Having wasted two hours of my life listening to Spoony rip on 5e last night, I came away with two things. First, that people need to stop complaining about those of us who allow stat rolls. But more importantly, that the Death and Dying rules are pretty terrible.
The immediate rule which I added to my packet was this one:
"Constitution modifier is applied to all Death Saving Throws."
This is a good start, and I think it a good addition for anyone's game. Doesn't slow the game perceptibly. Does make Con matter to how quickly you die once down.
But I'm wondering if we can't do anything better than this, preferably without terribly impacting the speed at which these rolls are resolved. (Though, if you think about it, the roll is the entirety of a character's turn. Surely we can allow them some consideration in the round for a touch more realism?)
One of the issues is the "any damage" one. Dog bite, kick, or greataxe...all one failed death save. Any ideas? (Conc check type? DC set by damage?)
Our DM added that one during playtest as well, unsure it's necessary myself. For most charcters it makes little practical difference.
What exactly is the problem with the rules?
It worked fine in 4E for myself and for the playtest games I've played in.
I vastly prefer them to the -10HP rule from previous editions myself, that entirely failed to account for HP and damage scaling from higher levels.
Also I suspect alot of people fail to notice the combanation of the unconcious condition automatically taking critical hits in melee, and the two failed saves on an critcal hit mechanic.
From the Conditions section.
Attack rolls against an unconscious target have Advantage.Any attack that hits an unconscious creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5' of the unconscious creature.
CorwynnMaelstrom wrote:
"Realism" (such an odd word, but there you go) would be more the goal, hence making healthier characters take longer to die. The first modification I made covers that to an extent.
As for the rest?
HP scaling is one issue. The "massive damage" rule seems to work at lower levels and rapidly become impossible to attain (barring seriously gimped Con characters) which is, I suppose, the opposite of the first thought. It would be nice if they COULD die. 
I haven't decided how much I care about the difficulty yet. I'm going to encourage the players to try and not get downed, but one issue my game will have that the base rules don't introduce is that I'm not using a single "monster initiative" ... that has any number of different ramifications to it. Not the least of which is that someone can be downed and have stabilization not likely (or possible) until a different discrete enemy (or even multiple enemies) has acted. While that can technically happen even with all the enemies going at once, there's a slightly different dunamic when the party is taking their turns with creatures strewn in throughout.
So I'm not at the "die at 0" point, but I'm definitely leaning towards the "should totally be possible to be killed by a massive hit" (that -10hp scaling issue is the problem...reversed) and am potentially thinking that 100% of hit points negative should probably not be that thresshold at higher levels.
Ah well.
Higher con characters take longer to die.
By by default you have 3 death saves to fail before you die.
Apply your Con modifier to the number of death saves.
A dwarf with 20 con (+5) needs to fail 8 death saves to die.
An elf with 9 Con (-1) need only fail twice.
That'd be pretty burly indeed.
My pet idea is that as the text says, monster weapons aren't really in good condition (enough to sell).
An impact of that is a chance the monster just did non lethal damage when they knocked you to zero.
Noon wrote:
Personally, I'm probably going to alter the rule that says, "When you take damage and are dying, it counts as failing a death save." Instead I'll be doing something along the lines of:
"When you take damage, immediately roll a death save. If you pass this does not count as a failure OR a success" (so getting hit isn't making it easier for you to stabilize, but it's also not a guarenteed slip into the shadows)
I'll be honest, I'm not sure how often this will come up, but I'd hate to see someone get hit by a wayward spell (or worse, me as DM purposefully not including a downed PC!) just to auto fail a death throw when they already failed their first one. Or worse: Falling into consistent damage (though not necessarily high). So you have 3 turns MAX to get that character out, but realistically more like 2 turns, potentially 1 o_O
I've killed PCs in the past (mostly in 3.x), but this auto-fail thing just rubs me the wrong way for some reason
CorwynnMaelstrom wrote:
I kind of like the idea of being hit forcing a death save, rather than forcing a failure. I think it addresses in part my issue with little hits just meaning DOOM...but at the same time as noted, dying from larger hits should definitely be possible/likely.
Save when hit? (fail and mark off a box, succeed and do nothing)
Crit forces two saves?
Damage adds to DC? (Base of 10, but scale up as damage exceeds a baseline for level?)
Starting to creep into the realm of slowing things down with that last one though...
hallows1999 wrote:
I'm ok with the current death save mechanic, if you think about it high Con characters are already harder to kill, because they have more hitpoints. Adding the Con modifier to death saves is just double dipping and making the stat more important than intended. Now granted, it isn't a drastic change, and you may feel that Con should be more important than it is, but it's something to think about.
Now the massive damage rule I think leaves a bit to be desired. Take a 10th level cleric or rogue for example, they are pretty middle of the road hp wise so make a pretty good example, if they have a 10 con, and took the average of 5 hps each level that would give them 50 hps. That means at the bare minimum, it will take a hit of 50 dmg to kill them if they are stable at 0 hps, quite a bit more if they're in good shape. And that's a low assumed hp total with no Con bonuses at all. Now how often do character take hits of 50 dmg or more? Is it even possible to take that much damage in melee? Certainly not from most humanoids wielding a melee weapon. The highest weapon damage is d12, if you crit and rolled max dmg that's 24, and only 34 if they have somehow manage to max out their Str at 30. A decent level rogue with a crit and an exceptionally lucky sneak attack roll might be able to pull it off, and some high level spells if you get equally exceptional lucky rolls. But once you build up a decent hp pool you become pretty close to impossible to kill with massive damage.
I legitimately think Con should affect the death saves, yes. Just bothers me that a hulking brawler and a sickly invalid die as easily as each other once they're unconscious. (Massive damage aside.)
And yeah, the massive damage rule seems nigh impossible that it'll ever take effect. (Short of throwing an unconscious PC off a cliff. A really, really tall cliff.)
I have yet to come up with a quick, easy formula to replace the 100% hitpoints rule that doesn't make it TOO easy (particularly at low levels) but scales better than the default.
Interesting thread. Thanks for bringing it up!
I don't have a problem with the death mechanic as written yet. If anything I find it a bit too lenient at first blush. Anyway, since I first encountered death saves, I equated it with the old System Shock mechanic in terms of intent. Hits after reaching 0 HP being auto-crits works for me, too.
I'm sitting here brainstorming possible solutions to the massive damage rule. Because 100% hitpoints is horribly wonky at levels much above 5. Maybe make it a CON-based calculation? Rather than HP it uses the character's CON score. Then scale it. From Levels 1-5, it's as written, just CON instead of HP. From 5-10 it's CONx2. From 10-15 CONx3. 15-20 CONx4. I haven't run any sort of numbers to see if that even makes any difference compared to HP (or at all). It's just off the top of my head.
Does the massive damage have to come from melee attacks? Massive damage can come from a variety of sources. Damage spells like fireball cast from a higher-level slot, , defenestration or chucked off a cliff, stomped on by cloud giant. Enough to kill a 20th-level fighter according to RAW? I'm not so sure!
HP are a metric representation of something that isn't easy to define. It's my interpretation that it's not as though each point is a representation of an individual scrape or cut. It's more like the will to live, or the amount of stamina the character has to keep up a good fight - the time it takes before she makes a fatal error. Imagine a sword fight between two skilled fencers. Each start with a certain amount of HP. They whirl, they dodge, they parry, they score a few tiny cuts. Then, at the end, the loser makes a fatal mistake, and the winner runs him through. You get "hit" for 10 points of "damage" means it took you 10 points of stamina to fend off the blow. When you run out of HP, you run out of stamina; you stop being able to dodge, parry, duck, and weave. Then you get run through.
That's how I see HP, anyway.
That's also why I think "massive damage" is broken, and I think the crit-as-death-save-failure is, too. If you fall to 0 HP and are undefended by a comrade, you're easy pickings for a coup de grace. If the attack gets past your armour as worn, your throat is slit. If you fall to 0 HP and a cloud giant steps on you, the amount of HP it deals is immaterial - you're going to be a smear of goo he scrapes off his foot. Same thing if someone chucks your unconscious body off a cliff, or the aforementioned giant throws your body against the wall of the cavern. You're just DEAD. I'm going to talk that over with my group tomorrow. It's not as though any of them are terribly familiar with the death mechanic anyway. We'll see what they have to say. I might just house-rule that if you suffer more than your CON score after falling to 0 HP, yer ded. If we stick with the RAW, I'm okay with that, too.
Death is a different animal in today's games than it was in days of yore. I suspect it has a lot to do with character generation getting quite complicated a couple of editions ago - it took a lot of time, knowledge, and options choices. Luckily, with 5e it's easier to roll a new character and get back into the game. You can create a character literally within minutes, even spellcasters. Therefore I think DMs can go back to pre-3e levels of concern for character death i.e., nobody wants to a PC to die, but if it happens nobody's going to get too upset).
I think people have gotten unused to the idea that characters die. It sucks. Always. But they do. I hate it when my characters die, because there's part of me in each character. I strongly suspect the rules were shifted toward making death more rare in order to nip in the bud the whining that always ensues when a PC dies. ;)
Thanks for letting me navel-gaze a bit.
Cheers,
Bob
CorwynnMaelstrom wrote:
First, let me say I think the CON+LVLx2 is a very interesting idea. Hmmmm...
hallows1999 wrote:
Gungolphus wrote:
That makes perfect sense.
I find myself wondering what happened some years ago that made the developers decide to make characters less likely to die. I'm just curious if what I suspect is true. Anyway. 
As a DM, I think it's important to establish early on how you might rule in certain situations. If you fall off a 100-foot cliff, for example. If you get stomped on by a cloud giant. If you are at the point of impact of a 10d6 fireball spell. That sort of thing. How that might very well kill you, no matter how many HP you've got.
I was thinking about the last example last night. 10d6 is insufficient damage to slay a 10th-level fighter, unless he's totally CON-gimped. But a 10d6 fireball is enough to burn all his organic equipment to cinders. (There used to be item saving throws in previous editions which were handy for resolving this sort of thing. I wonder if they'll be in the forthcoming DMG.) It is also - and this is the important bit - hot enough to heat his metal armour to damage-inducing levels. Even if we say that the heat damage is 10% of the 10d6, you're going to take it every combat round until you can doff it. A 10th-level fighter will probably have plate (heavy) armour, so that means 5 minutes to get out of it. Or 50 - 50! - combat rounds. During which he'd be taking damage every round. And uselessly out of the fight.
Now, that secondary heat damage isn't RAW. But it's an idea.
Cheers,
Bob
if you look at an adult red dragons (CR 17) breath weapon, it does an average of 64 damage if you fail your save. A 17th level fighter with a con mod of +4 and who always takes 6 rather than rolling hit points, has 174 hit points. If this fighter gets hit by the dragon's breath and fails the save, should this result in instant death?
If the answer is yes, then at least that gives some base to work from, though I think you might want to say that the breath weapon would have to roll over the average to cause instant death, so boost this number up to 70, lets say.. This 17th level fighter with 18 con then would have an instant death when damage left over exceeds 70 points.
I have worked out some possible options to add to those already mentioned in posts above:
OPTION 1 - limit excess damage needed to cause Instant Death
The maximum excess of damage leading to instant death would be equal to (Level x (HD type + Con modifier) / 5) +20 round down
This would give:
17th level barbarian with +5 constitution modifier would need to have remaining damage equal to (17 x (12 + 5) / 5) +20 = 77 damage before instant death.
17th level fighter with +5 con mod would need 71 excess damage before instant death.
17th level wizard with +2 con mod would need 47 excess damage for instant death
A 7th level barbarian with +4 con modifier would 42
A 7th level fighter with +4 con mod would need 39 damage.
A 7th level wizard with +2 con mod would need31 damage.
OPTION 2 - less math!
May be easier to just say that the maximum excess damage to cause instant death is equal to 70 damage, for example. So those with better Con and better hit dice reach the cap quicker than those that don't. Seems a little odd that those with higher con and higher level don't get any advatnage once everyone reaches this amount of hit points, but still simple and viable.
OPTION 3 - Introduce a half-way save v Instant death, and also keep the RAW instant death rule as well.
Alternatively you could just add on a save v Instant death if you are reduced to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining equal to or exceeding half your hit point maximum. You would need to have a minmum amount of damage exceeding to be set, to stop lower level characters being continually hit with this, so maybe say the minimum damage to cause the save must be over the Character's Level + Consitituion Score.
Figures for this:
17th level barbarian (20 Con) (209HP) needs to make a con save if damage remaining after being reduced to 0 hit points exceeds 104.
17th level fighter (20 Con) (191HP) exceeds 95
17th wizard (14 Con) (88HP) exceeds 44
7th level Barbarian (20 Con) (89HP) exceeds 44
7th level Fighter (20 Con) (81HP) exceeds 40
7th level Wizard (14 Con) (44HP) exceeds 22
would need to decide if the save was a con save or just like the stabilize type save, and what the DC was etc.
OPTION 4 - Take over 'X' amount of damage in a single blow and have to make a save v death - A Massive Damage rule
This is slightly different and follows the system used in the Moongose D20 game of Conan. in that game I seem to recall if you took over 50 dam in one blow you had to make a save v death. What you set this at will make a huge difference - could set it at half maximum hit points (with a minium maybe equal to Con), which gives the numebrs set out in option 3 above, or use a set number like 70, so it only kicks in at high level etc.
Gungolphus wrote:
Iorwerth wrote:
I really wish I had a better idea of how to do this.
On the one hand I really don't think being able to insta-kill PCs is necessarily a good idea. On the other hand, being able to walk away from a mountain falling on you is kind of silly.
On reading Iorwerth's calculations, I'm not certain that, at that level (17), there should be much of anything that can insta-kill a PC, except perhaps a god-like being.
I used to be uncertain. Now I'm just not sure. 
Cheers,
Bob
I appreciate the thoughts. I'll probably do some fiddling with some of the simpler formulas and check to see how they work out for forcing saves and for massive death. (I think light to moderate damage forces a save, as opposed to any damage means a failure would be a better default. And I think high level PC should probably get closer to not having an issue with massive damage deaths, yes.)
I suggest keeping it simple. Likely a combat will only last 4-ish rounds, so taking up to 3 rounds to die does not seem that bad.
I would suggest allowing a death save instead of an automatic failure on indirect or unintended damage (area of effect spells, etc.), or for damage that is less then their con score. For direct damage that is equal or greater then their con, they have an automatic failure.
You could also have their con score be the threshhold of total damage taken before there is an automatic failure. So 3 kicks from kobolds for less damage then the players con in a round means 1 failure.
Honestly, if I changed anything it would be that they just die "slower". Perhaps they must roll with every hit, and they get their con -or- wisdom bonus (why not willpower) to the roll. When dying on their own, they have to roll when a number of rounds pass that equals either their con or their wisdom bonus (whichever is more favorable).
Lots of options. Still, I do not see a problem with this. As a DM, if I ever want to draw out the tension, I can allow more time to pass between saves. I had two players drop in one combat last game, and the other players had no problem tending to them within two rounds. There was a sense of urgency, but also a nice safe amount of time.
Kind of sounds like people want it that when they as DM don't want the PC to die, the PC wont die.