Which is fine, but it amounts to a houserule to gimp the player. You turn a useful game mechanic into a guessing game for the player. Its no wonder players die in rage more often in your games.
-S
I never said they die more often in my games.
Since I am using the vitality-/wound-points and the death and dying variant from UA (with some tweeks), they drop dying if any.
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Yeah sure, but not feeling the pain and not being aware of the possible death thread is a CORE aspect of a berserker rage (in "reality").
That's why I vote for the DM to manage the ragers HPs as soon as he begins raging.
I agree about raging but I really don't like the idea of taking this out of the player's hands. You either have a good player who will play it properly or a poor one who doesn't really belong playing a barbarian. Either way taking the burden of tracking hit points from them won't help.
"You were hit by it's claws but where should be pain there is only hate." -- I Love this!
-- Dennis
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A barbarian of 10th level gains a +4 to Con, gaining 20 hit points. These hit points will disappear after the rage. So, to make the math easy, let's assume he has 100 hit points at 10th level. When he rages he goes from 100 hit points to 120 hit points. When he takes 100 hit points of damage, he feels fine. He has 20 hit points left over. When his rage ends, he will lose 20 hit points and go to -20. This means he should be dead.
There is a big problem with the math here that seems to have been missed. When the barbarian ends his rage, he doesn't drop to -4 con from where he was when he started off with. So if he was at 100 HP, went up to 120 while raging. Then took 100hp damage, when the rage wears off, he is at 0. No different then if he hadn't gotten the bonus hit points at all and certainly no worse. Now, if he had taken 120 points of damage, he simply would have been dead without the HP boost right off the bat but with it he is still standing(if wobbly) and that gives another chance to toss some healing at him.
I agree that for flavor, the barbarian should be more a berserker(though the frenzied berserker class is there to cover that full feel) and charge into battle heedless of things, but if thats the case you can't just assume he does that if he gets a boost to HP. If he doesn't and still only has 100 HP, he should be still standing toe to toe with the guy who is doing 40hp damage a hit even when he is down to 1hp either way.
-Tarlane
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You're right about the math. I had intended for the bonus to be 40 (I was going to use an 11th level barbarian with Greater Rage).
However, a barbarian that normally has 100 hit points and gains 20 hit points when raging is 'fine' at 10 hit points. They suffer no penalties to their actions. They fight exactly as well as a character with full hit points. But, if he comes out of rage, since he has taken 10 more hit points than he has, when he stops raging he will die.
I don't to remove any risk of death, but I don't think that a barbarian SHOULD BE more likely to die than other characters. I particularly don't think that a character that is role-played well should be more likely to die than a character that is role-played poorly. That kind of game just doesn't appeal to me.
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In the example given, the barbarian has taken 110 points of damage. In my opinion, he is more likely than any other class to survive that damage because of his rage and the 'extra' 20 hit points it provides. If another class had 100 hit points and took 110 damage, they wouldn't have to worry about how many rounds they had left. Of course, there are some classes that have abilities (defensive roll, etc.) that can save them from the same damage the barbarian might take.
On the whole, I do not see the rage ability as any kind of trap; an angry combatant can be very well aware of the extent of his own injuries, to the point of guessing that he is in serious trouble once his adrenaline stops surging. I cannot recall any time during my games that a barbarian PC died when he ended his rage. He either died in combat or lived long enough to get healing.
What I have always found easiest is to instead of adding the additional points on the top, is to add them on the bottom.
For example, let's take the 100 hp 10th level barbarian. He gets 20 more hp when raging. How I handle this is that he still has 100 hp, but instead of becoming disabled at 0, he becomes disabled at -20. And instead of dying at -10, dies at -30. I do this so that I realize that when you get into those extra hp, you are on borrowed time. If you are sitting at -16 and your rage ends, you were already dead, just too stubborn to realize it before than.
Here is a couple of images to help show the point:
Barbarian raging in negatives
It has all been said already. I'm of the ones who think that +4 CON is OUT, +2 temporary hp/level (call it moral bonus, whatever) is IN. (and possibly a +2 fort save to keep up with the old CON boost).
No matter how cinematic or uncinematic death-after-rage can be, its not a viable character class feature IMO.
How about making the Rage HP Nonlethal damage when the rage ends? He may fall unconscious, but he would not die.