New Article: Death and Dying

[Lonely Tylenol]

I for one have never been disappointed to feed a mortally wounded character a potion of cure light wounds, and find that they don't immediately leap to thier feet. I always figured that they were for curing light wounds.

You know what I always thought was funny about cure light wounds? It doesn't.

You're a 2nd level fighter. You are fighting another 2nd level fighter. You are stabbed in the arm by a sword. You sustain a light (5 hp) wound. You drink your CLW potion and get back 5 hp.

You're a 20th level fighter. You are fighting another 20th level fighter. You are stabbed in the arm by a sword. You sustain a light (40 hp) wound. You drink your CLW potion and get back 5 hp.

The wound is identical. The magnitude of total HP is (arguably, although I pulled the numbers out of my butt) identical. Assuming a character's HP represents their ability to soak/avoid damage, they should be injured to a similar degree. The stronger you are, the better at avoiding damage you are, the tougher you are, the less you benefit from healing magic.

 

[Primal]

Except that your way isn't much fun. If I get a nasty hit and go down, then spend the next 10 minutes sitting there while everyone else fights, I'm left with… well, nothing. Besides, what would be the alternative? No healing until combat is over?

But there will be "healing flowing from the Leader-types to their allies every round". And we've also seen playtest reports mentioning Clerics being able to heal their allies as they cause damage in combat. I also wonder if it becomes a trend to viciously beat up your fallen (Dying) buddy after combat? (I gathered that this would also "trigger" a roll?)

My biggest problem with this sort of "miraculous recovery system" is that while it's probably much more "fun", it may be an overkill as they've already increased HPs (for the PCs) and toned down Crits and damage/round-potential in the game. It may also have an impact on the storytelling:

DM: "So the Pit Fiend caused you 75 points of damage, dropping you to -50? Alright, so you've got one round left to live, correct? Sheesh... alright, he shattered your whole ribcage with the last mighty blow and your feel your innards being ruptured as you fall down, vomiting blood."
Player: "Uh-oh! Damn, we're out of healing! Get me rezzed as soon as you can!"
* Next Round*
Player: "Holy moley! I rolled a Natural 20! I get better! My ribcage and my innards are mystically healed!"
DM: "Uh... erm... ah, let's just say that it was a group hallucination, shall we? So you're back in the fight and the blow just knocked you out.... or something."

I guess it's a lot safer to drop all combat descriptions in 4E and just stick to "You fall down -- let's see whether you get up or not"-type of comments, hey?

 

[Grog]

It was not in 1e in any of the rule books. I don't think it was in 2e either. It sounds very much like a house rule.

No, it was definitely in 2E (EDIT: and according to John Snow, it was in the 1E DMG). You may be thinking of BECMI, where characters did die at 0HP.

 

[Grog]

You know what I always thought was funny about cure light wounds? It doesn't.

True, there was always that quirk to the D&D rules. A 1st level character could be opened top to tails, and a Cure Light Wounds spell would fix him completely. But a 10th level character could just have a few bruises, and that same spell wouldn't even fix them all.

I guess you're always going to end up with these sorts of issues when designing an abstract system.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

" If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he returns to 0 hp before any healing is applied."

I hate this kind of rule, it's the same thinking that gave us 3.5e's "save every round to break Hold Person". It gives the enemy a huge incentive to finish off dying PCs before they pop back into the fight, or the GM has to play the enemy as idiots.

Except that there are 3 or 4 other PCs present, each capable of sending the enemy to the big dirtnap, who would make much better targets than the guy with a 5% chance per round of getting sort of better, and a 50% chance per round of getting worse.

Monsters should finish off the fallen after they drop the ones who are trying to stab them. Otherwise, they really are acting like idiots.

 

[Peter LaCara]

You know what I always thought was funny about cure light wounds? It doesn't.

You're a 2nd level fighter. You are fighting another 2nd level fighter. You are stabbed in the arm by a sword. You sustain a light (5 hp) wound. You drink your CLW potion and get back 5 hp.

You're a 20th level fighter. You are fighting another 20th level fighter. You are stabbed in the arm by a sword. You sustain a light (40 hp) wound. You drink your CLW potion and get back 5 hp.

The wound is identical. The magnitude of total HP is (arguably, although I pulled the numbers out of my butt) identical. Assuming a character's HP represents their ability to soak/avoid damage, they should be injured to a similar degree. The stronger you are, the better at avoiding damage you are, the tougher you are, the less you benefit from healing magic.

Yeah, except we don't know how things like potions of healing work yet. Maybe a potion doesn't give back 5 hp at 20th level, but gives you a healing surge which restores a certain percentage of your hp.

 

[JohnSnow]

No, it was definitely in 2E (EDIT: and according to John Snow, it was in the 1E DMG). You may be thinking of BECMI, where characters did die at 0HP.

Since I didn't have my books handy, I did some quick perusing on the internet with a Google search. I turned up a legal document filed by TSR against Games Workshop that mentions negative hit points. Here's the relevant part of the text, which included page number citations:

The optional rule mechanic...is derived from a similar rule regarding negative hit points in the AD&D 1st ed. PHB (page 105); the AD&D 1st ed. DMG (pages 82 and 227); and the AD&D 1st ed. MM (page 11).

I haven't had time to check the page numbers myself, but I imagine they're accurate.

That proof enough?

 

[kennew142]

No, it was definitely in 2E (EDIT: and according to John Snow, it was in the 1E DMG). You may be thinking of BECMI, where characters did die at 0HP.

I would love to see a citation for it being in the 1e DMG. I ran the game for years. I never saw it. I never played BECMI until after 3e came out.

 

[Corinth]

Which many if not most gamers already did anyway. Did you seriously keep track of the negative hit points for every single orc the PCs dropped in a big fight, and make stabilization rolls for each of them every round? If so, I think you're in a pretty small minority.

Yes, I did, and not just in D&D. Every game I run, everyone plays the same game and adheres to the same rules. This makes system mastery easier to attain, since you need only do it once, and since I record what NPCs I create for later reference I never encounter the phantom menace of "excessive stats". (For everything else, there's print and online resources such as the d20 NPC Wiki that I can access as I require.) Once you know the patterns, everything becomes easy.

How is rolling a d20 every round more complicated than rolling a d10 every round?

Multiple results to track makes it more complicated; with 3.X, just one result it's binary- either you stabilize or you don't.

 

[JohnSnow]

I would love to see a citation for it being in the 1e DMG. I ran the game for years. I never saw it. I never played BECMI until after 3e came out.

Look up. Pull out your 1e books and check the page numbers.

If you don't have yours handy, I'll pull mine and give you the exact quote when I get home from work later.