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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 5111666" data-attributes="member: 63">Last night an assassin slit the throat of a sleeping PC, who survived. However, the group felt it was a little silly that, even with healing magic, he should be good to go with a few hours rest. So I've devised this. How does it sound?Dying and Lingering WoundsNormally when you fail 3 death saves, you die, and an extended rest gets you right as rain. I don't want you to get right as rain so fast. You get four steps of Dying. So each turn when you're at or below 0 hp and not stabilized, you make a death save, and if you fail, you progress one step. Then every time you take an extended rest, you have to make an Endurance check (DC varies) to improve one step. Or if you're getting bed rest, someone else can make a Heal check in place of your Endurance check.At step one, you have one fewer maximum healing surge at the start of the day. DC 15 to improve.At step two, you have two fewer healing surges, you can't heal above your bloodied value. DC 20 to improve.Step three, you have four fewer surges, and your max hit points are equal to your healing surge value. And if you get to this point, you're almost definitely going to have a serious injury like a broken limb or a cut that leaves a nasty scar. These depend on the nature of the attack that got you at this point. DC 25 to improve.Step four, you're dead.  A coup de grace of any variety drops you to 0 hit points, then does damage. If you're not already dead from being at negative bloodied, you have to make two death saving throws. If the attack does damage equal to your healing surge value, it forces another two death saving throws. (None of these death saves lets you spend a healing surge on a natural 20.)After this, since you're below 0 hit points, you have to make further death saves each round until someone can come by and rescue you. These, however, do give you the potential to roll a 20 and struggle back so you can defend yourself.So a typical pissed off peasant with a knife who slits your throat only drops you to -6 hp, which just forces you to make two death saves. At worst you've still got about two rounds to live. If you're lucky, you might cling to life for a few rounds, maybe even come back. (If you fail neither of the two death saves, that represents the killer doing a crappy job on the initial stab. But if you don't have any friends around, nothing's stopping the assassin from couping your unconscious ass again in the next round.)If an ogre with an axe tried to chop off the sleeping wizard's head, he'd do something like 22 damage, which would just kill our wizard outright I believe. Against our paladin and his 70-odd hit points, that would force four death saves. That might kill him, or maybe the axe only clove through the side of his neck, giving him a chance to come to and save himself. You could also use rituals like Remove Affliction to reduce the Dying Step by one.How does that sound?</blockquote>

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