One of the things I’ve always hated about D&D is the fragility of the characters, low level PCs drop with a goblin’s confirmed critical, and high level PCs sometimes roll poorly in save or die situations. Some players probably enjoy this, they love building a new PC and trying them out, but I for one hate it. I also love building characters, but I generally go past the stats and spend some serious time building backgrounds and character motivation, and having a PC sliced down with a lucky (or unlucky) roll doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve noticed that Pathfinder (as well as 4th) has attempted to rectify low level survivability by giving PCs more hit points – I don’t much care for this solution. A first level character should be somewhat fragile, if you can’t be intimidated by a great axe at this level when’s it going to happen? What I’d like to see is PCs become more resilient to dying rather than more resilient to damage. Here’s some of the ideas I’ve been kicking around:
-10 is out, PCs can survive to –Con
Constitution determines how tough you are, so why is it that when a PC is knocked to the negatives the gnarled old dwarf dies as quickly as the asthmatic wood elf? Death’s door should be determined by the character’s constitution score wouldn’t you think? PCs can now survive to –CON before dying.
New Condition: Dying
1)-10 dead is gone. PCs now can survive up to –CON before dying.
2)The disabled condition now extends from 0 to –CON
3)After –CON PCs are dying loosing 1 HP a round until they have taken additional damage equal to CON bonus x Level. At this point the PC is dead.
4)Magical healing or use of the heal skill will stop the PC from losing any more HP but does not remove the dying condition. A PC must be healed back to positive HP before the dying condition is removed.
5)PCs do not heal normally while dying. Other characters may attempt to use the heal skill once per day to revive the fallen PC if magical healing is unavailable. The DC is equal to the total negative damage and the PC is healed 1 HP + the amount the check was exceeded by.
6)Massive damage rules and save Vs death now gives the dying status rather killing PCs outright. On a failed save the PC is immediately dropped to –CON -1, or simply apply the damage taken (which ever drops the PC lower). If this is enough damage to kill the PC outright then the PC is dead.
This change would make the PCs much harder to kill. An eighth level dwarven fighter with a 16 Con and 91 hit points could fight as normal until he took 91 damage, take partial actions until he dropped to -16, and linger at death’s door until he took a further 24 damage . . . meaning that this tough little dwarf could take 130 damage without being killed.
Hero points:
I first came across this idea in the Warhammer RPG. I think they may have been called fate points or some such. It’s a very simple fix: instead of complicating things with new conditions or rules simply give PCs hero points (let’s say an arbitrary 2 at level1). These are essentially “get out jail free” cards. Anytime a PC would be killed outright a PC may cash in a hero point and essentially avoid the catastrophe all together. In the case of massive damage or instant death the PC is instead dropped to -1 and stable.
New hero points should be awarded any time a PC does something extraordinary. Defeating a major villain, saving a town, or doing something particularly heroic are all great reasons for earning hero points. If a DM is using a pre-made adventure the completion of a module is also a great time to award a hero point. PCs are not invincible though and the gods only give so many chances so a PC can only hold a maximum of 3 hero points in reserve at a time. Only PCs and named villains should have hero points but I allow PCs to spend their own hero points to save their cohorts.
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These are just some ideas I’ve been thinking about. Please feel free to post your own ideas or critics of these three.
