How do you handle mass damage?

[Alex the Rogue]

I am one of the GM's in my group and during the last game the 11th level Alchemist/Rogue took 55 points of damage. Since we have not dealt with that before we decided to rule on it at a later time. The Alchemist did not die, but he was already down some HP and it took him to a negative level. Luckily for him his CON was high enough and he just bled for a round before being healed.

My question is how do your groups handle mass damage or do you just ignore it? My thinking was that the 50 HP level is tough especially at their level and growing levels. It would also work both ways so they could take out bad guy should they crit, etc. Please help!

[Doggan]

Characters/enemies die fast enough as it is. Massive damage can just end things way too quickly.

[mdt]

I thought the thread was about mass damage, as in, how do you handle masses of people who get hit by a fireball or archers or something.

For Massive Damage, I ignore it for the most part. At low levels, massive damage kills you outright. At high levels, it's too easy to take 'massive damage' per the rules.

[WhipShire]

Yep, I agree with everyone above we ignore mass damage rules. As Doggan said, NPCs die fast enough anyway.

[Hawktitan]

Massive damage is even clearly stated as an optional rule. If you don't like it then don't use it.

[Paul Zagieboylo]

It's an optional rule for a reason. If you don't like it, don't use it. Problem solved!

That said, relatively few things can actually deal 50 damage in a single attack, except high-level spells, Vital Strikes (from someone pretty buff), or critical hits from a REALLY powerful monster (or a x4 weapon). And by the time you're facing this kind of stuff, you might have more than 100 hp, in which case the threshold is even higher. A full attack doesn't count, that's multiple attacks. What hit your alchemist for 55?

[blahpers]

Massive damage mechanics don't add anything useful to the game. If you can do enough damage to trigger the mechanic, you can probably finish the creature normally, unless it was an all-or-nothing burst--and you can make those ridiculously large already (see FuelDrop's Exploding Toad for an example).

[SycoSurfer]

I have heard of some people using a massive hit like that knocking you unconcious Fort save or whatver you feel like using. I agree that the half damage rules being an outright kill is a little to much exp. at lower levels or if say a rogue gets the jump on a caster. A big hit hurts enough in HP why would you take the character out the game... he will be hurt and behind the rest of the battle anyways. Their are to many abilities that allow for 1 big hit and to have that kill a PC is just to much.