Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JustinA 02-24-07, 03:06 PM	These rules have three goals: 1. I want to get away from the idea of "death as a revolving door", where becoming a corpse is almost routine and characters do not so much mourn the death of a comrade as complain about needing to haul them back to town for the raise dead. To some extent I'm shooting for a return from death to have more of a "resuscitation" feel to it. Magic allows you to push the limits (repairing damage which couldn't be repaired with modern medicine), but you're still only healing the body -- once the soul has moved beyond this world, it cannot be returned. 2. I like the mechanics for disabled characters. I like the idea of badly injured characters still putting up a last, valiant effort or desperately escaping from the battlefield. But this doesn't work so well when you have to land on precisely 0 hp to become disabled and doing anything of note knocks you unconscious. 3. I don't like the save-or-die spells. Using them on players is either (a) pointless because the save is made, or (b) no fun for the player because their character has just been wiped out because of a single die roll. So either (a) I remove the spells (and lose some valuable and genre-appropriate special effects), (b) I let the players gain an advantage over everyone else because they have no compunctions about using the spells, or (c) I implement the solution found here. So, please, comment. DEATH THRESHOLD: Your death threshold is a negative number equal to your maximum hit points or your Constitution score (whichever is greater). For example, if you have a maximum of 23 hit points, then your death threshold is -23. ALIVE: You are alive as long as your current hit points are above your death threshold. DEAD: You are dead if your current hit points are below your death threshold. Dead characters automatically lose 1 hp per round. DISABLED: Once you reach 0 hit points you are considered disabled. While you’re disabled, you must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + the number of hit points below zero) each time you take damage (including the damage which resulted in you becoming disabled). If you fail this save you fall unconscious and are dying. Unless you have stabilized (see below), you take 1 hp of damage per round while disabled. DYING: A dying character loses 1 hp per round until they either stabilize or die. If a dying character is stabilized, they are now considered disabled (but remain unconscious). STABILIZED: TENDED CHARACTERS: A disabled or dying character can be helped with a first aid check (Heal, DC 15). On a success, the character stabilizes and begins healing naturally. UNTENDED CHARACTERS: A disabled or dying character without assistance has a 10% chance each round of stabilizing. They may still take additional damage, however: Each day they must make a 10% roll to start healing naturally. If they fail this check, they suffer 1 hp of damage. WAKING UP: A dying character who has been stabilized remains unconscious. They have a 10% chance of waking up each hour. An untended character (who has not benefited from a first aid check) who fails to wake up also takes 1 hp of damage each hour. HEALING NATURAL HEALING: After a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or more), you recover 1 hit point per character level. Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you from healing that night. If you undergo complete bed rest for an entire day and night, you recover twice your character level in hit points. MAGICAL HEALING: Any magical healing automatically stabilizes a character. A character unconscious as a result of their injuries also wakes up as a result of magical healing. RESURRECTION: There are no spells which return the dead to life (raise dead, etc.). However, even dead characters can benefit from magical healing and are returned to life if their hit point total is raised above the death threshold. After 24 hours of death, however, a character is lost forever and cannot be returned to life. ABILITY SCORE DAMAGE: Characters reduced to 0 Constitution are dead, but still have whatever hit points were left to them. They still lose 1 hit point per round until their Constitution is raised to at least 1. If their hit points drop below their death threshold, it will be necessary to raise both their Constitution and their hit points in order to return them to life. Note: Clerics may spontaneously cast lesser restoration and greater restoration spells as if they were cure spells. DEATH EFFECTS: Any special ability or spell that results in death instead causes 4d6 points of Constitution damage. On a successful save, the special ability or spell causes 2 points of Constitution damage (instead of whatever effect a save would normally have). (This would include vorpal swords, finger of death, etc.)
Saberus 02-24-07, 03:37 PM	This sets up for a "less lethal" campaign. I like the changes, but long-term testing is required. I would recommend this for younger crowds, or people that want to see all there chars reach godhood. I like my mortality rates.
Kukamunga 02-24-07, 03:50 PM	thats funny becuse i beleive it was the OP's intention to create a more leathal campaign.. I do beleive that although being short term less leathal.. the fact that a dead dead character cannot be returned to life deffintly makes it more leathal
The_Levitator 02-24-07, 04:07 PM	I feel the same way about resurrection and I just initially took resurrection out of the game. But, after thinking about it, being resurrected could be a very memorable and epic moment of the campaign. So, I decided to be a quasi-evil DM and allow resurrection, but tell my players it doesn't exist in our world. The idea is that VERY few people in our world have the ability to perform this ritual. So few, that stories of people coming back from the dead as normal people and not twisted versions of their former selves (zombies, wights, ghosts, skeletons, etc.) are just myth. BTW, this is also how we view gods in this world too. There is no proof of the existence of gods in our world, making faith actually an important part of the game. I made sure to tell my players that they can TRY anything in my world. Just because people don't believe in resurrection doesn't mean the heroes of my story (the players) can't go on a quest to bring back their dead comrade. And you can bet that if my players have busted their butts and a character dies at a crucial moment or by an unfair fluke, I will find a way to give them an opportunity to bring that character back. :)
Rhialto 02-24-07, 04:33 PM	Personally, I'd make the negative hit point level the LOWER of CON or base HP. Otherwise, that's an awful lot of extra HP to give to a player. Unless of course you are alsogiving the monsters and npcs the same benefits and co-operative tactics to keep each other alive. In practical terms, unless the party has sufficient healing there and then, taking a character to town for healing is not going to save anyone's lives. Even if teh local high priest can be reached in 30 minutes, that's still 300 extra hit points that need to be healed, on top of whatever damage the character actually took.
Man in the Funny Hat 02-24-07, 05:13 PM	I have this to say on that subject - it is largely a ROLEPLAYING issue, not a rules issue: http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/resurrection.htm That was written largely as a response to people forcing characters to go through hoops of fire to obtain resurrections, or tacking on all kinds of penalties and side-effects. It applies to natural healing rules as well though, especially when natural healing is being experimented with as a substitute for raise dead magic. The effect is the same - you've simply changed the name of the spells. You certainly won't have changed the amount of damage the PC's take, the tactics and strategies the PC's use, or most importantly the attitude they have their characters take towards death and resurrection.
JustinA 02-24-07, 06:29 PM	Personally, I'd make the negative hit point level the LOWER of CON or base HP. Otherwise, that's an awful lot of extra HP to give to a player. That's the intention. It gives you a broad hit point range in which characters will be disabled. The fact that you continue to take damage (and risk falling unconscious) unless you've stablilized makes this a dangerous range to be in. The intention is to create a more meaningful buffer between "completely alive" and "dead" without affecting gameplay when characters still have positive hit points. In other words, I'm not interested in a death spiral mechanic (death spirals aren't fun). But having a meaningful "near death" state is interesting and also provides some meaningful feedback ("you guys are in trouble") short of "you're dead and can't play any more". In practical terms, unless the party has sufficient healing there and then, taking a character to town for healing is not going to save anyone's lives. Even if the local high priest can be reached in 30 minutes, that's still 300 extra hit points that need to be healed, on top of whatever damage the character actually took. That's intentional, too. Well, the fact that the local town or village is going to have to chew up expensive healing resources. Healing 300 hit points is about 20 cure moderate wounds potions. That's pricy, but not only moderately more expensive than a casting of raise dead. Those rules have actually been in effect in my campaign for several years now (the disabled rules are the new addition, along with a few tweaks). It tends to create interesting scenarios. Two examples: 1. In one campaign the party's healer was killed. Without the necessary resources to revive her, they had to race back to the nearest village. This was a small village, and healing the party's character essentially chewed up all of their healing resources (their cache of potions, their spells for the day). This had a meaningful impact on the community, and the PCs eventually journeyed to the nearest town to purchase more healing potions for the town. 2. In another campaign, the PCs were facing off against a clan of dark dwarves. The dark dwarves were well-supplied with healing resources. This gave the dark dwarves a meaningful edge until the PCs managed to decapitate one of their leaders. The dark dwarves managed to revive their leader, but they chewed up essentially all of their healing resources to do it. This ended up being a significant turning point for the PCs, who eventually turned the tide against the dark dwarves. (For the full story, check out http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/talesfromthetable/khunbaral.html.) What's interesting about these examples is that they created a sense of urgency and meaning when it came to death. For example, in the latter instance the dark dwarves only had so much time in which to recover their leader's corspe before it would be too late to revive him. In the former, the PCs raced to save their comrade -- whereas in a typical D&D campaign, they would have respectfully tied the body to a pack horse and then sedately headed back to town for the inevitable raise dead.
JustinA 02-24-07, 06:44 PM	I have this to say on that subject - it is largely a ROLEPLAYING issue, not a rules issue It's an interesting argument, but it relies on making sure that your PCs never gain the ability to cast raise dead and similar spells for themselves. As a DM you can treat it with all the solemnity you want, but the reality remains that death is not an ending. If you die, you're only 5,000 gp and a quick spell away from being alive again. This fundamentally changes the way the world works. To take just one, narrow example: It means that assassins can't be content to merely shoot their target with a poison dart from a distance if they have any reason to believe that someone will care enough to spend the 5,000 gp necessary to bring them back from the dead. It means that no one will ever bother assassinating someone if the target is rich enough to have put down a 25,000 gp retainer to guarantee that they'll receive a true resurrection. And there is a fundamental difference between a character who must think, "My god! They've killed the love my life! I've lost her forever!" And a character who can think, quite legitimately, "My god! They've killed the love of my life! ... I'm going to have to work some serious overtime to pay off the church after they cast raise dead on her." You certainly won't have changed the amount of damage the PC's take, the tactics and strategies the PC's use, or most importantly the attitude they have their characters take towards death and resurrection. You're half-right: I'm not interested in changing the amount of damage the PCs take or the tactics and strategies that they use. Nor am I interested in making it more likely for them to lose their character forever. But I am interested in changing their attitudes towards death. I want them to take death as a serious and irreversible threat. To some extent, I achieved this with removing raise dead spells and allowing healing spells to work on the dead. I'm hoping to have even more success by extending the period of "near death's door" through the disabled rules I'm suggesting here.
JustinA 02-24-07, 06:55 PM	thats funny becuse i beleive it was the OP's intention to create a more leathal campaign.. I do beleive that although being short term less leathal.. the fact that a dead dead character cannot be returned to life deffintly makes it more leathal I've actually been using the "dead means dead, but you can resuscitate the recently 'deceased'" rules for a few years now. In practice, these rules mean that the campaign feels less lethal: Characters fall in combat, but because they can be more easily resuscitated they don't stay out of the action for long. This tends to make things more fun for the players: Usually they're back in the action right away rather than having to wait around as a corpse for the raise dead to happen. Occasionally you get a rush of excitement if someone's injuries outstrip the party's ability to immediately heal them. And the only time they're in really serious jeopardy is if a TPK were to happen. (That reminds me. I forgot an important element of these rules: Gentle repose still works. It stops the hit point loss for the dead corpse and extends the period of time in which the character can be revived.) But the fact that death means death keeps death meaningful, even if death is rarely experienced. The only problem I've run into is that, at high levels, its too easy to jump from "alive" to "dead" without hitting the "disabled" or "dying" stages inbetween. This means that, beyond 8th level or so, I was still running into a certain sense of a "revolving door" mentality. "Oh crap, I've suffered mortal wounds and my heart has stopped again... Somebody dump a potion down my throat, please." I'm hoping that by extending the range in which characters are disabled and/or dying that it will create a sense of "grievous wounds" that effectively take people out of combat without stopping them from breathing. I want to keep the stakes real without increasing PC jeopardy. I think extending the disabled/dying range will also make true TPK scenarios a little less disastrous, since it gives me a more leeway to run "they left you for dead" scenarios in which one or more PCs might still have a chance to recover from near-death.
Rhialto 02-24-07, 09:31 PM	Your villages hae 300 hp of healing lying around? In my campaign, villages generally don't have that. As a rough guide, I assume any given cleric keeps enough healing potions to approximately match his healing potential in spells, plus possibly more heavy duty magic items if there is a speciifc camapigna reason for him to have them. 300 hp to heal a guy who was a mere half hour out of the village. That's roughly the far edge of the local farms, or as far again if you are on a horse (unconscious people don't stay on galloping horses, so assume a trotting speed). basically, give the low magic levels in my campaigns, this rule wouldn't save anyone unless someone had a teleport to a temple of healing prepared.
JustinA 02-25-07, 03:41 AM	Your villages hae 300 hp of healing lying around? In my campaign, villages generally don't have that. As a rough guide, I assume any given cleric keeps enough healing potions to approximately match his healing potential in spells, plus possibly more heavy duty magic items if there is a speciifc camapigna reason for him to have them. I tend to just use the DMG. Village with a minimum population of 400 has about 500 gp in healing magic, plus whatever healing the cleric is capable of doling out from their daily spells. 300 hp to heal a guy who was a mere half hour out of the village. That's roughly the far edge of the local farms, or as far again if you are on a horse (unconscious people don't stay on galloping horses, so assume a trotting speed). basically, give the low magic levels in my campaigns, this rule wouldn't save anyone unless someone had a teleport to a temple of healing prepared. Or had a gentle repose or were adventuring closer to a larger community with more healing magic available or had bothered to bring along enough healing magic that they could take care of their own wounded.