One step closer to death

[Blue]

I'm idly considering a house rule for an upcoming campaign, specifically to put a little more tension on the table. It's got two parts:

1. Once you fail a death saving throw after being knocked unconscious, you do not awaken until after a short rest, even when healed.
2. Failed death saves do not reset until after an extended rest.

The first has me worried a bit - no player likes to sit idle. But I wanted some detriment to going under, not Weeble heroes. The PCs have at least a full round to get some healing before the downed PC even need to make a death save (unless they go down on their round). Actually, it'll usually reduce a time a player is inactive because the leader knows that they need to hurry and get someone up otherwise risk being without them for the whole encounter.

Second part is a bit of reinforcement for the first - death is scary and possible. But since I expect less waiting from leaders on healing due to the first part, I expect it to be more psychological than play-effecting.

One concern I have is if the party only has a single source of healing and that PC goes down, things could go south quick, which is not my intention.

Another concern is that it will encourage the 15 minute adventuring day if they want to stop as soon as anyone fails a death save.

Thoughts? How to make fear-of-death more prevalent without making actual death happen more often? Without changing basic dynamics (so no long-term wounds or things of that nature).

(Notes: I'd need to muck with it to allow various Epic Desitinies to work. I though making Dailies always wake, but that made the Paladin lay-on-hands very powerful. Revenant abilities and some PP also need to be addressed. Known and acknowledged.)

 

[shamsael]

1. Once you fail a death saving throw after being knocked unconscious, you do not awaken until after a short rest, even when healed.
2. Failed death saves do not reset until after an extended rest.

The current rules already require a short rest to wipe off your failed death saves. I thought that was harsh enough as it was.

 

[S'mon]

The current rules already require a short rest to wipe off your failed death saves. I thought that was harsh enough as it was.

I thought they already require an Extended rest to wipe off failed death saves?

Check out my Raise Dying rules I've just posted in this forum. They should I think greatly increase fear of death with relatively little mechanical impact on play. I might bring back Raise Dead as an Epic-Tier ritual.

 

[the Jester]

You are absolutely going to encourage 15-minute adventuring day with the "failed death saves don't reset w/o an extended rest".

Also, any of your players who fail a death save might as well wander off and play Nintendo or something.

Yeah, I don't like either of those ideas. The best way to ensure a "fear of death" is to show that you're not afraid to let pcs die, that you won't fudge to save them. If you want the players to fear death, it has to truly be possible- if you're a "never kill 'em" dm it will never work, no matter what you do.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'd advise against any rule that encourages a player to give up and go home when he goes down.

How about this:
once you fail a death save, if you are healed again, you need to succeed on a save to regain consciousness.

 

[TarionzCousin]

How about this:

For each failed Death Save before being revived, you must do one of the following:

1. Buy the DM a snack--or get him/her one from the kitchen
2. Give the DM a shoulder rub.
3. Refresh everyone's drinks.
4. Stay late to help clean up after the game session.

 

[nnms]

I've run games where death saves only reset at extended rests. It was alright and it didn't really have the PCs turtling, mostly because I almost always structure things so they can't just take as much time as they want.

Lately I've been trying to get rid of extended rests as much as possible. I've switched daily recharges over to a 5 6 recharge roll at the beginning of encounters. I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do about healing surges or death saves and am running them as is.

 

[Arnold1]

How about this:

For each failed Death Save before being revived, you must do one of the following:

1. Buy the DM a snack--or get him/her one from the kitchen
2. Give the DM a shoulder rub.
3. Refresh everyone's drinks.
4. Stay late to help clean up after the game session.

This is cool and if you have some more please share with us.

 

[Zinovia]

Lately I've been trying to get rid of extended rests as much as possible. I've switched daily recharges over to a 5 6 recharge roll at the beginning of encounters. I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do about healing surges or death saves and am running them as is.

How is that working out for you? A 5 6 seems pretty generous, but I suppose it depends on the circumstances. One of my players is always commenting on how unfair it is that monsters get recharge rolls for their cool powers while PCs don't.

 

[nnms]

How is that working out for you? A 5 6 seems pretty generous, but I suppose it depends on the circumstances. One of my players is always commenting on how unfair it is that monsters get recharge rolls for their cool powers while PCs don't.

So far it's working out fine. People are using their dailies often because they can only get the most possible uses out of them by using them.

I did the math on recharge 5 6 per encounter and it does result in the use of dailies that is higher than the assumed 4 encounters per extended rest. I run pretty challenging multi-faceted encounters (where the monsters aren't the only threat and defeating them is not necessarily the only goal), so perhaps I've just scaled up the difficulty to match the higher refresh rate.

You could always go with a 7,8 on a d8 (or a 4 on a d4). 6 on a d6 is too low, even if 5 6 has a refresh rate that's slightly too high.

I still have healing surges tied to extended rests but only allow one or two healing surges to be regained if they rest outside of a truly safe and comfortable area.

The problem with attaching healing surges to recharge with encounters is that if the refresh rate is too high, the PCs are functionally invincible and can carry on forever. If the rate is too low, it's a death spiral. And if the refresh rate is identical to the expenditure rate, you may as well not have them at all and just go with Gamma World's healing back to full at the end of every fight.

I think the key might be to attach healing surges to the pacing mechanic of leveling. I'm not sure exactly how to do this yet, but if you had X number of healing surges to last you until you leveled up, that could be one way of doing away with extended rests. The problem here is that the potential is there to really amp up the difficulty. Fail to get to your next level before you run out of surges? Looks like you'll likely die.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

So once during your current level you can recharge back to full healing surges as part of a short rest. When you level up you recharge back to full healing surges.

I'm not overjoyed with such a solution though

I just think "rest and get all your power back" might be a hold over from previous editions that seems to get in the way more than it helps.

Extended rests are also used for diseases, so that's another thing that needs addressing.