Syl's Pathfinder RPG suggestions: Death & dying

[Sylvain Hamel]

Here are the alternative death and dying rules that wizards had suggested on their web site. I found that they added a lot of excitement to the game without over complicating it. It would make a great "alternative rule".

From the dnd site :

1) At 0 hp or less, you fall unconscious and are dying.
Any damage dealt to a dying character is applied normally, and might
kill him if it reduces his hit points far enough (see #2).

2) Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or
one-quarter of their full normal hit points, whichever is a larger value. If it feels too small, increase it
to one-third full normal hit points and try again.

3) If you're dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times
before you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
10-19: No change.
20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter
your full normal hit points.

4) If a character with negative hit points receives healing, he
returns to 0 hp before any healing is applied.
In other words, he'll wake up again with hit points equal to the
healing provided by the effect—a cure light wounds spell for 7 hp will
bring any dying character back to 7 hp, no matter what his negative
hit point total had reached.)

5) A dying character who's been stabilized (via the Heal skill)
doesn't roll a d20 at the end of his turn unless he takes more damage.

[Tarlane]

One of my players(who is also a DM) just implemented this in a campaign that he is running a few weeks ago. He was really pumped to try it out, but so far the response from us playing with the system has been less then positive. It seems to add a lot of complexity for relatively little real benefit.

The chance of stabilization and springing back to your feet is good, though its lower then a normal stabilization check, and if you are unconscious and bleeding its likely you have less rounds to make it in this system(having only three failures). Plus there is a lot more book-keeping involved, especially when spells that affect your hit points come into play(ok, so I'm 12th level and just got bears endurance. That means I gain 24hp, so my new 'death point' is 6 lower then it used to be...), and it adds a lot of other points up for interpretation(What about temp HP, ect).

If you want to make your characters have a better chance of surviving when they are down below zero, let them drop to their negative con instead. Unless they are a very low con build(in which case they probably don't have a lot of HP anyway) or you are in the upper levels where they have a lot of HP, thats probably going to put them to near the same level and its much easier to keep track of.

[Sylvain Hamel]

Here are the advantages I found about it :

1) No more disabled at 0 hp. How often have you seen that happen in a game anyway.

2) It adds excitement to the game especially for unconscious people. I had a few situation with people coming back from the dead and winning the day.

3) The problem with fixed negative hit points is that it doesnt scale. Ask a mid-level fighter if he would rather be alive at 1 hp or unconscious!

Tarlane wrote:

One of my players(who is also a DM) just implemented this in a campaign that he is running a few weeks ago. He was really pumped to try it out, but so far the response from us playing with the system has been less then positive. It seems to add a lot of complexity for relatively little real benefit.

The chance of stabilization and springing back to your feet is good, though its lower then a normal stabilization check, and if you are unconscious and bleeding its likely you have less rounds to make it in this system(having only three failures). Plus there is a lot more book-keeping involved, especially when spells that affect your hit points come into play(ok, so I'm 12th level and just got bears endurance. That means I gain 24hp, so my new 'death point' is 6 lower then it used to be...), and it adds a lot of other points up for interpretation(What about temp HP, ect).

If you want to make your characters have a better chance of surviving when they are down below zero, let them drop to their negative con instead. Unless they are a very low con build(in which case they probably don't have a lot of HP anyway) or you are in the upper levels where they have a lot of HP, thats probably going to put them to near the same level and its much easier to keep track of.

[Archade]

What our group started doing after we saw the 4e test rules for dying was this, and it worked *very* well.

When a character is reduced to 0 hit points, they are disabled, as written. When a character is reduced below 0 hit points, they are unconscious and dying they must make a DC 20 Fortitude save each round, or lose another hit point. If a character fails their save by 5 or more, they lose 2 hit points. If they fail the save by 10 or more, they lose 4 hit points. That way, dying is more uncertain (adding excitement to the game), you get away with metagaming ("I'm at -2 hit points, don't worry about me!"), and higher-level characters have an easier time of stabilizing (which seems fair).

If an unconscious character makes their save, they are unconscious and stable. In our campaign, we use the regular 'stay-unconscious' rules, as well as a character can come over and rouse the character with a standard action, leaving them conscious and disabled.

That's my suggestion.

[Tarlane]

Archade, I like your suggestion. The only issue that I see with it is that at higher levels some classes can make a DC20 fort save without batting an eye. At a certain point your barbarian is only going to die on a 1 from then on.

However Iron Heroes has a system that is something like this and is kind of neat while being a bit more fluid then a set dc. The other side of it though is that its designed to help the PCs survive(generally a good thing, but can take fear out of a more gritty campaign. Its designed this way because IH is a low magic setting, so no raise dead).

Essentially how it works is that things progress as standard when you are below 0, you are unconscious with a chance to stabilize every round or you drop 1 more hp. However once you hit -10 thats when things get different. Once you get to -10 you aren't going to recover on your own any longer, however you aren't immediately dead either. Starting at -10 you make a fort save each round vs a DC = to how far in the negative you are. If you succeed you lose 1 more HP, if you fail, you're done for. A tough character can survive a while this way, depending on whether he's just barely at -10 or if the last hit knocked him down quite a bit further. But the system scales pretty well, since when you are low level with a low fort save the hit that drops you down below isn't likely to do much more then 10 damage. But on a high level when you save is much more impressive, you could get creamed and be down at -30 right away.

-Tarlane

[Lilith]

I use the "0 is disabled" rule, but you're dead at negative your Constitution score.

[Sylvain Hamel]

Lilith wrote:

I use the "0 is disabled" rule, but you're dead at negative your Constitution score.

This doesnt work at higher levels. Lets say your fighter's const is 15. At mid-level you frequently encounter monsters that can take your fighter from alive and kicking to dead in one round. Crits just make it worse. And this behavior is even worse for "weak" classes.

There is only one solution in my mind to this problem and that is to have the negative hit points scale with your level.

[Taman]

We've been using the adapted 4e rule for our 3.5/PFRPG BETA game and we've liked it so far. How many times our characters escaped death because of that so far! But the 1/3 of hp might be a bit much. A 10th level character with 100 hp dies at -33... I'd suggest: you die at minus your CON + 1/2 level rounded down.