david ferris's page

I think the inability to maintain your current position in the air is silly if flying is through magical means.
It also breaks traditional expectation.
If you think about it, it means that you only need to add levitate to your magical flight to be able to "hover". Levitate should be a built in component of magical flight.
I do think that movement should require a build up process to reach maximum speed, especially if that speed is really fast.
For example, a creature that moves (flight, running, whatever) really fast (lets say 120 feet per round) should be able to move say 60 feet in the first round, 90 feet the second, and reach their maximum speed in the third round since it takes acceleration to reach your maximum velocity.

I think the idea here is so that you don't have players passing stat items around just to meet the criteria. Similar wording is used with the regeneration items that heal only damage taken while wearing the item, this limits the idea of the "group" ring of regen that gets passed around until the group is fully healed.

I think you are right about this intention.

Welcome Redwolf. .....

I like the idea you propose:

Spell level = number of initiative counts between beginning to cast the spell and the spell taking effect.

I can see it working for most spells with a casting time of 1 Standard action. I would leave all spells with casting times of Swift action or Full round action (or longer) unchanged.

It is my understanding you intend for attacks against the wizard on the initiative counts between beginning to cast the spell and the spell taking effect to have the possibility of disrupting the spell. I have no problem with this but others may.

Yes!

But I do forsee some problems.
Wizard starts casting a spell at the enemy forces, lets say it is a fire ball. Before the spell goes off the enemy gets to move and so does an ally of the wizard.
I assume that the wizard is allowed to aim the spell at the last moment.
The wizard may suddenly find that when the spell actualy manifests that the battlegrid layout may have changed in a way that makes the spell undesirable to cast.
On top of that, it is possible that an enemy may move close enough to make a melee attack against the caster. Would that entitle the attacker an additional attack of opportunity (casting a spell when in a threatened space)?
Imagine if that striker was a rogue!
I can see the need for better team work. That could be a good thing.
It could also be a useful mechanism for addressing power balance issues.

Perhaps this idea could be used to provide a Harry potter flavour. Perhaps a caster that uses a focus device (such as wand or a holy symbol, or a staff) could get their spell off faster than that.
Perhaps an initiative delay of half the spell level (rounded down) would be the advantage of cluttering up one of your hands with a focus device. Perhaps this would also require a feat.
Spell level / initiative count delay
0-1 = no delay
2-3 = 1 count delay
4-5 = 2 count delay
6-7 = 3 count delay
8-9 = 4 count delay

Should this rule apply to users of supernatural spell like abilities?

It seems that the proposal is an attempt to find a better way to make multiclassing viable and fair.
With the release of 4E WOTC openly admitted that 3.5 prestige classes were a band aid multiclassing fix.
I can't argue with that admission.
The posters who want the new fix suggestion to incorporate prestige classes seem to miss that fundamental point.

I'm in favor of killing it. The core classes should be able to stand on their own without bribing players into sticking with them.

I am also in favour of killing favoured class bonus or penalties.

And Jason, the same goes for discouraging or encouraging multiclassing combinations. You seem to favour single class play. I may be wrong!
But multiclassing is a great way to make your character concept unique.

Take Conan the barbarian as an example:
Barbarian in attitude, serious figher training, spent time as a rogue, jungle fighting, survival and sailing skills, becomes a general of armies of many types, and finally a king.
What single class covers this interesting character?

SEPERATE ISSUE
Another poster made a "poo on you comment"
This apparrant rudeness may have been made with fun and light hearted intentions. But we can not hear tone, or giggles, or read facial expressions.
This simply comes across, in the reading, as a childish attack.
I may side with your stance re the rules, but you lose all credability in my search for mature discussion.
I say this not as a personal attack against you, but as a general attack against anyone who lowers themselves to that level and expects us to accept it.
A newbie to these forums will take one look at the wrong post and think "these people are a buch of little children", and walk away.

Lets not diminish the PRIVILAGE of posting on these forums.

A couple of sessions ago the PC's in the game I was running encountered a huge white dragon (21HD) in a close quarters situation.
There were 8 characters all around 10th level and a few at 11th.
No one has a magic item higher than +2.
Yep its initiative sucks.

Round one basically involved the party charging at the dragon.
Yes it got in attacks of opportunity and those wee claws and bite attacks were rather pathetic.
It gets criticaled a couple of times and several minor wounds.
Spell casters are magic missile hammering hit points away.
The dragon breathes all over half the party (and itself) and does hardly any damage of significance.
The dragon is realy hurt.
Round two involves the dragon taking enough damage to make it worry about survival.
In desperation it bolts but incurrs several attacks of opportunity that do massive critical damage.
Basically they kicked its tail.
I was shocked at how pitiful it fared, it was supposed to be a serious threat and prelude to a serious adventure to take it out.
I was really disappointed.
We were all a bit suprised at how comparatively powerful their characters were.

Many years ago I was playing in a game run by a novice DM who started play in my group and then wanted a first go at DM-ing.
It was the most memorable game ever. Mainly because of the PC deaths that occurred, and how they occurred.
The DM took great pains to keep secret actions secret by kicking us outside when wanting private discussions, some of which were just to keep us guessing.
The first PC was killed by a tough doppleganger and the player of the slain character then got to play the doppleganger. First kill.
Hiding the body realy well, the PC doppleganger took the opportunity to take out the next PC. The PC chosen was the other PC run run by the same player (now controlling the doppleganger). Second kill.
Doppleganger remains in the form of the first kill.
For some reason when we finally discovered the second slain body (assuming it to be the first) we subconsciously assumed that the PC controlled by the same player must be the genuine article.
At some point the possibility of a doppleganger is raised because of the concealment of the corpse. But we are not sure.
We really started to get paranoid and untrusting of the wrong people. Accusations fly and scouting was scary because you did not know if the guy you were with was actually a monster or if the monster was hiding around the next twist in the tunnel.
The death toll kept comming and we eventually split up for a while (just to get away from each other) we get chased around by monsters and each other.
At one point my own character fireballed a small rat because it might have been a shapechanger stalking him.
We eventually got the doppleganger but mostly because its own process of elimination kept narrowing down the list of suspects remaining.
We were so messed up and resource drained that even outnumbered 3 to 1, it still almost took us out in the process.
Very close to TPK. PC's down to 1-2 hit point each. All rolls displayed.
That was the best game ever.
Mostly due to one selfless player deliberately eliminating one of his own great characters for the good of our game experience.
I wish that guy still had the time to play with us. But he is too busy surving in the real world.
Here is a salute to you Abraham Fisher (top player in my book)

"OK I will agree to make this pact. For the result will be for the greater good."

That is truely a case of lawful stupid.

I don't understand how a Paladin can expect a demon to honour an agreement.
Stupid! (My 5 yoear old niece would call him/her a Silly Billy!)

So what is the point of making a pact that you will feel honour bound to uphold and the other side does not?
Stupid!

The paladin runs the risk that the whole scenario is simply a ruse concocted by the greater evil simply to trick the paladin into a moral compromise that also limits the paladin's demon slaying for a while.
The contact might actually be sincere but still be a tricked puppet.
Evil triumphs when good folk do nothing.
"You want me to stop smiting you guys?"

Perhaps a renegade demon could contact a Paladin and pass on information about a powerful demon's vulnerability and location etc.
A paladin is unlikely to attack if a demon expresses a desire to communicate in a non threatening manner.
The Paladin might say "Thanks for the info, I might do something if you do not get in my way. But I am not agreeing to anything so do not try anything that will annoy me, or even get too close to me, or I will smite your sinning butt. So go to hell, or where ever it is you live before I consider this discussion ended.
The Paladin will then expect that the info is likely a trap.
But a paladin may still take the bait (for the greater good) but on his or her own initiative and without making promises to an evil party.

A paladin could make a statement to indicate that destroying a common enemy was something the paladin believed was a worthwhile goal.
Making a pact or a promise is not the same as expressing a desire to destroy a common enemy and a willingness to CONSIDER taking advantage of a prime opportunity to do so.

Honour is not a shallow and ill conceived concept.
It is based on looking at a far greater picture then a single mission objective.

If a Demon actually has an alignment improvement (away from evil) that would probably be such an amazing thing that a Paladin might be willing to negotiate.

According to the article, he was verbally abusive and obsessive, and she had gotten a restraining order out against him. Just a guess, but I bet that it wasn't another man.... At least not at first. I feel sorry for her and her family, and I hope that this doesn't translate into another black eye for the hobby since people like that will go off no matter what industry they happen to work in.

Unfortunately another example of the weakness of the legal systems in our "civilised" societies.

If we're giving possibilities for Save or Die effects, I also agree that straight HP damage is kinda boring. I was actually toying around with this idea:

The spell does a set amount of damage (straight or rolled), or brought to -1 HP, whichever is effectively more damage.

Say some death effect spell deals "20d6" on a failed save.
Comparing a Lv 15 Fighter with 200 HP vs lvl 1 fighter with 15 HP.
Let's say the spellcaster rolls 66 points of damage for his spell:

The Lv 15 is brought to -1 on a failed save because bringing him to -1 is a greater total then the 66 points that was rolled.

The Lvl 1 is dead due to damage being great enough to bring given fighter to less then -10 outright.

This has the potential effect of still making the save or die spells a worrisome threat for lower level characters, but tougher high level characters don't have to worry about outright dying because they rolled that "1" the only thing they could fail on.

Just an idea that I'm tossing out there, haven't even tried it in a game.

I like this idea:

Does anyone have a multiclass character who is both a sorcerer and a wizard?

I am wondering if this combination is extreemely rare.
I kind of expect that it is a rare choice.

If you have tried this multiclass combination, what is your take on the pathfinder impact on the character?

If you want to state or rant that this is a stupid and pointless combination then please do not bother to post in this thread.
Thank you.

david ferris wrote:

What about spellcraft?

A sorcerer is not judged by arcane level, just skill point investment (or lack of...) getting a +3 bonus is nice.
Can't perform work the same way for a bard?

You can invest skill ranks in perform when you are multi classed, it just no longer affects the DC of the spells effects. This is the same as it is for all other classes.

Thank you mister ogre (and other polite informitive people) for your interpretation/clarification.

david ferris wrote:

Bardic performance DCs are now based off the bard's level, not his Perform skill check.

So if you are a multi class bardic character you can't keep improving your perform school by allocating skill points to perform when adding a different class level?

Yes, and thats perfect!!! Its the way it should have always been.

NO other class has their primary function based solely on a skill that you have to allocate skill points too.

Hopefully Perform skill will add some functions and benefits to those who OPT to take it - but it shouldn't be a requirement.

Now the bardic abilities are based off of half-character level - just like SLAs and spells for all other classes.

Robert

So you are saying that a multiclass bard who invests in the perform skill should get no benifit for doing so.

What am I not getting about this?
Investment of skill points should be benificial.
Why discriminate against multi-class characters?
A bards level still defines special ability limitations, including spell casting.

Perhaps you really think that perform should not be available to other character classes.

As for comparing other core classes and skill spending:

What about spellcraft?
A sorcerer is not judged by arcane level, just skill point investment (or lack of...) getting a +3 bonus is nice.
Can't perform work the same way for a bard?

Perhaps you think the bard deserves an extra skill point to spend on this.

How about clerics and knowledge religion...

Must I point out the Rogue class to show you the most obvious parallels?

Bardic performance DCs are now based off the bard's level, not his Perform skill check.

So if you are a multi class bardic character you can't keep improving your perform school by allocating skill points to perform when adding a different class level?

D&D is a concept that now transends rule sets.
It is a genre understood by many non players who never bothered to read a rule book and have no idea who owns the licencing rights.

D&D has survived changes in official ownership and rules evolutions for better or worse. Whatever the technical format; the concept is the same.
The real ownership is the millions of players.
The players have the power to make or break the license company through the power of the dollar vote, or lack of.

Pathfinder is blatently a 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons game.
There is nothing original about it except minor technical adjustments.
That is OK. Evolution is allowed to be a slow process.
I vote to use pathfinder as the central ruleset for my dungeons and dragons games since it is a continuation of the 3.5 rules.
And since I own the right to make any house rules that I want; I will.

When I am playing D&D in 20 years time I have no idea what it will be called but it will still be a Dungeons and Dragons game.
Whatever it is called I guarantee it will be better than anything currently on offer or there would be no reason for me to change to that system.
That is why D&D will continue to evolve. The true owners of D&D (The serious players for life) will accept change for the better but not otherwise.
If WOTC D&D 4.0 was an improvement for me than I would be there.
Their loss.
I would call pathfinder: D20 Pathfinder.
I would tell people that I play Dungeons and Dragons and that I use the D20 Pathfinder rule books.

This is exactly why I already posted the suggestion that hit points are rolled normally but that PC's get a flat 10 hp bonus to enhance survivability.

Of course it only matters to those of us that like multiclass characters and who might want to start out with sub-optimal class sequence choices to fit personal story development preferences.

Judging by the lack of responce to my posts and yours I guess that not many people play like this.
Role playing or powergaming? I guess powergamers actually rule.

Realising that powergamers would hate having their carefully considered advantages neutralised, I sweetened the deal by letting on about the other half of our advancement house rule. Elite characers cheat!!!
PC's are elite characters.
Elite characters cheat - by re-rolling any natural 1 for rolling hit points or ability scores.

Sometimes you have to read betwen the lines and see the intention behind the actual wording.
Will not use poison.. or lies... etc.
Essentially the paladin has vowed not to use techniques that are the hallmarks of evil or cowardly behaviour. The paladin may not consider a particular sedative or paralysing venim to be evil but still consider its availability something to be avoided simply because in the wrong hands it can be used to achieve evil ends by cowardly means or tragic accidental misuse.
It is hard to kill off your enemies by sneaking a sword into their sandwiches.
I would rule that a paladin might openly use a tranqualiser to bring down a raging beast without killing it if the circumstances provided the materials availability and the situational urgency justified immediate results. Perhaps to save innocent lives in immediate danger.
This would require making an attack to deliver the substance, possibly at some risk to the character if the attack misses.
I would not expect a paladin to carry such materials since they can be stolen, mislaid, or become available to the BBEG that manages to actually kill the paladin.

Poison and lies are symbols of evil to the paladin.
The paladin might not want to risk going down the path towards evil by making excuses for taking those "cowardly" options. It is too easy to decieve oneself about the ends justifying the means.

[It is possible to introduce BDB to D&D however you need to acept the following tweaks:

- Give to characters, NPCs and Monsters BDB = BAB.
.....

Just some thoughts.

That ends up increasing the brokenness at high levels since it makes it even harder for lower martial classes such as rogues to hit fighters because AC's keeps improving faster than the attackers BAB advancement. Essentially you also drag out the combats much longer too.

Arnim Thayer wrote:

......

The main drawback is that combat may end up getting drawn out because the AC of everything in the game suddenly improves. In order to balance this, it might be desireable to rule that Armor and Natural AC bonuses cannot stack and/or perhaps that Deflection and BDB bonuses do not stack. ......

That problem is covered by my system.

That is where the weapon proficiency damage bonus really helps.
Provided the attacker is using a weapon that they are proficient with. That includes magic energy attack, monster bite attack etc. Monk fist.
Sure you don't always hit a similar level character/monster without trying, but at high levels with lots of hit points, everytime you hit you inflict a decent amount of damage so it makes a noticible difference. This really makes a difference when a critical occurrs since the bonus damage gets multiplied too.
We also do not allow the defensiveness bonus to AC to apply in situations where the target is unaware of the attackers presense. So ambush and suprise situations are actually serious.
It also means that high level characters can mop up low level enemies such as orcs, with single arrow shots etc.
This gives them the chance to really kick butt and play super lethal like that elf with no LEGO in TLOTR.
Who needs the minion concept? Not me.

For some time, I've been working on making D&D compatible with d20 Modern. Pathfinder has brought much of this to the surface. Where I'm at a loss right now is what to do with class bonuses to defense.

The way I see it, as someone progresses in level, they should become more adept at dishing out damage. Hence, the ever-ascending curve of BAB.

This led me to think that over time, someone is not only better at hitting, but should know better how to dish out damage. So, now, in my games, we add +1/2 BAB to damage rolls.

But that got me thinking. As someone advances in levels, shouldn't they know better how to avoid being hit. After all, Fort/Ref/Will Svs also go up as a character progresses in levels. So, why shouldn't a character's AC or Defense (beyond the occasional climb of Dex or enchanted armor). The question is how to reflect this.

In part, the answer I see is found at d20 Modern with the Class Defense bonus. How would we create an equivalent counterpart in D&D? 1/2 BAB like damage? No. Avoiding being hit isn't the same as making a hit.

But what about CMB? That's sort of an armor class against certain hits isn't it? It is based on BAB. That's a hard angle to get around, and honestly, I can't ... except that it deals with making a hit vs. evading the hit. It's a power move between two opposing forces.

If you are wanting to avoid a hit all together, it seems to me that the Reflex Base Save is the most logical result.

But I can't envision Reflex Base to go hand in hand with armor without penaltiy. The penalties I see:

(1) Associate with Max Dex with armor. I.e., your Ref Base cannot exceed your Armor Max Dex for purposes of Base Defense Bonus (BDB). The same should apply for encumbrance.

(2) The Ref Base Sv does not apply if you are wearing armor with which you aren't proficient.

When I inserted this into my current characters, it seems reasonable insofar as enchanted armor wasn't included. But once you started adding enchanted armor, this could become very...

Congratulations on having a great idea by thinking about the core mechanics.

I've already done this with my house rules. Specifically so that the playability at higher levels (up to 50th) is still viable.
In our new rules BAB has two progresion benifits.
Benifit one is an AC defensive bonus.
It is approximately 2/3 of the BAB.
Benifit two is a weapon proficiency damage bonus.
It is approximately 1/3 of the BAB.
Every time a character increases their BAB one or the other (but never both) of these progression benifits increases.

Eg in our system a 50th level fighter has a BAB of +50
AC defensive bonus is +33. Weapon proficiency damage bonus is +16.

A 20th level fighter/ranger/barbarian has BAB of +20.
AC defensive bonus is +13. Weapon proficiency damage bonus is +6.

Unfortunately the system has not been fully playtested (just using it for our normal game sessions) but so far it seems to work.

I do my games as max HP at 1st + con mod. Is the method I like unless someone wants to go Iron man and roll em

Originally my group went "iron man" as you put it when rolling ability scores and also hit points (even at first level).

Now we cheat.
We always re-roll natural 1's when rolling up hit points and ability scores.
We even re-roll natural 1's for hit point advancement beyond first level. It just sucks when you are a barbarian and you roll a natural 1 when you go up a level.

We are a dedicated bunch of cheats.
One day we decided to cheat even more by giving every PC a bonus 10 hit points. Elite character bonus!
The beauty of this system is that survivability is increased but if you multiclass it does not matter which class is your first level choice in terms of long term hit point potential.
You are not penalised by choosing to start out as a rogue rather than a barbarian. The power gamer considerations are eliminated.

I like the way the proposed pathfinder skill system also eliminates this class sequencing optimisation problem.
So I suggest that the cheating sytem that my group uses could also be a great solution to the class sequencing optimisation issues with hit point allocation.

Turn to the dark side..... join us!

....
The changes do not seem that extreme to me.
....

I have to agree that the changes are not difficult to accommodate.

Change for the sake of presenting a new product is very different to improving something that we love.

I find it hard to believe that any serious gamer would have a problem with any new rules provided the changes moved the gaming experience forward in the right direction.
Would you go back to 1970's AD&D now?

Just fix what is broken, eliminate hassles and headaches.
More fun with better rules!

Great concepts beat technical statistics every time.
Ignore the stats just get the concepts.
The plot, the maps, and the essence of characters beyond their statistics are always worth recycling if they were ever worth anything in the first place. Concepts!

Pathfinder is an attempt to improve the game that we love by making a carefully considered partial step forward. It is not true democracy but it’s not despotic.
Good on you pathfinder. Your heart is definitely in the right place. And I think that the step forward is in the right direction.
I will be supporting pathfinder RPG by voting with my wallet.

How can you not want improvement?
How can you not applaud the effort and desire to make improvement?
How can you not want us to consider your great D&D improvement idea?
Help us rescue the 3.5 concept from its marketing based demise.

The fact that we are even bothering to even post our thoughts here means that we really like the 3.5 rules system (you do) but also that an even better version would be appreciated.

I say that the changes do not go far enough!
3.5 is definitely broken due to its level range playability sweet spot.
Pathfinder direction does not make any significant impact on that essential mathematical design fault.
Personally I think that a braver pathfinder upgrade has the potential to take over and become THE leading D&D game version.
We could be playing our balanced multi-classed characters, monsters, NPC’s all the way to 50th level. Character customisation should be broader and easy.
It would require making some core advancement mechanic adjustments right across the board but not enough to make 1st to 20th level characters difficult to upgrade.

Future change is a certainty.
D&D will evolve many more times until it improves greatly or is driven off the rails.
Have some influence in the outcome if you can.

Why can the Fighter get his weapon that'll hurt his enemy, and "land his hit every time", but the Wizard has to be shafted so that NO ONE has a crappy enough save for him to find a "weak point" and attack it with a spell?

...
Low Saves are in the game for a reason. Fighters and Rogues get Phantasmal Killed, or Dominated... the party has to deal/protect against it. The Wizard and Rogue get hit with Disintegrate, the Cleric and Fighter get hit with Fireballs, Polar Rays and Meteor Swarms.
....
An increase to low saves across the board would depower magic. And not in the good way. Who likes playing a class who's attacks are a bunch of misses/low effects.

The save difficulty is heavily influenced by what is usually the primary ability score of the spell caster. Especially if single class.

This really stands out when the attacker is using a natural ability and has a super high constitution (size and level based) which massively boosts the saving throw requirement.

Better then incorporing Intermediate Saving Throws to the game, would be to step to a more streamlined progression.

I mean something more simple, in line with Star Wars Saga, each character receives a Base Saving Throw bonus equal to 1/2 character´s level (rounded down) + key ability modifier + Class Bonus.

Class Bonus will be equal to +2 (for a Save in wich the class originally had a GOOD [up to +12] progression), +1 (for a Save in wich the class originally had a INTERMEDIATE [up to +9] progression), and +0 for a Save in wich the class originally had a POOR [up to +6] progression.

The good of this rule is that DM´s don´t need to consult the Tables with Saving Throw Progression every time they need to fast build a NPC.
Also the old +6 progression, even for poor saving throws, has proven to be ridiculously low.

I totally agree.

This is the greatest problem with the existing 3.X mechanics.
Pathfinder does not tackle this core problem at all.

Eliminating this problem could enable pathfinder to have the structure for us to take our characters all the way to 50th level rather than having no real fun with them beyond 20th.
Imagine how great it would be if pathfinder could blow away 4.0 in level progression capacity.

I am already house ruling a level based linear progression for saving throws. It is so much easier when DM'ing especially if I want to quickly generate a multiclass monsterbased NPC.
PC ability scores become the main influence about how well you save compared to the other party members.
NO problems so far so I will probably keep the house rules even when using pathfinder.

Here is a new version of cure minor wounds that can still be cast at will to provide emergency minor healing, but is not a free hit points generator and can also provide a team bonding experience.

Cure Minor Wounds – New version

When cast, this zero level spell can be applied in more than one ways. The caster must specify which application is being used.

1. Stabilize
If the recipient is unconscious the application of the spell can be used to stabilize their condition, but this does not increase the hit point total of the patient.

2. Donate Health
Once per round the caster can transfer 1 hit point from a donor creature to the recipient.
Usually the caster will be the donor creature.
Limitations:
All creatures involved must be living.
The transference of health requires making a personal life force connection between the caster, the recipient, and the donor (if the donor is not the caster).
The caster, donor, and the recipient cannot be of opposite good/evil alignment with any of the others involved for a life force connection to be successful.
A creature with the regeneration (SU) ability or under a similar magical effect cannot be a donor or a recipient of hit point transfer, but can be a caster of this spell.
A donor must freely and consciously will some personal energy to flow into the recipient.
A transfer cannot result in the recipient ending up with more hit points than a donor.
The caster cannot use this spell to increase their own health even with the help of a willing donor.

Donor Circle:
A group of willing donor creatures can create a healing circle whilst linking hands. The caster cannot be a donor in this case but during the round can channel one hit point of energy from each donor in the circle to heal a single agreed on recipient. There number of donors in the circle cannot exceed the caster level of the caster. All other limitations on this spell working properly still apply.

I like the "at will" concept for zero level spells.
I also agree that if cure minor wounds stayed unchanged that it would get abused.
However I felt that the stabalize spell still needs a bit of an upgrade on the healing side. Especially since its dark side counterpart could actually be used repeatedly until the patient ultimately loses enough hit points. "I really tried to save him but alas his wounds from the battle were too deep and must have carried an infection...(evil cleric making a deception check and tearfully blowing nose with handkerchief soaked in diced onion juice).

So I ruled (in my last weekends session) that if a cleric devoted 5 minutes to a stabalized patient while channeling more of the stabalize magic into the unconscious victim, that the recipient could be "revived" up to 0 hit points.
I call this the "restore consciousness" variation on using the stabalize spell.
At least at this point the patient can talk (possibly heal themself further if magically capable) and even drink a potion of healing without drowning on it.

I do not let people pour magic potions down unconscious peoples throats without considering the danger of inhaling liquid into the lungs. I do allow a slow drip feed proccess but that takes a minimum of 10 minutes.

Oops
Somehow I missed out a vital point.
Whenever you roll a dice to get abilities or hit points:
Ignore any natural 1 and roll the dice again!
Simple!

Hit points for first level characters
This is an issue when multiclassing:
Long term hit point attainment is currently biased towards your first level choice of class. Long term skill attainment is no longer skewed that way. So why hit points?
If you want to multiclass then a power gamer will choose the highest hit point class for their first level character. Best to start out with maximum hit points of the highest possibility.
A story line gamer might well prefer a more organic sequence "I am starting as a rogue because I am a poor refugee trying to survive on the streets.."
I prefer to lego block together character stats without having to consider sequence of class selection.
I suggest a concept that defines player characters as being elite characters. Elite characters have advantages with progression.
Elite characters have to roll initial abilities (3d6) and hit points (based on class HD) for every level.
To give elite characters even more survivability I suggest giving a flat bonus of 10 hit points at first level. That means that even if a barbarian unluckily rolls a natural 2 for first level hit points, he or she still gets a better deal than the majority of first level monster opponents.
This would eliminate multiclass sequencing for hit points to fit in with the way you have eliminated the class sequencing issue for skill point attainment.
It sucks when you roll a natural one for extra hit points at any level. Especially if you are a barbarian.
This rule seems fair for all classes and I have used it for a long time with my gaming group.

Elite NPC's and monsters can be generated. Elite opponents ought to be worth 20% more XP than non-elite characters of the same level level.

You can generate an elite critter from scratch.
If you want to convert an existing critter into an elite one on the fly (because you want a tougher leader for a random encounter) simply assign an extra 10 hit points and give it a +1 bonus to attack rolls, armorclass, saving throws, and save difficulties.