New Article: Death and Dying

[Raith5]

In any heroic narrative, the heroes of the story operate under "completely different rules" than the rest of the characters in it. If you're not comfortable with that, may I suggest that a different rules system, such as Warhammer, might be more to your taste.

I don't understand the theory that says "I only want my character to be a hero (i.e. exceptionally lucky) if I the player am also lucky." Bob the brute could survive the fall if he rolls low on his hit point damage. With Mike the PC, we just have rules that give him a certain amount of "script immunity" so that the player doesn't have to rely entirely on luck for his character's survival.?"

Well said. But while I appreciate what you are saying, I cant help but fear the "different rules" are too advantageous to the PC hero and actually (in a way) demean what it means to be a hero.

I would rather special rules (via feats or action points for example) that enable choices. Advantages for heroes to do extra crit dam with magic weapons or have extra benefits when below 0, make the game easier for PCs but dont actually allow heroic choices to me made.

We wont know till all the rules are known but I do have a small fear that the designers may have gone to far on these types of rules.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

You know, the easy way to do this is to just add a number of extra HP equal to the player's Fortitude defense and state that players can only make one standard action at a -5 or 1/2 movement until they reach 0 (and are therefore dead).

If you use the 4th edition Fortitude defense, it continually rises as you level (therefore, you gain more "dying" HP and can sustain longer periods of battle).

Super simple and eliminates the need for negative HP.

 

[Darkwolf71]

Clint Eastwood gets nearly beaten to death in A Fistfull of Dollars, but recovers enough to drag himself away. He heals up in a mine and comes back to kill everyone....

Pretty big difference from what we're seeing here.

 

[Gundark]

There is a problem here. The character is stabilized, but what does that means? Is he conscious or not? Being stabilized prevents you from rolling a 20 and get 1/4 hit pts!

Maybe when you're stabilized you get 1/4 of your HP

 

[Corinth]

The designers had a chance to remove one of the genuine flaws of 3.X, but instead they had to compound the error instead with this lame rule. Such epic failures of judgment are not allowed to go by without vigorous criticism and demands for rectification.

If it truly was the goal of the 4.0 team to simplify the rules to make them easier to run, then the first thing you is build an elegant and simple ruleset that all players adhere to; this rule regarding death and dying does neither, as it makes PCs into sanctioned cheaters through having separate standards from NPCs and it does so through a far more complicated Death's Door rule than all previous editions. Far, far better to make the rule of "0 HP = Dead" universally applied and require incapacitation to require rolls against Fortitude Defenses.

 

[Warbringer]

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?"

DnD already has a mechanic for that. Also, there is the whole mysticism that Arwen Undómiel reaches out and brings him back..

But, that said, there is a wonderful opportunity for subplots where some 'power' has taken an interest in the hero... in the immortal words of Juba as he brings Maximus Decimus Meridius back from the brink "you will meet them again, but not yet..."

 

[JDJblatherings]

Can't be. That means that dying would actually be far more infrequent than in the current system. Stating simply "no change" is really precise: you don't get better this time around, but you also don't get worse. It's not stabilized, it's just delaying the (potentially) inevitable. Otherwise, there's no real point to the "three strikes, you're dead" mechanic, as more often than not, you'll get one 10-19 before you get 3 1-9s.

I'm reasonbly certain that the only "stabilize" in this system is the Nat 20 "I think I'll go for a walk!" result. This certainly explains the actions of the Paladin in the last Biggie Smalls playtest report as he kept bouncing back up after the bugbears smacked him on the bean.

I figured it meant 1 hp a round to start, 1-10 bleedign at the rate set, 11-18 bleed 1 hp more a round, 19-20 snap out of it.

so the 1st roll of 11-18 you are now bleeding 2hp a round, 2nd roll of 11-18 you are now bleeding 3hp a round, 3rd roll...gack, sputter, rattle..dead.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You can still do that, though, at the DM's discretion. What this means is you don't have to keep track of that stuff for J. Random Orc. And, for god's sake, people, if the PC's say, "Hey, is there one we could heal up and interrogate?"

Just say yes! So what if he hit 0 hit points? You're only not bothering with the -HP stuff because it's a headache, not because J. Random Orc doesn't take some time before he bleeds out.

Just say yes, for chrissakes...

I think we can characterize it as "abusive" if the players demand that every last orc, goblin, and grick is tracked to -10 with stabilization rolls for all. It's a pain in the butt, and who cares anyway? If it matters that an NPC might or might not survive, by all means, roll to stabilize every round. Otherwise, there's no point.

...three days later, goblin #34 woke up with 1 HP. He swore revenge, tracked down the PCs, and was killed in one round because they had gained six levels in the intervening time period.

Woo yeah!

 

[kennew142]

Alternative: I liked 1e's approach; a PC reduced to negative hp is incapacitated for a week, no matter how many cure lights he gets.

Are you serious? The -10 rule wasn't one of the cool things about 3.5. It was a holdover from 1E that didn't work very well in 3E. In 1E, the -10 threshold almost always meant something, because even the more powerful monsters often didn't hit for very much damage in a swing. But in 3E, the -10 threshold basically didn't exist at high levels where monsters routinely do 30+ damage with a single attack.

It was definitely time for an overhaul.

I don't know where you guys got these rules. In 1e, 0 hp meant dead.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I think we can characterize it as "abusive" if the players demand that every last orc, goblin, and grick is tracked to -10 with stabilization rolls for all. It's a pain in the butt, and who cares anyway? If it matters that an NPC might or might not survive, by all means, roll to stabilize every round. Otherwise, there's no point.

Abusive to the DM, maybe.