Death and dying my take on it

[Diskordant]

So after reading part of the is it bad form to kick a pc when he's down thread I realized I probably should be doing more of that, but I've always thought the death threshold and stabilization rules needed some work. So heres my new take on them.

You can go to negative a number of HP equal to your con score plus your level plus your hit die(for multiclass characters it's whichever hit die they have the most of, and if it's equal than average them).

This creates a starting minimum of -12, elven wizard who dumped con to 7 before racials, and a max of -33 for dwarves barbarian with a 20 con. At 20th you're looking at about -38 for the wizard and -76 for the dwarf. Everyone else will fall into the middle.

Stabilize checks will just be a straight con check with dc = -HP. You receive a +1 if your highest number of HD is 8, +2 if 10, +3 if 12(average and round down if two or more equal number of HD). 20 auto succeeds, no auto failure. You gain a +1 for 5th level and every 5 after.

Endurance grants you an additional +4 to stabilize.

Toughness give you a bonus to stabilize equal to 1/2 level.

Then to tell if a combatant is dead or dying it's either a heal check dc 10 as a move action that draws an AoO

or a perception dc 15 as a free action. If the subject is bigger or smaller than medium the dc decreases or increases by 4 per size category. Also for every 5' away you are you increase the dc by 1

[Ringtail]

I like your idea (might refine it a little to taste before using it though), but I've one question: Do you plan on changing Diehard at all?

[Diskordant]

I had not read the PF version of diehard yet. So a change would be nessicary, off the top of my head I would allow you to add your con twice to your negative total. Imm not sure though as the aforementioned dwarf barbarian would be at -120 and able to act the whole time.... Then again I'm not sure if I have a problem with that.

[LazarX]

Pathfinder made it a good deal tougher to die as it is.. nerfed spells, boosted hit dice. Yes those who dumped their CON down to 5 have it tougher, but that's the price of making yourself sickly in order to crab points.

[Diskordant]

LazarX wrote:

Pathfinder made it a good deal tougher to die as it is.. nerfed spells, boosted hit dice. Yes those who dumped their CON down to 5 have it tougher, but that's the price of making yourself sickly in order to crab points.

Pathfinder made it harder to die when your HP are in the black, but it's about the same once you're in the red. I feel that con, level, and hit die type don't play enough of a role in how well you can suffer mortal wounds. Plus I'm going to have combatants who will continue to attack downed characters if it's within reason for them to do so. So I want most characters to not go up, to negative, to dead with just a couple attacks. I would like to give the rest of the party time to intervene when they see a comrade go down.

Edit: started two sentences in a row with plus and used the wrong your.

[Min2007]

May I make a suggestion...

Why all the extra math? I ask myself what my end goal is when creating a house rule. You are trying to prevent player deaths in battle, right? Then why not simply do just that? Borrow a video game rule: When someone falls in battle they don't die unless the entire party has been defeated. Simple and you don't have to change any other rules. If the battle ends with PC victory then all the fallen are back up with one HP. If all the PCs are dropped then they are all dead (unless you want to save one or more as a GM plot point). If characters flee a battle while some of them are dropped and they leave behind the dropped characters then those dropped characters are dead. If they carry the bodies out and successfully get away then they are back up with one HP after the chase.

[TOZ]

May I suggest Raising The Stakes?

[Diskordant]

Min2007- first off is your name a reference to WoT? If so sweet.

Secondly I do want characters to have the capacity to die. I want the tension when a character is down with a celestial dire badger raging and drooling overtop them about to sink their teeth into him to finish him off, forcing the other pcs to either have to break from attacking the cornered wizard giving him a chance to teleport to safety, or risk losin the pc and finish off the wizard.

TOZ- I have always considered the PCs roll all the dice thing, but why add 12? I could see 11, but if a d20 replaces a base 10 then why replace the other d20 with a 12? As for the raising the stakes portion I might give that a try, though that seems like a skill that both dm and players need to master and my group runs through too many players. Thanks for post, I enjoyed reading it none the less.

[TOZ]

I really just like that PDF for the Death Flag idea. I'm not particularly interested in the Players Roll All The Dice option.

[Min2007]

Diskordant wrote:

Min2007- first off is your name a reference to WoT? If so sweet.

Secondly I do want characters to have the capacity to die. I want the tension when a character is down with a celestial dire badger raging and drooling overtop them about to sink their teeth into him to finish him off, forcing the other pcs to either have to break from attacking the cornered wizard giving him a chance to teleport to safety, or risk losin the pc and finish off the wizard.

Yes I was a huge WoT fan. And Min was the character I most identified with. So it made sense to use her name when I was making a web ID. You may be the first to notice. Awesome.

Well you will have to try out your rules and take notes on how well it works so you can let us know. I do wonder if anyone who has -33 or more buffer is truly going to be worried about a drooling celestial dire badger though. Unless you let the badger use Coup de Grace... in which case it can kill you in one attack regardless of whether you use the system I thought up or yours.