrong at fitst glance, so I did math.

Crit Failure (CF): 5%
Failure (F): 45%
Success (S): 50%
Crit Success (CS): 5%

Sorry, but this also seems wrong at first glance as the above percentages add up to 105. You've given ordinary failure 5% too much.

Crit fail = 1 thus one side of the d20 thus 5%
Fail = 2 to 9 thus 8 sides of the d20 thus 40%
Success = 10 to 19 thus 10 sides of the d20 thus 50%
Crit success = 20 thus 1 side of the d20 thus 5%

The chance of dying is therefore a bit lower overall than your analysis suggests (though I don't know the math required to figure out what it actually is).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sorry, but this also seems wrong at first glance as the above percentages add up to 105. You've given ordinary failure 5% too much.

Crit fail = 1 thus one side of the d20 thus 5%
Fail = 2 to 9 thus 8 sides of the d20 thus 40%
Success = 10 to 19 thus 10 sides of the d20 thus 50%
Crit success = 20 thus 1 side of the d20 thus 5%

The chance of dying is therefore a bit lower overall than your analysis suggests (though I don't know the math required to figure out what it actually is).

You're right, typo. I used 40 and 45 for tge math. Good catch.

 

[DND_Reborn]

My two gripes with 5e are 1) the death issue; I feel like it is too easy for PCs to stay alive. I would prefer that when you hit 0 hit points, you have X rounds and then you're dead. As it is, the odds are that you are going to stabilize without help.

Hey @Jd Smith1 . So, a variant for death saves is to change the DC to 15 instead of 10. This decreases the chance to self-stabilize from about 60% to only 25% or so. You can further modify it to use the CON modifier to the roll. After all, someone with a CON 20 would logically be in better physical shape than someone with a CON 6 or so and have a better chance to stabilize. FWIW, a CON 20 with the +5 mod adjusting the roll would go back to the normal 60% stabilize rate.

Here's the table showing the percentage based on a CON mod applied to the DC 15 idea:

I'll probably suggest adopting this at our own table. Now, the odds you'll stabilize without help is only better than 50/50 if you have a CON 18 or better.