Post/Author/DateTime	Post
eamon 06-18-07, 06:19 AM	EDIT: super short summary: Upon dropping to negative hit points, creature must roll a fortitude save DC 1/2 negative hit points. On success, loses 2 hp, on failure dies. This roll is repeated a further four times in each successive round. This avoids metagaming current hp since nobody knows when you'll really die, and scales nicely with both level and character (high fort-save fighters can take more damage than low-fort save rogue's, say.) The long story: Motivation In regular D&D, characters have a 10 hit-point "grace period", a gray area, if you will, in which they aren't quite dead yet. Unfortunately, this gray area shrinks to insignificance as the power level rises. Whereas a first level character has a very good change of falling unconscious and slowly dying, giving allies a valuable few rounds to pop a potion in his/her mouth, in higher levels the variability of a single hit is so great that, barring great coincidence, characters which were running around top speed one moment will have run off to the eternal hunting grounds the next. Also, a player who's character just dropped to -1 looks very different from one who's character just dropped to -9... and party members that recognize they have a few "safe" rounds might choose to first dispatch that dangerous opponent before healing their party member, whereas if they know he's on the brink of death the willingness to take that extra risk is often greater. The randomness on the one hand, and the invitation to metagaming on the other just aren't particularly fun, and they also makes a DM's life harder by forcing a choice between three equally unattractive options: bending the rules and leaving a character standing (which you can't do very often without destroying the game), harshly interpreting the rules (and disappointing a player that sometimes could not have seen it coming), or reducing the challenge (which is boring...) What we need are rules that (normally) make dying a nice and slow process again. Furthermore, you want a process which remains risky no matter the power level - if there's even a small chance of a character dying, things stay tense (which they should - your character's dying after all)! Finally, we want a d20 mechanism, not any anachronistic odd d10 rule which for no apparant reason was used in core D&D 3.5 instead. Rules Change These rules supersede the normal PHB rules on dying. The basic mechanism is a fortitude save vs. death on which you must succeed. The DC of this fortitude save is 1/2 your negative hit-points, and you lose 2 further hit-points even on a successful saving throw. You must succeed on such a saving throw as soon as you drop, and repeat it each round on your initiative, and whenever you are damaged. You stabilize in the fifth round. For example, Tordeck is mortally wounded by an orc. He succeeds on his initial saving throw, but must make another in each of the following four rounds. In the beginning of the fifth round he becomes stable. Sometime later in battle, he is hit by a stray arrow and drops to -23, and must again make a fortitude save vs DC 11, and will need to again survive five rounds to become stable. At best, you still have a 1 in 4 chance of dying if unaided, even if you can only fail on a natural 1. Tordeck had better hope he gets help soon... As a standard action provoking an attack of opportunity, a character with the Heal skill may attempt to help a dying character. If he succeeds on a Heal check (with the same DC as the fort save), the dying character does not need to make his own save. If he fails by 5 or more, the dying character receives two damage instead. This heal check may be made as a move action at a -10 penalty, and as a swift action at a -20 penalty. A character damaged while performing such a heal check must succeed on a DC 15+damage dealt concentration check to avoid automatically failing on his Heal check and damaging the character instead.
eamon 06-23-07, 08:58 AM	I didn't get to many responses here, but did at ENworld: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3604746#post3604746 I'm still curious what people think, though!
Sphyre 06-24-07, 01:26 PM	Interesting... It makes hitpoint damage even less dangerous (not automatically dying at -10 or greater) Although, I've never had a problem with dying in D&D before, if it were to ever need a change, this would be the change I'd apply.
eamon 06-25-07, 09:26 AM	The real problem I had was that at low levels players had a huge safety net and actually let their bleeding companions lie around because they couldn't be very much in danger if, say, 4 damage just dropped them, so metaphorically speaking stop for a tea-break before looking to their companion. This is annoying metagaming. At high levels, on the other hand, I like to run a campaign which is truly challenging, but I also like a happy party, and players that lose a character each session aren't happy. Anything that is truly challenging at higher levels quickly becomes coincidentally lethal at no fault of the players. One action by opponents is often enough to kill a full-HP party member if the DM is "lucky". My six-player sixth-level group encounters an 8th level sorcerer who can cast greater invis and empowered scorching ray... that's 12d6 points of damage without save, at only CR8. A wizard with Con 14 at full health who rolled average for his hit points would drop to -14 on only and average such ray. Seeing as it (unsurprisingly) took the party longer than one round to find and eliminate the threat, even the most insane barbarian in rage with 24 Con would have dropped after at most three of these rays, and with a little bad luck, only two. To speak nothing of Sudden Maximize, which this sorcerer had as well... Similary, a CR 8 Minotaur barbarian in rage could reasonably have 30 strength and deal 25.5 damage on an average hit. With an attack bonus of +21/+16, he might just hit twice, otherwise power attack could still be interesting... to speak nothing of improved crit (which he'll have by then) with his greataxe. Even one non-power attacked crit (and there's almost a 10% chance per hit) will deal 76.5 damage on average. This drops an average, front line, Con 16 fighter to -21 hitpoints. This variant means that such a fighter will almost certainly die if not attended immediately: but if he gets healing right after the first damage, he has a good chance of survival. It makes healing more interesting, because it's actually important to do in battle sometimes. It makes metagaming irrelevant because even an epic character at -1 HP has a 5% chance of dying each round, keeping things tense and dramatic! Finally, it's very simple ;-)
Arcade 06-25-07, 10:40 AM	Looks good, I am looking at the scaling factor you are using. The original UA rules used DC 10 + Damage/5. When you use damage divided by 2, I don't think you will find higher level characters more likely to stay alive- they will have about the same chance because damage dropping you in the negatives will likely be higher than at lower levels. Though it is prudent to point out that under the normal rules, such a character would likely be dead outright. But more importantly, low Fortitude characters are likely going to find the saves harder and harder to make since the amount they go into negative hit points increases faster than their Fortitude save. This is just my opinion though based off a few not-thought-out calculations in my head. the scaling factor you use might be about right. I think it's a great rule and i think something like this should be standard, rather than the whole -10 thing.