Where is unconsciousness

[Lord Vangarel]

One of the things that's always irked me with D&D combat is zero hit points = death or dying. What I'd like to see is a system where characters could be taken out of a combat without necessarily being dead.

Thinking about this last night I got to thinking why don't weapons inflict some actual damage and some subdual damage. Using the rules for this the real damage comes off the overall total and the subdual damage counts from zero upwards. When the two meet the character/creature becomes unconscious from accumulated damage. By spliting the existing damage for weapons no more actual damage is inflicted so no balance issues? I would probably make the damage random so a d8 damage would say inflict 1d4 real and 1d4 subdual.

Does anyone else have a system to simulate this or any thoughts?

 

[Frostmarrow]

Try this: Odd damage=Subdual damage, Even damage=Real damage.

 

[hong]

Zero hit points == disabled. When you're disabled, you can still move, but not do anything else (unless you want to go to -1 hp). Effectively you're out of the fight.

The system thus already does what you want it to do. The real problem is that the range of hp where someone is disabled is very small. This is especially true at high levels. The chances of hitting exactly 0 hp become negligible, so either someone is active, or they're dying.

What you can do is expand this range so that it becomes easier to disable someone. Perhaps

0 -> -10 hp == disabled
-11 -> -10 - Con == dying
-11 - Con == dead

This also gives high-level characters a better chance of surviving heavy blows. This is a good thing IMO; at the moment, it's a bit too easy to go from relatively healthy to dead in one hit.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

hong

Would you count dying as per the rules where they continue to lose 1hp/round? Also doing this gives characters/monsters more hitpoints which I don't really want to do. I do agree that the line between running around perfectly ok and dying is very very small (0hp) and should in some way be bigger. My suggestion of spliting damage into different dice was one possible way.

 

[hong]

hong

Would you count dying as per the rules where they continue to lose 1hp/round?

Yep.

Also doing this gives characters/monsters more hitpoints which I don't really want to do.

AFAIK most DMs only keep track of this hit point loss for PCs (and maybe important NPCs). Monsters and mooks are assumed to be disposed of once they go down.

 

[rankarrog]

I have had a rule that, whenver your remaining hitpoints are reduced by more than a half from a single stike(or spell or whatever) the character had to succeed a Constitution-Check(DC15) or be disabled, if the check failed by more than ten the character was knocked out.

Worked IMHO good, but my players didn't like it.

 

[Austin]

I read a house rule a while back where Armor turned damage into subdual. I think the rule was for every point of armor bonus, 1 point of damage was converted to subdual. Natural armor worked the same way. I remember the DM saying that with this rule combat lasted just as long but was much less lethal.

 

[hong]

I read a house rule a while back where Armor turned damage into subdual. I think the rule was for every point of armor bonus, 1 point of damage was converted to subdual. Natural armor worked the same way. I remember the DM saying that with this rule combat lasted just as long but was much less lethal.

Can't say I've playtested it, but that sounds like a damn fine rule.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Austin, that does sound like just the sort of solution I'm looking for.

Thanks.

 

[Lord Vangarel]

Used the rule last night. The fighter with 41 hit points dropped to 24 actual hitpoints and had 19 points of subdual damage leaving him with 5. The opponents were beaten but one more hit would have seen the fighter fall unconscious, previously he would have been dying. I've decided to implement the lose 1hp/round rule anyway once unconscious, they could simply bleed to death from their wounds afterall!

I'll be using the rules again next week and make sure there are a few more fights to better evaluate the changes.