Will you try the new "Death & Dying" rules now?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Not using them. I plan to LIVE!

 

[humble minion]

I like the rule (though if it were me writing them I'd have probably put some sort of critical failure penalty to be applied on a natural 1, just to keep the pressure on) but there's no chance it's going to make it into my 3.5e campaign. It most emphatically does not play well with the dragon shaman's aura of healing...

 

[KarinsDad]

Well, I tried it out in both my games this week. It actually makes combat seem a lot more intense, and I was quite pleased with the outcome. Nobody died, but the moment one of my players rolled his second 5 in a row...

I'm looking forward to next week. Maybe, if someone's close to biting it, they'll roll a 20... could be very interesting.

I like a little fear and uncertainty among my players. Just me though...

So, your players rolled this in front of the group?

I can definitely see a pro and con here.

Pro: the tension. People are watching that roll closely each round and it generates excitement.

Con: everyone at the table knows that the unconscious guy is not only down, but when he is potentially one round away from death. Metagaming knowledge that only a Heal skill roll should supply and only a little tension occurs on the first round he is down, rather real significant tension does not occur until the round he is one roll away from death.


Now that I think of it, this rule reminds me of a house rule from long ago for wands. Roll percental dice. On a result of 1 or 2, the wand is out of charges. This more or less emulates 50 charges, but the players really do not know. They could find a wand and only get one shot out of it just due to the luck of the dice, or they could get 60 charges out of it. They are not keeping track of charges (the reason for the shortcut), so they do not bother to count.

Ditto for this unconsciousness rule. Whether the player is close to death or not is not dependent on the attack that occurred, it depends on the die rolls made after he is already unconscious. A character hit to -50 can get up on the next round and be conscious whereas a character hit to -1 can die in a few rounds.

So, a great powerful NPC attack that damages for 100 points can mean almost nothing. The PC gets knocked to huge negatives and luckily, gets right back up.

Like the house rule with the wand, it allows players to determine condition after the fact based on random dice rolls as opposed to based on "number of charges actually remaining" (or in 3E terms, number of hit points remaining before -10, in 4E terms, number of hit points remaining before -half). In other word, it's a rule to keep track of charges without really doing so.

Hmmm.

 

[FireLance]

Ditto for this unconsciousness rule. Whether the player is close to death or not is not dependent on the attack that occurred, it depends on the die rolls made after he is already unconscious. A character hit to -50 can get up on the next round and be conscious whereas a character hit to -1 can die in a few rounds.

So, a great powerful NPC attack that damages for 100 points can mean almost nothing. The PC gets knocked to huge negatives and luckily, gets right back up.

Like the house rule with the wand, it allows players to determine condition after the fact based on random dice rolls as opposed to based on "number of charges actually remaining" (or in 3E terms, number of hit points remaining before -10, in 4E terms, number of hit points remaining before -half). In other word, it's a rule to keep track of charges without really doing so.

I'm fairly sure that there will still be a need to keep track of negative hit points, though. For one, I believe that characters will still lose hit points on a failed roll (just not necessarily at the rate of 1/round ) in addition to moving one step closer to death.

In addition, we are likely to see area attacks (including continuous area attacks, like the pit fiend's fire aura) that will continue to hurt characters even if they are already dying. It seems simpler to me for such damage to be subtracted from the character's (already) negative hit points instead of being abstracted as additional dying rolls, or additional steps closer to death, for example.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm fairly sure that there will still be a need to keep track of negative hit points, though. For one, I believe that characters will still lose hit points on a failed roll (just not necessarily at the rate of 1/round ) in addition to moving one step closer to death.

In addition, we are likely to see area attacks (including continuous area attacks, like the pit fiend's fire aura) that will continue to hurt characters even if they are already dying. It seems simpler to me for such damage to be subtracted from the character's (already) negative hit points instead of being abstracted as additional dying rolls, or additional steps closer to death, for example.

I do not think we will be keeping track of negative hit points with regard to losing them each round without outside influences.

The fire aura of the demon will lower the hit points, but just lying unconscious on the ground probably will not. The article appeared to imply that the 3 strikes and you are out rule was handling that for us.

For the most part, I think we will write -14 down and it just stays there shy of additional damage. At least based on how I interpreted the article.

 

[Arnwyn]

Nope, won't be using them. We like the current rules as-is.

 

[Dragonblade]

Used the new death and dying rules both in my Pathfinder game (I'm the DM) and in our Savage Tide game (I'm a player).

It worked out well. One character went down in Pathfinder after fighting the ghoulish bat in Pathfinder 2, but was healed within a round. Everyone really liked the heal back from 0 rule.

In Savage Tide, my rogue was dropped by the monkey swarm in the temple of Demogorgon (at least I assume its a temple of Demogorgon, with all the demonic baboon imagery). I was dropped to -14, one point away from death since I have 60 hp. I rolled a 4, and then a 6, so I had two strikes against me. On the third round, everyone waited with baited breath to see if I would die by rolling a 1-9. Luckily, I rolled a 15 and there was much clapping and cheering. Then the party bard healed me before I had to roll again. And it was nice being healed immediately into positive hitpoints.

All in all, it worked out well and was exciting.

 

[pukunui]

It most emphatically does not play well with the dragon shaman's aura of healing...

Can you go into more detail about this, please? I don't really see how they don't work together.

I do not think we will be keeping track of negative hit points with regard to losing them each round without outside influences.

The fire aura of the demon will lower the hit points, but just lying unconscious on the ground probably will not. The article appeared to imply that the 3 strikes and you are out rule was handling that for us.

For the most part, I think we will write -14 down and it just stays there shy of additional damage. At least based on how I interpreted the article.

I think you are right. The way I read it, the negative hit points only need to be tracked when you take damage. Let's say a PC gets hit for 20 damage and gets dropped to -7. Let's say his "death threshold" is -10. This means the initial hit isn't enough to kill him outright, so he's lying there unconscious and dying. So long as no more damage is dealt to the PC's body, the player can forget about the negative hit points because he's either going to die after rolling below 10 three times or get healed, in which case his hit points jump back to 0 before the healing is applied anyway.


Lastly, can I change my vote? I'm leaning more towards yes now. After reading reports of how they have worked in actual games (instead of people's theoretical speculations and arguments for and against), I'm more inclined to give it a try, despite the fact that I'll be ending my 3.5 campaign soon. I've just sent an e-mail with the rules to my players to get them to vote on it. I told them it could make the difference between life or death for their players in the coming battles (they've reached the climax of the RHoD module).

EDIT: I had a thought. Regarding how the Diehard feat could interact with the new rules. Basically, the feat would allow you to go stay conscious and capable of fighting while in the negatives, but as long as you're there, you still have to roll a d20 and if you roll badly three times, you suddenly drop dead. However, if you roll a 20, you find some inner reserve of strength and regain some hit points, and if someone heals you, you go back to 0 then get the healing. I guess that makes the feat kind of powerful but at least you have to get Endurance first, so not everyone would be taking it ...