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My last pondering of the day, I promise =).
Last night I ran into something that can definitely be categorized as fluff. It deals with falling into the negatives.
Since the creation of the negatives concept I took a very slight offense at the concept of the "oops now your night-night" or the instacoma version of negatives. Why can't you be conscious and be dying? Why can't we fit that into the rules?
Well last night I did and it actually worked (9 out of 10 of my ideas fail =). One of the PC's got hit by acid several times, the last in the leg where it ate through his clothing, flesh and artery. It pumped his lifeblood out, he felt woozy and collapsed to the ground. Still conscious and weak he used his stabilization roll to try to tie a tourniquet around his leg. He eventually succeeded and slumped against the wall, slightly aware of his surroundings but too concerned with breathing and fighting to stay conscious.
Did it affect play? Yeah kind of, it made it a bit more dramatic and interesting. It changed the stabilization roll into something more than a roll. It also gave the player a chance to still remain ‘in play’ in a limited way (I just went straight to the ½ action phase without the waking roll).
Has anyone else handled negatives differently? Anything work or fail particularly well?
You are aware of the Diehard feat, right? That feat does at least some of what you're looking for.
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You are aware of the Diehard feat, right? That feat does at least some of what you're looking for.
That allows a character to act while in negs. I don't think that's what he's looking for, I belive (and correct me if I'm wrong) that he's simply looking for a way to add a little flavor to how a character stabilizes. I think that the way you (decrepit) described it is a fair assumption. I mean if somebody has a gushing arterial spray, they aren't just going to stop without some type of intervention.
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Yes on the die hard, not exactly what I am looking for though. The concept is that is it mandatory to call all PC's who hit the negatives unconscious?
On one of the few occasions I actually got to play in my career, I ran into a rather interesting call. My dwarf had entered a room, cursorily scanned it for enemies, and entered. The DM declared there was a paper on the floor and, since I scanned the room, I saw the paper, therefore I had to make a save, which I failed, and was subsequently out of the game over an hour because of a Sepia Snake Sigil. Good call? I think not. I did however learn an important lesson about keeping players involved in play.
So is it possible to keep a player in play who is in the negatives without defaulting to the now your awake, now your not, rule.
Note my current campaign is a PA setting where there are not quick cures =). Also note that the player was limited to 1/2 movement actions only, no standard actions, thus keeping Diehard viable.
I like the idea of being upright until you are through 1/2 your Con score. If you want something a little harsher, use the Con modifier. Or, perhaps you can require a Will save, DC 15+# points you're negative to remain upright. I'd allow a Fighter's bravery to apply.
Mechanically, issues include the following:
1) As mentioned above, subdual or nonlethal damage. You are normally downed by this stuff when it exceeds your current hp. If your current hp are negative numbers, even the wimpiest of attacks can knock you down and out anyway.
2) Diehard. If we find a way to keep you upright even down a few hp into the negatives, then this feat will need some work.
One other possible concern. Any mechanism that allows characters to remain upright into negative hp can cause players to react differently to damage. Normally, you get down into the teens or single digits and you're worried. Now, you don't stop until you're negative some number. This can encourage more reckless behavior/brinksmanship in some groups, resulting in more dead PCs. Not all groups, obviously.
On the other hand, I appreciate not having characters get knocked out of the game for extended periods. But you'd hope the party healer would get them on their feet if they went negative. Or that in the future a character learns not to let themselves get so beat up. Unavoidable at times, I know. We had a critical hit from a frost giant berserker (barbarian levels) knock our paladin to -9 hp in one fight, that's hard to avoid. And the shadowdancer got hit by a gelugon's fear aura and ran off for an entire fight in another case.
Flavor, well, I'll need to think about that.
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Slanky... A really good question. Later on in the adventure the same player accidentally electrocuted himself and that dropped him to -3. This I fluffed out to it stopping his heart. He collapsed to the ground and gasped for breath. This time I declared him unconscious (I have seen a couple major heart attacks and you have seconds of lucidity at best, and even then your level of consciousness is not so good =). This time another player ran up to him and revived him. Like before he was limited to half movements, but the symptoms were different.
I also only allowed him his movement only actions after combat was over. During combat he, in the first case, was aware of his surroundings, which disturbed the player much more then the simple sleepy time version, even though the only thing that really changed was the description.
It is still in the experimental phase and quite subjective based on the injury. As for subdual, I plan on implementing the same policy. You get pounded and either are so weakened from the beating you cannot continue or you are KO'ed. Either way I would let them stumble off after the fight.
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I'm not even sure it's required that such a system actually provides an in-game benefit of "remaining upright." If anything I see this as a way to increase dramatic tension in games while still letting players who are at negative HP provide just a little group support, even if that support is simply the ability to cry for help or provide an in-game reason for stabilizing wounds (the example of bandaging his own bleeding). I would be interested in implementing it just for the flavor alone with no game benefit.
Unfortunately the problem with the existing system is that it is more-or-less binary. You are either up and fighting, or you are down and out. Sure there's "staggered" at exactly zero, but other than low level games, how often have people seen that happen? With this kind of system the player is awake for far longer before finally passing out and succumbing to his/her wounds.
If you were interested in expanding the rules to provide an actual benefit it would be as simple as moving the "staggered" window from just zero HP to a range of -CON Bonus to 0 HP. Players in this window follow all the standard staggered rules (one standard action only) and still pass out at when their negative surpasses their CON bonus. Two problems. One, players have a much smaller window of "not being dead yet" as a staggered target is still a tempting target and when you're only talking about 5-8 damage taking them to dead, there's not much of a window for error (although using CON bonus instead of 1/2 CON helps fix this). Two, you have to treat non-undead/construct/ooze NPCs the same way (which may skew combat to more difficult at lower levels).
The benefit for the system I just outlined is that it still provides a benefit (albeit significantly reduced) for diehard, as you'd get your standard allotment of actions, not just a standard action. Hmm, I think I may have just convinced myself to try out the system I outlined where your "staggered" window moves from just 0 to -CON Bonus to 0.
My last pondering of the day, I promise =).
Last night I ran into something that can definitely be categorized as fluff. It deals with falling into the negatives.
Since the creation of the negatives concept I took a very slight offense at the concept of the "oops now your night-night" or the instacoma version of negatives. Why can't you be conscious and be dying? Why can't we fit that into the rules?
Well last night I did and it actually worked (9 out of 10 of my ideas fail =). One of the PC's got hit by acid several times, the last in the leg where it ate through his clothing, flesh and artery. It pumped his lifeblood out, he felt woozy and collapsed to the ground. Still conscious and weak he used his stabilization roll to try to tie a tourniquet around his leg. He eventually succeeded and slumped against the wall, slightly aware of his surroundings but too concerned with breathing and fighting to stay conscious.
Did it affect play? Yeah kind of, it made it a bit more dramatic and interesting. It changed the stabilization roll into something more than a roll. It also gave the player a chance to still remain ‘in play’ in a limited way (I just went straight to the ½ action phase without the waking roll).
Has anyone else handled negatives differently? Anything work or fail particularly well?
I like this. Prompting the player to think of a way to stop themselves from dying is a great idea.
Though, for some people this can just be a free "Cast cure light wounds" on myself. I'd say, in this case, to make them make an "Injury" check, with the damage of the attack being their negatives.
ie., Level 4 cleric at -3 makes a concentration check to cast Cure Light Wounds on himself, takes 1 damage from taking an action while dying and goes to -4, and the DC is 15. (10+4+1)
But that's just me-- and it'd make going into negatives for any class pretty handwavey later on in the game and for divine casters ("I'm in negatives? I draw a potion. Next round I drink it. 1d8+1 hp and I'm fine" or "I'm in negatives? I cast stabilize on myself. DC13.. look, I'm twelfth level. I didn't roll a 1.)
My last pondering of the day, I promise =).
Last night I ran into something that can definitely be categorized as fluff. It deals with falling into the negatives.
Since the creation of the negatives concept I took a very slight offense at the concept of the "oops now your night-night" or the instacoma version of negatives. Why can't you be conscious and be dying? Why can't we fit that into the rules?
Well last night I did and it actually worked (9 out of 10 of my ideas fail =). One of the PC's got hit by acid several times, the last in the leg where it ate through his clothing, flesh and artery. It pumped his lifeblood out, he felt woozy and collapsed to the ground. Still conscious and weak he used his stabilization roll to try to tie a tourniquet around his leg. He eventually succeeded and slumped against the wall, slightly aware of his surroundings but too concerned with breathing and fighting to stay conscious.
Did it affect play? Yeah kind of, it made it a bit more dramatic and interesting. It changed the stabilization roll into something more than a roll. It also gave the player a chance to still remain ‘in play’ in a limited way (I just went straight to the ½ action phase without the waking roll).
Has anyone else handled negatives differently? Anything work or fail particularly well?
I like this. Prompting the player to think of a way to stop themselves from dying is a great idea.
Though, for some people this can just be a free "Cast cure light wounds" on myself. I'd say, in this case, to make them make an "Injury" check, with the damage of the attack being their negatives.
ie., Level 4 cleric at -3 makes a concentration check to cast Cure Light Wounds on himself, takes 1 damage from taking an action while dying and goes to -4, and the DC is 15. (10+4+1)
But that's just me-- and it'd make going into negatives for any class pretty handwavey later on in the game and for divine casters ("I'm in negatives? I draw a potion. Next round I drink it....
I believe that the OP is proposing that a person be able to roleplay part of stabilizing as being awake and trying to bind their wounds, not be able to stay standing.
Though, for some people this can just be a free "Cast cure light wounds" on myself. I'd say, in this case, to make them make an "Injury" check, with the damage of the attack being their negatives.
ie., Level 4 cleric at -3 makes a concentration check to cast Cure Light Wounds on himself, takes 1 damage from taking an action while dying and goes to -4, and the DC is 15. (10+4+1)
But that's just me-- and it'd make going into negatives for any class pretty handwavey later on in the game and for divine casters ("I'm in negatives? I draw a potion. Next round I drink it....
The simple answer to these problems is the rule that casting a spell causes too much trauma to an already strained system. If the player attempts to cast a spell, the result automatically fails and the player is moved to -1/2 Con Mod and loses consciousness.
As for the drinking the potion result, I think that's a great flavor-based way to stabilize and get yourself back in the fight. I'm greatly considering switching to this system we've thought up. Thanks, Decrepit DM.
1) As mentioned above, subdual or nonlethal damage. You are normally downed by this stuff when it exceeds your current hp. If your current hp are negative numbers, even the wimpiest of attacks can knock you down and out anyway.
This doesn't sound like a problem. If you're so injured that you are literally fighting off death, somebody walking up and punching you is going to be pretty devastating.
One other possible concern. Any mechanism that allows characters to remain upright into negative hp can cause players to react differently to damage. Normally, you get down into the teens or single digits and you're worried. Now, you don't stop until you're negative some number. This can encourage more reckless behavior/brinksmanship in some groups, resulting in more dead PCs. Not all groups, obviously.
Players will learn eventually.
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I thought this a cool enough concept to bring up this idea as a house rule with some of the people I play with. Here's what I've been talking about with my group and I thought I'd get more feelings here (plus I'd like to keep the discussion going):
My Objectives:
- Realism: While I understand that Pathfinder is not realistic the concept of continuing to stay alive while bleeding out and sputtering those last few breaths mimics real-life a little better than "you're awake!", "no, you're unconscious now", "oh, you heal 1 HP, you're awake!". Playing a lot of level 1 stuff lately and watching the effect of "staggered" on players really pushes this point home for me.
- Limited New Rules: I do not want to make this some huge cumbersome system. The easier to use the better. If it requires a lot of bookkeeping, I'm not interested. House rules are good, but once they become massive sweeping changes to the system I question their value.
- Cool Factor: A lot of dramatic tension and "cool points" can be written into an encounter as that hero tries to crawl away from the main fight, or falls in battle at a key chokepoint ready to fight off the hordes while prone as his friends rush to try and reinforce him. I think providing a system with out so many penalties the players are "essentially unconscious" (such as only being able to speak) while more in-line with RAW and a good beginning are not the same as watching players try to struggle with surviving.
- Avoid Expanding survivability too much: My goal is not to make it so players feel like immortal gods; it's to make them feel like there is a window of opportunity to fight to survive, not just lie on the ground hoping that their friends might fight for them. This is the tough one as I know survivability will grow a little, I'm just oping that since the fact that the "drop dead" point for character death does not change, survivability isn't impacted dramatically (especially at higher levels).
My Proposed House Rule:
- Players have a "staggered range" from 0 to -2xCON Bonus (a character with 14 CON would have a staggered range of 0 to -4 HP).
- The death point remains at -CON Score (a character with a 14 CON dies at -14 HP).
- When you take damage that brings you into the "staggered range" you gain the traditional "staggered" status. This status and what it means you can do is identical to what is written in the RAW.
- Per RAW, trying to do anything other than a move action causes one point of hit point loss.
- Once you take that single hit point of damage while in this status (whether that loss is from an external source such as damage, or a personal source such as taking the allowed standard action) you will fall prone.
- Should your hit point total still keep you in the "staggered range", you remain staggered per the rules and can continue the standard action allowed per RAW (which means you can even try to stand up as a move action or attempt to move your speed, but if you were to try to make a melee attack, you would take 1 HP of damage from the strain and fall prone again).
- When you finally do hit -2xCON you fall unconscious and enter the "dying" status.
The way I see it under this set of rules really there are only two new rules:
1. You are staggered between 0 and -2xCON bonus (as opposed to only 0).
2. You fall prone when you take a point of damage.
Some Considerations I've Had:
- As a noted side bonus it would help alleviate the "The Raging Barbarian falls unconscious and dies! effect). Being staggered would mean they could actually keep up the rage and retain those hit points that would normally kill them when they go away.
- Since a 14 CON is pretty standard (if not higher), you're likely talking about an average staggered range of 3 to 5 HP for most characters. This is hardly game-breaking.
- This makes low level play a little harder and NPCs would follow the same staggered rules. Fortunately most NPCs have morale problems and would probably try to run which may make it easier to run as a GM.
- The window between "up and fighting" and "dead" is smaller. Characters would generally have about 10 rounds of survival when unconscious which is what the core rules were trying to eliminate. I'm hoping the addition of the rounds where one is staggered alleviates this.
- The diehard feat loses some benefit (not good for the Half-Orc race). I would expand die-hard to allow players to take their standard allotment of actions when in the "staggered range" (with the same penalties applying regarding loss of hit points and eventual unconsciousness). When you finally hit a round you would be unconscious, the standard diehard text would kick in and you would get one round of actions before passing out (essentially diehard individuals don't really have a staggered window).
- A window of just 5 HP (0 or -4) when you have a CON score of 14 doesn't sound very significant but that could only be confirmed with some playtesting.
Again, if you like the idea of free actions that's good (I like that idea too), but this set of rules are for people who want to expand the range to a little more. Good, bad, indifferent?
Following your post, but making the following changes:
-Nauseated (only move action, but can wait to turns to do a standard)
-Exausted (to represente the blood lose or similar)
-Dying (but not unconcious)
-And increasing the treshold to CON/2
Will kinda add realism and will not likely add survivabilty to the players. Also, will not make the Diehard feat redundant.
I kinda like the idea of a hero brought to its knees, unable to bear the weight of his armor, crwaling for cover desperately while his life fades away rapidly.
Humbly,
Yawar
"The brain is the last to die" that said, causes of death are blood loss, starvation and freezing. Attempts to revive or stabilize have merit intrisicaly but the basic fact is from -1 to -9 you are either like dead or dying depending on the REAL factors above.
Here is how I handle things in a game. When a player takes damage I describe that wound based on how far above success the attack roll was with damage dealt in mind and the type of weapon used.
In a case of paladin vs. frost giant (supposing an axe were used) I would declare the paladin either knocked dead but blunt force or fully split in half. There is no way around massive cases and the only cure for thinking "I'm not below zero" is to give the player a concept of what being at 13 out of 60 hit points after a duel would mean.
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Not having Pcs and NPC's unconcious at negative hit points can lend itself to a more visceral game experience. Combats usually leave people lying on the ground gasping out their last breaths, or screaming in agony at a fatal wound or desperately trying to hold their intestines is as their life bleeds out. The severity of the wound prevents them doing anything but lying there, however they don't need to be unconcious. If you're after a more mature game, this can add an entire new level of grittiness to your combats. My players like this level of realisim, but we tone it down heavily when our kids are around.
Another plus, this level of detail makes certain necromantic spells more likely to be used (deathknell anyone). You don't need to have deathwatch up either.
The possible problem with this is it makes it far easier for the baddies (or PC's) to just finish off fallen opponents. That one also comes down to GM and player preference. In a game where every action counts and some battles can be a TPK if people don't make critical decisions at the right time, this can be a big factor. In the normal unconcious but dying, enemies are more likely to just walk away and attack something else, increasing the survivability of pc's. With obvious signs of life but dying, they may just decide to stay and finish off the dying PC, especially in a world where magic can return you to full combat effectiveness very quickly.
Ultimately it comes down to play style.
What we don't do is add new mechanics in. The pc/npc is helpess and unable to do anything except cry out, or feebly try and stop the bleeding. No additional actions or anything. It's purely a story telling mechanism for us, that doesn't change the mechanical balance at all. I'd be very wary of adding new mechanics that allow characters more actions when in negatives.
Cheers
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Good ideas. Just trouble shooting a bit:
I can't remember what spell, but in the last game I played, being at -1 and unconscious actually helped someone avoid some mind-effecting spell; he's was unconscious so no need to make a save. While there isn't much damage between "unconscious" and " barely conscious, unable to do anything except stabilize," the PC may now be susceptible to mind affecting spells. What happens when someone down but awake at -3 hp gets hit with a Fear spell? Like I said, just trying to trouble-shoot the idea a little.