Reworking Massive Damage + Death Thresholds [Archive] - Wizards Community

Reworking Massive Damage + Death Thresholds [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Amon_WinterfallIV
05-24-06, 05:18 AM I've always thought that something was wrong with massive damage and death thresholds, in that they were fixed values as opposed to something that scaled upward as characters became more powerful, so in my campaign, I've decided to scale it with HD and max HP. Massive damage must deal at least one third of a creatures max HP to threaten an instant kill, and the DC increases with the Percentage or the value above 50 as follows:

Fort DC Amount of Damage/Percentage
15 50 33.3%
17 55 40%
20 60 45%
23 65 50%
26 70 55%
30 75 60%
35 80 65%
40 85 70%
+5 +5 Damage +5%

You would roll against the lowest Fort DC between the two: if you had 240 HP, and took 70 damage, you don't need a massive damage roll. If you took 90 damage, you took less than 40% of your Max HP, so the Fort Save is only 15.

Dealing with Death:
Your are disabled at 0
You die at -10hp, or -1xHD or -1xCharacter levels, whichever is lower
You are dying between this range
Your body is destroyed at -20hp, or -100% of your hit points, again, whatever is lower. Destroying your corpse means that you need Resurrection, not Raise Dead, to return to life.

There exists various ways to survive going below your "Dead" threshold, such as Deathless Frenzy. But the body destroyed threshold is instant death--and nothing short of Divine Rank 6 will negate this.
Pellanor
05-24-06, 11:46 AM Thoughts on your two rules.

Massive Damage:
While I like the idea, it sounds like a lot of work to me.
Picture this situation,
My character is a 10th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 100 HP.
In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP.
In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage.
Now he gets hit for an attack that does 37 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out?

By the way, have you looked at the Massive Damage Varients (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/massaveDamageThresholdsAndResults.htm) in Unearthed Arcana?

Death and Dieing:
Just to verify, when you say whichever is lower, you mean as in whichever is the greatest negative value, so -30 would be lower than -20, yes?

-Character Level should always be the same as -HD, so there's no point in listing both.

I've actually done some work on a system like this myself. What I use is as follows:
Death Threshold = MAX(Charisma, Con) + Character Level.
When the character is between 0 and negative DT HP they are unconcious but stable. Charcters with Die Hard are instead Disabled.
When a character is below negative DT HP, they are dying, and must make a Fort or Will save each round (including the round on which they dropped below their DT) with a DC equal to 10 + Current HP - DT (so with a DT of 15, and current HP of 20, DC would be 15) or die. Success means they simply loose a single HP.

I may add something like what you have where -100% HP is instant death. Perhaps I'll make it -MAX(100% HP, 2*DT), or just -(100%HP + DT).
theblindman
05-24-06, 02:30 PM Too much math. Even without all those good points Pellanor brought up. I want to play my game with a minimum of tables. (preferably just one, for soda and rolling dice)

I don't have much to say about massive damage, but I too have been thinking about fiddling with the death threshold. It is fairly arbitrary to make -10 the constant. So I've been thinking about two things.

You die when you reach the negative value of your max hitpoints. So a 10th level fighter with 100 hitpoints would die at -100 hit points. The normal rules for falling unconscious and stabilization still apply, except that instead of a 10% chance you have a fortitude save, linked in value to the amount of damage taken. Heal checks to stablize remain the same.
Stabilizing requires a saving throw, and you die at whatever point it becomes impossible for you to stabilize without rolling a natural 20. So a character with a +10 fortitude save dies at -30 hitpoints, but would remain alive at -29.
There is no fixed point of death, characters die when the DM decides they do. Characters can continue to accumulate a theoretically infinite amount of damage and still simply be "dying." This makes it easy for the DM to control the story-line, while still keeping combat dangerous. It may, in fact, be more dangerous, since players don't actually know how long they can wait until their fallen comrade is actually dead, preventing metagame thinking. ("I'll wait to the end of the combat to cast cure critical wounds, because he just stabilized")
Amon_WinterfallIV
05-25-06, 01:25 AM Thoughts on your two rules.

Massive Damage:
While I like the idea, it sounds like a lot of work to me.
Picture this situation,
My character is a 10th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 100 HP.
In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP.
In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage.
Now he gets hit for an attack that does 37 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out?

No Fort save required. Time Elapsed: .4 Seconds.
As 37 is under 50, no Massive Damage roll would be required. You have to deal 50 damage, minimum, to get on the Massive Damage table. If one of the options throws out "No save Required", there is no save required. The Idea is that if you get more than 150 HP, 50 HP is no longer really massive damage.

Temporary HP is kind of funny, but 50 damage, even if its entirely against Temp. HP, still provokes the Fort Save anyway.

Because of Temp HP, you can get with an attack that would deal 100% of your Max HP--but you'd never save against it.

Dropping your Con score decreases your Max HP, so it makes HP loss more significant. Below 150, though, Death from Massive Damage is based on a set number pattern.

Death and Dieing:
Just to verify, when you say whichever is lower, you mean as in whichever is the greatest negative value, so -30 would be lower than -20, yes?

-Character Level should always be the same as -HD, so there's no point in listing both.

That's right, -30 is lower than -20.
Also, some templates (such as petitioner) give you 2d6 HP/level. In that case, they are not the same, so it needed to be posted that the lowest number possible is used as the death threshhold. It is mostly redundant, but I feel its better to explain too much than too little.

I've actually done some work on a system like this myself. What I use is as follows:
Death Threshold = MAX(Charisma, Con) + Character Level.
When the character is between 0 and negative DT HP they are unconcious but stable. Charcters with Die Hard are instead Disabled.
When a character is below negative DT HP, they are dying, and must make a Fort or Will save each round (including the round on which they dropped below their DT) with a DC equal to 10 + Current HP - DT (so with a DT of 15, and current HP of 20, DC would be 15) or die. Success means they simply loose a single HP.

I may add something like what you have where -100% HP is instant death. Perhaps I'll make it -MAX(100% HP, 2*DT), or just -(100%HP + DT).

Reason that -100% = unavoidable death is in there is because I dislike the idea of things like Frenzied Bezerkers running around with -5k HP. I also would like to create an Epic spell called "Preservation" that allows someone to avoid death until their body is destroyed.

@theblindman: I suppose that it could be easier to start at 40%, and increase the Fort DC by 3 for every +5/5% more than that.

Also, Death at -100% Max HP is crazy--mostly because it means that you are able to take as much damage while on the ground, helpless, as when you are able to fight.
Pellanor
05-25-06, 04:51 PM No Fort save required. Time Elapsed: .4 Seconds.
As 37 is under 50, no Massive Damage roll would be required. You have to deal 50 damage, minimum, to get on the Massive Damage table.Sorry, the way you wrote it it sounded like you were replacing the base of 50 with the % based.

Well let's try it this way:
My character is a 15th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 150 HP.
In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP.
In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage.
Now he gets hit for an attack that does 77 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out?
theblindman
05-25-06, 05:24 PM Also, Death at -100% Max HP is crazy--mostly because it means that you are able to take as much damage while on the ground, helpless, as when you are able to fight.Well yes, but it's not really that insane. Rules for coup de grace still apply, of course. It's designed to create a simulation wherein it's easy to fatally wound a person, but difficult to kill them instantly. Which may or may not be realistic, I'm neither a doctor nor a war veteran.
Amon_WinterfallIV
05-25-06, 06:58 PM Sorry, the way you wrote it it sounded like you were replacing the base of 50 with the % based.

Well let's try it this way:
My character is a 15th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 150 HP.
In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP.
In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage.
Now he gets hit for an attack that does 77 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out?

I'll be honest, that took about 45 seconds to figure that out. Here's how to decipher it.
--Gaining Temp HP does not apply to the table
--His Max HP decreases because his con drops. In this case, 2x15=30.
--As he has less than 150 Max HP, he goes on the flat number scale. You don't need to look at both tables, just to understand that when your max HP is above 150, massive damage requires 33% of your hit points to be "Massive". Because his Max HP is below 150, use the flat damage table.
--Flat damage table says: 75 damage, Fort DC 35. So that's the entry to use.

Poor fighter though, he's probably going to get fragged by that attack.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Amon_WinterfallIV 05-24-06, 05:18 AM	I've always thought that something was wrong with massive damage and death thresholds, in that they were fixed values as opposed to something that scaled upward as characters became more powerful, so in my campaign, I've decided to scale it with HD and max HP. Massive damage must deal at least one third of a creatures max HP to threaten an instant kill, and the DC increases with the Percentage or the value above 50 as follows: Fort DC Amount of Damage/Percentage 15 50 33.3% 17 55 40% 20 60 45% 23 65 50% 26 70 55% 30 75 60% 35 80 65% 40 85 70% +5 +5 Damage +5% You would roll against the lowest Fort DC between the two: if you had 240 HP, and took 70 damage, you don't need a massive damage roll. If you took 90 damage, you took less than 40% of your Max HP, so the Fort Save is only 15. Dealing with Death: Your are disabled at 0 You die at -10hp, or -1xHD or -1xCharacter levels, whichever is lower You are dying between this range Your body is destroyed at -20hp, or -100% of your hit points, again, whatever is lower. Destroying your corpse means that you need Resurrection, not Raise Dead, to return to life. There exists various ways to survive going below your "Dead" threshold, such as Deathless Frenzy. But the body destroyed threshold is instant death--and nothing short of Divine Rank 6 will negate this.
Pellanor 05-24-06, 11:46 AM	Thoughts on your two rules. Massive Damage: While I like the idea, it sounds like a lot of work to me. Picture this situation, My character is a 10th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 100 HP. In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP. In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage. Now he gets hit for an attack that does 37 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out? By the way, have you looked at the Massive Damage Varients (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/massaveDamageThresholdsAndResults.htm) in Unearthed Arcana? Death and Dieing: Just to verify, when you say whichever is lower, you mean as in whichever is the greatest negative value, so -30 would be lower than -20, yes? -Character Level should always be the same as -HD, so there's no point in listing both. I've actually done some work on a system like this myself. What I use is as follows: Death Threshold = MAX(Charisma, Con) + Character Level. When the character is between 0 and negative DT HP they are unconcious but stable. Charcters with Die Hard are instead Disabled. When a character is below negative DT HP, they are dying, and must make a Fort or Will save each round (including the round on which they dropped below their DT) with a DC equal to 10 + Current HP - DT (so with a DT of 15, and current HP of 20, DC would be 15) or die. Success means they simply loose a single HP. I may add something like what you have where -100% HP is instant death. Perhaps I'll make it -MAX(100% HP, 2*DT), or just -(100%HP + DT).
theblindman 05-24-06, 02:30 PM	Too much math. Even without all those good points Pellanor brought up. I want to play my game with a minimum of tables. (preferably just one, for soda and rolling dice) I don't have much to say about massive damage, but I too have been thinking about fiddling with the death threshold. It is fairly arbitrary to make -10 the constant. So I've been thinking about two things. You die when you reach the negative value of your max hitpoints. So a 10th level fighter with 100 hitpoints would die at -100 hit points. The normal rules for falling unconscious and stabilization still apply, except that instead of a 10% chance you have a fortitude save, linked in value to the amount of damage taken. Heal checks to stablize remain the same. Stabilizing requires a saving throw, and you die at whatever point it becomes impossible for you to stabilize without rolling a natural 20. So a character with a +10 fortitude save dies at -30 hitpoints, but would remain alive at -29. There is no fixed point of death, characters die when the DM decides they do. Characters can continue to accumulate a theoretically infinite amount of damage and still simply be "dying." This makes it easy for the DM to control the story-line, while still keeping combat dangerous. It may, in fact, be more dangerous, since players don't actually know how long they can wait until their fallen comrade is actually dead, preventing metagame thinking. ("I'll wait to the end of the combat to cast cure critical wounds, because he just stabilized")
Amon_WinterfallIV 05-25-06, 01:25 AM	Thoughts on your two rules. Massive Damage: While I like the idea, it sounds like a lot of work to me. Picture this situation, My character is a 10th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 100 HP. In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP. In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage. Now he gets hit for an attack that does 37 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out? No Fort save required. Time Elapsed: .4 Seconds. As 37 is under 50, no Massive Damage roll would be required. You have to deal 50 damage, minimum, to get on the Massive Damage table. If one of the options throws out "No save Required", there is no save required. The Idea is that if you get more than 150 HP, 50 HP is no longer really massive damage. Temporary HP is kind of funny, but 50 damage, even if its entirely against Temp. HP, still provokes the Fort Save anyway. Because of Temp HP, you can get with an attack that would deal 100% of your Max HP--but you'd never save against it. Dropping your Con score decreases your Max HP, so it makes HP loss more significant. Below 150, though, Death from Massive Damage is based on a set number pattern. Death and Dieing: Just to verify, when you say whichever is lower, you mean as in whichever is the greatest negative value, so -30 would be lower than -20, yes? -Character Level should always be the same as -HD, so there's no point in listing both. That's right, -30 is lower than -20. Also, some templates (such as petitioner) give you 2d6 HP/level. In that case, they are not the same, so it needed to be posted that the lowest number possible is used as the death threshhold. It is mostly redundant, but I feel its better to explain too much than too little. I've actually done some work on a system like this myself. What I use is as follows: Death Threshold = MAX(Charisma, Con) + Character Level. When the character is between 0 and negative DT HP they are unconcious but stable. Charcters with Die Hard are instead Disabled. When a character is below negative DT HP, they are dying, and must make a Fort or Will save each round (including the round on which they dropped below their DT) with a DC equal to 10 + Current HP - DT (so with a DT of 15, and current HP of 20, DC would be 15) or die. Success means they simply loose a single HP. I may add something like what you have where -100% HP is instant death. Perhaps I'll make it -MAX(100% HP, 2*DT), or just -(100%HP + DT). Reason that -100% = unavoidable death is in there is because I dislike the idea of things like Frenzied Bezerkers running around with -5k HP. I also would like to create an Epic spell called "Preservation" that allows someone to avoid death until their body is destroyed. @theblindman: I suppose that it could be easier to start at 40%, and increase the Fort DC by 3 for every +5/5% more than that. Also, Death at -100% Max HP is crazy--mostly because it means that you are able to take as much damage while on the ground, helpless, as when you are able to fight.
Pellanor 05-25-06, 04:51 PM	No Fort save required. Time Elapsed: .4 Seconds. As 37 is under 50, no Massive Damage roll would be required. You have to deal 50 damage, minimum, to get on the Massive Damage table.Sorry, the way you wrote it it sounded like you were replacing the base of 50 with the % based. Well let's try it this way: My character is a 15th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 150 HP. In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP. In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage. Now he gets hit for an attack that does 77 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out?
theblindman 05-25-06, 05:24 PM	Also, Death at -100% Max HP is crazy--mostly because it means that you are able to take as much damage while on the ground, helpless, as when you are able to fight.Well yes, but it's not really that insane. Rules for coup de grace still apply, of course. It's designed to create a simulation wherein it's easy to fatally wound a person, but difficult to kill them instantly. Which may or may not be realistic, I'm neither a doctor nor a war veteran.
Amon_WinterfallIV 05-25-06, 06:58 PM	Sorry, the way you wrote it it sounded like you were replacing the base of 50 with the % based. Well let's try it this way: My character is a 15th level fighter with a Con of 18 and 150 HP. In the surprise round of combat, he gets buffed with 17 temp HP. In the next round hit gets poisoned, and takes 4 points of con damage. Now he gets hit for an attack that does 77 points of damage. What's the DC of his fort save? How long did that take you to figure out? I'll be honest, that took about 45 seconds to figure that out. Here's how to decipher it. --Gaining Temp HP does not apply to the table --His Max HP decreases because his con drops. In this case, 2x15=30. --As he has less than 150 Max HP, he goes on the flat number scale. You don't need to look at both tables, just to understand that when your max HP is above 150, massive damage requires 33% of your hit points to be "Massive". Because his Max HP is below 150, use the flat damage table. --Flat damage table says: 75 damage, Fort DC 35. So that's the entry to use. Poor fighter though, he's probably going to get fragged by that attack.