Post/Author/DateTime

Post

Jack Daniel 05-14-04, 12:32 PM

I've been looking for a "hovering at death's door" system that sits somewhere between negative hit points and the Fortitude save rule in UA. Negative hit points don't help you at high levels, when one attack can easily drop you below -10. The Fortitude save rule means that any attack, no matter how deadly, will drop you to 0 hp... and then, if you're a fighter, you'll be disabled until you recover; or, if you're a wizard, you'll be dying for a few rounds, and then dead. The core system works independent of your class's Fortitude statistic or even your Constitution score -- it's fair and even across the board. The problem is that it’s not enough of a buffer at high levels. The alternate system is too dependent on class, and it can be too much of a buffer, so that some characters are basically invulnerable -- but it has the benefit of not being so terribly deadly at high levels, and it avoids the illogical concept of negative hit points. So, I need a system that combines a set “countdown” of rounds before death and percentile chances of stabilizing, like the core negative hit point system, but with the 0 hit point minimum of the Fortitude system: • When a character takes enough damage to fall to 0 hit points, he immediately rolls d%. Characters have a 10% chance of being conscious but disabled and a 90% chance of being unconscious and dying. • Dying characters roll 2d4+2. This is the countdown -- the number of rounds a dying character has to live. Each round, a character has a 10% chance of stabilizing, and a 90% chance of losing one point from his countdown. When the countdown reaches 0, the character is dead. • If a disabled character takes damage, he starts dying. • If a dying character takes damage, he loses 1 point from his countdown; but if the attack is a coup de grace, the character immediately dies.