New Article: Death and Dying

[Voss]

Aragorn going over a cliff in The Two Towers anyone? I know it wasn't in the books, but it makes for great drama in the film version. Did you find his survival "unrealistic?"

yes. Yes I did. Unrealistic and the worst sort of melodramatic palp. One of several inserted scenes in that script that actually worked against the grain of the story.

But back to D&D. A group RPG isn't the same as a movie. Different requirements and very different elements make it 'good'. Scripted hack melodrama isn't one of those things.


@phobos- here's the thing. By default, you can't interrogate your defeated enemies now. They're dead. Automagically dead. No prisoners, no interrogation, no trying to convince them to help you or change sides. Just dead. That helps contributes to the cardboard cutout feel.
Again, its failing to be believable.

This actually happened in one of Chris Perkins' games. The party was trapped in a room, snakes and nagas and poison everywhere, oh my! Everyone was down to single digit hit points and taking ongoing damage. My warlord's turn came up, she took damage and fell over...and I rolled a 20 on the saving throw. That was just enough to stand rearguard as the rest of the party got the doors open and escaped. If I hadn't rolled that 20, the others wouldn't have been able to work on the door and I'm fairly sure we would have had more than one casualty. So yeah, it was wicked cool gnarly.

Ouch. Between the automatic poison damage and the '20 saved us all', this sounds more bad than good. I'd much rather see something about 'So and so's ability or clever idea saved us all' than 'a single die roll determined our fate'.

 

[frankthedm]

First part of 4E I utterly hate. Luck, heroics, daring-do is all fine when someone is up and about dodging blows, but when someone goes down, all they are is soft yielding tissue as entitled to death as any other member of their race. It even goes against all of wotc claims of what a 4E character’s HP represents.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

hmmh the death at -10 hp was a houserule in ADnD introduced in some adventrures IIRC... (one of them is Night Below... right here by my side) called hover at deaths door.

As I read it, there is absolutely no rule which states, a NPC is always dead at 0 hp. It is: An NPC is usually dead at 0 hp if he is of no importance. As already said: Random ORC who knows where the hidden camp is is actually important.

But a clever party should try different tricks to get him alive instead of: "lets hack on all enemies and look who survives".
If the PCs are attacked, and they suspect something/one behind it, they should have a better plan to make prisoners. (Spells/sap/net)

 

[Lackhand]

Toryx: I'm not sure I get your point, either.

The gap for me is between "I'm dead at 0 hp" and "I've got no tactics or personality". I really don't see how you're getting from one to the other at all.

I appreciate your complaint that telling the DM "use the PC death mechanics when you feel like it!" doesn't do a lot for the game. But I'm pretty sure it's the best of all possible worlds:

* Use this mechanic always! This leads to a throat slitting game, where it's usually better to slit a foe's throat, or else you wouldn't have knocked them down in the first place. There are, of course, exceptions; there are also exceptions to those exceptions, and under the default assumption, making Heroes into Throatslitters is not cool. Besides, it means the DM has to keep track of enemies of which only 1 in 20 will 'matter' again.

* Use this mechanic never! Well, some DMs will complain, since it gives a lot of boost to the PCs, destroys a lot of verisimilitude, and makes it so that returning villains don't. If there's a healer in the fight, he can't make his friends bounce back up, but the players can. I don't think that that's so bad. As long as the healer reaches his friends before 3 rounds have passed, they're not dead yet. Just assume they always fail. Voila.

* Use this mechanic when appropriate! Sure, you need a guide for what 'appropriate' means, but it's the best of all possible worlds; most NPCs kick the bucket easily, when you care about it, they don't. Like magic!

 

[Stormtalon]

I like the mechanic, myself, and am planning on instituting the "play it now" next time I DM, but my snarky, silly side has this observation....

Sure as heck sounds like a Chumbawamba song....

 

[Professor Phobos]

@phobos- here's the thing. By default, you can't interrogate your defeated enemies now. They're dead. Automagically dead. No prisoners, no interrogation, no trying to convince them to help you or change sides. Just dead. That helps contributes to the cardboard cutout feel.
Again, its failing to be believable.

No, no they're not. They're dead only if no one wants to interrogate one, at which point- boom! Hey look, there's an Orc over there still bleeding out! His name is Dorngan! He's only here in human lands to search for his sister, lost in an attack on an orc colony...

Ten seconds ago he was J. Random Orc 15. And if no one had ever bothered to look into him more deeply, that's how he would have stayed. Just because mooks are abstract doesn't mean they stay that way.

Just say yes. DM's discretion is exactly for this sort of thing. The rules default to abstraction designed for ease-of-play. If the situation requires that abstraction be provisionally extrapolated to something more detailed, just do it.

It's not hard. It'll make your game a thousand times better. On another thread there are people talking about how there are no rules in 3e for blocking an attack with a grabbed opponent. This implies that they think 3e can not already handle this situation. That terrifies me. Of course it can! You have a Strength attribute, right? Rules for grappling? What more do you need?

 

[Lizard]

I like the mechanic, myself, and am planning on instituting the "play it now" next time I DM, but my snarky, silly side has this observation....

Sure as heck sounds like a Chumbawamba song....

We do that song in our 3e game, where there is a constant "Drop to -5...get zapped with a heal..." routine.

 

[rkanodia]

Because then you could easily end up with a situation where it's better to be unconscious than conscious when you're hit for a large amount of damage.

I do see the point that, under the system I had proposed, a character would rather take three small hits, go unconscious, and then take a big hit, than to take the big hit, go unconscious, and then take three small hits. It is a problem. But any system is going to have weaknesses. For instance, imagine a fight with a big ogre brute and then a bunch of kobold minions. The ogre lands a big hit, knocking the fighter down but only a little bit into the negatives. Now, it's the cleric's turn. Under the system proposed in the article, the fighter would prefer it if the cleric would wait, and let the kobolds spend their turn kicking him while he's down, and then cast a healing spell, since he can easily 'soak up' the negative hit point damage which will suddenly vanish when he gets the healing spell. That doesn't seem right to me.

I'm not saying that my proposal would be better in all situations. I just think that the advantages and disadvantages are kind of a wash, so you might as well go for the one with less bookkeeping.

Negative Hit Points: Essentially, having these allows for the case where one massive blow can kill someone outright. Even if its a small chance. (Can a 15th level brute do 65+ points of damage on a crit, I am guessing they could). I am also wondering about "kicking the corpse": if the monster takes a few stabs at the down charecter, then negative HPs accounts for it.

Though, I am still not 100% convinced they are needed.

'Massive blow -> instant death' could be done without recording negative hitpoints. For instance, if the blow that drops the player reduces him to less than -1/2 of his max HP, he dies outright; otherwise, he goes to zero. Likewise, a blow that hits him for 1/2 of his max HP when he is already down kills him outright; otherwise, it adds an extra 'save versus death'.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

i myself do not like this i find the whole -87 hp bit just a little to much then im like-25 or 30 50 or 100 even and 1d8 heal will get me right back up and going ......i have a system to play super heros in. i do not need another.

 

[LostSoul]

No, no they're not. They're dead only if no one wants to interrogate one, at which point- boom! Hey look, there's an Orc over there still bleeding out! His name is Dorngan! He's only here in human lands to search for his sister, lost in an attack on an orc colony...

Another way to do it - the PCs make a Heal check to see if they can stabilize one of the orcs, and if not, they're all dead.