Should D&D Have an Alternate Death Mechanic?

[RangerWickett]

You don't remove death. You just make random death of individual PCs rarer. D&D is a party-based game, so I'm perfectly fine with a character dying if the whole party is defeated, but I don't like it when one PC dies in combat, and the rest of the party survives. Killing someone should be a major event. You shouldn't just die when your HP reaches -10.

My suggestion: At negative hit points, you are dying, but conscious. You lose a hit point each round. If you take any action other than talking or moving at half speed, you drop immediately unconscious and lose a hit point. You lose your Dex-modifier to AC, but you aren't helpless.

When your negative hit points equal or exceed 10 + your level, you fall unconscious if you haven't already, and are at death's door. You count as helpless. If left untended, you don't die if you're a PC. If you're an NPC, you have to make a Fort save every hour (DC 15) or die.

Normal coup de grace attempts still take a full round, but if you're at death's door, you can be couped as a standard action. This must be deliberate, however. Area effect spells still deal damage, but don't kill you, nor to attacks that are not intended to kill you. You have to intentionally kill a PC for him to die.

This way, if a single PC drops, he's bad off, but as long as the party prevails, he can be brought back. This keeps the same level of danger and tension as normal D&D, but removes the ridiculousness of resurrection being an expected part of adventuring life. In normal D&D, you die easily, and get raised fairly easily. In this version, you are removed from combat just as easily, and you get back to the adventure a little more easily (it just requires healing magic, instead of resurrection), but you don't continually interrupt the game at early levels by having to replace PCs who die.

The GM has to want to kill your character. He can't do it accidentally any more. This way, mean GMs can kill PCs just as they always have, but GMs who want a cohesive story with consistent characters don't have to pull their punches.

 

[Quartz]

I allow spells like Raise Dead to be cast as a standard action immediately afterwards to counter spells like Slay Living.

 

[Mortellan]

This way, if a single PC drops, he's bad off, but as long as the party prevails, he can be brought back. This keeps the same level of danger and tension as normal D&D, but removes the ridiculousness of resurrection being an expected part of adventuring life. In normal D&D, you die easily, and get raised fairly easily. In this version, you are removed from combat just as easily, and you get back to the adventure a little more easily (it just requires healing magic, instead of resurrection), but you don't continually interrupt the game at early levels by having to replace PCs who die.

I'm in agreement there. I despise Res spells and 3.x's True Res is the worst of the lot, making high level PCs effectively unkillable.

 

[Destil]

I think I like the "save or dying" option best, along with getting rid of negative HP entirely. After you're knocked below 0 (by anything, attacks, save or die spells, disintegrate et cetera) you have 1d4 rounds (rolled in secret by the DM) before you're dead. 0 is stable but disabled, as always.

Benefits: Retains the "oh my god we need to help him NOW" urgency in combat over "We've got at least a good 6 rounds, he'll be fine."
Low level parties benefit a lot from the lack of negative HP, no more needing 3 cure light wounds to get your -9 HP barbarian back in the fight.
Keeps one roll from ending a PC but retains the usefulness of spells that get around HP.

Drawbacks: Makes magical healing a little bit better, thus making the "every group should have a cleric" rule a bit stronger.
No more reducing players to a pile of dust with disintegrate. What can I say, I'm a simple man with simple pleasures.

 

[DungeonMaester]

I think I like the "save or dying" option best, along with getting rid of negative HP entirely. After you're knocked below 0 (by anything, attacks, save or die spells, disintegrate et cetera) you have 1d4 rounds (rolled in secret by the DM) before you're dead. 0 is stable but disabled, as always.

Benefits: Retains the "oh my god we need to help him NOW" urgency in combat over "We've got at least a good 6 rounds, he'll be fine."
Low level parties benefit a lot from the lack of negative HP, no more needing 3 cure light wounds to get your -9 HP barbarian back in the fight.
Keeps one roll from ending a PC but retains the usefulness of spells that get around HP.

Drawbacks: Makes magical healing a little bit better, thus making the "every group should have a cleric" rule a bit stronger.
No more reducing players to a pile of dust with disintegrate. What can I say, I'm a simple man with simple pleasures.

Thanks for the complement, I think. If you are referring to my idea/rule do you think there is room for improvement?

---Rusty

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

 

[blargney the second]

Doom! Gloom! The end is nigh!

 

[kaomera]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

I think the objective here is not to remove the risk of death, but rather to reduce it. Generally I view the point of keeping the risk of PC death "real" for the players to enhance the thrill when they overcome the "obstacles" I've put in front of the PCs. Some groups are Evil Knievel and they want me to put 40 buses out there. Some groups will somehow manage to crash and burn on the smallest speed-bump. Some players I really have felt the need to hand-wave it all away, and generally I end up having to not game with them.

I try to avoid throwing chances for PC death from a single die roll at my players. I'd prefer not to have a PC death every session, or even very frequently at all. Aside from the relative ease of recovering from such things in 3.x, killing off PCs too frequently is the biggest way (IMHO) of making death lose it's sting.

 

[Destil]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

The idea is not to remove death. In fact the idea is to make death meaningful. In high level D&D death is a status aliment that's just removed with the right spell by the books. The number of save or die effects necessitates this. Thus the general desire to give death some of it's kick back (I think it's a bit of an unwritten comment that everyone who agrees with these changes considers casting spells like "raise dead" to be taken as a much more serious act within the campaign world than a cone of cold, plane shift, prying eyes or spell resistance).

 

[hexgrid]

Serious question: If death is not a risk, why roll the dice?

Why not just handwave all the fighting and say, "You meet a bunch of monsters and kill them. The loot you find is..."

Because death is not the only way to be defeated, and mere survival is not the only measure of success. And in any case, there's more to than game than winning and losing.