New Article: Death and Dying

[HeinorNY]

5) A dying character who’s been stabilized (via the Heal skill) doesn’t roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.

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!

 

[Lizard]

Which are ripe for feats and class abilities to modify...


The "Wake up with 1/4 HPs" thing strikes me as a cinematic recovery, where the hero suddenly wakes up after a drubbing, scowls and immediately proceeds to kick everyone's ass.

I keep thinking of Ahr-nuld in Terminator II.

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

Although if you get a bonus to Saves (which I imagine are rare, but extremely significant when they show up), that makes a character much tougher.

Hey, here's an idea. What if there are feats that provide you with bonuses to saves, but only against certain things? Like a Dwarven racial feat that provides a +2 bonus to saves to recover from poison, or a Hard to Kill feat that gives you a +2 bonus on saves to stabilize.

Man. I was a little wary of the new save mechanic at first, but I'm really liking it the more I think about it.

this would make for very different characters
you have the standard defense and then a generic Luck roll that you can "personalize" with the right feat
I think you got it

 

[Dausuul]

That seems pretty much like the story of our 3.5 dark elf rogue. For a while, she had so few points - and our favored soul was so good at healing - that she'd be at full, take one round's worth of attacks and get knocked out, then get healed back to up near full (plus temp HP).

I played in a really high-level game once in which the party's ranger/scout died twice in the course of a single battle, and ended the fight at full hit points.

3.5E combat gets pretty wacky at level 18+...

 

[Peter LaCara]

The one thing I really don't like about this rule is that it doesn't seem to matter how far below 0 HP you are; you have the same chance of dying regardless. This could lead to silly situations like a character getting stabbed in the toe by a halfling and dying three rounds later, while a character whose skull was bashed in by a titan pops back up the next round and goes on fighting.

Still, on balance, I think it's a good rule. I just hope those corner cases don't happen very often.

This depends entirely on how you visualize HP. A 2 hp attack from a halfling is not a stab in the toe if the fighter only has 1 hp left. That's the halfling shanking the fighter in the gut as he's still dazed and exhausted from parrying that ogre's massive club attack (that really just did 30 damage to him). ANY hit that drops a PC to zero should be described as potentially lethal regardless of if it does 1 damage or 100.

 

[BASHMAN]

The one thing I really don't like about this rule is that it doesn't seem to matter how far below 0 HP you are; you have the same chance of dying regardless. This could lead to silly situations like a character getting stabbed in the toe by a halfling and dying three rounds later, while a character whose skull was bashed in by a titan pops back up the next round and goes on fighting.

Still, on balance, I think it's a good rule. I just hope those corner cases don't happen very often.

An easy way to handle this would be to, despite the damage roll, role-play any attack that takes someone to negative HP to be of equal seriousness. The halfling didn't stab your toe-- they made a pinhole in a major arterie. The titan didn't bash-in your skull (that would be if you died) he bashed in some ribs instead... You may have punctured a lung (and then die) or it may have looked worse than it was (if you get up). Same goes for the arterial halfling strike-- you bled out & died, or the wound clotted & closed itself...

 

[Jedi_Solo]

The "Wake up with 1/4 HPs" thing strikes me as a cinematic recovery, where the hero suddenly wakes up after a drubbing, scowls and immediately proceeds to kick everyone's ass.

And that is exactly how I want it.

The 'cinematic' part.

Well... I want my PC to kick ass as well.

So yeah... that is exactly how I want it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

From what we've seen, 4e is big on DOTs and area effects. This means your corpse will keep taking damage round after round, more so than in 3e -- so you may well burn through that reserve before you've hit '3 strikes'.

Hmmm. I'm not sure keeping track really adds anything, though. The damage will ensure you're not getting stabilized, or if you are, you're keeping going back to dying, and three strikes will get you in six rounds, usually. I guess it means if you keel over right in front of the angry dragon, you're in even more trouble, but meh, again, not sure if that ADDS to the game.

 

[Sir Brennen]

The "Wake up with 1/4 HPs" thing strikes me as a cinematic recovery, where the hero suddenly wakes up after a drubbing, scowls and immediately proceeds to kick everyone's ass.

At least at 1/4 hit points, the character is still bloodied (do we know if there are any penalties associated with that particular condition?)

 

[Sitara]

Hoo boy.

I am NOT thrilled. I was hoping negative hp's, a silly and annoying subsytemic mechanic would be done with now that they had 'second wind', and since SAGA did away with it.

Not good. Though I do like the play 4e now side bar! Hope to see these in every article now.