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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 6020853" data-attributes="member: 11821">You're confusing two things here.There's two main ways to die.First is: Hit your negative bloodied value, and die.This is remarkably easy to hit at low level (especially 1st), but rather hard to hit at paragon tier and above.  Even if enemies aren't specifically attacking downed combatants (which they might do if they are, for example, flesh-eating ghouls), the frequency of area effects and ongoing damage can cause all sorts of damage after unconsciousness.The second is via death saves.  If you're at 0 HP or below, when it's your turn, you roll a 4e-style save.  (That is, success on a 10+.)  Succeeding on one doesn't stop your dying; it just holds it off that round.  Three failures over the course of an encounter and you're dead.  (So if you fail two death saves, get healed back to consciousness, and then go unconscious again and fail another death save, you're dead.)  If you get a 20+ on your death save, after fairly uncommon modifiers, you get to immediately spend a healing surge.  I've seen this happen maybe once a year, so it doesn't come up often, but it's  awesome when it does.These two systems operate in parallel; you can die at -1 HP if you fail 3 saves, or go to -Bloodied without ever making a death save.  The game gets pretty tense when you have a few PCs rolling them.I'd say deaths in my game at low levels were about evenly split between the two, with maybe negative bloodied edging out death saves.  It tends to be fun and exciting in play - though like most things in 4e, it's not particularly swingy.-O</blockquote>

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