D&D General Stealing Death Moves from Daggerheart for 5e

[Charlaquin]

So, for anyone who might not know, Daggerheart has an interesting mechanic called Death Moves where, when your character drops to 0 HP, you have three options for what happens next: you can go out in a Blaze of Glory, which allows you to immediately take one final action, which is an automatic critical success, after which your character dies; you can Avoid Death, which leaves your character unconscious but alive, and with a permanent physical or psychological scar, which interacts with some other Daggerheart-specific mechanics, which I won’t go into here, but in short a character can only do this a limited number of times in their career unless they go to great lengths to heal from the physical and mental trauma the scar represents; or you can Risk it All, which also involves some Daggerheart-specific mechanics, but functionally is a random roll that could result in your character dying, or surviving without the same lasting harm that Avoid Death causes. I think this is a really neat idea, and I want to steal it for my D&D game. So, here’s how I would translate the concept to D&D (I’ll be using 5e, but I think the concept would probably work just as well for most versions of D&D).

So, here’s my take. When your character’s hit points are reduced to 0, choose one of the following options:

• Put Your Life in Fate’s Hands. Your character falls unconscious and unstable. This works the same as the normal rules for dying, except that the DM rolls the saves behind the screen and tracks successes and failures secretly. Another character can use an Action or a Bonus Action and make a DC 10 Wisdom (Medicine) check and determine if your character is alive on a success.

• Avoid Your Fate. Your character is falls unconscious and stable, but you take one permanent death saving throw failure, representing the lasting physical and mental trauma this near-death experience caused. If your character accumulates three permanent death saving throw failures, they can no longer Avoid Fate, and die immediately if they Put Their Life in Fate’s Hands. At DM discretion, a character might be able to remove a permanent death saving throw failure by fully recovering from the trauma it represented - the DM is encouraged to work together with the player to determine what such a recovery would entail.

• Take Your Last Gasp. Describe one final action your character takes with their dying breath. The action is an automatic critical success. Afterwords, your character dies, and cannot be restored to life with resurrection magic. Your character has accepted their fate, and their soul has gone to its final destination. At your discretion, a Wish spell might be able to forcibly tear your character’s soul back to the material plane, but no other magic can coax it back from its eternal rest.

 

[Horwath]

great ideas, would add few tweaks:

• Avoid Your Fate. Your character is falls unconscious and stable, but you take one permanent death saving throw failure, representing the lasting physical and mental trauma this near-death experience caused. If your character accumulates three permanent death saving throw failures, they can no longer Avoid Fate, and die immediately if they Put Their Life in Fate’s Hands. At DM discretion, a character might be able to remove a permanent death saving throw failure by fully recovering from the trauma it represented - the DM is encouraged to work together with the player to determine what such a recovery would entail.

maybe Greater restoration and Regenerate would be good solutions
G.Restoration is available sooner but costs material components
Regenerate is "free" but 7th level spells are not dropping around everyday.

• Take Your Last Gasp. Describe one final action your character takes with their dying breath. The action is an automatic critical success. Afterwords, your character dies, and cannot be restored to life with resurrection magic. Your character has accepted their fate, and their soul has gone to its final destination. At your discretion, a Wish spell might be able to forcibly tear your character’s soul back to the material plane, but no other magic can coax it back from its eternal rest.

why should it be harder to resurrect you.
you might count on your party to make that happen, that is why you go all out when mortally wounded.
treat Revivify as retroactive healing potion.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Cool.

I think the resurrection-specific 9th level True Resurrection should be better at resurrecting than Wish.

I also feel like Avoid Your Fate would be a choice I'd be much more likely to take if I could choose it after making a few death saves, not just because I know I've failed them at that point, but also because I usually have a much better idea if rescue is coming for me after a few rounds. At the outset it just feels way too high a price to pay when I have a slightly more than 55% chance of surviving through death throws even if nobody heals me, and in most situations someone can probably heal me.

 

[Charlaquin]

maybe Greater restoration and Regenerate would be good solutions
G.Restoration is available sooner but costs material components
Regenerate is "free" but 7th level spells are not dropping around everyday.

I think those are great suggestions! Personally, I don’t want there to be a default way to recover from Avoiding Your Fate, because I want the prospect of recovery to require a conversion between the player and the DM. That said, either of these are suggestions I as DM would be happy to accept as ways to recover, assuming it felt thematically appropriate for the specific instance of Avoiding Fate.

why should it be harder to resurrect you.
you might count on your party to make that happen, that is why you go all out when mortally wounded.

Because part of the point of this subsystem is to fix the problem of death tending to feel cheap in D&D. The intent behind the Last Gasp is to make sure you always have the option to let the character make a final heroic sacrifice, but when you do take that option, it is truly final. The point of Avoid Fate is to let you buy time before having to let go of the character. If they go down but you aren’t ready to let go of them yet, you can give yourself that peace of mind and say no, this is not the end. But you can only do that so many times. If it keeps happening, you’ll eventually need to make your peace and either let them retire with their life, or accept that the next time they go down will be the last. The Put Your Life in Fate’s Hands option is there for if you want to stick to the default rules, including the option to be resurrected. But if you want to go that route, you have to accept the additional tension of not knowing if you succeed or failed right away. You have to sit in that uncertainty if you’re not willing to take a hard yes or no.

treat Revivify as retroactive healing potion.

Isn’t that kinda how it already works?

 

[Charlaquin]

Cool.

Thanks!

I think the resurrection-specific 9th level True Resurrection should be better at resurrecting than Wish.

Well, the point is supposed to be that when you Take Youe Last Gasp, your character is fully accepting that ending, so they cross over willingly. Resurrection magic doesn’t work, not because it isn’t powerful enough, but because the character’s soul doesn’t want to come back. But at the player’s discretion, a Wish might be the one thing powerful enough to force them back to life against their will. You know, in case the idea of playing as Season 6 Buffy sounds fun to you.

Maybe I should call it “Accept Your Fate” to make that intent more obvious, and carry through the trend of all three Death Moves having the word Fate in the name.

I also feel like Avoid Your Fate would be a choice I'd be much more likely to take if I could choose it after making a few death saves, not just because I know I've failed them at that point, but also because I usually have a much better idea if rescue is coming for me after a few rounds. At the outset it just feels way too high a price to pay when I have a slightly more than 55% chance of surviving through death throws even if nobody heals me, and in most situations someone can probably heal me.

Well, that’s kinda the point. It’s an all-or-nothing choice; you either commit to this being your character’s final heroic sacrifice and the end of their story, commit to it not being the end, but carrying a heavy narrative cost, or commit to letting it be uncertain and allow cold, uncaring probably make the decision for you.

 

[Horwath]

Because part of the point of this subsystem is to fix the problem of death tending to feel cheap in D&D. The intent behind the Last Gasp is to make sure you always have the option to let the character make a final heroic sacrifice, but when you do take that option, it is truly final. The point of Avoid Fate is to let you buy time before having to let go of the character. If they go down but you aren’t ready to let go of them yet, you can give yourself that peace of mind and say no, this is not the end. But you can only do that so many times. If it keeps happening, you’ll eventually need to make your peace and either let them retire with their life, or accept that the next time they go down will be the last. The Put Your Life in Fate’s Hands option is there for if you want to stick to the default rules, including the option to be resurrected. But if you want to go that route, you have to accept the additional tension of not knowing if you succeed or failed right away. You have to sit in that uncertainty if you’re not willing to take a hard yes or no.

but you can always chose not to be resurrected.
Why should last gasp force you to do so.

To me it would be similar scene in Expanse on ship Donnager, where Alex chooses to get knocked out to lower his metabolism so rest can survive and by that also revive him. He chose to be technically dead so to give others fighting chance with limited oxygen in a sealed room. With last words before knocking himself out: I want to wake up!

Isn’t that kinda how it already works?

This accelerates the rate of using it that way. Usually you wait for 3 failed death saves.